Ménage à 3/Headscratchers

As with the main page, please, no NSFW links on this page.

Seriously, whatever level of experience he has with women or men, how the hell can he make that kind of mistake?
 * When a character is kicked in the crotch, why are the stars above his head!
 * Because that's where his testicles are now?
 * I figure it's because he got knocked out and that's the standard spot.
 * What is it about Zii? Every guy and his mother (in a recent strip, that's taken literally) willingly sleeps with Zii. Does she have some sexuality-warping aura, is she lucky enough to always find a fellow bisexual where ever she goes, or is she just that good?
 * And while you're at it: Why is she allowed to sleep around, but the guy who's married to said mother is a scumbag if he does so? And it's not exactly her only flaw.
 * The idea is that the husband did it first, and the mother did it as a consequence.
 * Also, the fact that the guy was, y'know, married gives his a lot less leeway in that regard than Zii has, as a single.
 * It's a little complicated, but it mostly comes down to revenge sex. Most likely after Zii met Angèle there was quite a lot of talking about their lives before Zii put the moves on her, at which point Zii likely realized that not only was she going to get hot and heavy with an industrial-strength MILF, but she was doing said MILF a favor by giving Angèle the push she needed to dump her cheating husband and bail on a crappy marriage. On top of all that, she got to shove Vyndicator's words back in his face in a very, very literal way. If you're one of the people who thinks that was Zii's CMOA, this three-for-the-price-of-one seduction is what separates it from a typical quick-and-dirty hookup.
 * I would like to note that even if you think Zii is a Creator's Pet, this can still be her CMOA. Villains (and The Scrappy) can have crowning moments too.
 * Why did Gary have to get new room mates after he found out they were dating? He doesn't seem to be that uncomfortable around Dillon, and he's pretty much just a blink away from rapist. So why did they feel the need to move out?
 * Well, Dillon and Matt wanted a place all for themselves, it seems. And by the time Gary found out, even if he told them he was okay with them being gay and around, they had already made that decision. And without THAT the story wouldn't have started to begin with. Plus there's the nosy intolerant landlord and thin walls that would have made them getting kicked out inevitable.
 * Wouldn't say that they'd get kicked by the landlord, she did tolerate Zii and DiDi while watching horror movies.
 * Sort of. That Landlady still scared the Hell out of poor Zii and DiDi. Thankfully for Gary's sake, Girls Are Really Scared of Horror Movies.
 * On that note, why are all the gay guys a bunch of slutty sexual predators, and all the girls are slutty bisexuals? Would it kill Giz to be... you know... creative in one single part of the comic?
 * They aren't predators, really, though they do seem to be promiscuous.
 * It's ribaldry. Everyone being slutty is part of the deal, and has been for as long as anyone can remember.
 * So the kid in the latest arc finds out: His dad is cheating on his mom, his mom just had gay sex with someone they never knew before, someone he made fun of online randomly shows up at his house and has sex with his mom, and his parents are getting divorced, all on one morning. He runs screaming. End arc! Wait wait!? What about the kid? He's gonna need therapy, or something.
 * Somehow I doubt we were supposed to care for that kid.
 * Seeing how the fans are now treating him as The Woobie, that would be a major swing and a miss.
 * Wait, "gay sex"? Is that important? Is it more likely to demand therapy?
 * ...yes?
 * I'm guessing because-- would you expect your parent, whom you (Provided you've ever thought about it before) thought was straight, to suddenly reveal/imply they've had sex with someone of the same gender? Especially at that (the kid's) age? Also, depending on the person, that probably could be quite the shock. I wouldn't be surprised if there actually were people who went to therapy for that. Unfortunate, but possible.
 * Is it me or does a main character's sexual identity make their character? Besides Didi, you have Gary and Sandra who are both unlucky losers and identify as straight. Dillon and Yuki identify as gay and are very bright and cheerful. Matt and Zii, both identifying as bi, are immoral cheaters who are only concerned with their immediate needs than the feelings of others (More Zii though).
 * Mh, that's a nice observation.
 * I always figured that as far as the creators go, They Just Didn't Care and the characterization is only as deep as the softcore porn of them she is selling, with everyone just being hollow stereotypes to exploit.
