The current story arc started with this comic: Irrhetorical Question.
The original ladder theory. (contains not safe for work language)
- Caption: The next day.
- Larisa: Thanks so much for your help. That was so nice of you!
- Landon: Good luck on your test!
- Benjamin: Hey, Theo, looks like somebody just climbed up Larisa’s “friends ladder” all the way to the top.
- Landon: “Friends ladder”, what?
- Benjamin: And the clueless chap’s not even aware of the ladder theory!
- Theo: Tragic.
- Benjamin: Then let’s enlighten the nerd, Theo. We boys have to stick together, after all.
- Theo: Flip chart, please.
- Theo: All boys rate girls according to their attractiveness and place them on a ladder.
- Caption: 10 – Girl you’d French kiss right in front of your mom
8 – Girl you’d French kiss
6 – Girl you’d kiss
4 – Girl you’d kiss on the cheek
2 – Girl you’d kiss on the cheek in exchange for a new Xbox game
The Abyss – Girl you’d only kiss if she’d chop off your feet with an axe otherwise
- Theo: Girls, however, have two ladders. One “real ladder” for boys they’d like to kiss, and one “friends ladder” for boys they’d like to be friends with ’cause they’re soooo nice.
- Caption: 10 – BEST FRIENDS FOREVER!
8 – Boy she’d talk with about other boys
6 – Boy she’d go shopping with
4 – Boy she’d do homework with
2 – Boy who’d better sit three benches away
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I doubt anything involving Larisa and personal relationships could ever be as simple as a straight ladder. She’s probably got a jungle gym… if not a full playground.
NOOOOOOO! Not the friend zone! Anything but that! It will be near impossible to jump to the other ladder. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I assume that ‘kiss’ is a codeword for ‘have sex with’
Where did he get the flipchart?
Girls you’d have sex with in front of your mom.. Can’t imagine that’s one anyones ladder
I hope you only mentioned this ladder theory to point out how ridiculous it is.
To put it veeery friendly, I think it was created because someone couldn’t “score” with a girl although she had been previously nice to him, and concluded that being nice to girls gets you nowhere. The words the site uses for girls are also not nice.
@Guest
As you’ll notice the two ladders diverge at the top, so – no can do!
First you gotta get back down from BFF to get on the other side to BF ^^
But I’d say some guys have the same system for girls – pretty sure.
Just who, exactly, was Theo talking to when he asked for the flip chart?
#10 boys she´d lend her flamethrower
Landon can also understand this way:
1- Open google
2- Click “Images” option
3- search for “mario friendship zone”
Sorry Landon…looks like that’s as far as you go
Wish I had know about the ladder theory in high school.
Would have saved a lot of effort (i.e. money) on my part.
Did a giant hand just draw a chart…
@ Fiontan:
well, Carmen Electra is in that category
“oh, hi mom…she es Carmen”
@ Andres:
*is*
sorry =P
so, just where would a real boyfriend be on this ladder…or is that an entirely different third ladder?
Duke wrote:
Is a codeword for much more than that, is more like “share sexual experiences”, from holding hands to see her/him naked adn all the rest. “In front of your mother” is not about oedipus complex but “be the mother of my children and grow old together” thing (wich is an extension of the maternal/paternal security and in that case mirrors the relatioship wi the mother)
Wait, they don’t make fun of him first?
I disagree with Frank. By making the opening move, without directly insulting Theo, the payoff is that the mark doesn’t know he’s participating in a game. Hopefully, he’s familiar with marginal utility and the law of diminishing returns. Or the classic “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”
…This just proves how clueless guys are about girls. Most of the girls I know want their boyfriend to also be a FRIEND, otherwise you’ll be going nowhere fast in the relationship.
Don’t listen to them, Lanny! They know nothing about girls…just look at their past appearances. Just keep being a nice guy, and you’ll win Larisa. Trust me. Lots of girls asked me out because I was kind and polite to them in high school.
@ Sand Fox:
Interesting… what city are you in because there ate places where people will eat you alive if you’re to much of a nice guy.
i think BFF can cross over to BF pretty easily
just jump from one ladder to the other
I cant tell you the number of times i got stuck in the “Friendship Ladder” :/
Erm… That site is part of the STUPIDNESS.COM network.
@ SLimeCat The Awesome one:
Near LA, California. The people at my school were all pretty nice, though a few people did try to “eat me alive for being to much of a nice guy.” I just grinned and bore it, and eventually we became friends or everyone else thought they were being jerks. I find that deep down, everyone likes a good guy.
AHHHHHH! The 4th wall is breaking! Its creeping me out. Who are all those people looking at me!
Neither of those charts apply to Larissa. If they did, they would specifically mention things like “would set fire to empty buildings with” and “partner in crime”, and “BFF” would stand for “Burns For Fun”.
As for flip charts, it seems that they are now an accepted exception to rules of object permanence, along with giant, pest-smashing mallets, placards for mute characters, carrots and disguises for Bugs Bunny, and jellybeans for Harlan’s Harlequin.
now that sounds….scarrily logical o.O i believe in the ladder theory!
