Punch her in her face!
Ok, not really. But I’d like for Marten to show some anger to her. Get frustrated with her, yell, something! He needs to grow a spine. Instead he just takes her yelling at him, shows Faye some of what he’s feeling, then goes for a walk and comes back all happy and understanding.
He needs to let her know how she acted was unacceptable. Faye telling her isn’t the same as Marten.
I want to get Angus out of the way so that Faye can get back together with Sven, now that he’s grown up a bit. I think this will happen eventually, but it will take some time.
She overreacted- it’s one thing to tell Marten he can’t sleep in the same bed as her when she’s angry, but to seemingly fire Faye without confirming what happened? Way out of line.
Is yelling a necessary component for that?
Or, maybe she realizes it’s unacceptable. And maybe being met with love and understanding over this is the best thing that’s ever happened to her in a relationship, and the best way for her to learn to do likewise. Maren’s quiet strength and kindness impresses me more than a rant would.
I didn’t think that Faye was fired; when Dora said “don’t come in tomorrow”, I thought Dora meant “you’re banned for one day, I don’t want to have to deal with you tomorrow morning.”
That may be the case, but how would Faye know that? I did take it as “you’re fired”, but who am I to say so? Marten let Dora off way easy; fine, it’s their relationship. But Dora owes a huge apology to Faye for making her a part of her Crazy Bitch act, and I hope that is forthcoming.
I think what bugs me is that the wrapup is still nearly all about Dora: “Are you going to break up with me?” “I’m such a mess.”
Yes, she apologized, but what we don’t really see is any acknowledgment that Marten has feelings and that she hurt them. She lashed out at him, and then when she calmed down, she put him in the position of him having to comfort and reassure her.
I think that’s pretty astute. Granted, being a mess, she probably wouldn’t understand why that’s a bad thing.
I also think it doesn’t speak well for Marten. There’s an exceptionally fine line between quiet strength and being an enabling doormat, and I think he’s sliiiightly more on the doormat side of the line by not making her acknowledge how she screwed up.
Thank you! That’s exactly what I was trying to say without know I was trying to say that.
Or something.
Ditto. Yeah, I’ll go with that.
Marten is fine when he’s just cracking wise and offering social comments, but Marten is frustrating and annoying for men to watch in confrontations because his near supine passiveness and acquiescence to whatever others want is not how most men behave. Now the artist is even dressing him in women’s pajama pants and putting him on the street in them. It’s pretty funny, but there seems to be a near forced humiliation of the character.
The character is candy for women because who would not want a completely loving, understanding, punch me in the arm, pinch me, yell at me, kick me out of bed chew toy who will always come back for more and be ever so understanding about what made you act that way in the first place. He’s a male plush toy.
I’m not an anime maven, but I get the impression via comments the artist has dropped over time that most of the characters in the QC strip have references in popular anime culture.
That’s standard in this strip for several characters, as they’re all pretty aware of their own shortcomings.
–Cliffy
I am nerdy enough in my fandom to recall that Marten’s mother is a professional dominatrix. What you describe is probably the model he learned for male behavior.
Yes, PintSize is actually Akira. Don’t tick him off.
I don’t think that Dora was acting that crazy, considering the past relationship between Faye and Marten. I can totally understand her being upset. I don’t know that I would have reacted as strongly as she did (don’t come in to work tomorrow), but on the other hand, I found Faye and Marten’s reaction annoying. They were pretty much saying “what is wrong with what we’re doing? why would you object?” I know that if I had a male roommate, and I came out to the living room and my wife was sitting on the couch in the dark in her underwear, embracing the male roommate who is also in his underwear, I wouldn’t be too happy about it.
P.S. In any case, I find that in general, most of the characters in the strip go way overboard in their reactions, which is why I’m not really surprised at what Dora does. It just seems par for the course for me.
For example, Faye often makes jokes with sexual innuendoes, but if anyone implies that they think she’s pretty or that they might want to go out on a date with her, she punches the person?
IIRC, Marten had a previous girlfriend who dumped him. When his ex happened to show up at the coffeehouse once, didn’t Faye throw a cup of hot coffee in her face, just because the girl had told Marten “I don’t want to go out with you any more?”
In fiction, I find that to make the story more interesting, the authors often exaggerate the actions of their characters.
My favourite current regular character is Hannelore, just because she makes an effort to be nice to people.
That’s not at all what they were saying. They admitted from the start that it looked bad, but that there was an innocent explanation. The problem is that Dora was too busy yelling to listen to it.
Yup. She kept yelling, they tried to explain, she yelled more, then told them to get out of her face.
It was a jug of milk, actually. The previous few strips to that detail the break-up, which was a lot less direct than your faux-quote implies. Faye still overreacted, but at least it was cold milk and not scalding hot coffee.
Of course Marten forgave her. He who makes a principled stand over trivial stuff will end up standing alone.
Okay, now it’s my turn to say “I don’t quite get today’s Questionable Content strip.”
http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1751
What on earth does Marten want with a hello kitty belt?