01-08-14 I am whoever you want me to be

[crimzontearz]

BUT, he was not abode stealing the stage from Zii out of petty revenge. Granted it backfired but...still not nice and definitely not honorable or sportsmanlike.

I do agree Sonya needs a swift kick in the rump tho

[Fluffy]

However, Angel's behavior towards Zii at the concert had nothing to do with winning Jerzy back; that was all about professional competition and probably out of spite towards a woman she probably sees as the cause of the breakup with Jerzy/their band.

[crimzontearz]

My point is not about severity of infraction but more that Angel is no angel either in spite of him adopting honesty with jerzy as a course of action

[wi1dfire]

Ruby needs the confidence to say "no" to people in general and Dillon very much in particular. She's too easily bounced into things. Discovering the courage of her convictions would be good for her. Dillon has been right about one thing; she needs to test and stretch her limits. Her night as Rudy was good for her in that respect, and discovering that she can call an older, more extrovert person out when he's talking BS would be another step.

In the end, Ruby is there as Amber's guest, and that isn't going to change for at least four different reasons. Ruby may go along with Dillon's nonsense out of a sense of politeness, but she's entitled to set limits to his claims on her patience. Sometimes, you've got to sacrifice some harmony to stop the situation being abused, or on principle. And Ruby has principles; that's part of her charm.

That's not how Ruby seems to work, though. She actually has a moral code, whereas most of the characters in this setting just run on shaky situational ethics. And moral codes are general, not personal. Just because Dillon hasn't hurt her with this behaviour doesn't get him a pass.

Note how she instantly saw the problem with Dillon's "27 guys" boast, when every other character in the comic just lets that kind of thing slide by. She may bite her tongue here, if only because Dillon wouldn't listen, but we can see that she's very, very unimpressed.

Is she sanctimonious and judgemental? Sure. If she tries appointing herself Dillon's personal Jiminy Cricket, she'll sacrifice a chunk of cuteness and some domestic harmony. But she'll retain her integrity, which is not only important to her, it's what makes her, Ruby, such an interesting and strong person.

I strongly disagree with pretty much all of this. I should start by saying that the idea of a moral code being general rather than personal is one I find grossly repugnant and I am trying very hard to even think rationally about it.

But more on topic, I still don't see how calling Dillon out would represent personal growth for her. Acting like a jerk and giving unwanted, unwarranted, and unneeded advice doesn't seem to me as the behavior of someone full of integrity. It sounds like the exact opposite; someone so unsure of themselves that they strike out at easy targets in order to create a sense of superiority. And it would be acting like a jerk. Dillon isn't her problem to fix. Taking that burden on when no one, least of all Dillon, asked her to is the behavior of a jerk. Demanding that he and Amber conform to her moral code is acting like a jerk, a terrible behavior she is already too willing to indulge in.

Real personal growth, as I see it, would be for her to see his faults for what they are, and then letting him live his life as he chooses anyways. Recognizing that there is more than one way to be a human would be a great step for her to take, and one that, if she is able to look past Dillon's faults to see a person, she might be able to take and apply to repair her relationship with her sister. Then she might be able to examine her own faults, where she comes up short according to her own values, and either ease up on herself or set new goals in light of her increased awareness.

[Fluffy]

Though, really. If she's present when Dillon goes on an on about how he was wronged, but in the same breath, shows that he is very hypocritical when it comes to his own actions, she should - as a friend - politely point out the hypocrisy in the hopes that he would see that he wasn't completely without fault.

Dillon is not going to make any growth as a person if people keep enabling his behavior by laughing it off or ignoring it.

My point is not about severity of infraction but more that Angel is no angel either in spite of him adopting honesty with jerzy as a course of action

I never said Angel was the essence of purity, as she does have her spiteful tendencies - but seeing as the discussion was about what women will do in order to win their hearts desire, her actions are nowhere near as extreme/despicable as Sonya's (Hell - Sonya's initial plan to break Erik and Zii up was to get Erik drunk and have Zii walk in on him plowing her. Can't tell me that isn't just a little deranged).

[Missie]

My thoughts on this are that Angel is probably a transman. Born female, identifies as a man now, probably pre-op/possibly pre-T (hence using the female bathroom). Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable going into the men's room yet. His band name seems to suggest he probably identifies as male.