 * Matt is more culpable than Zii. We've never seen Zii in a committed monogamous relationship, and while she's had sex with people who were, she's not the one cheating; they are. Matt, meanwhile, was a huge whore, despite both Dillon and Sandra apparently having real feelings for him.
 * Bull, if Zii knows those people were in a committed monogamous relationship, she is equally as culpable as the person in a relationship.
 * Is it just me, or is the comic verging on Cerebus Syndrome? All those cheating stories in the last time...
 * I honestly don't think so. I can understand why people got offended or something similar with the "Gently Cares" You episode, but I really, really don't think it was meant from the author to be taken as seriously as some people have.
 * If we can base ourselves on Yuki's reaction, Gary isn't excactly proficient at drawing (naked) women (Yuki: "what are those?" Gary: "Er.. her breasts"). Okay, this is a throw-away gag to justify another naked scene with DiDi but still... Aren't there any art academies around where Gary could have access with real-life models? He certainly seems passionate enough about his art to have a high quality drawing table until Matt and Dillon broke it.
 * My guess is that Gary's a talented artist, but is strictly amature with little to no formal training. Judging what we know about his home life I don't think his parents would have approved of his becoming a cartoonist and if he went to college he probably studied something more pratical and lucrative, such as computers. He does seem to be pretty knowlegable about them and it's suggested that he works in a tech-support call center.
 * But wouldn't a reasonably talented artist who actively looks for models (he did ask Matt to pose for him after all) look for an evening-school academy or something like that?
 * Given his job (working in a call center), his living situation (seriously, that apartment is gorgeous), and his hobbies (rare and most likely expensive Transformers) he probably doesn't have the money to pay extra classes so he takes what he can get, and what he can get is Matt. That Came Out Wrong.
 * Why don't any of the females in the cast seem to wear bras?
 * Why indeed...
 * Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that a good majority of the sexual encounters in this comic-- whether positive or negative, but mostly positive-- involve women? Even the ones involving the gay guy? And the only ones where he managed to get any with another guy either ended or are probably going to end rather badly? Granted, I should probably wait and see where the creator's going with this Dillon/Dillon's agent/Amber thing, but I just think it's odd. Also, Dillon doesn't necessarily have sex with any women, but he sure seems to end up in a lot of sexy situations with them for a gay guy. I'll just chalk it up to Everyone Is Bi for now.
 * Giz seems to be aware of this, because as of recently there have been a lot more exclusively-gay encounters. The fandom was kind of divided over the issue, but the majority agreed that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing that there was more hot man on man action going on in the strips. The few that claimed disgust at the change were decried as homophobic idiots and told to stop reading if they didn't like gay sex.
 * Why does almost no one seem to speak French primarily? Didi does, obviously, and once in a blue moon a random passerby does, but everyone the main characters come across addresses them in English, even those who've never heard them speak. When I've been to Montreal, nearly everyone knew English, but most people would approach you first in French...
 * Parce que c'est acceptable d'être prèt à sacrifier l'authenticité d'une oeuvre pour rejoindre un public plus large? Because it's acceptable to be ready to sacrifice the authenticity of a work in order to reach a larger public?
 * I just figured because the writer's experience with French seems to be to the extent of two quarters of a beginning French class in high school.
 * I have actually spoken to the artist/co-writer herself via email. She is quite fluent in French. Listen to the above Troper. Il/elle a vraiment raison...
 * Convenience?
 * It bugged me too (Didi saying "Bienvenue" for "You're welcome" instead of "De rien"), but then it occured to me this might be how Canadian-French (as opposed to French-French) speakers respond.
 * It was only a generation or two ago when fully half of Montreal was primarily English-speaking, so the artistic license isn't as big as you may think. As to the French shown in the comic, Quebec French and France French can be quite different, to the point of being neigh-incomprehensible to each other if the speakers have particularly strong dialects.
 * The little angels and devils that the main characters have. When we first see Didi's devil, its small enough to fit on her shoulder. Her angel, however, is a huge giantess. That means that she is a really good person, right? So if that's true, why the hell isn't Zii's devil the size of Godzilla?
 * Because for all the years that DiDi didn't call on her devil, her angel was the only one who could feed on her emotions, while Zii's angel/devil had to split?
