Ok, here's my (long-winded) interpretation:
Hospital-Bound: title is foreshadowing (esp. obvs. now that we know she's in the hospital
)
Homeward-Bound: title is probably more foreshadowing, I highly doubt she WOULDN'T go home after this if her mom were already aware of what happened, and I can't imagine her not being notified of this. OTOH, if her mom doesn't know, then Faye may be too ashamed of herself to go home.
Dora's angry right now, and for good reason. Faye's been warned about drinking on the job, and she has a business to run. Firing Faye was in the heat of anger, though it was still the right choice, both professionally, and as a friend — the firing is what Faye needs to realize how bad her alcoholism is. And it IS alcoholism — we've seen this build up over the course of the entire comic. She's even gone sober before, and relapsed. It's pretty common for relapses to start out moderate, and then over time get worse again.
P1 & P2: Faye knows she's in the wrong. That's about as guilty a face as ever there was in QC.
P3: Faye's expecting to be sent home. It stings, but she's arrogant (and drunk) enough to think Dora would never fire her over this.
P4: The look of shock on her face, with just a touch of "OH SHIT" is priceless! Jeph's talent shines in this panel. The "you're fired" is a punchline, a play on the phrase "go home, you're drunk."
The Great Schism: foreshadowing. Faye and Dora will not be able to reconcile, at least not for a very long time. Whether that will spill over into other characters taking sides, I don't know. Probably.
P1: Faye's arrogance showing again, with an attempt at bargaining. Who wouldn't beg for their job at this point?
P2: Dora's still angry here, but it's actually quite the mature, measured response, especially for her. There's some growth for Dora here.
P3: Dora's still Faye's friend, and cares enough about her that even through her anger, she wants to see Faye deal with her alcoholism. Dora needs to be given credit here. Faye, on the other hand, is drunk and an alcoholic. The whiplash from begging for her job to this reaction is typical for addicts and alcoholics. Alcoholics tend not to react well when told they need help. If there was ever proof that Faye is an alcoholic, this is it here.
P4: Continuation of Faye's denial that she has a problem. Dora's now just fed up with Faye's behaviour at this point. She's reached her limit with Faye.
Heavy Stuff: not much to read into here. This is heavy stuff, after all (and a painful cliffhanger to end the week on, but at least Jeph didn't leave us hanging with Close To Home).
P1: Marten's home. He doesn't look to surprised to see the scene that lies before him. Faye's (and Marten's) casual abuse of Pint-Size is well documented. Marten doesn't seem too concerned about Pint-Size's state, which indicates Pint-Size has just been turned off. No scary "is he dead?" scene here.
P2: Pint-Size, turned off. He doesn't even have a scratch on him, much less a dent. Recall that Pint-Size has a military-grade chassis, and has taken huge physical damage from Faye (punching a huge dent in his head) and Marigold (a matching dent on the other side of his head after checking to see if Pint-Size was being abused and Pint-Size playing with her boobs).
P3: Faye, passed out. Assuming for a minute, we haven't seen Close To Home yet, there's no sign she's dead. Marten would be freaking out a LOT more if there were a chance that were the case. In fact, he looks even less surprised at the scene than seeing Pint-Size, and even just looks resigned. Marten's not blind to Faye's alcoholism, so he must have known that this was coming at some point. As for the vomit, those aren't pills (just chunks of food) and there's no blood in there — mostly it just looks to me like she puked up a whole lot of bourbon.
P4: Courtesy call to Claire. Probably off-panel telling her Faye needs to go to the hospital, but not much more than that. Also, the call would have been made before calling 9-1-1, as the operator would have kept Marten on the phone until the paramedics arrived.
Close To Home: I don't know much about Jeph's personal life (I don't read his blog or anything) but I do recall him mentioning getting sober at some point in the comic comments. I don't know if he was ever hospitalized as a result of his drinking, but given the title, I think it's likely he has. Can anyone clarify this?
Written entirely from Faye's perspective. Bravo, Jeph!
P1, P3, P5, P7, P9: Faye, unconscious. Not just memory-based blackouts.
P2: Marten trying to get Faye's attention and keep her awake long enough to know she's alright. Probably hasn't called 9-1-1 yet, he's not yet aware of how serious of a state Faye is in until she passes out again. If he had called, he'd have the phone in his other hand, possibly even up to his ear still. Faye's still on the couch at this point — you can see the entrance to the apartment behind Marten.
P4: Paramedics arrive, checking her pulse. Pretty standard stuff. Based on POV (she's facing the kitchen now, at an angle), she's now on the floor.
