Hello from Bath, NY! I'm on my way up to TCAF as we live and breathe! Though they've been swift, this'll be the last update til after I'm back next week. See you in Toronto perhaps!
There was… WAY more repressed feelings than I was expecting, shrieking out of the person I wasn't expecting to be the one shrieking in this situation o.o
"I KNEW I'D FIND YOU EXACTLY THE WAY *I* LEFT YOU"
aaaaand there it is. pretty rich coming from the holier-than-thou, short fuse asshole we all know park as. the subtext is rich, much like those hippie stoner artisanal scones.
also, gotta love that he left $50 for 2 drinks, since clearly his wealth he's been working so hard for all these years is all that he has to show for the depth of insufferability his work ethic/loneliness has caused him.
also also: at the "the way I left you" is doubly hilarious, since he desperately wanted eve to go with him, but she's the one who left him! the self delusion is strong with this one.
Park is a walking cautionary tale for putting career/money above genuine human relationships. Which is essentially what he's criticizing her for not doing here, but we see who's ultimately the more well-adjusted one.
He'd probably be a really great guy if life would just manage to knock his head out of his own ass. Dude needs to fall in love with someone. People like him usually just need to know what it feels like to care about someone more than himself or his job. After that, he'll probably look back on this exchange with a lot more guilt. (<-from a former Park)
Okay I have to say. I really love the contrast here.
Pierce has moved up to very successful life but he's become stagnant as a person.
Meanwhile Eve has changed and grown so much despite not really "moving up".
Huh that went exactly as well as expected and actually it looks like Eve is in a much healthier place now! Cool! And I hope we never see Park's dumb face again.
I don't keep up with such things but I really hope that Octopus Pie gets the recognition it deserves.
Every other update I read I'm kind of floored by. I've been reading comics since… before I could read and this still Regularly and consistently blows me away.
What's interesting to me about this arc is not only the story, but how vehemently anti-Park the comments are, for the most part. He is indeed a self-absorbed asshole (and Eve had seriously deluded herself about him), but in the strip above, he's also not entirely wrong. Everyone's been growing up around Eve … maybe that's why she's feeling such a disconnect right now. She may need to do some catching up.
He is wrong, though. Eve has grown up a lot, and the stuff Park is accusing her of doesn't stick, which is why she can't help but laugh. He doesn't even really know her, and yet he thinks he can hurt her by calling her a hipster and telling her her life didn't pan out how it was supposed to. Eve has already learned this and made her peace with it. Not having a "normal, respectable" life is simply less important to her than it is to Park. She took a chance on this meeting because she's always had lingering feelings and thought maybe they could actually make it work together after this period of growth. But, as it turns out, Park is still just the same old asshole who cares more about fitting in and projecting a certain type of success than having actual relationships with people.
Sure, but where are Eve's actual relationships with people? She's frankly not done a terrific job in that area of late, as things like the (excellent) Ferris Wheel comic have shown. She seems to be in a dead zone right now. Maybe Park's specific comments about her fixed-gear bike and ironic record collection are no longer accurate, but Eve is certainly drifting a little aimlessly right now, and I don't think she's "made her peace with it" at all, otherwise she wouldn't have been pinning so much of her hopes on Park in the first place. She hasn't decided that a non-professional life isn't for her. She doesn't appear to have decided anything. That's the issue.
People grow in fits and spurts. Eve has grown a lot over the course of this comic, but over the last year, I think she's been in a lull. I think Meredith knows this very well, and I think *Eve* knows this very well — I also think those last two "head down" panels have a whole lot more meaning than just "I'm laughing too hard to look up."
La Chouffe
The insults are not even really aimed at the old Eve, but at the old version of her social circle in which his achievements would not buy him status or recognition. It’s precisely this tirade that reveals how near this fixation already laid to the surface. It suggests that meeting Eve only after familie, once-shared-friends, after old co-workers and deliberations about seeing a hole in a bathroom wall was not merely being oblivious to the point of being callous, but intended to prove how little she means to him, and so remove any stain on his self-perceived standing by her not following him. Park’s insults have no bewaring on Eve’s present woes.
Not to say Park's outburst isn't funny in a kind of cringe-worthy way, I just mean I don't think Eve is still laughing or even smiling under that curtain of hair in the last panel.
I'd say that this update proves quite the reverse of what Park said. The world she wanted isn't leaving her behind; she's leaving the world she once wanted behind. Given that that was his attack of choice, he and she appear to differ in this regard.
I think they both managed to hit each other's soft spots. Park obviously regrets some of the sacrifices he's made for a stable life and a well-paying job, so being "out of touch", ie. sounding just like the stuck-up baby boomers he works for must sting. Eve knows things are changing around her and she might not be keeping up. I bet being "left behind" is her worst nightmare at the moment.
