790 Robosexual.

by

I think Thomas must go talk to Nina first when he wants to talk about something he might get made fun of for. So as to emotionally prepare for it. Her reaction to his question amuses me to no end. She clearly has grown accustomed to being hit with very random, very nerdy, questions. She’s humoring him to the point of teasing. They say you should write what you enjoy reading, or seeing as the case may be, and I certainly do that. I don’t need a punchline to enjoy a comic. Interplay between people fascinates and entertains me. Of course in the case of the comic it’s practically masturbatory, since I’m playing all the parts.

It’s never really been mentioned in detail in the comic, but I did write a fairly complex backstory for Thomas and Nina. I don’t intend to tell that story here and now, but eventually I will. I’ve tried to make their familiarity seem natural in their scenes together. It’s guesswork since my relationships with females tend to be very superficial. At least on my side. I can generate a pretty convincing faux intimacy when called upon, however rarely, to do so. I’m not particularly deep. If you scratch my surface you’re going to find more surface. For the most part I am as I am. Or it could be that I am deep, but too close to myself to see it that way. The long and the short of it is that even platonic relationships with girls tend to end badly. In that respect Thomas and Nina’s relationship doesn’t ring true to my ears. It seems to for people who’ve had different experiences from me, so I must be presenting a reasonable facsimile of this kind of friendship.

If I am feel free to praise me, if not then let me remain blissfully ignorant. XD

31 Comments

I hate to use a “Friends” metaphor, but their relationship makes me think of the friendship between Ross and Pheobe. Close, but never will there be a “How you doin’?” moment.

Gods, I feel like a tool now.

I didn’t watch enough Friends to get the reference. I feel cheated. T^T This is what reading the comic is like for non nerds… What have I done!?

Funny how there’s a difference between the connotations of someone who’s shallow and not deep. Never had a problem with someone who was as they appeared, but the shallow ones tended to seem like a waste of space.

Love the comic, but does Nina seem a little younger or smaller than normal?

The younger look is just my random drawing style I suspect. She looks shorter because she and Thomas are the same height nearly, so it makes her seem shorter. She’s been paired with shorter people for almost every scene for at least a year I would guess.

This actually isn’t terribly far off from some of the conversations I’ve had with some of my femal friends.

That said, I get what you’re saying entirely about the superficial interactions people can have with eachother on a daily basis.

My relationships in any sense tend to be rather gender neutral, however, so maybe I’m the wrong person to comment. XD

In any case, I love reading these two together. I really like the purely friendly vibe that these two exude. They’re just buds. Buddin’ it up. And one of the buds just happens to have a pretty nice set of buds, but no problems or tensions between the buds seem to bud from the fact.

I’ll stop now…

Seeing Thomas talk to nina is like seeing shaggy hang with daphne. They run in the same circle, but you rarely get to see them interact. But it nice when it does happen.

Could just be me tho…

No you totally pull it off. From the very first time Thomas and Nina interacted with the whole ” you’re not going to plot against me?” conversation you can tell that not only are these two strictly friends at this point in time, that they also have a very deep and meaningful respect and friendship for each other. You could almost guess that they may have tried to be romantically involved years ago but found the whole idea to just not fit very well. To where it was almost silly to think about, and thus have been close friends ever since.

I think the only characters that have a more natural sounding back and forth would be John and Brooksie. There smoke breaks always seem to flow as any conversation I would have out back on a smoke break. Minus the pouncing of course…for the most part.

But … What? How? How does C-3PO even have a sexuality, and for that matter how does R2-D2 even have a gender?
… And for that matter, how are people even seeing them as lovers?!

I don’t understand the conclusions people draw sometimes.

The droids in the star wars universe can be programmed and built to be of either gender though sexuality i would guess would be reserved only for “special” models of droids

You know, I’ve never really seen someone pull off a character that’s…got buck teeth AND sexual appeal.

…maybe it’s cuter if we just call them chipmunk teeth.

I dunno. I always thought of C-3P0 and R2-D2 more like Fred and Barney, Abbot and Costello or maybe Frodo and Sam. Or Felix and Oscar, for that matter — and that pairing of the fussy and the functional is probably more apt. I think implying that C-3P0 and R2-D2 were gay is like implying that Bertie Wooster had a homosexual relationship with his butler, Jeeves. It’s just silly. I’m a little tired of people trying to ‘out’ historical, popular or fictional figures, particularly the twits who claimed they ‘proved’ that Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain were ‘gay’. It’s just a load of ¢?@¶.

