What's that? Steer clear of criticizing certain current politicians' Ussing and Themming? Don't compare the othering of immigrants to disastrous isolationist policies in history, or transgender paranoia to literal and metaphorical witchhunts? Just stick to commenting on the strip itself? Well, if you insist.

I think it goes without saying that this right here is a turning point in Ellen and Lily's relationship. They're both being pretty prickly here, it shouldn't be surprising if the dialogue of the next strip consists entirely of "you're fired"/"you can't fire me, I quit".

...actually, does that work in real life? I honestly don't know, I've never seen it done.

Anyway, this whole conversation would probably be going very differently if Ellen hadn't psychoanalyzed Florenovia earlier. Lily's control of her business, her gaming group, and her fiction audience is much more obvious, once you see all three of those things in context of each other. Perhaps it originally compensated for feelings of being unsafe in the world, or frustration over her lack of control of her height or weight or ocular acuity. And then, of course, controlling others triggered the reward lever of feeling safe and powerful, and producing tangible results triggered the reward lever of feeling productive and worthy, and then the ensuing feedback spiral helped cement Lily's whole schtick...

Ah, but I'm backfilling. Besides, we're not interested in Lily's past. We're interested in her future. Let's see where she goes from here.