Skip to content
Up until this point we'd seen Eve jump to sex quickly with people she'd just met, where maybe it could've been confused for simple enjoyment, agency, an exercise of freedom. I think this is the first time we see how painful the alternative might be for her, that sex is something she might depend on to feel all right with herself, and in that sense has nothing to do with freedom at all.
This one is also kind of an unfortunate page slice-up, where we miss Don's hopeful "we're cool, right?" face in the very next panel.
3 thoughts on “#551 – maybe we shouldn’t”
Mike
This one made me sad, from what little we see of him Don seems like such a good person 🙁
grateful_reader
Interesting hearing your take on Eve's sex life. I never thought of her as being particularly 'quick to bed,' especially compared to Will and early Marigold.
This page always struck me as heartbreaking because, up to this point, we rarely saw Eve truly go out on a limb to connect with someone else: she seems uncharacteristically candid, vulnerable, and (dare I say it?) hopeful here. And even though she was let down gently, we know the experience will only reinforce her tendency to emotionally sequester herself — that it will be a long time before anyone sees this side of Eve again.
grateful_reader
…I can't get over the commentary on this one. I was SO SURE that Eve's sexual advance here was of the 'bonding' kind and not the 'self-obliviating' kind: this is one of the few times we see Eve at a non-farcical social function apart from her main posse; the only truly familiar face here is Jake, whose callousness acts as a foil to Don's kindness; Don then introduces Eve to more nice people, whom she actually seems to enjoy, further cementing his 'nice and worthwhile guy' bonafides; and finally she lengthily and steamily makes out with Don without once arching an eyebrow, cracking a joke, or drunkenly slurring her speech. But after rereading this sequence in light of your comments, I can totally see the evidence to the contrary.
Can I say how grateful I am that you're sharing your thought process with us like this? And how grateful I am to be reading a webcomic as rich and nuanced as this one? Because I really, really am.
Thank you, Meredith.