Not really. I miss it, not because I left it last year, but because it stopped being my home before I even left. I was born in Oregon, graduated High School in Portland, came back there after college, and… it's gone.
R. Crumb wrote a piece about how Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love came totally unmoored from the things that made them beautiful, and that's how I feel about Portland now. The new folk coming in talked a good game about diversity and creative spirit, but they treated me and my friends like they were needy and pathetic, and I was some kind of boring old square who didn't "get" it. My family was growing pot in those hills before they were born. I learned to cook the native plants from an actual Native American. When I was a kid there was no Voodoo Donuts, the Pearl District was Skid Row, and George Bush Sr. (who wasn't Sr. yet) called my town "Little Beirut" because we hated him so much.
Anyway, my multi-ethnic community bleached whiter than a dead oyster in the last fifteen years. The Ethiopian place down the street (which country was where my dad came from) shutting down and being replaced by a hookah joint run by a pasty-faced flannel-wearing kid from Seattle was kinda the metonym for the whole damn collapse.
Portland's new weirdness isn't any more real than the landscaping at Disney World.
What would have been a better response? Action? What form would that take, giving Eve a slap? In this situation it's commendable that someone restricts himself to 'sound and fury'. I bet most people commenting here would go absolutely mental if someone threw a drink in their face, not least someone they had (some kind of) feelings for.
In that situation, he knows he's guilty as sin. He may not be acknowledging it, but that little stumble he had over seeing the gardens and not calling Eve until now was a big, big giveaway.
"Drink in the face" is about the best wake-up call you can get when you carry on being an insensitive douchecanoe while trying to explain away gross missteps.
Park calling Eve pretentious is hilarious. Thats his reaction? Getting a drink thrown at you isn't some indicator of being a hipster. What planet does park live on? He just jumped to the first way he thought to criticize her without even looking at the situation or analyzing why she might have thrown her drink. After all of his pretension and bragging he calls eve pretentious for not taking his shitty behavior well. Its amazing how he has no self-awareness at all.
It goes to show that he has been looking down at Eve this whole time wit these criticisms ready to go. Funniest of all, he says he has found her exactly how he left her when he is the one has barely changed. Eve couldn't be more different.
Well that was a cop-out.
I suppose the "villains" of this comic have never been that subtle or challenging, but this just seems a waste of what seemed to be a great set-up.
'I suppose the "villains" of this comic have never been that subtle or challenging…' Ugh. Anyway, the point is of course that Park can't now be a villain or much of anything else because the world he and Eve cohabited doesn't exist any more.
I think it could still be great set up, in a way. This isn't totally clean and cut just because Park came off LOOKING like the asshole or villain–cuz honestly, he isn't. He wasn't wrong about everyone moving on while Eve seemingly isn't, and Eve might have to digest that after she's done with the high of getting over THE ex that she always kept as a fantasy. Now that that fantasy of Park is gone, what is she left with? Reality.
And the reality is, Park is right… Everyone is moving on because everyone is making choices. Eve has options, but she has yet to make her own choices. So it can be set-up.. for a different battle, within herself rather than against someone else. The subtleties are in that Eve is the one who has to digest that Park isn't all wrong, even though she now knows he IS all wrong as a choice of partner for her.
As some philosopher or zen duck might have said maybe some time in the past or something long, long ago and far, far away: Our enemies are our enemies because we recognize ourselves in them, and hate their faults as we hate our own.
I agree with you. Part of what attracts Eve to Park is that he is so sure of what he wants while she isn't. She's at an impasse and kinda wanted to fall back on him hoping she wouldn't have to make a decision herself, but luckily their interaction has shown her how ridiculous that is.
It's interesting to me how much Eve mirrored Park at the beginning of OP. She used to be cynical, hated how much of a hipster hippie Hannah was, hated pot, etc. etc. She's changed a lot over the years, but was it because she was softening her edges for herself or so she could fit in with the group of friends she wanted to be more like? Is that why she's so upset that everyone seems to be moving on while she is there, stuck with who she's become yet again for other people?
What is supposed to be subtle or challenging about a guy that just used sex to prove to himself that women still desire him and can't become "real people" without him?
????
So now Park moved from being kind of a dick to being a mysoginistic pick-up artist (even tho this never implied anywhere since his inception in the comic in the slightest)?
You've been reading too many feminists blogs if you think casual sex (and it WAS casual, at least for Park) is only enjoyed by men who hate women.
Is he? It's never really been established why he contacted Eve or had sex with her. All we've seen is that he's just very much stuck in his own little bubble and is thoughtlessly unaware about who Eve is and what she is feeling. For instance, he really should have been off his phone while hanging out with her in the restaurant. It's tacky to text at a dinner table to begin with (though most everyone has done it at least once), but all the more stupid when you are visiting someone you care about who you haven't seen forever and just had sex with. If he actually wasn't so stuck in his little bubble, he'd never had a drink to his face because he'd have seen he'd be needing to edit himself a bit while telling Eve she wasn't informed about nor invited to a dear friend's wedding.