For some reason Jerzy seems to be denying his bisexuality. Maybe it really was just a phase for him, I don't know. My guess is that, amongst other issues, things didn't work out between them because he realized he was gay, and didn't truly see Angel as the man he wants to be (hence the slip up, calling him 'Angie'). This is a common problem with trans people, whether they're gay or straight - many people simply do not see them the way they wish to be seen. Especially if Jerzy knew him before Angel started living as a man.

As someone who's been in very similar situations (ignore the name, I registered it pre-transition and registering a new one is a huge hassle now) that's just my perspective on things.

[Spidrift]

Whether one finds Sonya or Angel "worse" is probably a matter of taste. To me, Sonya is a comedy character; even when she's being evil, it's all a game, and she's likely quite redeemable. She just needs to calm the hell down a bit, get over her runaway crush on Zii, and concentrate on doing people favours for fun instead of trying to be a femme fatale (for which she really doesn't have the brains anyway). There seem to me to be reasons why quite sane folk like Ally and Peggy treat her as a friend; she's like a teenager who just needs to get over her current hormone surge.

Whereas Angel, from the slightly lesser amount we've seen, keeps giving me a much more scary sense of creepiness. There's an edge of, I dunno, hysteria there - a real feeling that she could turn downright dangerous if anyone flipped the wrong switch. At best, she's a damaged obsessive who badly needs therapy. Maybe the writers will pull her back from that edge eventually - but until they do, I'd avoid her like poison. Personally.

I strongly disagree with pretty much all of this. I should start by saying that the idea of a moral code being general rather than personal is one I find grossly repugnant and I am trying very hard to even think rationally about it.

But that's what a moral code means! If it's not potentially universal, it's not morality, it's just a wanky private set of aesthetic guidelines. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". "No man is an island." You're welcome to revise your morality in the light of experience, but refusing to judge others, no matter how badly they behave, is the worst sort of cowardly solipsism.

Acting like a jerk and giving unwanted, unwarranted, and unneeded advice doesn't seem to me as the behavior of someone full of integrity. It sounds like the exact opposite; someone so unsure of themselves that they strike out at easy targets in order to create a sense of superiority.

Who says that Dillon would be an easy target? Getting through to him would be hard work. The easy option is leaving him to act like a hypocritical jackass for the sake of a quiet life around the apartment.

Real personal growth, as I see it, would be for her to see his faults for what they are, and then letting him live his life as he chooses anyways.

However appalling that behaviour might look to her? Presumably, if she found his actions sufficiently despicable, she'd be entitled to walk away eventually - or if she caught him strangling kittens and giggling, should she just say "oh well, that's how he chooses to live his life"? There's got to be a point where anyone is entitled to say "No" out loud.

(Anyway, it's probably too late. It seems clear to me that Ruby has already judged Dillon's behaviour as wrong - just as a lot of readers have, in fact. Whether she has the inclination and courage to actually say anything about it is what remains to be seen.)

Dillon is not going to make any growth as a person if people keep enabling his behavior by laughing it off or ignoring it.

That's pretty much the heart of this. Most characters in these comics persist in enabling Dillon's idiot-bad behaviour. Ruby is interesting because she's someone who might call him on it.

[wi1dfire]

I strongly disagree with pretty much all of this. I should start by saying that the idea of a moral code being general rather than personal is one I find grossly repugnant and I am trying very hard to even think rationally about it.

But that's what a moral code means! If it's not potentially universal, it's not morality, it's just a wanky private set of aesthetic guidelines. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". "No man is an island." You're welcome to revise your morality in the light of experience, but refusing to judge others, no matter how badly they behave, is the worst sort of cowardly solipsism.

Oh, I'm not saying judging others is out of the question. Silently, anyways. But commanding other people to live by a set of rules you made up for yourself is acting like a jerk. The difference is between asking someone to not have an opinion, which is basically impossible, and asking them to keep that opinion to themselves.
To explain more fully where I am coming from, and why I react so strongly against it, if I let other people dictate what was right for me based on what was right for them, I would never have come out of the closet. I would never have gone to college, or left home. Not that these things are required for a happy life, but they made me happy, and that's kind of my point. Figuring out what is right and wrong for yourself is what being a responsible adult is. Shirking that duty is cowardice. Trying to take that duty away from someone capable of it is to belittle them.

