The hilarious (@#$% terrifying) thing about this strip is that so many of us turn into that psychotic ex who overanalyzed every single thing as if we were ourselves living the lives of the characters. A testament to Jeph's talent, certainly, but also not healthy for anyone.
The problem with what we call overanalysis is that it really doesn't exist. Analysis is, by definition, breaking something down--once it can't be broken down anymore, further work reveals nothing more than what you already know. What we refer to as overanalysis is just misanalysis: the attempt to analyze the situation without having all the facts at hand (which is related to what Orson Welles said about acting: "what we call over-acting is really just false acting"), which results in greater misunderstandings and wild theories that serve no valid purpose (cf. any government on Earth).
We don't know what's up with Padma--while all the speculation is a fascinating experiment in exploring all the possible things going through Marten's mind, it's also, as I pointed out above, basically just serving as practice for the cognitive behaviours with which so many of us will inevitably destroy our real-life relationships later on down the road.
Worst of these behaviours, frankly, is the resurgence of the Dora-breakup-storyline-era argument over whether or not one character or another is 'right.' Marten's a jackass. We know this. Most of us love him in spite of it and also for entertaining us with it (we've all had that one trainwreck friend in school who was more trouble than he/she was worth, but just provided way too much entertainment value to actually break with--and if you didn't have one, you were that friend). Padma's also a jackass. Same deal. They're emotionally retarded idiots because they're written honestly and because, really, if they were perfect, this would probably be the most mind-numbingly repetitive webcomic in the world; the entire strip would be about Pintsize and his racist/sexist/sexual/otherwise-offensive antics and the responses of all the healthy perfect people to those antics over and over and over and over and over and over and over again (in other words, it would be Least I Could Do--rim shot).
Nobody's 'right' here. We've all got baggage (some more than others) and our ability to identify with the characters and/or situation is perhaps adding that baggage onto the comic's situation, where it doesn't belong. Padma isn't a heartless bitch--at worst, she's confused about her feelings and, obviously, gotten to a point where she feels confident enough to contact Marten so they can say good-bye, if not sort things out (at best, she was trapped under something heavy for a week and desperately trying to reach her phone, which was just out of reach). Marten, likewise, isn't a heartless bastard--he's protecting himself, albeit at a moment when he'd probably be happier later if he didn't.
Moreover, this isn't the last comic foreverandeveramen. Marten did something thoughtlessly today and we've already had it set up that he's going to regret it--and what he does about that regret (as well as when he does it) is going to be very interesting. We haven't seen the last of Padma or this storyline, so, like when your best friend broke up with that stupid whore that no one really liked anyway, man (to whom he's now been married for eight years), it's probably best not to be making with the wild (and cruel) speculations.
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Topic: WCDT January 9-13, 2012 (2096-2100) (Read 131029 times)