P6: Arrival at hospital. Marten rode in the ambulance with Faye. He's concerned, nervous, wondering what's going to happen next. Waiting for someone to come tend to Faye. Given that she's repeatedly in and out of consciousness, there's no way she could get there standing. She's on a gurney (too high up for a wheelchair, she's almost at head level with Marten). Judging from the placement of Marten's arm, he's pulling the gurney himself.
P8: The punch. Not surprising for Faye, drunk or not, but especially given her state. An extension, really, of her state of mind in The Great Schism, P3 & P4. Faye punching people has been a running gag throughout the strip; this is just an extension of this. The truly great comedy writers know how to inject a little bit of humour into serious storylines, and in this case a little black humour is almost necessary for the mental health of us readers. I applaud (and thank) Jeph for including this. Marten's definitely pulling the gurney. He's still holding it in this panel, and judging from the position of the overhead lights, he's pulled the gurney further down the hall now. The door frame at the end of the hall is also bigger now.
P10: They've just poked her with the IV. The pain of the needle going in has just awoken her and/or grabbed her attention. The little bit of blood in the tube is what happens when first getting poked — the blood rushes to fill the vacuum before any fluid starts flowing through. At this point the hospital staff hasn't yet injected anything yet. The beeps are presumably from a heart monitor. Aside from it's stereotypical use in media in hospital settings, it's logical that Faye would be hooked up to one, since the combined effects of alcohol and the soon-to-be-injected sedative/anaesthetic can have a depressing effect on the heart, and needs to be monitored.
P11: The sedative has been put into the IV now. Yes, angry drunk people with alcohol poisoning do sometimes have to be sedated. In a hospital setting, there are trained anaesthesiologists who are fully capable of figuring out which sedative and/or anaesthetic is appropriate given the situation. The beeps fading are an indication of the sedative/anaesthetic taking effect. If she were dying and/or in cardiac arrest, we'd be seeing a longer beep.
P12: Faye is now in a drug-induced sleep. She won't be waking up until treatment is over.
I honestly don't read a whole lot of webcomics anymore, though I used to read a large number of them avidly, including CTRL+ALT+DELETE (when the miscarriage scene happened — great job with the parody btw (can't remember who posted it). I just don't have the time to keep up. However, based on what webcomics I have read, I agree this latest comic is the best in webcomic history. And I would actually extend that to the entire storyline, from Hospital-Bound until now (and probably including the rest of the comics this week, and maybe even into next week).
PredictionsNo one's dying or being put on the bus. The webcomic's not ending soon. Stop being so damn dramatic. Faye, Pint-Size and Dora are major characters — they pretty much define the strip, along with Marten & Hanners (and possibly Claire & Marigold now). It would be fan-base (& income) suicide to write these characters out. Same goes for ending QC at this point. Alice Grove has not yet built the fan base necessary to sustain Jeph's income, and after years of solely earning money off QC, it would be very difficult to go back to a "regular" job, psychologically speaking. He'd be bored outta his mind in any office.
However, we won't hear from
Dora for a while. She shut out Sven when she finally got fed up with him, and now she's fed up with Faye. We might catch someone telling her Faye's in the hospital, but while she'll care, she's going to want to stay away from Faye until she cleans up. I don't think
Tai will take Faye's side; I think she understands well enough that Faye's drinking has become problematic.
Claire and Marten will face some tension as a result of this, and Marten's attention toward Faye. However, it's not going to break them up, for a few reasons. First, from character aspects: Claire is (presumably) new to dating as a girl, so she'll be insecure, but will also want to hold on to the relationship. It's not uncommon for trans women to feel the need to hold on to a partner, fearing the difficulty of finding someone else who will accept them as who they are, especially one as decent as Marten, and especially early in their transition (I'm a trans woman myself; speaking from experience here). She's also the type to react badly initially, but then recover and correct her mistakes (the library incident is a prime example of this). From a story writing perspective, Marten dating a trans woman is too good of a storyline to give up. Jeph has barely even touched on any issues yet wrt her being trans.
I doubt
Sven will come to Faye on his own — he's smart enough to understand the situation. However, if Faye does decide to go sober, she very well could replace one maladaptive coping mechanism with another — and Sven fits the bill. I can definitely see Faye running to him in a time of need. And this time, it might just be for sex on Faye's part, with Sven wanting more. The role reversal would be interesting (and funny) to watch.
I definitely don't see a quick recovery for
Faye in the near future. I think she'll stop drinking for a short while, given the scare this hospital stay will give her. But she'll relapse. And descend into alcoholism more and more. There's a whole recovery process for Faye ahead of her, and one I think Jeph will be exploring frequently. Don't expect a permanent recovery* for Faye for at least a few more years yet (in real time). This is something that's going to take time to explore fully. In the more immediate future, I see a short stay in the mental health ward for Faye before she gets out of the hospital this time. And AA, though whether it's when she gets out, or later on, closer to her permanent recovery, is anyone's guess. I honestly want it to be the latter though, it would be more realistic. Most people have tried everything else they can think of before they encounter AA, unless under court order. The worse her drinking will get, the more her social life will suffer. Expect to watch Faye push everyone away over time. Once she reaches permanent recovery, she may or may not get her job at CoD back. She will if she asks for it, but if she develops her art (more likely) she won't need nor want her CoD job back.