Who says that Dillon would be an easy target? Getting through to him would be hard work. The easy option is leaving him to act like a hypocritical jackass for the sake of a quiet life around the apartment.

An emotionally high-strung person does tend to be an easy target for this kind of criticism, but that's not exactly what I meant. His flaws are easy targets, because he lives so openly and emotionally, as opposed to Ruby or even Amber, who tend to play things closer to their chests.
And would that be the easy option? Easy for her? She already feels free to criticize everything and everyone; continuing that pattern wouldn't exactly be a stretch. Going against that instinct by keeping her mouth shut, especially if she did it because Dillon's character isn't really any of her business to correct, would be a lot harder for her to accomplish.

Real personal growth, as I see it, would be for her to see his faults for what they are, and then letting him live his life as he chooses anyways.

However appalling that behaviour might look to her? Presumably, if she found his actions sufficiently despicable, she'd be entitled to walk away eventually - or if she caught him strangling kittens and giggling, should she just say "oh well, that's how he chooses to live his life"? There's got to be a point where anyone is entitled to say "No" out loud.

Comparing self destructive behavior with violent actions against things unable to protect themselves is very weird. Also, she's free to walk away at any time. This bit didn't really make any sense to me. Especially the "entitled" sentence. Why does there need to be a point in which someone is entitled to intervene in a someone else's life? If you aren't responsible for either party, and both parties are adults capable of walking away themselves, then no, you're never entitled. Thinking you have a free pass to do so sounds like an excellent way to get yourself killed for no reason, actually. But, then, I was one of the few that saw Uncle Ben's actions as stupid, albeit kind. It was just money.

[Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot]

My thoughts on this are that Angel is probably a transman. Born female, identifies as a man now, probably pre-op/possibly pre-T (hence using the female bathroom). Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable going into the men's room yet. His band name seems to suggest he probably identifies as male.

For some reason Jerzy seems to be denying his bisexuality. Maybe it really was just a phase for him, I don't know. My guess is that, amongst other issues, things didn't work out between them because he realized he was gay, and didn't truly see Angel as the man he wants to be (hence the slip up, calling him 'Angie').

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Since they were "childhood friends" Jerzy may even have had his one-time fling with Angie before she began to transition. If Jerzy really does think of himself as homosexual rather than bisexual now (and there's really no reason to doubt that he does) and if Angel really is a pre-op trans man, it would be hard (or rather it wouldn't be hard! ;) ) for him to have sex with someone he knows as a person with a vagina rather than a penis. It might also explain why some people who know him would be a bit confused about using a male or female pronoun, and might choose to just avoid using either.

[Swayambhu]

so uh - not trying to sound like a broken record here, but hey, anyone out there sweet enough to post the actual comic in the forum? Still can't load up SDB comics on my laptop for some reason and it's all I got.

[Azrael]

Here you go, Sway.

sdb20140801.png (130.88 KiB) Viewed 7202 times

[Cortez]

I think the idea of Angel is supposed to be that she is in love with Jerzy. No different than Sonya with Zii.

It may just be her emo style, but her dialogue strikes me as a notch more creepy and a notch less funny than Sonya. Sonya is bouncy and a bit dim, with a tendency to spin off zany schemes; even when she's being evil, she seems to be roleplaying a femme fatale. That's comedy; a strip with Sonya in will usually end in a joke. Angel just seems scarily determined; note the total lack of a joke in today's strip - which is very unusual in this universe.

No matter how you try to sugar coat it, Joybuzzer has a point. Sonya's obsession with making Zii hers was just as scary as Angel's was with Jerzy.

In fact, Sonya's worse!

While Angel flirted heavily with Jerzy and proclaimed repeatedly that she wanted him back, she never crossed any questionable line. She settled with using honesty in order to try and make Jerzy see the light when it came to Dillon. She never lied, schemed, or manipulated things in order for Jerzy to comeback to her, and if she did? She was honest about it.

