First, it's useful to remember that there's a significant disconnect between comic time and calendar time.
Are you telling me this?
No, it was directed generally. If I were telling you specifically, I would've made that explicit. But then, you already knew that.
Second, it's useful to remember that, in life and in stories alike, it ain't all drama all the time.
Life and stories are not alike. Drama is the life's blood of a story. QC has the form of a "slice of life" strip, but it's never been as tediously literal in its entire run as it has been these last few months.
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While I don't disagree with the "tediously literal" part, I think the "tedious" stems from the comic's habitually glacial pace, and the "literal" likely stems from Jeph breaking the fourth wall a bit. I would also guess that given that he's writing, at least in part, about things outside his experience, he's trying to tread carefully.
Third (he points out for the second, maybe third time), when you're juggling multiple story arcs, you need something to leaven the drama.
Let's look at those story arcs, in the 2800-2899 period. Jeph wrote:
- 35 strips featuring or commenting on Claire and Marten's relationship
- 33 strips featuring or commenting on Faye vs. Angus & the Bottle
- 10 strips of Yelling Bird and Turkeys
- 4 strips about Hanners
- 4 strips about Marigold
- 2 strips of AnthroPC hijinks
- 2 strips of Claire talking about something other than Marten
So I would call this is more a case of a little angst cutting the sweetness. Only 7 of those 35 Marten/Claire strips (2800-2806) even had any narrative tension. In those hundred strips, we've seen nothing of Dora/Tai, nothing of Dora/Sven, and barely an offhand mention of Marigold/Angus. I would happily have traded ten or fifteen Marten/Claire strips for any of those subplots.
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Again, you'd have to take that up with Jeph. There are, as we've discussed, gobs of unresolved plot points -- some of which have been left unresolved long enough that one can't help but wonder if they were afterthoughts to begin with. Which brings us to:
I think that half of y'all won't be happy unless the entire cast dons sackcloth and ashes (except Hanners, because she'd be freaked out probably), and commences the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Verily, wailing shall be in all the streets, 'cause, you know, verisimilitude.
This isn't me. I just want some motion and complication, and some attention paid to other characters (DORA) and dangling plotlines.
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With which I agree. But again, I don't think either of us knows the broader arc here. There may be an offline reason for this arc (as has been suggested elsewhere, maybe Jeph's happy as a clam and the writing reflects that), or maybe there's some narrative reason for the storytelling going the way it has (establishing the Claire/Marten relationship firmly enough that he can then background it a bit and move on to addressing loose ends without everybody collectively losing their shit and thinking this is a sign of the apocalypse or something). I'm holding out hope for the latter, but I'm guessing the answer is C: none of the above.
I think maybe we all need to take a step back and chill - this is gradually edging closer and closer to stereotypical tumblr territory.
Edge? It dove.
Instead of casting aspersions on presumed-homogenous groups like tumblr/4chan/reddit/"SJWs", why don't you try unpacking that cliché and say what you really mean? What element of our discourse here has fallen beneath your standards?
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Not sure if that part was directed at me or TCP. On the off chance it's the former, here's my take: what I'm seeing pass on this forum for "discussion" of anything remotely issue-related/substantial lately has rapidly devolved into a shitstorm of petulance, snark and ad hominem attacks. Call me a silly bastard, but I'd like to think, or at least hope, that people are capable of better.
PS: Sorry for making a total hash of the formatting... I can never seem to get the hang of the code on this thing.