 * Because Zii isn't a bad person. Just kinda slutty.
 * There are a lot of people who would disagree with you on that point.
 * And just as many who would agree.
 * I've only read Menage A 3 and I don't know which strip came out first, so I'll put it here: Isn't the I Banged Your Mom example (mentioned above) dead on for the scene in Sabrina Online where Zig-Zag (Sorry if I'm misspelling it) had sex with a teenage troll's mom for revenge? MA 3 is, in my opinion, the best webcomic ever, but somone ripped off somone.
 * Read the title of that strip. No one ripped off anyone. It's just a little in-joke.
 * Oh, okay, sorry.
 * Okay, a little Fridge Logic on my part, but why does Yuki associate Penises with tentacles? Unless the tentacles were shaped like penises, shouldn't she associate any phallic object with tentacles? How would she react to an actual tentacle?
 * Who says she doesn't react that way to phallic objects? We haven't seen her in the same scene as any non-penis phalluses, or tentacles aside from the childhood flashbacks. She very well might have the same reaction.
 * It was shown that she doesn't like sausages, though she doesn't have an extreme reaction to them.
 * She seems to have a reaction, thought not quite as dramatic of one, to bananas
 * Many Naughty Tentacles do have a glans. If that's how her father drew them, penises might provoke a stronger reaction.
 * My opinion is that Yuki's reactions depend on how penis-like what she sees is like. Thus, foodstuffs (bananas and sausages) just make her angry, and unwilling to eat them; drawings (like Gary's drawings of Matt) just make her faint; photographs (the naked mags at the shop Kiley works) and her father's drawings trigger her "destroy all penis' images" rage, and the real deal (and strap-ons) trigger her groin-attacking Unstoppable Rage.
 * Why is it that the gay males in this webcomic are both such utter bastards? Admittedly Dillon does seem to care about Gary, but he still takes his flirting with Gary way too far. Jordan, meanwhile, makes Dillon seem nice by comparison, using twisted mindgames to make Gary question his sexuality. Seriously, what the hell?!
 * This troper isn't particularly fond of Jordan either. Although one has to take into account that he hasn't actually met Gary for himself and what he knows about him is only secondhand information. Information provided by a deluded man with a blind crush on Gary who's all but convinced himself that Gary returns his feelings. I'm not defending Jordan's Mindscrewing of Gary, I can't stand him either because of it. But Jordan doesn't really know anything about Gary. If he knew him for himself and his issues with sexuality he may not have messed with him.
 * Matt's been bugging me lately too. When Sandra comes to him saying Didi came on to her and asking for advice, he tells Sandra to deliberately start a sham relationship with Didi because men will find it hot to see them together.
 * No, he tells her to pull a Xanatos Gambit: Either it turns out she's a lesbian and she'll have Di Di, or she gets the experience out of her way and it helps her get men in the future. Like how you should try a lot of jobs, because even if you don't like them they look good on your resume.
 * It's the same thing. He's telling her to use DiDi as a tool to get a rich boyfriend in the future. Trying lots of jobs to beef up your resume is completely different from deliberately manipulating someone into a relationship just so you can dump them later and use the story to titillate men.
 * Senna. Nothing against transsexuals, but from dialogue I assume she is a man who received a sex change to become a woman. Why would she still have her penis? It has to make her job as a model difficult.
 * Ahum... If you don't recognize the phenomenon, I'd advise you not to google terms like "pre-op transsexual", "ladyboy" or "shemale" with Safe Search deactivated. Especially the Brazilian ones are well-represented on the internet. (seriously, you will only get NSFW results)
 * Alright then. As long as it's not a totally unheard of thing I can accept it better. Still, a lingerie model? The airbrush guy must be amazing.
 * There are a few preop transgender models out there, and as a general rule Mt Fs are pretty good at tucking. Also, for some shoots Senna might wear a gaff under whatever panties she's trying on, if they're not too skimpy. (Also, at the age Senna probably is (20ish, most likely), it's much easier to turn a guy into a very pretty woman.)
 * Didn't you see the look on Sandra's face, thinking the same as you, when she was told Senna was a lingerie model? Rule of Funny, dude. It's how impossible that sounds what makes it funny. XD
 * Also she's (apparently) only in town for a short time, maybe she's leaving to get the other half of the operation.
