Webcomics Rant
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm addicted to the webcomic Questionable Content (also, Dinosaur Comics and Dr. McNinja, but that's not germane to the present discussion.)
Anyway, predicting the plot twists of a webcomic seems frivolous even for the weirdness that is Orthonormal Basis, so I'm taking care of business here on my rarely-seen LJ. I've been exceedingly nervous about the current plot thread ever since Sven appeared and asked a higly dubious favor of Marten. (The artist, Jeph, had the brilliant idea to go on hiatus for a Guest Week right after dropping that.)
What was I nervous about? Well, exactly what Marten did on Monday and Tuesday- act uncharacteristically, and get misinterpreted by his friends as trying to cheat on Dora. It was ugly to watch, firstly because I loathe dramatic irony (it sets my teeth on edge when an innocent character is treated as guilty, especially when the whole thing is played for laughs), and secondly because I feared that the episode would cause a Marten-Dora split.
And even though Marten has been allowed to fill Faye in on the real situation, my hackles are still up for a number of reasons; I don't think we're out of the woods yet.
The first reason is, I suspect this whole "favor" of being a set-up by Sven to humiliate Marten and get him in hot water; he could deny everything (or disappear) tomorrow and make Marten look dishonorable after all. Or Hannelore could report a distorted version to Dora.
But the larger reasons that I think Marten and Dora are going to be split apart by fate are two. First, author Jeph has taken considerable pains to keep that relationship unconsummated (despite the wishes of many fans, no doubt), despite the characters' (flawed) moral outlook that provides no reservations. The fact that Marten and Dora haven't, er, you know, means that Jeph can annul their relationship by some mishap and yet (by the understood rules of the genre) keep the sexual tension between the two (and thus keep all his readers hooked).
But more importantly, I have my theory of where QC is heading (and I note that Jeph acknowledged having a plan for it way back when- read the newspost). Marten and Faye are simply destined for each other, completing the circle started in the beginning. If this were a 19th-century symphony, Dora would be the dominant but Faye would be the tonic. (Poor Dora, but I speak the truth.) And considering the large number of real-time days it takes for each comic-time day, Jeph has to keep the plot moving fast if he's going to get there in even another year or two.
Why on Earth am I posting this analysis of a silly webcomic instead of, say, my predictions for the rest of Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot"? I DO NOT KNOW. Thanks for reading!