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Just a few more days to get all 4 books in the store! Get ’em before the week’s out, if you want them directly from me with a signature! Apologies to Canada + abroad folks, for whom shipping will be quite steep. If you ain’t got the scratch, I recommend getting the books at your local comic shop instead! |
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i love when olly starts to dramatically monologue. i hope the next page has him waxing poetic only to realize eve has left already.
There is some wisdom in that old nut
Deep, Olly. Deep.
ha! kiss cabin. I think this is the first time we've seen Olly in color. Very interesting to see the characters in their beautiful full-color glory.
And he's getting a little gray.
"Now go stack some stuff, Ning. What am I paying you for anyway?"
"And chaos… IS A LADDER! … Now go grab an actual ladder and re-stock the shelves on isle 7"
That final panel is gorgeous! The lighting effect is great.
I"m pretty much Will personified, but Olly just described how I have been feeling for the last 7 years….
I know this is selfish (Eve probably has no choice and really needs this job) but I've come to hate Olly's. It's a prison to Eve. How many times has she done "clo-pening" for the damn place. She sleeps overnight in the storage room sometimes. I hate it. I want Eve to be free, but I also want Eve to actually want something more.
Jeez, I think I channeled too much of Park there.
I don't think you're channeling Park at all. I think the comic makes a strong case – even if it's scenery inference and the alienation Eve feels from peers of hers who ENJOY their jobs, aka Hannah – that Olly's isn't making Eve feel happy.
The conflict with Park is that Park was projecting his values of how someone should live onto Eve for self-centered reasons, but that doesn't negate the fact that Eve's job is clearly not fulfilling her life nor is it paying her enough. Sometimes I wish Octopus Pie would make it more clear how much financial stress Eve goes through. Many of us "millenials" who work(ed) shitty jobs relate to Eve so much for this but we don't really hear her actually say out loud how much she hates the job. But the hints are dropped so many times
THIS.
It's always been in the back of my mind that so much about Eve and her life/social circle has changed over the years this comic has been going, yet she's remained stuck at Olly's for the duration. Very excited for what his speech might mean re: what's coming next for her.
(Also as someone who has worked in retail I found her comment about structure and discipline v funny. It is 100% chaos.)
but i don't think park wanting eve to want something more (than olly's) was necessarily wrong. you're right — olly's has been a comfort trap, even though it sustains her and is an absolutely acceptable job. what's unacceptable is the way it consumes her (as olly points out) and becomes a crutch. eve's been struggling with this complacency/trapped thing for a bit (see the arc about the staying in/nytimes writer).
what was wrong about park was the rationale behind that sentiment: her non-type-a friends and their non-type-a lifestyle was vastly inferior to his striving-for-the-middle-class trajectory.
I kind of hate it too, but Eve isn't being trapped there against her will. She's actively choosing to sleep there overnight, to take more time. Hell, I don't even know if Olly even IS taking a trip — I've made excuses like that in the past to avoid getting out of my comfort zone, even if that comfort zone was toxic for me, promoted no growth, and perpetuated my insecurity of EVER escaping because this was the only thing I knew.
We can hate Olly's, but Eve is the one maintaining the codependent relationship with it.
To be honest, Eve's the one that chose to keep working for Olly. She had the opportunity to leave during the Fukken Shit arc and pretty much any time afterwards. It's less about Olly being a dick (which pretty much everyone top dog in retailer has to be) and more about Eve thinking that she can't get something better.
I may just cry…
#thatgnarlykisscabin
Everything is chaos? But Olly usually seems so organized and on top of things! Like that time when…oh.
I might be completely wrong here. But I get the impression that Olly doesn't mean that Olly's is chaos. I think it means that the world, or life is chaos. That it doesn't really take structure and discipline to fulfill your dreams.
Was Olly always that grey? Or maybe it's just that this is the first time we've seen him in color. Or it could be another example of Meredith's impeccable attention to detail (e.g. making small changes over the course of the comic to depict a realistic passage of time)
I really think that Olly has sort of developed his own sidestory, even if he usually seems just a comic relief. He doesn't just seem a grayer to me. He seems to have gained weight. Also, whenever he starts to monologue, sadness seems to ooze out of him. I think that the departure of Julie and Jacob (were those their names) mean to show not only how his business is crashing, but how lonely he is. This speech and the last time seemed to be about broken dreams and loneliness. Idk why, but I get the impression that his wife (I think she appeared in a panel one time) has left him, too. Idk, whenever I see Olly now, he just reeks of broken dreams, failure, sadness and loneliness. But it has been a gradual change. And the fact that we hardly noticed just goes to show how good Meredith is at developing her characters.
Okay, wow. I… needed to hear that.
Looove the lighting/color effects here.
This page has some amazing expressions and body language.
Wait, Olly's…not a monster?
The childlike Eve all balled up in the 2nd to last panel…
IS SO CUUUUUTE!!!!
She is! Eve is the cutest.
However, it seems it's kind of a "defense" position, I seem to remember her like that when Mar confronted her about her idea of Park at the spa and she went a little childish and "mnyeh well, um, no"? I could swear she also sat like that on another occasion.
Olly is one of my absolute favorites.
I'm always worried he's going to be the first one to die lol…………
I feel that by making Olly’s her life, Eve doesn’t have to take responsibility for all the other things she wants to create in her life. It is her excuse and safety blanket for why she doesn’t do A, B, or C. But it also makes her a victim to her circumstances, which is a powerless position. And Eve has been fighting that power struggle for as long as I’ve known her! I’m happy to see her growing away from this pattern after so long. And to kiss Will and feel good about it 🙂
Olly in the fridge kind of made my week. Except that Will kissing Eve already made my week.
This is a page it would be great to have a print of. 🙂
And just what dreams is Eve pursuing by hiding in her work? Structures can be useful, and a big one can provide shelter for a while… but there's still the big wide world outside and that does have a lot of chaos. If you can't deal with the chaos, you can't deal with the world.
The last panel is gorgeous, as much for the composition and colour as for what he's saying. It's like he's saying it to all of us, since we see him from Eve's (visual) perspective.
I never liked Olly before, although he was highly entertaining, I identify him too much with the universal 'mean boss' and my past experiences with those. But even he has nuances and development throughout this story.
Seriously, I say it almost every time I comment and I'll keep on saying it, but thank you for sharing this with us, Meredith <3
The lighting in dat last panel, though… 😮
Look out! Olly's all sweet and sentimental again!
"Things to IGNITE you". The faiiiiintest breath of foreshadowing?