I’ve never seen a full episode of Friends, Seinfeld or Everybody Loves Raymond (although I met Peter Boyle years ago — he seemed a very nice person in real life). I guess this makes me the wrong person to comment on ‘Modern Popular Culture’. And yet, I understand references to a Festivus Pole…

R2D2 had all kinds of retractable things he could deploy, where as C3P0 had nothing he could really do actually aside from speak unfathomable amounts of different language, but most people understand R2’s beeps and boops like he was speaking English, so why not slap some subtitles on there and ditch the golden idol

(on a side-note why the hell are all robots in the SW universe named with numbers and letters, why cant there just be a robot named Bob or something?)

model number and serial number, there have been a few robots who have names like whistler, shaker, and squeaky the first two are astromechs and squeaky is a protocol droid, but it’s like many computers have both a common name and a special numerical name.

Not Just Driods
Obiwan Kenobi – Oh-Bee-One Kay-Enn-Oh-Bee [OB1-KNOB]
and a lot of other names also follow a similar vein.

The first 3 movie kind of bolluxed up a lot of theories and continuity though when they came out.

I agree with you on the interplay between characters. I may never accomplish anything with my writing, but at least I can always enjoy writing conversations. I’d say that’s one of the major reasons I enjoy this comic so much. If the characters can toss words back and forth in an enjoyable fashion then, like you said, you don’t always need a punchline! You pull it off perfectly.

Since you haven’t watched FRIENDS, I highly recommend it… there’s lots of society that came out of it, so anyone alive during the 90s will see “oh… oh that’s where that’s from!”.

Also, the ability to emulate relationships, or write them, is based on observation… I can act like anyone, but the normal me is rather socially awkward. Interesting point: Being James Bond means people will always be amazed~

I wish I had something more productive to say, but the thing that keeps coming to mind is that I love how you drew Nina’s hair on this page.

Never ever don’t say something to praise me because you think it isn’t productive. Being praised never gets old.

Crave my friend i think everyone as a pool or lake, in that every one has thier shallow areas and depths and most people play in the shallows not the depths so you are going to find most of the things you like about a person in the shallow areas of thier personality and the mysteries and secrets in the deep parts while not always fun it can be sort of an adventure to explore, but I would advise you save the exploreation of some ones deeper parts to some one you truely care for, other wise you’ll just be nosing in others secrets and personal affairs and no one really like that person.

but as to the realtionship of Nina and Tom ithink they come off very chummy best friends even as robosexuality is not a topic you talk about idly with just a gal pal

I don’t really get why people have to speculate on such things as a character’s sexuality when it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Just like Dumbledore, who gives a flying snitch whether he is gay or not? Just saying.

Also, C-3P0 is totally gay. Didn’t you see how he put the moves on that other protocol droid in Empire? Too bad he got shot down. *rimshot*

In other news, NINA! :D Hope this means we’re heading for some more Ed/Nina fun!

Well, Dumbledore’s being gay actually caused a lot of the pre and back plot of the series. For the stories themselves it was more or less a non-issue, although it did have some plot aspects as well. keeping in mind that they were written for younger persons look at some of the books where Dumbledore isn’t well liked by certain other characters, and when he is ousted from Hogwarts. no one says anything about it to the children (we don’t talk about gay to kids. Insert various reasons why here, I don’t care to generalize on this topic, but have consistently observed that we don’t talk to our kids about gay and tend to shove the conversation in other directions should it come up in front of them)>

So the whole Dumbledore example is one of the few where his sexual orientation while never specifically mentioned in the books, was thought of and actually used by the author as part of the goings on and general plot, much like it would happen in actual reality (at least as far as the children are concerned). Also keep in mind the current political climate where if Rowling had mentioned anything in the books directly, she would have had to stop the plot and make it about Dumbledore rather than Harry. No, we haven’t gotten over Gay enough to have it just be factor, we still feel the need to elaborate on why it is okay (or wrong) to be Gay, etc…

As to why people have to speculate on fictional/Historical people being gay… Sometimes they are gay themselves, and the speculation makes them feel more vindicated or less alone. Sometimes people use it to tear down someone else’s reputation. I don’t get it with genderless anthropomorphized objects (re: robots, magically animated anything, etc…) They aren’t alive to have a sexuality in the first place, and there aren’t actually any Gay personality traits in the second. I guess maybe it gives the sort of person who likes to be superior to others something else to use, maybe?

Tahei and Matashichi are not gay, [Hidden Fortress 1958] why should characters based on them, C3PO / R2D2 be so?

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