I know that this will harsh some people's squee, but does this seem at all in character for Marten? His past two interests were in fairly dominant women.
I think Claire
is a dominant personality. She
got right up in Marten's face in her first day on the job, and
in Tai's business shortly after,
digs into Faye
fearlessly, doesn't hesitate to let Emily know when she's
stepping on her style statements, and
makes no secret of her disappointment in Marten's casual hook-up with Delilah. And she misses no opportunity to
dominate and
humiliate her brother, and
refuses to put up with his overprotective schtick.
This is not a girl afraid of expressing her opinions or accustomed to backing down. She has the same bulldog intensity that Marten was drawn to in Faye and Dora, and is clearly his "type" in a way that, say, Hannelore and Emily aren't.
HOWEVER, she's doesn't feel safe throwing herself at Marten the way that his previous lovers have done, because she is either
confused and disgusted by her own body, or expects that Marten might be, or both. This means that she has to
express her
interest very
subtly, in a way that would be otherwise out of character for a girl with her obstreperous personality, and wait for Marten to notice and take the initiative to act on it. Which he finally did.
You can argue whether making a move like this is in character for Marten. I would say that it's the direction his character has been arcing toward for the last thousand strips (or three months, comic time).
Losing Padma showed him that
life would pass him by if he didn't
learn to be
proactive. He's been trying to
figure out what he really wants. He knows it isn't
casual sex. He does know that he
likes being
around Claire, and that
she likes him back. And for the first time in his life, he feels
empowered to seek out what he wants.
So this is a place we got to slowly and deliberately. Characters growing and changing is not the same as acting out of character.
Dora called him 'pretty vanilla.'
Well, isn't it fortunate that trans women's bodies aren't props for straight people's fetishes, but are actually just the bodies of
regular humans who are just trying to make it in the world? And that
Claire and
Marten are both good-bordering-on-paranoid communicators about consent?
If there's any sign in the last 600 strips that spells doom for this relationship, it's that Claire just
doesn't like his music that much.