Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT: 2882-2886 (26-30 January 2015)

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NilsO:
Dora and Faye were close friends early in the series, but I think Dora Friend has distanced herself from Faye for quite some time, for several reasons:

* When dating Marten, Dora had issues with the Marten-Faye friendship, constantly worrying if they still had romantic feelings for each other.
* Dora did not approve of Faye's affair with Sven.
* When moving to Amherst, Dora naturally became more distant both geographically and socially.
* Dora's relationship with Tai meant she had less time for the others (the classical twosomeness syndrome).
* Besides, her business requires most of her waking hours.
* Dora Boss has on several occasions lately been dissatisfied with Faye's performance. As Dora Friend is not a separate physical entity, it is bound to influence their friendship. Moral: Never be friend with your boss. Jeph has touched upon this in strip #1707.

ReindeerFlotilla:

--- Quote from: bartman on 29 Jan 2015, 00:10 ---
--- Quote from: eschaton on 28 Jan 2015, 17:39 --- Dora just didn't care about her as a friend as much as she thought.

--- End quote ---

That's a two-way street though. I would remind a friend who tried to pull a 'you obviously didn't care about me as a friend because you fired me' that they put me in the horrible position of having to fire a friend for drinking on the job, and point out  that if they truly cared about the friendship then they wouldn't have put me in that awkward position in the first place.

--- End quote ---

Ah, yes. The infinite finger pointing. It's like a flame war, but less typing.

Friendship is not transactional. People tend to think it is, but only when they need something or have been hurt. Friendship is just a group of people bumbling along in company, trying to make room for one another. Because it feels good.

At some point we invest a part of ourselves in the others. The same way your brain can be tricked into thinking that a fake arm is attached to the body. When they hurt, we hurt.

We expect it to go both ways. In a real friendship it does. But the fact is, the part of our friends that they invest in us will not be the exact same as the part we invest in them. Overlap? Likely. Perfect match? Never. At some point something they do will hurt us or vice versa, We tend to think, because mutualism, that they should have known. In the case of Faye, the argument stands that she should have known. Common sense, after all. But Faye's world had been reduced to looming hurt.

Faye could argue the, "hey! looming hurt!" Dora "should have known." But ultimately, as friendship goes, neither argument is valid. (which introduces the employee employer angle, and Dora is super valid there.) Either they can see past the friendship error, or they can't. That doesn't make a bad friend of either. It doesn't erase the validity of what they used to have.

Of course, they will patch things up. Unless Dora's at the bus station. But I don't see that happening. Not like this. Angus, Gabby, Sara? Sure. they had roles to play and the role is done. Dora is core cast. She might get bussed out--a writer can get sick of any character--but it will be a storyline of it's own. Otherwise, someone might start a movement about ethics in webcomics.

McH:
There's more than just the emergency bourbon, there's also the beer & pizza with Claire while on the clock. I took it to mean that Dora isn't really that strict about it when it's all in good fun and responsible.

That really does differ from sneaking in cheap scotch and secretly drinking it/coming in drunk, though.

BenRG:

--- Quote from: McH on 29 Jan 2015, 01:12 ---There's more than just the emergency bourbon, there's also the beer & pizza with Claire while on the clock. I took it to mean that Dora isn't really that strict about it when it's all in good fun and responsible.
--- End quote ---

There seems to be a genuine possibility that Dora didn't know about the 'Emergency Bourbon'. If that's the case, then Faye has been sneaking hard liquor into work for some time and then using it when confronting emotions that she doesn't want to confront. Previously, this has never been anything than 'anaesthetic' to create a buzz strong enough that she doesn't have to feel/confront her emotions.

However, the break-up with Angus was so painful that Faye started drinking to excess in a failing attempt to avoid confronting those emotions. Instead, as strip 2872 demonstrates, the questions and emotions were so strong that it was difficult to cloud them. So, she tried upping the dosage. When that didn't work, she tried again and again until, as we see in strip 2876, she was practically stupefying herself and trying to keep herself in such a state. This is what came very close to being a death spiral.

I suspect that Faye will be a very sad, very reflective person for a while now as she now has to confront all those demons that she's been trying to drown, possibly for years.

tragic_pizza:
I noticed it in yesterday's comic, and today's comic reinforces it: Faye is being very un-Faye-like: not sassy or combative, no snark...

Imagine waking up in a hospital, not really comprehending how you got there... now, imagine yourself with the addition of Faye's PTSD and general anger issues.

That would have been a very easy direction to go, I think - maybe fill out the week with some one-off "Faye in the hospital" punchlines, before digging into the meat, if at all. I think Jeph is doing this the hard way, and the best way.

I might just get to being able to like Faye again.

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