Villain? Naw. I don't think Meredith would have wasted time showing him being a decent human in so many strips if he was villain material. He a person with some pretty big issues/flaws, though, and he's not at all a good fit for Eve anymore and doesn't bother taking the time to learn who she's become. That's been the point of the whole story.
Then some people think he's using her for sex, but I think that is more up in the air. He seems to care about her (at least on the surface). He's just so self-absorbed/narcissistic and terrible about handling confrontation. But while these are not likable traits, he's not a villain. He's not actively going out of his way to deliberately undermine or hurt Eve (though his actions and reactions are mindlessly hurtful).
To all of you who are stuck in the Good people/ Bad people worldview, Park also is just a human being. Here is (what could be) the story from his point of view:
He came back to NY because he was invited to the wedding. After that was done he still had some spare time which (from all the opportunities he had) he decided to spend with Eve. He’s probably single at the time and still feels about Eve just the way she still feels about him.
So Even though they both know ther’re better apart he had a weak moment when he called her to meet up. And thats just the same weakness she had when she accepted.
Now the sex happening between them has been understood by some as Park taking advantage of her because of eve’s medical condition. However I doubt Park was aware of it so it was Eve’s own decision not to listen to the doc’s advises.
Also he takes her out and tells her how much he missed her AFTER they already had sex, which shows us he really wanted more than just that.
Now his last lines are really mean to Eve, but what else would you expect from someone who just got a glass full of lizzard goo thrown at his face?
Yeah, I don't see Park as an asshole. He and Eve are looking for different things in life, but failing to realize this about each other.
Park went off and became successful because he wanted to. And he's proud of it. That's not a bad thing. We don't really criticize Mar for doing the same thing with her life.
And if he is disappointed in Eve for being happy in a dead-end job with no real goals, I think that's fair. To be honest, it's a fairly unattractive trait in a partner. So he should just leave her alone – but maybe he really thought she would have "grown up" in the meantime.
Even if I reacted as immaturely as Eve to Park's own insufferable immaturity, I would think someone who really cared about me and did not, underneath all vows to the contrary, look down on me and consider me beneath him, to at the very least NOT go on the attack immediately in the most vicious way possible.
I wouldn't do that (when I had a verbal/metaphorical drink thrown in my face once by a friend I didn't, anyway – I deserved it, I was very hurt, and I apologized).
My husband wouldn't do that.
This is what Park has thought of Eve all along and the fact that this is his immediate, instinctual reaction – to be as cruel as possible (which we've seen before with the "see ya" comment) – is very, very telling.
he went on the attack after, well, being attacked. I don't know if you've ever had a drink thrown in your face, but I'd liken it to being slapped, spit at, or any of the other ways that a person can violently publicly debase you.
The talk about how deserves to get punched is one thing, but that has to come very long after the grade school lesson that we don't respond to people who upset us with violence, in any form. That's not how grown-ups act.
Also, If I'm attacked, my reaction to the attack can't serve as validation of the initial attack, that's straight insanity!
His apathy hurt her feelings inadvertently, she made a conscious decision to hurt him back viciously and intentionally, he responded trying to hurt her intentionally.
Park is guilty here of being thoughtless, Eve is guilty here of being malicious.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND HE'S OUTTA HERE! Good riddance! I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the start, but man is Park a dicklord. Good for Eve for realizing how little she needs him in her life.
Second: good grief, the colors of this comic. I love that the redness starts to fade as he's leaving, leaving the placid blue for Eve. It's just beautiful, the whole thing.
And right there, for everyone asking last comic why we all hate Park so much and 'what did Park do that was so heinous', is why we all hate (well, dislike – I think his character is great in the sense of being well-written) Park so much.
He cheated on Eve and then broke up with her at the absolute last possible second, without even thinking that going all the way upstate for a much-anticipated visit would hurt her more than it was the 'right thing to do'.
Then they get back together years later and again he says he missed her, but again in all those years he never tried to contact her. Not the worst thing, sometimes (usually) it's better to stay away from exes you miss, but it did feel like she showed up by surprise in his life and he was all "well OK guess I'll hit that again" (to be fair she did the same thing).
Then he spends a fair amount of time of their renewed relationship criticizing her job, her friends and her lifestyle. It's all very subtle but if you go back and read you'll see this is sort of his MO. Everything he does, even working at Stark's, is in pursuit of a higher goal to him and everything she does is pointless in his view. Whenever she is down, he never quite 'gets it' or really tries to get it so he's unable to fully be there for her, because as he sees it she's only down because her life sucks. He doesn't stop to think that maybe she loves these friends and to her, her life doesn't suck.
