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I have to admit. It hurts to revisit just how bad Will was to Mar in these pages. And we were on his side, right? What sense of sympathy did I have for her? It’s hard to remember. Marigold has embodied some of my most foolish, embarrassing qualities. She’s been a lot of things I hated. Here she’s naive, self-infantalizing, irrelevant to the flirtation happening beside her. I’m going to have to unpack a lot more of this as I go, folks. Haha. |
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Marigold's super relatable through all of this. And even though she was kind of a narrative punching bag for a while, as she comes out of Hanna's shadow it's a great redemption (of her place in the comic). Yes, she grows, but also I feel like we the viewer are shown that we were wrong about her, that we were seeing her through Hanna's filter. (Similar to how we start seeing Marek's eyes when Eve realizes she'd been projecting a kind of inhuman easiness on Hanna and his relationship.)
Haha.
When I first read this comic, I was definitely not on Will's side in this situation… His relationship with Eve had taken on an unusual, antagonistic quality which hurt everyone in and around it. They weren't necessarily villains themselves, but their unfinished relationship had the potential to hurt just about anyone it touched, like a pile of broken wood and nails. I always had a vague sense of dread whenever they were in the same room.
Hard to feel sympathetic to Mar when she was flirting with somebody else just a few strips before, no? Can't we agree that Will and Mar were just not good together and being in denial (and comfortable conformity) made them subconsciously try to sabotage what they had?
True! We also musn't forget that Mar later admits to shaping herself to "fit" any given situation, to her own detriment. Is she ever truly happy anywhere in these old strips?