 * I'm totally okay with Rule of Sexy being the major driving force of this comic. What just bugs me though, is how the fanservice seems occasionally jammed in. Like the most recent strip here: (NSFW link deleted) featuring Di Di and her Naked Apron shot. There was no readily apparent reason why except for Rule of Sexy. Sometimes it seems like the author/artist has a "fanservice" quota that must be met.
 * I figured she was trying to make sure Sandra had the right idea.
 * Yeah, it's pretty clear DiDi is shamelessly trying to seduce Sandra. Why else would she be grinding her boobs into Sandra's back in the next comic? The weird thing is it seems to be working. I guess DiDi really is just that hot.
 * Is it me, or does Yuki's female version of Gary look old?
 * How does anybody mistake Dillon in his Black Canary outfit as a girl, considering it prominently displays his completely flat chest?
 * They may have thought he was just underdeveloped.
 * But other shots of him shirtless show that he's got a fairly masculine chest, even if he's got girly mannerisms. It probably wouldn't be so unbelievable if the costume came with the padding you'd assume pretty much anyone would need to play your average superheroine... or even any padding at all. The fact that they just strapped the outfit to a completely and utterly flat chest, when the rest of the body shape indicates a fully-grown adult, wouldn't be very believable. Adult women that flat are also usually extremely skinny.
 * And on the subject of the play, the whole "You've ruined it...no, it's a hit!" bugs me. It's incredibly cliche, but I can handle that. What bugs me about it is that there's no way anybody in the audience could begin to believe that this was still part of the play. Dillon completely breaks character, nobody's using character names anymore, and some random mundane freckled woman comes on stage spouting about sex, goes toe to toe with "Black Canary" and rips "her" wig off. Willing Suspension of Disbelief will only go so far.
 * The only reviewer was Jung. He's known for extremely negative reviews, so when he said it was good, the execs were more than happy to jump at the opportunity.
 * It also helps when you know that Black Canary actually does wear a wig in some comics to hide her short hair and, therefore, identity. So if people also start to think that Sandra was just Barbara Gordon/Poison Ivy/some other Gotham redhead, things work themselves out.
 * It's entirely possible that Jung realised it obviously wasn't part of the play, but still actually enjoyed it because it was still entertaining. We never do see the rest of his review.
 * This whole "Amber pretends to be Dillon and gets Gary to perform oral sex on her" bit. If the comic was gender-reversed, this would be considered sexual assault.
 * Normally I'd agree with you, but let's be frank. Gary, given the choice between Dillon's lips and Amber's "lips", he would choose Amber's lips. You can bet once he finds out, someone's not going to be calling the police. This may sound like Unfortunate Implications, but after watching Gary obsess over Amber, it softens the blow. A lot.
 * True. It reminds me of this comic I read one time a while back. I can't remember the name of the comic, or the characters, and I'm mostly paraphrasing, but it went something like this: There's this girl who is very shy around men, but is crushing really bad on this guy from her high school. The guy's feelings are mutual, but every time he tries to approach the girl she freaks out. At one point he attributes this to her having a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality and goes about trying to involve her in some "exposure therapy". So he follows her to this movie she's going to with her friend, well when said friend gets up to go to the bathroom, he takes her seat and does the world-famous "popcorn trick". (To those of you who somehow don't know: It involves cutting a hole in the bottom of a box of popcorn. I'll let your imaginations run wild from there.) The shy girl, reaching into the box and expecting crunchy and buttery goodness, instead gets a handful of her secret obsessions man-meat. The reaction that she has is priceless! The hunch the guy had turned out to be true, and they wound up going out for a bit. I stopped reading it after that though, because a bunch of pussies who couldn't take a joke kept sending the editor angry letters demanding that the guy suffer some form of punishment for it. That's pretty much exactly like what happens between Gary and Amber-Amber, isn't it? Yeah. Some people just need to quit overreacting and take a joke.