Then he does ask her to go with him (more like pressures her, repeatedly) when he gets a job out of town, but doesn't address any of her actual concerns (he says "I'll make you feel safe" and "you'll never be lonely", without really considering that those aren't actually her concerns – the idea that she might not want to give up the life she already has doesn't even cross his mind, nor the idea that 'not lonely' with only your boyfriend around is not a great consolation to being away from everyone else you love). This after basically forcing her into an answer. Again not what someone who loves you does. Eve is not quite mature enough to call him on it, though. She takes it as normal.
Then when she says she can't go with him, he stalks off saying 'see ya' – obviously he was going to be hurt but he prioritized lashing out and thereby hurting Eve as a way of tending to his own hurt. Sure, I can empathize with that, it's something many otherwise decent people do, but it is not the sign of someone who really, truly loves you.
And now this. I mean, of course he was going to be angry that he just got a drink in his face but his immediate reaction is to attack Eve in the most vicious way he knows how. An understandable reaction from a flawed person, and Eve isn't exactly Jesus in this, but telling that his very first instinct was to go on the attack. That's not the hallmark of someone who really loves you or even cares much about you.
Especially, as someone noted above, he didn't leave her. He wanted her to go with him and she declined.
He's not 'heinous', but he is absolutely wrong for Eve and is insufferably self-centered. His first reaction is always to get what he wants, and if he's obstructed, called out or reacted to badly in any way, to lash out at the other person. Not only is that not a sign of someone who loves (or even likes) Eve, it's a sign of someone who can't really love or be a good partner to anyone. My guess is he'd do this with any girlfriend. God forbid she thinks he is anything less than perfect!
He is never – at least not until he grows up, which feels like it may as well be never – going to look back on this conversation and ruminate on what *he* might have said to bring about that reaction. He is always just going to assume he is fine and she is crazy.
People keep asking what is so terrible about Park, he doesn't seem bad at all, Eve is maybe worse…I feel like a solid level of detail is needed to show exactly where the anti-Park crowd is coming from. It's not just a feeling, we didn't just make it up. We dislike him for a reason.
crudbrain
I'll admit, I may have forgotten way more about Park than Eve did.
SupaDeuce
What happened to that cat? I haven't seen him in ages.
You know, I re-read a lot of stuff thanks to some links here and… Park (outside of the current arc and how he has treated Eve) doesn't seem like a demon. It's obvious that he and Eve just don't work, and it's obvious that his selfish obliviousness hurts people (including himself) but… as much of a dick as he is this month, his character is still very human. The comic with him and his grandma should drive that home if anyone doubts it.
Yeah, Eve is actually too good for Park, and it's unlikely he will be satisfied in any relationship until he pulls his head out of his rear, but it's also important to remember (I think) that his character isn't some one dimensional shallow bastard. Sure, he's a jerk now, but he's also very human. For a made-up character anyway.
I mean, did Park ever even ask Eve what was new with her, what was happening in her life? Or was it just "Oh hey, good to see you, here's a list of stuff I've done since we last saw each other"? Park obviously has an image of Eve as much as Eve had of Park, but it seems Eve has realized this faster than he did (if he ever does).
151 thoughts on “#902 + 903 – congrats”
Faye
There was… WAY more repressed feelings than I was expecting, shrieking out of the person I wasn't expecting to be the one shrieking in this situation o.o
humanoftheyear
"I KNEW I'D FIND YOU EXACTLY THE WAY *I* LEFT YOU"
aaaaand there it is. pretty rich coming from the holier-than-thou, short fuse asshole we all know park as. the subtext is rich, much like those hippie stoner artisanal scones.
humanoftheyear
also, gotta love that he left $50 for 2 drinks, since clearly his wealth he's been working so hard for all these years is all that he has to show for the depth of insufferability his work ethic/loneliness has caused him.
also also: at the "the way I left you" is doubly hilarious, since he desperately wanted eve to go with him, but she's the one who left him! the self delusion is strong with this one.
Diloolie
Reminds me of how Clark Li said "this is everything" when Eve mentioned how she'd wanted to write for the New York Times, too.
peakpointmatrix
I'm trying to upvote your comment 100 times and it keeps telling me I've already upvoted it.
Well said.
Guest
Park is a walking cautionary tale for putting career/money above genuine human relationships. Which is essentially what he's criticizing her for not doing here, but we see who's ultimately the more well-adjusted one.
He'd probably be a really great guy if life would just manage to knock his head out of his own ass. Dude needs to fall in love with someone. People like him usually just need to know what it feels like to care about someone more than himself or his job. After that, he'll probably look back on this exchange with a lot more guilt. (<-from a former Park)
Deadly
This has exceeded all of my expectations.
David
Baked some crow pie for the Park fans! $12.99/slice here at the Standard.
Panel 6 is perfect.
David
Also that he left a cool 50.
matt w
All that and he's a crappy tipper?
/NYCdrink price joke that's as old as Park's insults
Chris
I'd prefer some OCTOPUS pie, myself, hur hur hur hur.
