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New strip! http://www.stickydillybuns.com/strips-sdb/low_on_funds

well, that's an interesting, if not totally surprising look into poor ruby's backstory.



spidrift gonna have a field day with this strip, i reckon.

That sound you hear is the ten page essay he's typing ;)

Hardly. It's a sad story, but not a complicated one, or even that unexpected. We've had a lot of hints that Ruby has never had many friends, and now, well, there's part of it.

The only irony from that particular scene being that Ruby has grown up not only perfectly decent-looking, but notably slim - and she doesn't have much problem dressing to suit, either. Oh, and that she has some grounds for thinking that Zii previously stopped her from making a substitute-friend of her own sister.

Anyhow, it looks like we get a cut from this scene at this point, and a reminder that Ruby doesn't have seed funds, so whatever she's planning after the last strip's moment of revelation, it's going to take a while to set up. Next step, asking Dillon to work for free?

Edit: Oh, and (a) Ruby was right to lose those bunches, and (b) No, I don't know what Minew is doing in this scene at all.

aww that poor kid, still Zii's line in the last panel had me laughing good.

Ahhh there it is. See I was wondering, with all these negative outlooks on girls who care about or even want to gossip about men, how does she have any female friends that are into men? Answer: she doesn't lmao. Even if she is fairly nice-seeming, if she starts putting down people who like to gossip/gush about guys here and there, even on accident, people are gonna be turned off of that real quick.

So Ruby has a friend, who she will have to hate when (not if) she finds out about Zii and Amber's arrangement, since Ruby must hate Amber and everything associated with her at all times. The tragedy of being uptight and judgmental... poor Ruby.

TwoWayStar wrote:Ahhh there it is. See I was wondering, with all these negative outlooks on girls who care about or even want to gossip about men, how does she have any female friends that are into men? Answer: she doesn't lmao. Even if she is fairly nice-seeming, if she starts putting down people who like to gossip/gush about guys here and there, even on accident, people are gonna be turned off of that real quick.

Pardon? She's shown here as having been a friendless geek in school. Why or how that happened remains unexplained. She isn't shown putting anybody down.

More recently, she's hung out with Dillon while he's talked about his love life. She doesn't always seem to enjoy it much, but she mostly puts up with it politely and doesn't put him down (much).

If I had to take a wild guess about what happened to her in school - well, she's a bright introvert. She probably did spend a lot of time in the library, and even if she tried to make friends, she probably wasn't very good at it. That would have made her chum in the water to the sharks of the school's social set. Lucy was probably similarly bright but slightly more extrovert, and hence qualified for a position as Designated Ugly Fat Friend. So Ruby withdrew yet more into the library. Negative feedback loop.

(I also suspect that posters here who say that she doesn't seem to be much brighter than Amber or Dillon may be kind of right, but also kind of missing the point. Ruby has ended up as someone who spends most of her time alone, and who's prepared to work hard because she doesn't have much else to do. That makes her functionally the Smart One. "Genius is 99% perspiration", remember?)

Milkmaid79 wrote:So Ruby has a friend, who she will have to hate when (not if) she finds out about Zii and Amber's arrangement, since Ruby must hate Amber and everything associated with her at all times. The tragedy of being uptight and judgmental... poor Ruby.

Ruby has already made a friend of Dillon, who's quite close to Amber and who'll defend Amber against Ruby's criticisms. And she already knows that Amber and Zii are close from the gig. She's got hang-ups about Amber, but she's not totally nuts.

Getting a lot of flashbacks to the days when I was Helen Tomalin's most tenacious defender. I'd write more, but I'm on break.

So Ruby was the stereotypical studious outcast in high school. No surprises there, and I'll bet she wasn't much different in university either.

I've always thought that part of the reason such students get heckled is jealously about them getting high grades, especially in tougher subjects where everyone else is barely able to pull off a passing grade.

Kids get heckled in school for a very simple reason: Kids are assholes. All of them, in one way or another. The entire point of growing up is to stop being an asshole and start being an adult. Most succeed at this, some don't.

You know I'm right. You know the first person that popped into your mind.

This parallel's Gary's reaction when Zii offered her help to find a girl.

what i find interesting about this strip isn't so much the flashback to ruby's past, as it is the effect it's had on her in the present. the fact that we're seeing a new crack in her facade, that there's more to her issues than repression & resentment toward her sister.

the idea under the thorny shell, ruby is actually kind of lonely & desperate for friendship makes her much more interesting to me.

I don't think she was in itself a total outcast, I am guessing this was AFTER they boy's party

the problem WAS that she made friends with Lucy, but than came the time that Lucy got interested in boys while Ruby swore off boys...........

Result? the other 2 girls I am almost sure tried to get "the cuter brainiac" to help them FIRST, but since Ruby never showed any interest in accepting "their help" in trade for the brain help or going to same activities, they settle for helping Lucy in order to get homework help as Lucy had an interest to be part of same activities as the other 2 girls(boys as dates for girls)