Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
What is Marigold's fundamental character?
TAG:
Sorry for the late jump in, normally only read the WCT if that. Bored on a train though :P
--- Quote from: IanClark on 04 Jun 2010, 01:12 ---Marigold's shown herself to be altruistic and caring on a number of occasions. She had little reservation about letting a near-stranger borrow at least $200 worth of manga,
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Oh yeah, someone who protects her manga like this is lending manga to someone who has a proven record directly to Marigod of treating those exact specific manga like this. My heart aches at her generosity. Next thing you know, she'll loan her 20 year old car to an automechanic!
Plus, as we've no evidence of her or Hanners ever knowing Japanese (much less both of them), these are not high rarity imports but rather relatively cheap subs / fansubs. So Marigold lent someone a book, someone likely to return it in better condition than when it was lent. Whoopie.
--- Quote ---as evidenced by the beginning of this strip, she shows a genuine interest in the social lives of her new friends (When has Faye ever discussed her personal life, sober or drunk, without some kind of prompting?).
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http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=500
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=511
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1079
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1089 (sorta)
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1342 (sorta)
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1343
etc. I wouldn't put it past her to drunkenly discuss it on her own volition... I would find the concept of Marigold -- who has never really been introduced to Sven -- bringing it up more unlikely.
--- Quote ---Here she shows that she cares enough for Hanners' feelings to make sure she's not too shook up by her guild-mates' comments (someone please correct me on the term if it's wrong)
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She seems just as mortified by the concept and immediately co-opted it into self pity. Also this proves that she at least has some repetoir with her raid guild which means she's not the social six year old people are treating her as.
--- Quote ---and here she seems genuinely sorry she inadvertently insulted Dora, as she does here.
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Nonspecific apologies to a blatantly (perhaps irrationally, if Marigold didn't have a foot so far down her mouth she was autofellating) mad person.
--- Quote ---The only two areas in which she's been really selfish are her pursuit of Angus and her somewhat self-absorbed constant self-deprecation, and those both come with the territory. Once she sorts herself out, I think we'll discover that she actually does care.
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How about her treatment of Momo, which includes her apathy at fixing Momo's friend (Pintsize fix) and her demand that Momo give up on a raid to indulge Marigold's self interest (a raid Momo was doing specifically to free Marigold from that responsibility)?
Anyway, she's had something like 25 years to sort herself out. WoW is a social game and she seems to excel at it, with evidence that she's not just camwhoring it out to get by. Hanners has massive OCD and was literally raised in a space station and is more socially adjusted. Faye witnessed her dad's suicide and survived her own possible suicide attempt and is more socially adjusted.
Anyway, as should be clear, I have no interest in Marigold other than what better characters reveal about themselves when dealing with her. Jeph seems fixated on her so I'm sure we'll see her "get better", but if I were any one of the QC universe people I would not be making anywhere near the effort to include her that every single one of them is. But for now she's just so... boring. She exists basically to get better, and I don't find that compelling at all. She's a self-centered jerk.
jwhouk:
And yet... we have an entire thread on her.
I'd say she's a character "under construction" right now.
TAG:
--- Quote from: jwhouk on 06 Jun 2010, 23:34 ---And yet... we have an entire thread on her.
I'd say she's a character "under construction" right now.
--- End quote ---
Well, she's been around for more than 250 strips now, and one could reasonably argue that she's been one of the two major focuses (Angus being the other, and half of his strips are Marigold-appeasing centric). So far she seems to have constructed from a character we know nothing about to one I would rather know nothing about :P
Edit: Gah I didn't realize she's been around for more than a year... how much more leeway can y'all give her?
Is it cold in here?:
--- Quote from: TAG on 06 Jun 2010, 23:12 ---... and her demand that Momo give up on a raid to indulge Marigold's self interest (a raid Momo was doing specifically to free Marigold from that responsibility)?
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Looking at Momo-tan's dialog in the preceding strips, does it really sound to you as if she was doing something for Marigirl as opposed to being selfishly engrossed? Someone with a social protocol database isn't going to say "Meh. Later." by accident if she's doing someone a favor.
Magical Love Gentlemen may have been an import. Marigold is known to buy top of the line imported Japanese goods (Momo is a high end model!). Even if she doesn't know enough Japanese to follow anime, she has an AnthroPC who can translate.
For comparison and perspective, how long had Faye been around before giving clear evidence of kindness or caring about someone else's feelings? (Understandable if you don't want to wait for Marigold *that* long). (And duly noted that you didn't cite Faye as an example of a good character, just one who is relatively better adjusted despite severe trauma (which we can't compare to Marigirl's because we don't know her past. Self-esteem problems that bad suggest severe early childhood abuse)).
Marigold needs Raven for a friend.
IanClark:
--- Quote ---Oh yeah, someone who protects her manga like this is lending manga to someone who has a proven record directly to Marigod of treating those exact specific manga like this. My heart aches at her generosity. Next thing you know, she'll loan her 20 year old car to an automechanic!