Deadly
Okay I have to say. I really love the contrast here.
Pierce has moved up to very successful life but he's become stagnant as a person.
Meanwhile Eve has changed and grown so much despite not really "moving up".
schleufer
fricken pierce
ThEWhit
Huh that went exactly as well as expected and actually it looks like Eve is in a much healthier place now! Cool! And I hope we never see Park's dumb face again.
Laura
NOW THATS WHAT I CALL CLOSURE VOL. 2!
Matt
I don't keep up with such things but I really hope that Octopus Pie gets the recognition it deserves.
Every other update I read I'm kind of floored by. I've been reading comics since… before I could read and this still Regularly and consistently blows me away.
mighty
YES! SLAY HIM, EVE! SLAAAYYYY HIIIIMMM
Chris Buecheler
What's interesting to me about this arc is not only the story, but how vehemently anti-Park the comments are, for the most part. He is indeed a self-absorbed asshole (and Eve had seriously deluded herself about him), but in the strip above, he's also not entirely wrong. Everyone's been growing up around Eve … maybe that's why she's feeling such a disconnect right now. She may need to do some catching up.
ewietstock
He is wrong, though. Eve has grown up a lot, and the stuff Park is accusing her of doesn't stick, which is why she can't help but laugh. He doesn't even really know her, and yet he thinks he can hurt her by calling her a hipster and telling her her life didn't pan out how it was supposed to. Eve has already learned this and made her peace with it. Not having a "normal, respectable" life is simply less important to her than it is to Park. She took a chance on this meeting because she's always had lingering feelings and thought maybe they could actually make it work together after this period of growth. But, as it turns out, Park is still just the same old asshole who cares more about fitting in and projecting a certain type of success than having actual relationships with people.
Chris Buecheler
Sure, but where are Eve's actual relationships with people? She's frankly not done a terrific job in that area of late, as things like the (excellent) Ferris Wheel comic have shown. She seems to be in a dead zone right now. Maybe Park's specific comments about her fixed-gear bike and ironic record collection are no longer accurate, but Eve is certainly drifting a little aimlessly right now, and I don't think she's "made her peace with it" at all, otherwise she wouldn't have been pinning so much of her hopes on Park in the first place. She hasn't decided that a non-professional life isn't for her. She doesn't appear to have decided anything. That's the issue.
People grow in fits and spurts. Eve has grown a lot over the course of this comic, but over the last year, I think she's been in a lull. I think Meredith knows this very well, and I think *Eve* knows this very well — I also think those last two "head down" panels have a whole lot more meaning than just "I'm laughing too hard to look up."
La Chouffe
The insults are not even really aimed at the old Eve, but at the old version of her social circle in which his achievements would not buy him status or recognition. It’s precisely this tirade that reveals how near this fixation already laid to the surface. It suggests that meeting Eve only after familie, once-shared-friends, after old co-workers and deliberations about seeing a hole in a bathroom wall was not merely being oblivious to the point of being callous, but intended to prove how little she means to him, and so remove any stain on his self-perceived standing by her not following him. Park’s insults have no bewaring on Eve’s present woes.
aleksi
Ah, yes. Laughter as an involuntary reflex, hiding real pain.
aleksi
Not to say Park's outburst isn't funny in a kind of cringe-worthy way, I just mean I don't think Eve is still laughing or even smiling under that curtain of hair in the last panel.
JackPoint
Brutal thumbs down for an innocuous remark…
The feels are real in this one, I guess.
park
oh no your expectations are all that matter park
all we all care about is what you think of other people
park you're so important park stop walking away when im talking to you park
the big cheesy
but his contacts
Dev
So proud of Evee for throwing the drink in his face.
grimmorrigan
I think his last line hit a little close to home. Her world is changing
NemoProprius
"I can see the cracks…"
Matthew Austin
That last line hit way too close to home.
Fucking contacts.
channamasala
In fact, it did.
Fucking contacts – it hurts sometimes to see things clearly.
Let's remember the Mr. Lasik ad when they last saw each other. In fact, we did see. We ALL saw.
James
I'd say that this update proves quite the reverse of what Park said. The world she wanted isn't leaving her behind; she's leaving the world she once wanted behind. Given that that was his attack of choice, he and she appear to differ in this regard.
aleksi
I think they both managed to hit each other's soft spots. Park obviously regrets some of the sacrifices he's made for a stable life and a well-paying job, so being "out of touch", ie. sounding just like the stuck-up baby boomers he works for must sting. Eve knows things are changing around her and she might not be keeping up. I bet being "left behind" is her worst nightmare at the moment.
Alexis
YEAH EVE GO BACK TO PORTLAND
T-they're still keeping Portland weird, r-right?
Doug
Not really. I miss it, not because I left it last year, but because it stopped being my home before I even left. I was born in Oregon, graduated High School in Portland, came back there after college, and… it's gone.
