Hello everyone, I'm new-ish here (I've lurked for a while).
This comic and especially this discussion thread had me thinking for a while. QC is pretty much the first webcomic that I started following, and I have pretty much followed it continuously since, aside from a three-month break during one of the slower plotlines. And I have to say that despite being a little bit of a Marteen-Faye shipper, I was more or less happy to watch the Marteen-Dora relationship work itself out. It didn't feel to me like a "rebound fuck" or however you want to put it -- Marteen himself addressed that: "Relationships aren't like the Olympics. I'm not with you because I wanted Faye but couldn't get her, I'm with you because it makes me happy." Dora wasn't exactly nice all the time, but very few people are. And she was far from some sort of demon-bat hell-bitch.
But something changed in their dynamic. In the last six months or so I've really started to feel uncomfortable watching this relationship unfold. I had thought it might be because I was projecting onto the comic too much: my own romantic life is not exactly happy, and so quite possibly I just couldn't stand watching other people being happy, even in a fictional universe. But after some more thought, I'm not entirely convinced.
I think what's been bothering me is that this relationship doesn't read as "complete" to me. I don't like reading about it not because I'm jealous but because it's actually uncomfortable to read about. No, I'm not saying that the constant fighting is destroying it. Fighting is a part of relationships; maybe not to this extent, but certainly to some degree. It just feels like Marteen-Dora is really insubstantial. Hear me out: the things that have been explored in the comic so far can (overly simplistically) be summarized like this: fighting, talking about said fights and relationship issues, sex, talking about sex, changing appearances, music (less and less so now), and the infrequent witty banter.
Maybe I have an overly idealistic view of the possibilities for relationships, but Marteen-Dora often seems like it lacks any kind of intellectual or emotional depth. They don't really talk about the important things in life -- they only really talk about each other. The physical aspect of the relationship is there, for sure -- in any given sample of 50 strips there will be a reference to whatever sex they recently had. But honestly I haven't seen them connect on an emotional level or an intellectual level. Honestly I can't even
tell you if they have the same hopes, fears, or dreams, because they don't talk about them. Their shared interests seem to be snark and a general liking of music.
Some of it might be the fact that this is a webcomic. Jeph wants to entertain, so he writes about the dramatic things in his character's life. That makes sense, and explains why half the comics seem to be about fighting. But the way it reads right now, with a possibly biased sampling of their lives -- Dora and Marteen sex each other a lot and then fight. Rinse, repeat. There are some adorable episodes (like the nonsense conversation, or the time when Marteen gets about ten nice gifts for Dora unasked), but they are
so few and far between, especially compared to the fights. I just don't really see them as a happy couple.
Hopefully that all makes sense/wasn't too long!
Unrelated: lol, 19 posts since I started writing this.