Man, I didn’t recognize Dora. Has her hair always been purple? Huh.
Looking again, I think she just has that strange expression and wide eyes going on that made her unrecognizable to me. She looks like she stepped out of an anime cartoon.
Dora’s haircolor changes from time to time. She started out as just plain black hair (although I believe she’s really blonde), but has had black with blonde roots, pink (I believe) and the purple she has now.
She’s happygoth. They change hair color as often as they change clothes. 
Hmm. I’m wondering if Pizza Guy/Alliance Scum will cross paths with them at an unfortunate moment.
Dora dyed her hair purple back in #1670. But Jacques has been experimenting with how he draws it.
I think Dora’s googly-eyed look just means “Daaaaaw! So Cuuute!”. Which is probably a side-effect of her cuddle rabies.
Missed edit window: here’s another example of Dora drawn googly-eyed. “So adorable!!”
I see this ending two ways.
- Tai’s crush on Dora gets temporarily dampened by her being pissed off at her for not stopping this before she embarrassed herself. (I sure hope this happens…Tai’s constant ‘I want Dora!’ to Marten is kind of annoying.)
- The fandom cries for Jeph’s blood when Tai actually DOES get somewhere with Mari, where Hanners didn’t.
I’m thinking Ferret Handler could have a point. Maybe Dale sees Marigold out on a date with Tai and assumes she’s gay and therefore not interested in him. Marigold then figures out that Tai is gay and isn’t interested (it’s clearly established Marigold isn’t gay) but now realizes she has to pursue Dale because he’s given up.
My first thought on Monday’s strip was “Wait, can you have a ‘meet cute’ when you already know each other?” apparently, you can. Though Tai may not remember it, given her alcohol capacity.
The goofy face is a ‘trying not to giggle’ expression, I think. Martin used it during the Hello Kitty belt swap. It’s anticipation of the ‘this is going to be cute!’ type, not the evil gloating kind. (Dora’s displayed considerable affection for both of them, and she’s not evil)
While another Dale appearance is likely, there’s another possibility: They complete the date with Marigold oblivious to Tai’s interest, and Tai oblivious to her obliviousness. For maximum humor potential, repeat until Marigold is comedy-outed to her parents (and herself) at their engagement party.
Actually, if the strip had a tendency towards melodrama this could go spectacularly badly. Marigold’s a passive type who’s desperate for any kind of affection or validation, and Tai’s crazy aggressive, more than a bit self-centered and has no behavioral filters. She’s also a tiny girl, so she slips under the radar of the more responsible cast members who would normally slow things down. A nice set up for an incredibly painful ‘next morning’ scene, with no one really at fault. Fortunately for all concerned that’s very unlikely. (drama, not **Drama!! **is about where it usually tops off)
Though I suspect Marigold’s love life, and some long-awaited character development for Tai, and some more of Dale’s showboating will once again push the ‘Dora needs to overcome her trust issues’/’Martin needs to be more proactive’ plotlines (remember that one?) on the back burner.
<JFK Mode>
However, consider this:
Three weeks ago, Dale appears again. Out of nowhere. **As if to remind us **he exists.
Two weeks ago, Sven, who had **just a week before **clarified his love of curvy chicks, bemoans his lack of relationship experience. **Who in the QC universe, WHO, I ASK YOU? *could possibly be described in such a fashion?
Last week, Tai, in typically graphic form, stated she could only be in a relationship with another woman WHO HAD NOT KNOWN THE TOUCH OF A MAN!! **Again, I ask . . . where, WHERE? could we find such a woman!?
And finally, Marigold. Suspiciously (if inconsistently) curvy. Suspiciously inexperienced. Suspiciously virginal. A woman whom the universe mysteriously surrounds with manga tropes. And Need! I! Remind! You! the **architectural basis **of manga is THE LOVE PYRAMID!!
</JFK Mode>
Ok, that’s not likely at all; I just wanted to do a JFK bit.
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- Raven, actually, who has a similar relationship pattern, an informed tendency towards plumpness, and who has been suspiciously absent since the ‘broken Sven’ arc began.
** Well, not really, but sorta. Close enough for yelling lawyer purposes.
Ura-Maru, I like your “consider this” suppositions. Clearly we’re being set up. But we are always being set up, so it’s not like this is a new thing. Setup for what, I don’t know.
Strip 1787 is up, and Marigold and Tai are headed back to Marigold’s place. I’m wondering if we’ll see the first QC lesbian “surprise kiss”* in the next couple or so strips. If Marigold declines Tai’s advances, she’ll be in exactly the same spot she put Angus into, though I doubt she’ll realize that.
