Oddities

[james_davis_nicoll]

Mocking someone's newbie errors in a hobby you both share isn't the way to a woman's heart? Sorry, publicly mocking etc.

Comments

[tww1fa]

Yeah. That was a painful episode. I'm hoping it's just down to nervousness.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Flesh-eating insects for the win!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I missed the hyphen and thought you meant we ate insects (which I did when I was little).

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure whether you were talking about a TV show, or yet another internet fandom incident. In fact, I'm still not completely sure.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

TV show about a place that sells oddities. Their young fellow hits it off with a young woman when she comes in to sell an articulated chicken skeleton because he's into preserving dead things as well. In fact, that whole scene felt a bit like she liked him before she brought in the chicken and it was her way of saying NOTICE ME.

Then he spends the whole evening showing her cool taxidermy stuff and not letting the matter of her early errors in preserving stuff drop. And he completely fails to understand the 'do not take this smile for an indication that I am happy with you; I am contemplating a deep grave and if you are lucky, a bullet" smile.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I fear I may have been this kid. In my defense, I am aware I was a bit of an Eddie, and I am no longer 13 years old.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Even allowing for the known geek social fallacies this seems to be a major understanding-other-life-forms failure. This sounds like Eddie reincarnated as a human, except I'm not sure he'd understand other cats enough to grasp the concept of mocking.

Eddie's idea of a joke, I think [1]

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

HEY LOOK I CAN RUN INTO YOU AT HIGH SPEED ISN'T THAT KEEN?

But he also liked being shoved down the stairs by Blotchy so he could take a joke back.

1: Pushing other cat's faces into the water dish was just his way of saying "my turn".

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Depends on the woman, doesn't it?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in this case she was sending clear signs that he was completely missing.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I would think the set of women who get off on being patronized by men they barely know would be pretty small.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

But Heinlein teaches us women need to be dominated to be won over and what is patronizing people but a form of dominance?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how many women I know whose Awful Ex stories involve being put down all the time.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Heinlein also teach us that she's probably packing a small but powerful concealed blaster, so watch it, buddy?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I was reading it as mocking someone else's newbie errors in a hobby etc. Which I have seen work.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Although, agh, I think I have seen the two person version work as well.

Apparently I would rather misread it than contemplate it. (Sort of the way a friend of mine kept on thinking I was taking about the United States when I was asking him about Vietnam fiction about the country.)

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

I once dated a woman for whom the tactic of mocking newbie errors would have been a guaranteed way to her heart, so long as I was mocking some third party's newbie errors.

I got rid of her in fairly short order. The combination of "spiteful" and "Dunning-Kruger victim" is...less than endearing to me.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

I think the biggest problem was that he was trying to hit it off with the girl, while in the presence of an entire film crew. Not very conducive to romance I'd imagine.