Rivka wrote, in defense of Andrus,
He's not of sub-normal intelligence, right? Did he never taste one of the tarts? Does he not have eyes or ears? Messing up I can believe (although it does bother me, but I can accept that your vision of the character is markedly different than my own); but complete obliviousness to his own inadequacies?
For me, it's been clear that Andrus is a comic relief character, not meant to be over-analyzed in a light-hearted, funny romp such as this. That said, I do know someone a lot like this. <g>
Obviously not exactly -- he's never messed up the sting of a time criminal, as far as I know
-- but he's often in his own world, it seems. Unaware of how people are responding to him and prone to saying thing that are odd and can mess up what to me is the most simple of tasks (needing help sending an email, for example, when he's been online for two years and has sent hundreds of them) and babbling on for an eternity about subjects when it's painfully obvious that no one in earshot has the least bit of interest.
Yet this man functions in society -- he has a college degree, a career (self-employed) and a wife and a child and a house in a good neighborhood. He's always had people to "take care of him" -- parents, siblings, tutors, spouse, friendly neighbors such as myself -- who buffer him against the world and help him navigate his way through situations that would be beyond him alone.
So I can kinda see how someone like this, in a society where no one would be mean enough to tell him how slow he is, where he has a father-in-law (or was it an uncle?) who is super-high on the food chain and has made it clear that he needs to be sheltered, could still be around. He's a parody, yes, but in this type of story, he fits right in. <g>
Kathy (who has just read CC's comments in the part 9 folder and is dying at the thought of going a week or two without this story.)