Sonya, on the other hand, schemed and manipulated to get what she wanted the moment Zii decided she'd pawn her off to Gary. Sonya would do a strip tease for Zii, make passes at her, get naked in front of her and physically stimulated her - providing constant physical temptation that she knew Zii would not be able to resist. While they were shitfaced, Sonya convinced Zii to dump Erik so they could fool around guilt free (which resulted in a genuine break up after Erik walked in on the orgy and overheard Zii's declaring her desire for Didi).

Bouncy, cute and dimwitted or not - Sonya does have vile tendencies.

Yeah, Angel didn't have to do anything, Dillon dug his own grave.

[Spidrift]

But commanding other people to live by a set of rules you made up for yourself is acting like a jerk.

I hate to have to tell you this, but your taxes pay for a few hundred people who make up rules for you based on their moral judgements, and thousands more who enforce those rules. You may think that all those people are jerks, but tough; that's how the world works.

And would that be the easy option? Easy for her? She already feels free to criticize everything and everyone; continuing that pattern wouldn't exactly be a stretch.

She makes a lot of judgements of other people, because she's a moral person who actually takes her morality seriously. She doesn't actually express those judgements to those people very often. She has some issues with Amber, and she pointed out to Dillon when his own inconsistency was causing him trouble, but she really doesn't go round playing the active critic. 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.)

Comparing self destructive behavior with violent actions against things unable to protect themselves is very weird.

The whole reason the temperature in that room just dropped ten degrees was that Ruby discovered that Dillon had hurt twenty-seven other people, and was boasting about it (while complaining when anyone did the same to him). If you want a rule of thumb for when someone is justified in imposing their moral judgements on other people, "When third parties get hurt" is actually a pretty good one. Dillon isn't just self-destructive (though God knows he's that); he's destructive of other people's lives. Someone does actually need to stop that.

A small extra thought; strip #1 featured Amber thinking that Dillon should never change. Assuming that the Pixietrix tradition of callbacks and bookends is preserved, what are the chances of the last strip of the volume having Dillon or somebody else saying that Dillon is going to have to change?

Double post merged. The DAMNed

[Swayambhu]

Here you go, Sway.

thanks, babe~

ugh but now I'm depressed, I don't like this strip one bit

then again, I don't even remotely like Angel. :/

[wi1dfire]

First, I apologize for quoting you out of order, but I think your middle section is the most important, and thus I'm saving my response for last.

But commanding other people to live by a set of rules you made up for yourself is acting like a jerk.

I hate to have to tell you this, but your taxes pay for a few hundred people who make up rules for you based on their moral judgements, and thousands more who enforce those rules. You may think that all those people are jerks, but tough; that's how the world works.

The difference here is that lawmakers are responsible to me and for me. Ruby does not have that kind of relationship with Dillon. If she were his parent, his lover, his owner (if this were a world where Dillon was an overly amorous pet cat instead of a human), then I could see her intervention being necessary and appropriate. Otherwise, no.

Comparing self destructive behavior with violent actions against things unable to protect themselves is very weird.

The whole reason the temperature in that room just dropped ten degrees was that Ruby discovered that Dillon had hurt twenty-seven other people, and was boasting about it (while complaining when anyone did the same to him). If you want a rule of thumb for when someone is justified in imposing their moral judgements on other people, "When third parties get hurt" is actually a pretty good one. Dillon isn't just self-destructive (though God knows he's that); he's destructive of other people's lives. Someone does actually need to stop that.

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. Someone does need to stop Dillon acting this way, and that someone is Dillon. Or Jerzy, or Angel, or any of the dozens of other people he has casual hurt with his behavior. 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.

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.)

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. Do you see her as trapped in that situation? Because I don't. She's not totally comfortable with the actions Dillon is leading her to do, but I think she's letting herself be led. And despite all predictions and logic, somewhat enjoying herself in the process. Although probably more "I am not harmed, let us never speak of this night again," instead of, "One more time!"
I also want to particularly address the parenthetical. I don't think anyone ought to, or, rather, I don't feel just anyone ought to. 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? Because that's what these sentences lead me to think. If so, I have no objections to an appropriate party performing that action (I thought Angel in the pet store was particularly entertaining, because none of Angel's creepiness came out.). I just don't see Ruby as that party.