She makes it sound like Andrew cheated on Marina or something.
Given the current information, I'm interpreting this as: If Andrew really loved Marina and was wanting to marry her, he wouldn't have risked the wedding money.
So I think it's still "only" two incidents. Before this reveal, we talked at length about how the incident needed to be something that threaded the needle. Something where it was believable that Marina could forgive Andrew and it was reasonable for Andrew to not be fully at fault (as a parallel to the current events). Based on what we learned now, it just makes me feel that much more weird about our protagonist.
Going back to the discussion about having a satisfying ending... Like... Andrew just seems like a super scummy person. He couldn't help himself with the method acting issue back then, but it is certainly his fault that he lost the money. Even if there was a bit of trickery involved, he apparently kept in communication with Orlov for some reason.
But even if we don't fault him for that: This completely re-contextualizes most of this story.
1) This means that Andrew always knew he was susceptible for getting stuck in a character. Despite that, he willingly took on a highly intensive and deep role.
2) For some reason, even after the time skip, it takes the dream sequence before he is reminded about the method acting. But even before then, there should have been flags that he needed to pull out, not go deeper.
3) Unless Marina has been determined to feminize Andrew from the start, this has to mean Marina had no clue about the method acting. Otherwise, she wouldn't have just vaguely referred to an incident. She would have brought up at any of the various points: "Hey, are you having trouble staying as Andrew?" Furthermore, she would have suspected Andrew was lost in character again when he didn't respond to the code word.
Now, I think there's a lot that contradicts the idea that Marina was in on feminizing Andrew from the start. The main one is that Marina was actually threatened by Roan. We see exactly how it plays out. Now, if this was purely something Marina says to Andrew, than it could be her lying. But it wasn't. It was shown to us directly in the flashback to fill in the blanks of info we weren't privy to.
Granted, there's a chance the flashback inside a flashback inside a dream sequence isn't really what happened, and it's supposed to be just the depiction of how Marina is explaining it to Andrew. Honestly though, I'd find that to be incredibly frustrating as a reader. The story has often jumped to other POV with the understanding that the reader has a "God" view of things. What we see and read is supposed to be "actually" what is happening. Especially in a mystery, if flashbacks don't have the same level of trustworthiness as the current scenes, then how can we know
any of Andrew's flashbacks are an accurate retelling of what happened, as opposed to unreliable narrator shaping things by his biases?
Some of the other scenes could support a nuanced version of her wanting to feminize Andrew. If it was that she was wanting to feminize him as punishment and knew about the method acting issue:
- Her not bringing up his past problems would make sense.
- Her being upset at him not remembering the code word could be concern that something unplanned is happening.
- Her being upset that Elena is sleeping with Nikos could be she's unhappy that this isn't a punishment if Elena is happy.
However... I just don't see the plan here: You can't feminize your husband into the trophy wife of your uncle, knowing that he loses himself in character, and then be surprised that he's in character and fucking said uncle.
That's just a terrible plan. I suppose it's still possible she didn't know about the method acting and was just intending on an "old fashioned" feminization plan. But even still, you can't team up with your uncle to make a fucktoy for him, and then be surprised when he fucks said fucktoy! If her problem is that it went too smoothly... Honestly, so what? Mission accomplished!
Anyway, all that aside, I wanted to revisit the discussion on the ending not leaving a bad taste in the mouth. Because with this latest revelation, that definitely muddies the waters even further for me.
I can't say I think Andrew deserves a happy ending. Like, if he ends up enjoying being Elena and gets into a happy marriage with Nikos... That's really not satisfying to me given what we know now about "the incident". Turns out, Andrew was a bad husband. Or at the very least, he's incredibly unappreciative of Marina (she helped him get out of an out of control spiral. If he didn't want to marry her, than call it off. But to then lose her money and then STILL string her along and marry her anyway? And after all of that, ride her ass accusing her of cheating?! That's fucked up). So should he be rewarded for that?
damn, Marina. You're super hot, you can do way better than this guy.
After AM ends, I wouldn't mind it in the slightest if in a future unrelated story, Melissa reused the Marina model as the feminized protagonist.
Well, if the "Joel is gonna be turned into a twin of Marina" theory holds true, maybe that's already in the cards!
