While I'm not taking back my opinion that the build-up and revelation of Maytag's 'split personality' were badly written and numbingly paced (even taking into account the presence/absence of the bonus chapter), I will say that I....genuinely loved the conversation between Maytag and Crest. (See guys, I don't indiscriminately hate everything Brion produces.) I did not anticipate reading the most emotive kind of scene - the kind where nobody is 'in the right' exactly but you sympathise with both of them anyway - but here we are.
What I'm seeing in Maytag here - rather, what I'm hoping I'm seeing - is someone almost Dexter Morgan-like. Not a perfect comparison, but by that I mean an extremely high-functioning sociopath. Someone with enough empathy to know exactly what people like to see but not
quite enough to realise that those people will feel betrayed and frustrated when they realise that whatever her 'real' self might have been, it's become suppressed under layers of chameleonic assumed traits. After all, she's just been giving them what they want, right? The fourth panel
right here hit me like a punch in the gut. If this is honestly the thesis statement for her entire life then I've found a reservoir of sympathy for this character I thought had completely dried up.
She doesn't understand people thoroughly enough to 'get' that what close friends really want is to know the 'real her', distinct from the show she puts on for everyone else - but variations on that show are all she has to offer. And she seems not to understand why Crest, Regina et al wouldn't see that as being enough.
If this is what Maytag is, if this is who she is, then I feel comfortable saying you've won back a reader - as in, someone who's reading out of genuine interest rather than morbid curiosity and nostalgic fondness for Book Zero. I'm just hoping this gets played to the fore.
Also, I'm enjoying Suspiria's 'ill person' hair although her follicular magic does emphasise the fact that if you shaved and washed most of the female cast you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
(However, since I can't make a completely uncritical post, one small complaint is from
this page, sixth panel. 'Why are you pretending to have tears now'? Nobody talks like this. 'Why are you pretending to cry?' or 'Why are you crying? I know it's an act' - fine, but 'to have tears' sounds like a phrase from someone whose first language isn't English. Distractingly stilted. Try reading your dialogue out loud, or better yet, get someone to act it out with you.)