R. Crumb wrote a piece about how Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love came totally unmoored from the things that made them beautiful, and that's how I feel about Portland now. The new folk coming in talked a good game about diversity and creative spirit, but they treated me and my friends like they were needy and pathetic, and I was some kind of boring old square who didn't "get" it. My family was growing pot in those hills before they were born. I learned to cook the native plants from an actual Native American. When I was a kid there was no Voodoo Donuts, the Pearl District was Skid Row, and George Bush Sr. (who wasn't Sr. yet) called my town "Little Beirut" because we hated him so much.
Anyway, my multi-ethnic community bleached whiter than a dead oyster in the last fifteen years. The Ethiopian place down the street (which country was where my dad came from) shutting down and being replaced by a hookah joint run by a pasty-faced flannel-wearing kid from Seattle was kinda the metonym for the whole damn collapse.
Portland's new weirdness isn't any more real than the landscaping at Disney World.
thistemporarylifeblog
Yeah yeah, bring Eve back to Portland!
And Meredith Gran, for that matter.
Arianod
Man, Portland has nothing on Beach City.
Spiritoftherain
GOD, that felt cathartic. Just to watch. All he is made of is sound and fury.
RBW
What would have been a better response? Action? What form would that take, giving Eve a slap? In this situation it's commendable that someone restricts himself to 'sound and fury'. I bet most people commenting here would go absolutely mental if someone threw a drink in their face, not least someone they had (some kind of) feelings for.
Spiritoftherain
In that situation, he knows he's guilty as sin. He may not be acknowledging it, but that little stumble he had over seeing the gardens and not calling Eve until now was a big, big giveaway.
"Drink in the face" is about the best wake-up call you can get when you carry on being an insensitive douchecanoe while trying to explain away gross missteps.
Vearish
Hahahahahahaha fuck you park.
ktk
Throwback to this strip: http://www.octopuspie.com/2008-11-20/222-sheer-po…
genius.
Laura
Park calling Eve pretentious is hilarious. Thats his reaction? Getting a drink thrown at you isn't some indicator of being a hipster. What planet does park live on? He just jumped to the first way he thought to criticize her without even looking at the situation or analyzing why she might have thrown her drink. After all of his pretension and bragging he calls eve pretentious for not taking his shitty behavior well. Its amazing how he has no self-awareness at all.
peakpointmatrix
It goes to show that he has been looking down at Eve this whole time wit these criticisms ready to go. Funniest of all, he says he has found her exactly how he left her when he is the one has barely changed. Eve couldn't be more different.
Morat Juan
some peeps be like that yo. some peeps be like anything you can imagine. what a crazy world
sasagish
Well that was a cop-out.
I suppose the "villains" of this comic have never been that subtle or challenging, but this just seems a waste of what seemed to be a great set-up.
Graham
'I suppose the "villains" of this comic have never been that subtle or challenging…' Ugh. Anyway, the point is of course that Park can't now be a villain or much of anything else because the world he and Eve cohabited doesn't exist any more.
Amy
I think it could still be great set up, in a way. This isn't totally clean and cut just because Park came off LOOKING like the asshole or villain–cuz honestly, he isn't. He wasn't wrong about everyone moving on while Eve seemingly isn't, and Eve might have to digest that after she's done with the high of getting over THE ex that she always kept as a fantasy. Now that that fantasy of Park is gone, what is she left with? Reality.
And the reality is, Park is right… Everyone is moving on because everyone is making choices. Eve has options, but she has yet to make her own choices. So it can be set-up.. for a different battle, within herself rather than against someone else. The subtleties are in that Eve is the one who has to digest that Park isn't all wrong, even though she now knows he IS all wrong as a choice of partner for her.
As some philosopher or zen duck might have said maybe some time in the past or something long, long ago and far, far away: Our enemies are our enemies because we recognize ourselves in them, and hate their faults as we hate our own.
humanoftheyear
I agree with you. Part of what attracts Eve to Park is that he is so sure of what he wants while she isn't. She's at an impasse and kinda wanted to fall back on him hoping she wouldn't have to make a decision herself, but luckily their interaction has shown her how ridiculous that is.
It's interesting to me how much Eve mirrored Park at the beginning of OP. She used to be cynical, hated how much of a hipster hippie Hannah was, hated pot, etc. etc. She's changed a lot over the years, but was it because she was softening her edges for herself or so she could fit in with the group of friends she wanted to be more like? Is that why she's so upset that everyone seems to be moving on while she is there, stuck with who she's become yet again for other people?
James
I'd suggest that Park isn't the villain here. Eve's hangup on Park was.
Bryy
What is supposed to be subtle or challenging about a guy that just used sex to prove to himself that women still desire him and can't become "real people" without him?
990
????
So now Park moved from being kind of a dick to being a mysoginistic pick-up artist (even tho this never implied anywhere since his inception in the comic in the slightest)?