Holy crap, a giant hand and pencil!
Lol funny how these boys don’t see girls as friends.
Love the Misery reference!
Ok first: The ladder theory is neither correct as it is, nor the total truth I assure you!
At least it puts thinks much too simple. As if EVERY boy just thought about the one thing (I know my boy friend does not, well not the whole time XD) and I think boys can also have friendships with other girls without considering whether they wanna kiss them or not. Just girls to hang out with, it may sound stuipid to some but I’m befriended with boys who don’t want something from me and I know boys (also without girlfriends) who casually hang out with girls. Also I know of girls beeing rejected by bosy beeing told “let’s just be friends” so its not one sided.
About jumping over to the other ladder: It can happen but I think it’s difficult. If a girl is not inittially interested ALSO in an intimate way then it’s highly unlikely the guy will ever be considered for something like that. Thats personal experience, I personally had two guys in love with me I only considered as friends and couldn’t even imagine kissing! (poor guys, I was really sorry, I realy liked them…)
Ok now what is totally wrong? To assume that girls will consider boys only as friends when they are nice and helpful! I know a bunch of girls liking nice-guys even without super musceles and what ever because it gives one a sense of security. So he might also have started climbing the other ladder. Especially since its Larissa who has had quite some boys (remember the strip where she is angry cause she was called a “whore” by cloey?) but never one that she considered staying with. These were prabably rather the good-looking-cool-guys. So something so different, someone caring for her might work (though It will probably take her to get it XD)
@ drinthap:
from outside the fourth wall, stupid
Now there just needs to be a third ladder to connect the top of the friend ladder with the top of the relationship ladder.
note the name ladder THEORY, landon seems to be a smart chap and he knows theories are still not proven (submitted to law), and most of the smartest chaps I know make a living off of proving theories wrong, or submitting new ones they know might not be right.
as a guy with 4 ladders and a few stepping stools I can tell you it doesn’t quite work out how they think it does. but then again I also believe that people can stand on two wrongs at the same time.
and finally, we are talking about larisa, she chopped up her ladders a long time ago for fire wood
@ drinthap:
It probably follows him around. 🙂
You’ll notice they didn’t say any of this in front of Larisa. Had she heard these boys their lives would have taken a turn for the worse. I think Larisa will feel indebted to Landon and perhaps even attracted to him (as a friend or otherwise) and I expect she will try to repay him by doing him a favor (with comic and maybe romantic results) she thinks he needs. I think they would make a good couple she can help him to be more outgoing and he could give her a focus for her crushes and a calming influence. Also Larisa is VERY unconventional so I doubt this will apply to her especially if she ever heard any of this.
@gamesman
hmmm if she heard them she would definetly do anything to prove them wrong…
But although I said I think they might make a good pair and stuff I’m unsure of Larriassas character concerning this ^^* she is a rather egocentric personality, so she indeed might just let him fall and later realize (maybe through the help of Sandra and Cloud) that she had been stuipid and comes back at him. To just dump him would be “typical Larissa”, so typical I don’ät expect it to happen 😉 she has made progress igdentically and I think in this strip this will be highlighted. But she is still far from beeing a considered and nice person ^^* so I doubt it will be a smoothly in her falling in love with him or sth. along those lines.
Is it just me, or does Theo (the guy with the glasses whos not Landon) look like the main character from Doraimon?
@ OrphanDidgeridoo: quite simple, you need a pencil, the ladder list, one scribble, and done :3
Wow, its been ages since we last saw Theo and Benny… and whats up with the whole cutting off feet thing at the bottom of ladder.
@ Blitz:
Yeeeaaaahhhh agreed. That would put him at, what, the swingset?
Hey, It’s Cloud’s poker buddies from 159!
@ Eclipse:
And Landon is from 169. It’s amazing how different characters look compared to the curent strips.
that may be the right picture of a normal girl’s ladders but i think Larisa’s ladder is more like this *pull out Snakes & Ladders, then sets a flamethrower on top*
I don’t recall setting my ladder on an Abyss
The ladder must be a European thing. In America we have zones ie. The Friend Zone (which is worst to be in than the Twilight Zone let me tell you!).
When a boy is put into the “friend” zone, he becomes a complete non-sexual entity to her. Like a brother….or a lamp.
The ladder theory does a lot to explain some things that make it a helpful guideline when considering male and female psychology, but it’s not completely right. The two ladder theory helps explain to those who are incapable of understanding that their rank as friend has no bearing towards their rank as a potential mate, this is true. However, it just means that the hierarchy of relationships in a girl’s life is too complex to be as straightforward as ‘rank 1, rank 2, rank 3’, etc.
As frustrating as the ladder theory and the ‘friend zone’ theories are, would you really want a world in which every girl actually considered every boy as a potential mate? It would make being in a relationship very hard if you thought that she would leave you for someone on a higher rung all the time, wouldn’t it? Likewise it would be pretty frustrating for us girls if guys actually had only one ladder.
@ SLimeCat The Awesome one:
Thanks, because of you I lost “the game”