If we don't see a Faye's Dad/NDE sequence soon, I'll be pleasantly surprised to see Jeph resist the temptation. This would be a perfect time for some revelation about him, but the NDE trope is so overdone. Then again, given the superb quality of Jeph's writing lately, a dream/NDE subplot is looking less and less likely.
Meanwhile,
Marten has to deal with the consequences of Faye losing her job. He won't be happy being saddled with all the rent while having to play babysitter with her (of course, he doesn't HAVE to, but knowing Marten, he will, at least for a while before he gets fed up too). Faye will eventually have to move out. Whether he kicks her out or she goes voluntarily, I don't know. But Faye will be moving out and finding a place of her own (where, when she relapses, she will descend into heavier drinking, at home alone). In the meantime, I don't see Marten putting up with Faye's drinking anymore — he'll be wanting to see Faye get help too, which she'll continually reject. This is going to be a huge issue for the two. Expect to see a blowout occur between them, probably about 6 months to a year from now (in real time). Marten will find a new roommate. Claire and Marten are just too early in their relationship for her to move in, and they'd want to share the bedroom anyway. They'd still need to fill the now-empty room. If it's any of the regular characters, it will be either Marigold or Hanners. Hanners seems the most likely choice of the two. She's had enough personal growth now that I think she'll be ready to move into an apartment with someone else, where the place isn't spotless. However, both choices are unlikely; more likely is for a new character to move in with Marten.
Hanners is going to flip when Faye gets out of the hospital. Both out of concern for Faye's well-being, but also because she's going to be the one to clean the couch. You just know there's going to be at least one joke about Hanners' cleaning prowess. The couch will be replaced, but not before Hanners deals with it. They're not just going to take the couch to the dump without at least getting rid of the fresh puke. Given her propensity for worrying, Hanners will be the one most worried about Faye, and will also be the one to finally get it through to Faye that she needs help.
Penelope will get promoted to Assistant Manager — she's been there longer than anyone except Raven, but of the two, Penelope is the only one competent enough to do the job (or maybe Jeph will assign Raven the job, just for the amount of mishaps he can write into the comic
). Penelope's going to revel in the schadenfreude before she finds out Faye's in the hospital.
Marigold will be pissed at Faye for her treatment of Pint-Size. I can see her encouraging Pint-Size to lay charges against Faye, but I can't see Pint-Size following through. He's just too used to Faye's (and Marten's) reactions to his antics. If it were to happen though, it would be done to set up a court-ordered trip to AA for Faye.
Winslow and Mo-mo (and possibly
May) will rally to support Pint-Size. He could still be quite shaken up by being non-consensually turned off. If May is included, then she'll be the one to go after Faye for turning him off.
Steve will make a reappearance at some point, as a source of support for Faye, though I can see him being an enabler, possibly even a new drinking buddy.
Angus will probably hear about what's happened. We'll see him deal with guilt. He might even return to try to make it work with Faye, but then realize too late that Faye is a sinking ship. By then he'll have lost his opportunity in NY, which will leave him embittered and angry at Faye before he fades into the background.
Padma is out of the picture and will not be coming back. Marten's with Claire now, and they're going to have enough tension between them without adding Padma to the mix.
We might see a bit of
Jim and Samantha in the near future. Samantha will be upset when she learns Faye was fired from CoD, but she won't understand or be told much about why it happened.
I don't know how likely this scenario is, but I can see Marten going to
his mom for advice on how to deal with Faye's drinking. At which point, she will put the Fear of God in Faye.
Finally, once the heavy stuff has died down,
Yelling Bird will make an appearance to make highly inappropriate fun of Faye, alienating a small number of readers who will find it highly offensive toward alcoholics and addicts.
*by "permanent recovery" I don't mean to imply she'll be all better and no longer an alcoholic — just that she'll finally establish a sobriety that will last.
Ok, now that I've finished this
very comprehensive essay (seriously, this is longer than some of the papers I write for class!), I'm looking forward to you all destroying my arguments!
I'll try to add and update to this as each new comic comes out.
Warning - while you were typing 2 more pages were posted, and you could have done something productive like clean your apartment, study for your test, or go to that class you missed. You bad student, you.Edit: added paragraph responding to discussion around NDE subplot idea
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Topic: WCDT: 2882-2886 (26-30 January 2015) (Read 159948 times)