--- End quote ---
There is no fixing a book. Page is torn, it's going to stay torn. Spine is fucked up, probably going to stay fucked up. Stain on the cover? Probably not going to get it out without damaging the pages below. Maybe Marigold leant her the manga as some sort of ploy to get her to replace all the manga. Even though only a few hours before she was threatening to throw out everything she owned and give nothing in return. But maybe Marigold knew that wasn't what Hannelore was really like, because maybe she's been spying on her since infancy.
--- Quote ---Plus, as we've no evidence of her or Hanners ever knowing Japanese (much less both of them), these are not high rarity imports but rather relatively cheap subs / fansubs.
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Manga runs at at least $10 per volume in a bookstore, and books are notoriously low-profit, meaning even the cheapest fansub would run maybe a buck cheaper or else whoever did it would lose money hand over fist. There seems to be at least 20 volumes of it, so we're talking $180 at the very cheapest. I'm not saying she's Mother Theresa, but it can't be denied that lending that much of anything to someone you barely know is an altruistic act. And the fact that she did it basically instinctually means it wasn't forced, and it wasn't part of some ploy for attention or admiration, it was just her.
--- Quote ---http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=500
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=511
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I'd call the first 499 strips of the series "prompting", and the fact that I just wrote out "499" instead of, like, 205 or 197 indicates that it is, in fact, that hard to get Faye to open up.
--- Quote ---http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1079
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"I have issues pushing my boundaries" isn't your personal life, it's just your personality. She didn't go into why, or even what those boundaries were (although she inferred pretty badly on the latter).
--- Quote ---http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1089 (sorta)
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Being in a therapist's office is about the definition of prompting.
--- Quote ---http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1342 (sorta)
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She blurted out a bunch of obscenities, none of which actually indicated why she was pissed off. Four hours ago one of my best friends was sitting in the back of my car, and he yelled at a passing couple that they looked nice. Even I couldn't read subtext from that and he's one of my best friends.
--- Quote ---http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1343
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Dora is both her best friend and Sven's sister. It was going to come up eventually. Again, prompting.
I don't think it's exactly in Faye's character to start a conversation with "So here's the story of my last boyfriend." I wouldn't venture a guess as to how it came up, but I'd guess Marigold prompted it in some indirect way.
--- Quote ---She seems just as mortified by the concept and immediately co-opted it into self pity.
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She actually reacted with anger, not mortification, and in the next strip Hannelore is shown literally curled up in fear as Marigold stammers out to try to rectify the situation. And she didn't co-opt anything, Hanners literally said "How about you?"
--- Quote ---Also this proves that she at least has some repetoir with her raid guild which means she's not the social six year old people are treating her as.
--- End quote ---
As far as I can tell, to succeed at WoW, you need to be one of two things: someone with good social skills, or someone who spends a lot of time playing. Dale appears to be the first, Marigold is decidedly the second. Of all the times we've seen her playing, only in one is she hooked up to a mic, and she spends the whole time talking to Hanners, not anyone else until the end. The fact that someone else in her guild felt comfortable enough to make a joke about her means either a) she has a good rapport with her fellow players or b) they're too socially awkward themselves to know it's not really cool. Given that her guild-mates are apparently easily impressed by camwhores, and used the phrase "lez out", money's on the second one.
--- Quote ---How about her treatment of Momo, which includes her apathy at fixing Momo's friend (Pintsize fix)
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But she did it.
--- Quote ---and her demand that Momo give up on a raid to indulge Marigold's self interest (a raid Momo was doing specifically to free Marigold from that responsibility)?
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As Jeph himself said in the newspost, the joke is supposed to be that she's trying to make Momo act sociably when she can't take her own advice. Not trying to be the center of attention, trying to make Momo act sociably.
--- Quote ---Anyway, she's had something like 25 years to sort herself out.
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Well the period up until she graduated college was the period she's having to sort herself out from, so it's more like four at best. And apparently according to her Twitter people yell at her on the street. People generally don't sort themselves out until they even see a reason to. Enter the QC cast.
--- Quote ---WoW is a social game and she seems to excel at it
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Seriously, the most socially awkward human being I know excels at WoW. This whole "Marigold as perfectly capable sociopath" explanation only works if you've never dealt with a sociopath before. I've dated one, and been involved in the lives of many others. They will seek out what they want immediately and not stop until they get it, no matter who they hurt. She wouldn't be pursuing Angus recently, she'd have been pursuing him for years, and she'd probably have gotten him by now. She would not have been harassed in school, because the first couple people to fuck with her would've ended up with severe internal bleeding one way or another.
All the evidence points to her having good intentions, but neither the skills or the self-awareness to know how to use them, or recognize when she's failing at it horribly. I'll admit sometimes as a character she gets on my nerves, but being the amateur psychoanalyst I am, I can't help but see someone ultimately worthy.
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