23-01-15 They are very close

[Shouri]

New strip! http://www.stickydillybuns.com/strips-s ... very_close

[Hogan]

You are sending mixed signals Ruby

[wiseguy]

maybe Ruby can go to her room and bring out the "Very jealous BF of Amber, Rudy"

[Azrael]

sdb20150123.png (116.65 KiB) Viewed 9448 times

[Spidrift]

You are sending mixed signals Ruby

Not once anyone works out what she's actually signalling, as opposed to what she's merely saying.

The poor kid really is losing the plot. So far, Dillon and Amber have ignored her weirder outbursts, which has been just about plausible in a comedy sort of way, but this looks non-ignorable. My guess is that Dillon will now drag Ruby aside ("The cat needs feeding!" "Again?") and ask her what the heck is up with her. Then ... what? Ruby may manage a moment of self-awareness when she realises that, well, she finds guy-on-guy action hot, and she's slipped into treating Dillon and Ray as sex objects... But I wonder if we'll also get a Ruby explosion about the way that Amber has always messed up things for her and got all the attention by being (spit) pretty. Dillon may learn just how toxic that relationship really is.

But that's guessing several steps ahead, which is just stupid of me.

Meanwhile, Ray loses some points for telling Amber that he's a big fan. He should have picked up from Dillon that Amber is trying to get out of the porn business, which makes telling her how much you liked her porn work potentially a bit tactless. Fortunately, of course, Amber is still kind of laid back about that.

[Bambikles]

Ruby is kinda scary in this one, especially the last panel.
She almost look like, facial expression wise, like a villain. Like she's possessed or something.

[Spidrift]

Well, she has made herself the bad person in this scene. That's not like her, but that's what unaccustomed hormones do to a person. And she is being possessed by her own urges - completely unfamiliar urges, which she therefore has no defence against.

And her facial expressions often tend to extremes. I've said before that I think they get far too exaggerated, actually - it makes her look like a cartoon character while everyone else looks quite realistic - but it does also serve a purpose. However much Ruby wants to think of herself as cool, calm, and controlled, the fact is that she's a seething mass of rage and unfulfilled libido, which she used to be able to repress but which she isn't being allowed to control in this apartment. Dillon was a quarter right when he said that she bottled her emotions up; she wants to, but she can't, because she's so damn angry with Amber, Dillon keeps provoking her, and now she's getting turned on by the yaoi. The extreme facial expressions are a symbol of her emotional state.

We may find that they stop when those emotions find another outlet - which may be bad for the furniture and the scenery. Dillon may discover that he doesn't enjoy it when she finally lets go.

[magco2000]

I bet Ruby will not keep her hobbies secret for long

[wi1dfire]

You are sending mixed signals Ruby

Dillon may learn just how toxic that relationship really is.

I'm not sure I would call their relationship: "Toxic." Annoying to both parties, but I'm pretty sure a LOT of siblings have at least one brother or sister that they hold in similar disregard. I have two. We all get along so much better now that we all live in different states, but close proximity to each other and being teenagers at the same time (if only just with the older sister) equaled a lot of "WHY DON'T YOU VALUE THE SAME THIGNS I VALUE?!" Amber is clearly over whatever animosity she might have had with Ruby, and you can't tell me that someone THAT fundamentally judgmental didn't annoy her older sister a time or two, but Ruby isn't quite there yet. I'm sure by the end of this comic's run she'll have a better appreciation for the kind of like Amber lives. She'll probably still be permanently annoyed at Amber, if for no other reason than she is continually pushed out of her comfort zone by Amber and Dillon's mere proximity, but that's siblings for you.

Meanwhile, Ray loses some points for telling Amber that he's a big fan. He should have picked up from Dillon that Amber is trying to get out of the porn business, which makes telling her how much you liked her porn work potentially a bit tactless. Fortunately, of course, Amber is still kind of laid back about that.

Totally agreed. I think she's also choosing to interpret his remarks as thinking of her as an actress. I rather doubt that even crossed his mind, but at least he didn't correct her by saying, "Oh, not like you."

[Spidrift]

"Toxic" may be a bit strong, but the relationship sure ain't great. It looks to me like Ruby has built a far better relationship with Dillon in a week than she ever managed with Amber in years. (Not perfect, but at least they're capable of communicating.) And yes, I entirely agree (from experience) that if one has siblings, one is likely to spend one's twenties sorting out the mess that both sides made during one's teens. These two ought to have started that process by now; they certainly ought to be getting it underway now that they've got the opportunity. But neither of them knows where to start, Ruby isn't even trying, and Amber's world-view is so distorted that her occasional efforts just make things worse.

The problem is, just about everything that can go bad in a sister-sister relationship has happened with them, plus some extra special details thanks to Amber's career. The smart one evidently makes the pretty one feel stupid, and the pretty one seems to have monopolised people's attention, to the point of making the smart one think that she's a parental favourite. And the older one hit sexual maturity and locked the younger one out of her life at precisely the point where the bookish, introverted younger one needed someone to talk to. So the younger one probably decided that at least she could build a serious career and a structured life while the older one was sure to mess things up... Except that it turns out that the older one has acquired a job and a nice apartment and friends, apparently by being a lying whore, while the younger one worked hard and got an education and now doesn't even have a job to show for it.