You've been reading too many feminists blogs if you think casual sex (and it WAS casual, at least for Park) is only enjoyed by men who hate women.
Dotcom
Is he? It's never really been established why he contacted Eve or had sex with her. All we've seen is that he's just very much stuck in his own little bubble and is thoughtlessly unaware about who Eve is and what she is feeling. For instance, he really should have been off his phone while hanging out with her in the restaurant. It's tacky to text at a dinner table to begin with (though most everyone has done it at least once), but all the more stupid when you are visiting someone you care about who you haven't seen forever and just had sex with. If he actually wasn't so stuck in his little bubble, he'd never had a drink to his face because he'd have seen he'd be needing to edit himself a bit while telling Eve she wasn't informed about nor invited to a dear friend's wedding.
Dotcom
Villain? Naw. I don't think Meredith would have wasted time showing him being a decent human in so many strips if he was villain material. He a person with some pretty big issues/flaws, though, and he's not at all a good fit for Eve anymore and doesn't bother taking the time to learn who she's become. That's been the point of the whole story.
Then some people think he's using her for sex, but I think that is more up in the air. He seems to care about her (at least on the surface). He's just so self-absorbed/narcissistic and terrible about handling confrontation. But while these are not likable traits, he's not a villain. He's not actively going out of his way to deliberately undermine or hurt Eve (though his actions and reactions are mindlessly hurtful).
DevilsAdvocate
To all of you who are stuck in the Good people/ Bad people worldview, Park also is just a human being. Here is (what could be) the story from his point of view:
He came back to NY because he was invited to the wedding. After that was done he still had some spare time which (from all the opportunities he had) he decided to spend with Eve. He’s probably single at the time and still feels about Eve just the way she still feels about him.
So Even though they both know ther’re better apart he had a weak moment when he called her to meet up. And thats just the same weakness she had when she accepted.
Now the sex happening between them has been understood by some as Park taking advantage of her because of eve’s medical condition. However I doubt Park was aware of it so it was Eve’s own decision not to listen to the doc’s advises.
Also he takes her out and tells her how much he missed her AFTER they already had sex, which shows us he really wanted more than just that.
Now his last lines are really mean to Eve, but what else would you expect from someone who just got a glass full of lizzard goo thrown at his face?
Also sorry for my english.
sthetic
Yeah, I don't see Park as an asshole. He and Eve are looking for different things in life, but failing to realize this about each other.
Park went off and became successful because he wanted to. And he's proud of it. That's not a bad thing. We don't really criticize Mar for doing the same thing with her life.
And if he is disappointed in Eve for being happy in a dead-end job with no real goals, I think that's fair. To be honest, it's a fairly unattractive trait in a partner. So he should just leave her alone – but maybe he really thought she would have "grown up" in the meantime.
channamasala
Even if I reacted as immaturely as Eve to Park's own insufferable immaturity, I would think someone who really cared about me and did not, underneath all vows to the contrary, look down on me and consider me beneath him, to at the very least NOT go on the attack immediately in the most vicious way possible.
I wouldn't do that (when I had a verbal/metaphorical drink thrown in my face once by a friend I didn't, anyway – I deserved it, I was very hurt, and I apologized).
My husband wouldn't do that.
This is what Park has thought of Eve all along and the fact that this is his immediate, instinctual reaction – to be as cruel as possible (which we've seen before with the "see ya" comment) – is very, very telling.
Kurt
he went on the attack after, well, being attacked. I don't know if you've ever had a drink thrown in your face, but I'd liken it to being slapped, spit at, or any of the other ways that a person can violently publicly debase you.
The talk about how deserves to get punched is one thing, but that has to come very long after the grade school lesson that we don't respond to people who upset us with violence, in any form. That's not how grown-ups act.
Also, If I'm attacked, my reaction to the attack can't serve as validation of the initial attack, that's straight insanity!
His apathy hurt her feelings inadvertently, she made a conscious decision to hurt him back viciously and intentionally, he responded trying to hurt her intentionally.
Park is guilty here of being thoughtless, Eve is guilty here of being malicious.
thistemporarylifeblog
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND HE'S OUTTA HERE! Good riddance! I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the start, but man is Park a dicklord. Good for Eve for realizing how little she needs him in her life.
Second: good grief, the colors of this comic. I love that the redness starts to fade as he's leaving, leaving the placid blue for Eve. It's just beautiful, the whole thing.
Diloolie
And look at how HE stays red while she's mellowing out as she laughs. 😀
Commodore Biggles
The gradient in panel 5 is even centered on the 'snerk' to mark that exact point of shifting momentum. Masterful use of color to convey emotion here.
Wetmang
"Congrats on doing nothing – NOTHING- to defy my expectations."
"Thanks!"
LdotIdot
"Wait, this was what it was all about — defying your expectations? Let's rewind, then: no, I don't want to see you again. Have a nice life!"
