Vote over at TWC and you can see a delightful panel of Marin from a comic I posted on Patreon :) We're past the abusive stuff yaaaay! Now we're just on the "pregnant woman dying in the woods" train, which isn't really more positive, but it is hopefully less triggering for everyone who's way too familiar with the relationship dynamics between Connie and Tom. I promise, that was the last time we'll really do a deep dive on abusive stuff like that, though I make no promises for future violence and whatnot. As I mentioned on Twitter last week, there's a lot of fucked up stuff in the very background of this story, and unfortunately, you have to eventually actually deal with the fucked up stuff rather than just implying it. I'll even finally get to address the fact that two people are dead, which is how this whole story started and is mentioned periodically, buuuuut I kind of forget about it from time to time. Oops? For absolute clarity, here's the deal: Connie/Flora is not okay in the head. She literally rejects reality. She is literally delusional. She doesn't understand the larger ramifications of her actions, which will be made slightly more clear in tomorrow's page. As the wise scholar Avril Lavigne once said, "can I make it any more obvious?" And no, I can't. We'd be here forever. So if you're not ready to believe me that she's delusional and bends reality to her will, um...reread this section, or possibly the whole comic, because that was part of her character from the beginning. She is still a bad person and she still makes stupid and terrible choices, and she's still abusive. You don't have to like her or sympathize with her. (Tom is also not a good person, and we'll come back to him in the next chapter...he's just not a great person in a different, less irrational way.) Keep in mind that characters like Walter White and Don Draper (alliteration!) are also terrible people who do abusive, fucked up things, but if one of them was pregnant and dying in the woods, you'd have a different opinion about them. Probably along the lines of "Oh my god, how did that guy get pregnant?? Do they have that kind of technology in New Mexico/1960s New York and I just didn't know? What is even happening??? I thought this show was about meth and/or advertising????" Anyway, this flashback has another...fifteen pages or so? And we're hitting the fast forward button a bit from here on out, because Charlene will be narrating the rest of it in more of a montage now that we generally understand the cut of Connie/Flora's jib. Some upcoming positives: we get to see Aubrey's pack as kids and they're all super cute (albeit panicked), and there are two short scenes that are pretty cute after this giant flashback is over. And then...I think we're done with flashbacks! I haven't had as many as it seems like I have, actually. I think the flashback-in-a-flashback from last chapter made it seem that way though lol. But yeah, this whole sequence should be the last bit of really important exposition you'll need from this story going forward. Our main mysteries are solved, so now we get to deal with the consequences >:). And I'm really looking forward to that! We're coming up on stuff I've wanted to write for over a year, and I think it'll be super cool.