For Amber's part - well, yes, I'm sure that Ruby was annoying at times, though the judgementalism may not have kicked in until the teen party disaster, by which time Amber was safely away from home. We certainly know that she thinks that Ruby tries to make her feel stupid, and she's probably right about that. But her main fault is that she not only doesn't understand Ruby at all, she doesn't have a clue where to start, and she too easily defaults to treating Ruby as a smaller version of herself. "She won't mind lying to mummy and daddy; after all, I don't"; "She's got a boyfriend, so she'll want a bed to screw him on". And then, when Ruby gets annoyed, she calls her "uptight" and shoves a kitten in her face. It may also be in the back of Amber's mind that Ruby can talk freely to their parents, whereas Amber is still stuck lying to them about her life; hearing Ruby call her the favourite may actually sting a bit there.

The only standard disaster they've missed is either of them stealing the other's boyfriends, and now Ruby is watching Amber threaten her current safe-zoned erotic fantasy, which is almost as bad. It also fits with Ruby's bitter feeling that Amber gets all the attention and all the fun. So the relationship isn't "toxic" in the sense that neither of them is trying to hurt the other seriously, but it's highly dysfunctional, in that it doesn't function at all, it isn't getting any better, and neither party has a clue how to improve it.

(Could Dillon help with that? Well, I'm sure that he'd love to try. But he has his own fatal flaws in that area. He may do better once he's spent a few weeks getting his head around Ruby's personality. She's not actually very complicated, but she's way outside of Dillon's usual experience, which is presumably why he finds her interesting.)

[Fluffy]

Meanwhile, Ray loses some points for telling Amber that he's a big fan. He should have picked up from Dillon that Amber is trying to get out of the porn business, which makes telling her how much you liked her porn work potentially a bit tactless. Fortunately, of course, Amber is still kind of laid back about that.

Why do you assume he's only referring to her porn career? Ray has acknowledged that he has seen her in other things aside from the porn flicks. To say he's only referring to her ability to fake an orgasm on cue is jumping to conclusions.

[wiseguy]

probabilities are right now higher that his admiration for her was from her being in the past Amber Amber http://www.stickydillybuns.com/strips-s ... ofessional

whether it will go the same way it went for Gary? and actually see her as a person? I don't know

[FlashD81]

Ruby, stop it's getting weird.

I know this is suppose to be funny but to me this is a little painful. I would hope someone would pull her aside and figure out what is going on.

Unfortunately Amber doesn't know her sister as well as she should and Dillon is still hung up on his crush. I don't see any easy way they can deal with Ruby other than to ask her to leave.

Ruby needs a time out to deal with her hormones and some self-analysis.

[Spidrift]

Why do you assume he's only referring to her porn career? Ray has acknowledged that he has seen her in other things aside from the porn flicks. To say he's only referring to her ability to fake an orgasm on cue is jumping to conclusions.

Has Ray acknowledged seeing Amber in non-porn material? I can't find any such speech. He implied that he'd seen Dillon kissing her, but that could have been on the set earlier.

We don't know for sure how much of Amber's post-porn work has been released, and yes, it's possible that Ray is talking about that. However, I got the impression that she was making a fresh start about the time that she first appeared in person in Ma3. Nathan said that she'd done "some acting", which I assumed was a euphemism for her porn work, but this was her first major film - and I'd guess that's the film which has just wrapped up. Given the timescales - two or three months - I really don't think that Dillon and Amber have had time to make a film and for it to be edited and released. (Ray could have seen a trailer, I guess.) Nobody's ever mentioned any of her non-porn work as being released, and I recall Dillon talking about the critics responding to it in the future tense (can't track that down just now, sorry). Plus, although Ruby knew that Amber was out of porn, Amber hasn't yet hit the problem she'll get with her parents when something is released and the press starts referring to "former porn star Amber LaRose". So I'd bet money that she's still very much starting out in non-porn work, and that nothing substantial has been released yet.

Conversely, Ray referred to her as "Amber-Amber" until Dillon pulled him up on that - so whether or not he could have seen any of her non-porn work, he's still having to get out of the habit of thinking of her as a porn actress. So I think that I was jumping to a pretty safe conclusion.

I know this is suppose to be funny but to me this is a little painful. I would hope someone would pull her aside and figure out what is going on.

Unfortunately Amber doesn't know her sister as well as she should and Dillon is still hung up on his crush.

To give him credit, Dillon seems to have his own hormones reasonably well under control at present, and he's already dragged himself away from Ray to talk to Ruby once. And he seems to be putting some genuine effort into his friendship with her. My bet is that he will take Ruby aside to ask her WhatTheHell while Amber talks to Ray. (Bonus points if Minew gets another meal out of this.) The interesting question then is how that conversation will go.

[FlashD81]

I hope you are right because she needs a talk.