Seven pages. By Tuesday.
Jesus.
Well, anyway, I am curious to see where this will go. Obviously shit is going down, and this is the closest they've had to a "breaking up" moment we've seen. They clearly won't let it lie at this, there's going to be more discussion at the very least, more yelling and fighting quite possibly, but it's not a good place to be at.
I don't believe that Marten and Dora have been working toward a breakup, per se. Dora, we all know, has her issues, but she clearly loves Marten and doesn't want to lose what she has. She just has boundary issues, not only with Marten's behaviour, but obviously now with her own. Hell, even Faye observed that with Marten's mum doing what she does, porn would obviously be kind of a sore point with him, no matter how well-adjusted he might be. It's a trust issue, and no doubt a big personal line in the sand, that Dora shouldn't have crossed.
But I think this is more of Marten's issues that we're seeing here. I don't see hints in the comic that they've been fizzling in the relationship, but I do believe I've seen hints that Marten is starting to question his life a bit. He has a small group of friends that range from semi-secret-agents to (literally) famously bitchy baristas to the daughter of a pair of supervillians. He's in a band that even he acknowledges is going nowhere. He has a job that he openly acknowledges isn't a whole lot of fun for him. His girlfriend tears him a new asshole over things he doesn't understand and treats him like a kid. His best friend, who he lives with, still blueballs him every now and then (as we've seen in his dreams) and he's now watching her start a relationship with someone else. And then throw in basically anything Pintsize does...
It's been said before in earlier discussions, but it needs to be said again - Marten Reed is the most superhumanly well-adjusted individual in the entire universe. The fact that he's not a screaming ball of crazy right now is proof of that. But bit by bit, we're watching him become a little more assertive here, a little more domineering there. He still controls himself - the first and only time we've ever seen him get truly mad in the comic, something Faye even noted, he clamped down on it to be a nice guy to Dora again. That was, maybe, the first crack in his armour. This is the next one, and it's a lot bigger.
Anyone who's ever said the words, "I'm sick of your apologies!" knows what it really means. You're not sick of hearing the apologies, you're sick of being in a situation where the other person has hurt you and is saying sorry, and you have to accept the apology. You're tired of this cycle where you get hurt and you have to laugh it off and pretend that it's all okay. Marten is the whipping boy of the entire QC-Universe and it's obvious that he knows it... and it's becoming even more obvious that he's sick of it. Dora just finally pushed too hard on a topic he wasn't comfortable with, and now things are happening. And, much like I said with their fight after Faye's panic attack, if and when Marten's armour finally does crack away, I'm going to be very interested to see what's underneath.
Despite the overwhelming odds that Jeph is too sensible to read this thread, I just have to say: the slow evolution of Marten as a character is one of the main reasons I keep reading QC, and I can't wait to see where this goes. Even if it gets grim for Dora and Marten, I'm looking forward to the story unfolding.
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15 (5%)
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Topic: WCDT 15-19 November 2010 (1796-1800) (Read 445964 times)