(This is so relevant to my life always.)
Actually, I got and read this last issue of the Dollhouse: Epitaphs comic arc (by: Andrew Chambliss, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Cliff Richards, Andy Owens, Michelle Madsen) last week. But I took a couple of days to read it, because as excited as I was to, I also just didn’t want it to end. Even knowing that there will probably be further Dollhouse comic arcs, I just… I still knew I was going to be a complete wackjob when I was done with it. Because it would be over all over again, and I didn’t really want to deal with that.
But, the above-linked self-definition won out, as did my completist tendencies, and I’m not ashamed to admit that once I’d turned the last page I just sat there staring at my ceiling and laughing nervously and repeating “well crud, why do I feel like I’m gonna cry even though I know I’m not?” to myself. The comic wasn’t even that sad. Not compared to the show, which is still the most tragic end on television. And it’s not the end. And I know who’s gonna be okay. But for howevermany months, I’ve had a bit of the world back in my life again, and now… well, thank goodness for re(watch)(read)ing.
I understand that I’m a nerd. I understand that I’m a sap. I understand that I’m not entirely sane. I understand that I’m too invested in these fictional people. I am unashamed.
I’m not giving away exactly what happened, because I know I’ve got friends who I still need to lend the issue to IRL and that means there are plenty of people elsewhere who need to read it, too. I will say, though, that there were so many feelings. Not in the “why did you die??!?!” way that could be expected (though that’s obviously because of its placement in the pre-existing timeline), but in every other way.
(Though, on the pre-existing timeline note, I will mention that when I read the first issue, I thought that maybe Ivy was RL Ivy, and they just hadn’t drawn her very Asian for some reason. Seeing in one of the issues that the other Ivies discussed Ivy being in Tokyo made me smile: if Topher told Ivy to get out of LA in “Getting Closer,” and in the interim between that and the robocalls she found herself in Tokyo, well, that means that maybe dear little Ivy wound up there with Topher’s big rival Takahashi [he's mentioned a couple times in there and I remember these things] and that may have been passive-aggressive or it may have just been determined to do something or it may have been something I don’t even know what, but it’s still awesome.)
There was the d’awww Alpha. I feel weird saying that, because of the psycho and the murderer and the creeper thing, but I’ve always enjoyed Alpha as a character. I mean, I understand that he spends most of the series as a bad guy. But he’s just so well-written and demented and perfectly so. This whole “Alpha seeks redemption” thing was much less frustrating than, say, others seeking redemption: he’s still wry and badass and he’s not always succeeding but he’s not running from everything.
There was the hurrah my actuals. For fairly obvious Felicia Day reasons, I always had a soft spot for Mag, too (that and I decided I should latch onto someone in the thoughtpocalypse since my other two girls were, y’know, very much dead), and someone had actually written in one of the letters in the back:
“When are we going to see Mags be a badass?”
Which was then responded to as such:
I think she’s perpetually badass.
So agreed. Because really, even if she’s not shooting everyone ever, she’s a tough chick, and she’s doing what she’s got to. She’s not heartless. She and Zone and Griff have a good thing going, as much as they snappily banter. (And the hurried introduction of Lynn just made me tee-hee, because even if it was in the background of a panel and it wasn’t ever show-explicit, I do like to believe that Mag had a little crush on Lynn, and maybe they had covert thoughtpocalyptic romance times once or twice. And even backgrounded, I could totally read into the art a little smirky smirk of “oh, hello there.”)
There was the sexual tension. Despite recent fanmixing, Paul/Echo isn’t my big shippy thing. I don’t mind it, and could obviously find songs that suited it, but there’s the part of me that hung onto pre-OMGWTF-Mellie’s-a-doll Paul/Mellie, and there’s the part of me that occasionally wants to just smack Paul upside the head. But, theirs is a pretty upsetting tragic-romantic journey, and at the end of the day, even if I don’t ship a thing that much, I still get sad when the characters are interested in each other yet cannot have each other for whatever reasons. Who the characters ship themselves with does matter at least a little. And that page of “no we cannot, there is still an apocalypse” is one of those moments. They’ll never be together, and as much as I don’t always spend a lot of spare time caring about if they’re together, they want to be together. So that’s still upsetting.
I know that the next arcs, if they do end up existing (which they plan to), won’t be for a little while (“not the near, near future”). But knowing that they likely will come to be is a comfort to me. Knowing that we’ll get more thoughtpocalypse exposition (Priya/Anthony please? There is so much I want to know there. Also metaphorical-tear-inducing crazy!Topher, which will induce more ceiling staring and under my breath muttering) is good. I mean, it’s not necessary. We know how it ends up. But I am a fill-in-the-blanks kind of girl. And I’m just thankful that the comics are around to do that for us.
–your fangirl heroine.
(Also, unrelated to Dollhouse comics but semi-related to Dollhouse and to the Whedonverse and to things that make me squee embarrassingly like the fangirl I really am, Emerald City’s announced guests. For fear of seeming creepy, which I’m not, I swear, just enthusiastic and babbly, I’ll refrain from typing out my various exclamation-pointed thoughts. But.)
