Her speech balloon suddenly starts dripping icicles, and icicles represent cold. (Quite a nice artistic touch, really.) It's actually the exact same effect that the artists used on Amber's speech balloon when Ruby made a dig about her working on direct-to-video movies. Note, incidentally, that Ruby picked up on Amber's tone instantly, realised that she'd gone too far, and apologised. Ruby isn't the most sensitive person in the world, but she can recognise a chill better than Dillon can.wi1dfire wrote:I'm not sure I agree with the temperature in the room dropping (I don't see any textual evidence that she's actively angry at him, rather than disappointed over his stupidity), but for the sake of argument I'll let it go.
*Snork*. Do you really believe that Dillon would recognise his own faults, unprompted, in a million years?wi1dfire wrote:Someone does need to stop Dillon acting this way, and that someone is Dillon.
And the whole problem with Dillon in the setting of these comics is that nobody ever does call him out on his faults. Amber gets dropped on her butt and thinks he should "never change", Gary takes weeks of petty harassment from him and never once yells at him, Matt and Jerzy keep telling him how cute he is...(And Angel is fundamentally hostile to him, and so of course Dillon won't listen to her.) It really does seem sometimes that Ruby was brought into this comic primarily to not be impressed by Dillon. Which makes calling out his BS simply doing her job.
It's a fair sign just how stupid Dillon can be that Ruby can spot his faults and advise on his problems, despite having little more to go on than a bunch of dated TV dramas. She admitted as much herself, and Dillon still had to admit that she was right. "If you want a serious relationship, don't flirt compulsively with other people" and "Don't be a hypocrite" really are basic things that even a naive virgin can work out from first principles - and yet Dillon needs prompting on them.wi1dfire wrote:I wouldn't be surprised if Ruby tried, but I would be disappointed in her, acting like she has useable input when her experience on this subject amounts to things she's seen on TV, if that.
I didn't say that she was under any obligation; I said that she was under no obligation to put up with him. She'd be perfectly entitled to simply walk away. But Dillon is going to swan through life, hurting other people (and himself), until some public-spirited person finds a way to pull him up. Unfortunately for her, Ruby seems to be the only person in the setting who's even faintly able to do the job.wi1dfire wrote:I feel this part cuts to the heart of our basic disagreement. I don't see how she's under that obligation you are describing now.Spidrift wrote:Calling Dillon out for being an aggravating hypocritical jackass would be good to see because she has no obligation to take unlimited aggravation from someone who imposes himself on her quite so much. (And because somebody ought to.)
Temporarily, yes. She can't extricate herself from the apartment without a lot of hassle and complications and some difficulties with her family, which means that she's stuck in proximity to Dillon for a while, and she made the mistake of letting him inside her guard when he offered her help with clothes shopping. Since then, he's been using presumption and tantrums to make her play along with his ideas.wi1dfire wrote:Do you see her as trapped in that situation?
And yes, she's been making the most of that, learning a bit and even enjoying a little bit. Dillon handed her lemons, and she's made lemonade. But that's the whole point here; if Dillon is going to treat her like a bosom friend, she's entitled to act like a true friend and see how he likes it. And a true friend is someone who can call you out on your faults.
Both. Dillon irritates me enough that the sight of him receiving a hard verbal slap would definitely be a guilty pleasure, but okay, it's more interesting to me to watch Ruby adapting her strong but inexperienced personality to the weird world she finds herself in. Ruby is someone I can like, Dillon isn't. Dillon just handed Ruby an open goal, and it'd be fun to watch her take the shot.wi1dfire wrote:I have to ask, do you want to see Ruby take Dillon down more because you want to see Dillon slapped down, and less because you want to see Ruby do it?