It'd make more sense for Faye to have that epiphany and go to the city to be with Angus and pursue an art career, but I don't think Jeph will want to write Faye out of CoD.
He wouldn't have to. Whether she visits him in NYC on weekends or lives with him and visits Northampton periodically, it's not as though she doesn't already spend lots of time off-screen to begin with.
As for Marigold's new room-mate, in descending order of likelihood (from my perspective, and without the idea of brand-new characters):
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2. Clinton. He's a character we don't see much, and with the SS Clairten setting sail, his traffic across our monitors is sure to increase, and this would be a nice setup for it. Additionally, he clearly has a job at the company that produces AnthroPCs, so his finances are steady. This could set up some return jealousy from Dale towards Marigold, allowing more drama and friction.
3. Claire. Assuming she DOES make money at the library, and that the Angus/Marigold residence is clearly not too far a jaunt from CoD or the Marten/Faye apartment, so it would allow for faster commutes to see Marten.
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5. Padma. Again, stretching, REAL far this time. Padma left at almost exactly strip 2100. And while some people say she's been gone about 6 months, people ALSO say that's how long Faye and Angus have been together, so it could be longer. The time between her leaving and Marten hooking up with Delilah was about 525 strips, and Marten seemed to be going through serious intimacy withdrawal, so it had probably been around six months by THEN. If we extrapolate that it's around late August right now in QC, then her grandma may have passed away 2-3 months ago and she decided to return to Northampton, because she liked her life there. Also, that would set up HUGE drama for the SS Clairten. Could you imagine Claire's insecurities if a previous lover of Marten's rolls back into town and starts hanging around him? Also, if she gets her job back, then Marten would hear about it through Jim, seeing as Jim is now dating Marten's mom, and probably knows that Marten was close with Padma before she left.
Personally, I'm hoping for 2 or 4, just to give them more "screen"-time, but yeah. I think 5 would have the biggest "splash", but is the least likely.
Comic-wise, Padma's served her purpose. It's clear that Marten doesn't see her as "the one who got away" any more than he'd see, say, Delilah in that light. And Claire has plenty of other stimuli for her insecurities without Padma in the picture. Claire and Clinton are both "possible" roommates in the broadest possible sense, but neither one is likely. We'll see more Clinton because we're going to be seeing more Claire.
Maybe Dale will move in with Marigold.
How many relationships do you want to see implode over the next few weeks?
I know you're asking rhetorically, but I'm really ready for the all-consuming Dora/Tai NRE to wear off. They've both got some corners and hard edges that I would enjoy seeing bounce off each other.
Momo might be making enough at the library that she can be the other roommate for Marigold. She has said that she would like more space.
I don't think Momo has that kind of cash flow, since she's still paying off the debt Marigold took on for her new Chassis.
RE: Tai/Dora: Agreed. I don't begrudge anybody a happy relationship, but this is QC... nobody has relationships that run smoothly, especially over the long term. I also find it odd that Dora's talked to Marten about this, but we haven't seen a substantial conversation between her and the one person you'd think she'd talk to about it (Tai).
RE: Momo: It's not as though they couldn't renegotiate. Besides, Momo is the most logical (or at least, the least contrived) roommate for Marigold, barring the introduction of a minimum of three new characters (the new roommate, new roommate's love interest, and an itinerant bisexual hipster pottery instructor named Rodolfo, just on general principle).
As for why Hanners isn't around like she used to be, there's a few reasons. One is I think her character has been explored as much as she reasonably can be, but sort of stalled out. For example, having her suddenly get over germ issues enough to date would totally break her character, but without getting over said issues she's missing out on a lot of character development/exposition that the rest of the cast has. I also think Jeph dialed her back a bit because there were too many creepy obsessive fans of her back in the day, and it freaked him out. Regardless, she's still here, she's just boring to use as anything other than joke strips at this point.
I agree that Jeph's kinda written himself into a corner with Hanners. Thing is, though, if he were willing to/could be bothered, it's not like it'd be that difficult for him to write her back into a main story line. I think he's just lost interest in her as a character, as he did with Sarah, Gabby, Wil, Penelope, Raven, Cosette, Steve, Veronica, the entire crew at the Secret Bakery, et cetera. My money's on another character being introduced before/instead of Hannelore's story having any more effort put into it.
Yo guys, why not Hannelore as Marigold's new roommate? I feel it would be a positive step for both of them. I certainly feel this is more likely than Amir or Padma.
Also, as much as it would suck, I think it would be interesting to see how current Faye would deal with a break up over not shitty reasons. The only time we've seen her deal with something like that was with Sven, and she had a perfectly justifiable reason for rage. This would be much less so.
Agree with your latter point. The former, not so much. For Hannelore, becoming Marigold's roommate is a step down/backwards. Right now, Hanners is independent, both financially and in terms of her living arrangement. Barring a drastic -- and contrived -- plot development, that's not likely. Besides which, as I mentioned above, that'd mean Jeph having to write more for a character that he's all but written off/lost interest in.
Warning -- While You Were Trying to Keep the Formatting Straight With Quotes From, What, Like Seven or Eight Posts, Even More Posts Were Posted For Your Delectation and Rumination. Listen, Mr. Disembodied Red-Letter Voice, I've had enough of your crap. Next time, I'll just type a bunch of individual replies.
On a side note, I love how people who just last week were saying that the Marten/Claire relationship came from out of nowhere are coming up with frankly ludicrous roommate pairings just for teh dramaz.