 * Perhaps the bigger issue is that Gary is apparently so thick he can't tell the difference between a vagina and a man's mouth. I mean, the latest comic shows that he apparently thinks he's making out with her rather than having oral sex...despite the "lips" being turned 90 degrees on their side, being distinctly different from a mouth (no teeth or tongue, way different on the inside) and the fact that he should be able to hear the other person talking three feet above where he thinks the mouth is.
 * I just took it as another reminder of one of the central premises of the series: that Gary really is just that ignorant when it comes to sex.
 * There's a line where it stops being "ignorant when it comes to sex" and starts being so stupid it breaks suspension of disbelief. If nothing else, the fact that she was loudly moaning from a space at least two feet away from where he thought the "mouth" was--and while said mouth was supposed to be, ahem, busy--should have tipped him off a hell of a lot more than a salty taste. Does Gary have no spacial awareness whatsoever? Does he think Dillon is a master ventriloquist who can both talk, and change and throw his voice while making out?
 * Come on! Sexual deception is okay when it's hot female on potentially receptive male! Given the previous antics of the comic itself, I guess it doesn't stray too far from what they've done before, but that really doesn't make it any less creepy, and the fact that Gary would be totally up for it in more honest circumstances doesn't make it any more okay.
 * Also puzzling is why it took Amber-Amber so long to realize that Gary couldn't possibly have been eating Dillon's vagina, since Amber knows darn well that Dillon doesn't have one. They were both holding the Idiot Ball on this one. It's chalked up to both being confused and caught up in the moment, and they both do start to realize what's going on -- just much later than they should have.
 * She never assumed Gary used it on Dillon's "vagina". Don't you remember that Brain Bleach-requiring scene where she imagined Gary eating out Dillon's asshole? That's what she assumed they did with it, being supposed gay lovers and all. She had just had it done on her vagina by Dillon once before, and was prepared to stoop to any despicable low to obtain that pleasure again.
 * What Amber did certainly not a good action, of course, but in some points it helped Gary more than harmed him: if she had told him the truth from the start, considering his awkwardness, he would have not done anything with her (he would have probably fainted). Thus, he would have never known that the "Swirly-Go-Round" technique did wonders on women, and when he met Kiley he would have not been able to please her. Not to mention the small boost of self-confidence managing to bring a girl to orgasm in his first try must have given to him. Not condoning Amber's actions, but Gary benefitted somewhat from it.
 * Ah, getting someone to perform a sexual act without their consent, but it's okay because it's what's best for him. No Unfortunate Implications about that.
 * Oh, and now she's apologized for her sexual deception and plans to make it up to him...by making him have sex with Dillon. Despite noticing his extreme reluctance to do so. How sweet!
 * I think that she still thought that Gary was gay, or at least bi-curious, so, to her, it would make more sense that the other person in the threesome was Dillon, who she believes Gary is involved with.
 * If Zii cares enough about issues of consent that she had a problem with Gary suggesting her as a replacement threesome member without consulting her first, why didn't she have a problem with Amber tricking Gary into eating her out?
 * Double Standard, that's why.
 * Since Dillon likes guys, how is it that he managed to learn a "kissing technique" that is actually a very effective technique for performing oral sex on women?
 * It's probably just a really lucky accident on Gary's part that the swirly just happens to be really useful for orally pleasuring women. Dillon probably never used it on a woman before.
 * It may (as Amber surmised) also work on guys.
 * How can Yuki be so ignorant of how straight sex works? Even if she's never done it herself, she should have learned about it from movies, from TV series like Sex and the City, from manga, etc. Yuki seems like a pretty liberal person, so it seems unlikely she would never have come across pop cultural representations of hetero sex. (And since those representations almost never show male genitals, even her phobia wouldn't have stopped her from seeing them.)
 * She went berserk imagining and forgot anyway?
 * Maybe she deliberately avoided representations of straight sex. She thought she was a lesbian, and she was pretty much a misandrist, so it's easy to imagine that she felt that Het Is Ew.
 * Except that she didn't think she was lesbian until after that incident with her first boyfriend, which took place when she was 16. You'd think that at 16 she'd already found out about straight sex, especially since she was about to do it with a guy? And even if you're a misandrist, you'd have to live in a rather ascetic manner to avoid all representations of straight sex – and nothing in the comic indicates Yuki lives like that. (For example, she seems to be an avid reader of manga.)