I know Claire is the favourite character of many of the forumites, so I'm trying to tread lightly, but anyone else already bored with this "OMG relationship" gag?
Claire is my favorite, and yeah, I'm pretty bored. Jeph is clearly struggling with how and how much to talk about the elephant in the room, and falling back on other characters reacting to mark time while he spins his wheels — but he's out of time, and it's starting to feel really awkward.
Think back to Dora and Tai's first date, which was structured like this one - as a long walk-and-talk around Northhampton. Out of eight strips, they spend half of them talking about queer issues:
body image, gender presentation, and genitals,
coming out,
family relations, and
bullying.
We aren't going to see Marten and Claire touch on any of this stuff, because Jeph clearly wants Claire's trans status to be an asterisk at the end of her character — a relevant attribute, but not the salient one. Even if it would make sense for the characters to be talking about it, showing those conversations except where absolutely necessary would work against Jeph's storytelling goal.
So what does that leave?
invite ~
invite;
banter ~
banter,
talking about music ~ well, we've already
seen that conversation
twice, and nothing new has been established about Claire's taste since her (vaguely dismissive) comments in those strips.
But it makes sense for Dora and Tai to spend the balance of their time talking about their queer experience. They certainly run no risk of alienating each other by doing it, there's no reason for them to feel circumspect about discussing it in public spaces, and it's a shared experience, so it's good cheap bonding for them. Claire and Marten are a straight couple, and this stuff doesn't apply to them. So let's reach further back for a better comparison: Faye and Angus's first date.
This takes place over twelve strips. We get the
invite,
two strips of
banter, some
real talk about the characters' childhoods, and a strip about
music. In and around this, we get
four strips of
Marten reacting and
two strips of
Marigold reacting. These work great, because the stakes are sky-high: we suspect Marten might still have feelings for Faye. Will he be a jealous dick to Angus, or will he be cool about it? How will it affect his failing relationship with Dora? We
know Marigold is still into Angus. How will she handle the door closing definitively on any chance with him? We expect her to have trouble and hope that she won't. Suspense!
Compare this to the utterly tensionless cutaways to Faye, Dora (
2810), Tai (
2822,
2824) and Veronica (
2832,
2833) squeeing at Marten/Claire, and it does not feel like substantial storytelling. We haven't even touched on Clinton, the single character who might have a real emotional stake in this relationship.
And could Marten and Claire even have the substantial conversations Faye and Angus are having here? Claire already
knows about Marten's childhood. Marten doesn't dare ask about Claire's without her volunteering it first. Jeph won't have her volunteer it. The problem is that although this is technically a first date, it's narratively a fifth, after the
walk, the
wedding, the
induction, and the
ear piercing. Most of the narrative tension of Marten and Claire getting to know each other has already been released. It's all over save the
butt grabbing.
But of course, they can't just fall into bed Dale/Marigold style without talking about the stuff that Jeph doesn't want them to be talking about! This is why some of us were saying 2830 would be a great moment to time-skip ahead from, picking back up with a Claire and Marten who are fully in the swing of physical and emotional intimacy, and sparing Jeph the difficulty writing himself through a story he's half-way told already, and half-way reluctant to tell.
Poll
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Topic: WCDT: 2831-2835 (10 - 14 November 2014) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread (Read 71566 times)