I quoted that bit because i was more replying to that part of your post. I of course also read the rest, your theory on what will happen et all, but i should have made that obvious. Sorry about that, and may you be right.
As for ded grandma, again it's a story and not real life, so for me that fell as flat as the childhood friends bit. To not reinstate what i already did, i believe expecting readers to care about some old fictional woman - whom they've only ever seen in a 1 minute flashback - because she died, and was old, and some newly introduced character cared about her... is a lot.
Like, she's not a character but a motive. And at that, a motive for a character i don't care about to do something i don't agree with, that furthermore only ended up hurting the one character in the interlude that i do care for.
I didn't buy any of that shit, to be brief, so while intellectualy i see what DCP was aiming for, emotionally i was just not invested in anything from beginning to the end (but maybe the MC's reaction).
Which is why, again, in my opinion this whole thing would have worked much better if Zoey had been a part of the story from the start. If i'd cared about her beforehand - say because she'd occupied Josy's role in the prologue, or because she'd kept in contact with the MC throughout those two seasons (thus making their fallout a thing we'd seen, rather than one we were off-handedly told about during some drunken ramblings) - then by proxy i would have at least given half a shit about her grandma, her own side of the story, and what she got up to.
I was just asked to care, so i just don't.