*QC “Surpise Kiss”, see here, here, here, here
I don’t really have anything to add, other than I love both Tai and Marigold and that I’m glad we’re getting to see more of them. I don’t really think there’s a chance they’ll create anything other than embarrassment out of this, but maybe they can teach each other to temper their extreme ways.
Edit: What does the SMIF on Tai’s hoodie stand for?
I think that’s the strip’s version of “Smith”, which is, again, I think, the college that Tai and Marten work in the library of.
She’s a student at Smif college, the QC-verses version of real-life Northampton’s Smith college, a famous world-wide for it’s successful graduates, high academic standards, and proportion of women who share Tai’s romantic tastes.
I’m currently working there, as it so happens. I should have been there five minutes ago, actually.
Pretty much all the locations in QC are thinly fictionalized versions of Northampton places. The “Horrible Revelation” bar, for instance, where Marigold met the gang for drinks, is “The Dirty Truth” in real life.
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Barbera Bush was a Smithie.
Do they make you dress all fancy there?
Sigh. I was trying to be amusing, not bragging. I’m a freaking temp for God’s sake.
See, by building up it’s ‘traditional’ achievements, I’d hoped to make the out-of-sequence lesbian bit at the end funny. Not hysterically funny, but moderately entertaining. At least, in theory.
. . . never mind.
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I mean, I’m not JUST a temp. I have many other and varied interests . . .
Nonono, you misunderstand. E-Sabbath is talking about The Dirty Truth; in the comic The Horrible Revelation’s dress code is Victorian-style fancy dress. It wasn’t intended to be a swipe at Smith.
I tried looking for the relevant strips to show, but it’s tough to find things in the archive sometimes.
Edit: Aha, here.
Victorian-style fancy dress that is provided to you on premises!
It was by way of being a joke. More seriously, any idea on where the coffee bar is, or the apartments?
I bet that the lesbian “Surprise Kiss” will be on the final frame on Friday…
Oh. That makes much more sense than implying I was putting on airs for . . . working in a college. (Where did my subconscious get **THAT?!) **I spent the whole day ticked at myself for being late, (again) anyway, so I was, apparently, much touchier that I should have been. Sorry.
I’M NOT HIGHLY STRUNG OR ANYTHING NO I DON’T NEED MORE CAFFEENE THANK YOU GET OFF MY BACK!!
I’ve actually never gone to the Dirty Truth; I recognized it by the name and the odd mirrored door and front. (I walk past it almost every day) I’m fairly certain the Victorian dress part is made up, sadly. Were it true, I know several people who would never leave it. Alas, I’m a geek, not a hipster, so my bar-experience is more limited than I’d like.
Coffee of Doom doesn’t seem to be based on any place specifically, though there’s a ton of them, and as a non-coffee drinker I could certainly have missed one. Near where it’s supposed to be is a hipster-magnet coffee place called Haymarkets, but they don’t look anything alike, Haymarkets has a tiny cramped ground-floor and a larger basement. That’s not an atypical layout, downtown is pretty old, and all the shops are skinny and crowded together, as the comic shows.
The ‘SCORN!’ episode placed CoD exactly where the Iron Horse music hall is, though, which is either a clever little indy-rock reference, or just a place where an indy-rock guy might bang out a sketch while standing in line.
The apartments haven’t been distinctive enough to pinpoint. Like a lot of New England towns, most of downtown’s third and forth stories are apartments, and is surrounded by old yankee two family houses, most of which are broken up and rented out. That close to downtown, it’s going to be expensive, though. A two bedroom place within easy walking distance is probably going to be $850 a month, pre-utilites. (mine’s $700, but only through some very lucky maneuvering that I can take no credit for) So you see a lot of three-kids-living-in-a-one-bedroom roommate situations. The storefront rents in the core downtown areas are rapidly approaching horrifying.
Tai and Marigolds date seems to be at Bueno Y Sano, a cheap but tasty ‘California burrito’ place which has fueled about half the strips poop jokes. (I prefer the more Mexican La Veracruzana, but they’re both good) I could probably go on indefinitely, if anyone’s interested, but it would just be a list of names and random comments that wouldn’t mean much to anyone who wasn’t planning a visit.
The strip gets the tone of the area exactly right, though. Friendly, weird, amazingly tolerant of weirdness, cripplingly self-aware, ironic, artsy, over-educated, and a touch neurotic.
And the women are . . . unbelievable.
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Not, as a group, particularly interested in me, but you can’t have everything.