Is this scene more complex than that? Yes, I think so. But damn, that's such an assholeish thing to say, Park!
rei
Yeeeeeeessssss!
Feel the sting of the emotional band-aid being ripped off!
Haha!
(And now I feel I can gleefully judge him)
The colors are absolutely gorgeous on this page.
channamasala
And right there, for everyone asking last comic why we all hate Park so much and 'what did Park do that was so heinous', is why we all hate (well, dislike – I think his character is great in the sense of being well-written) Park so much.
He cheated on Eve and then broke up with her at the absolute last possible second, without even thinking that going all the way upstate for a much-anticipated visit would hurt her more than it was the 'right thing to do'.
Then they get back together years later and again he says he missed her, but again in all those years he never tried to contact her. Not the worst thing, sometimes (usually) it's better to stay away from exes you miss, but it did feel like she showed up by surprise in his life and he was all "well OK guess I'll hit that again" (to be fair she did the same thing).
Then he spends a fair amount of time of their renewed relationship criticizing her job, her friends and her lifestyle. It's all very subtle but if you go back and read you'll see this is sort of his MO. Everything he does, even working at Stark's, is in pursuit of a higher goal to him and everything she does is pointless in his view. Whenever she is down, he never quite 'gets it' or really tries to get it so he's unable to fully be there for her, because as he sees it she's only down because her life sucks. He doesn't stop to think that maybe she loves these friends and to her, her life doesn't suck.
Then he does ask her to go with him (more like pressures her, repeatedly) when he gets a job out of town, but doesn't address any of her actual concerns (he says "I'll make you feel safe" and "you'll never be lonely", without really considering that those aren't actually her concerns – the idea that she might not want to give up the life she already has doesn't even cross his mind, nor the idea that 'not lonely' with only your boyfriend around is not a great consolation to being away from everyone else you love). This after basically forcing her into an answer. Again not what someone who loves you does. Eve is not quite mature enough to call him on it, though. She takes it as normal.
Then when she says she can't go with him, he stalks off saying 'see ya' – obviously he was going to be hurt but he prioritized lashing out and thereby hurting Eve as a way of tending to his own hurt. Sure, I can empathize with that, it's something many otherwise decent people do, but it is not the sign of someone who really, truly loves you.
And now this. I mean, of course he was going to be angry that he just got a drink in his face but his immediate reaction is to attack Eve in the most vicious way he knows how. An understandable reaction from a flawed person, and Eve isn't exactly Jesus in this, but telling that his very first instinct was to go on the attack. That's not the hallmark of someone who really loves you or even cares much about you.
Especially, as someone noted above, he didn't leave her. He wanted her to go with him and she declined.
He's not 'heinous', but he is absolutely wrong for Eve and is insufferably self-centered. His first reaction is always to get what he wants, and if he's obstructed, called out or reacted to badly in any way, to lash out at the other person. Not only is that not a sign of someone who loves (or even likes) Eve, it's a sign of someone who can't really love or be a good partner to anyone. My guess is he'd do this with any girlfriend. God forbid she thinks he is anything less than perfect!
He is never – at least not until he grows up, which feels like it may as well be never – going to look back on this conversation and ruminate on what *he* might have said to bring about that reaction. He is always just going to assume he is fine and she is crazy.
Good on Eve for finally seeing it so clearly.
Graham
Could you go into more detail, though?
channamasala
Actually, I could:
http://www.octopuspie.com/2009-01-02/240-some-inv…
People keep asking what is so terrible about Park, he doesn't seem bad at all, Eve is maybe worse…I feel like a solid level of detail is needed to show exactly where the anti-Park crowd is coming from. It's not just a feeling, we didn't just make it up. We dislike him for a reason.
crudbrain
I'll admit, I may have forgotten way more about Park than Eve did.
SupaDeuce
What happened to that cat? I haven't seen him in ages.
JackPoint
You know, I re-read a lot of stuff thanks to some links here and… Park (outside of the current arc and how he has treated Eve) doesn't seem like a demon. It's obvious that he and Eve just don't work, and it's obvious that his selfish obliviousness hurts people (including himself) but… as much of a dick as he is this month, his character is still very human. The comic with him and his grandma should drive that home if anyone doubts it.
Yeah, Eve is actually too good for Park, and it's unlikely he will be satisfied in any relationship until he pulls his head out of his rear, but it's also important to remember (I think) that his character isn't some one dimensional shallow bastard. Sure, he's a jerk now, but he's also very human. For a made-up character anyway.
tzeentchling
I mean, did Park ever even ask Eve what was new with her, what was happening in her life? Or was it just "Oh hey, good to see you, here's a list of stuff I've done since we last saw each other"? Park obviously has an image of Eve as much as Eve had of Park, but it seems Eve has realized this faster than he did (if he ever does).