Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird

[Kish]

Okay. Well, I'd never try to get you to like a character you didn't, for my part. And in general, I don't get the impression Jeph particularly expects or intends anyone to like any specific characters of his.

(Which is not at all to say he's perfect as a writer; most notably to me he has this recurring thing where women threatening violence is supposed to be endearing.)

Someone else might be more willing to make a case for Renee.

[John Cribati]

The question I guess I meant to ask was more akin to "how am I supposed to like Renee in light of her past instances of petty theft in addition to her general unpleasantness?"

The simple answer is "you don't have to."

The slightly more complicated answer is "You don't have to, but you should at least be able to understand her on a baseline human level without taking her every action as though she has once again sacrificed a week-old infant to an elder god."
With the caveat that "I'm pretty sure you don't despise her that much, but given how much vitriol I've seen toward her that I largely consider unfounded and a waste of time, anything that sounds a little too snippy to my eyes (which are reading this without the aid of vocal inflection to further facilitate my understanding of people's words) rings several alarm bells in my head."

[Stevesciguy]

Anyone else feel that Jeph is going a bit excessive on the "Beepatrice is incompetent" thing?

[Willie the Duck]

Anyone else feel that Jeph is going a bit excessive on the "Beepatrice is incompetent" thing?

Depends on whether we're supposed to treat her as anything other than pure comic relief. If not, she's not that different from Pintsize. If so, then yes it is excessive and will distract from her eventually being taken seriously.

[Kish]

Yeah, at this point I think it's actually kind of alarming that she's expected to be self-sufficient. "Will buy anything a reasonably competent salesperson hard-sells her" is a super-dangerous character trait for pretty much anybody.

[Keltest]

Its worth pointing out that her actual, literal job is to try and break things in dumb or unusual ways. You don't generally do well at that if youre efficient and level headed. This is just a side gig that Roko has taken and suddenly made significantly more serious in a way that Beeps wasn't really operating at before. Is it necessarily any wonder that she doesn't react well to unpredicted problems cropping up out of nowhere?

[Gnoman]

That's really a good point. A critical ingredient in idiot-proofing testing is a sufficiently-talented idiot.

[Wraith]

Honestly, I don't get the impression that Beepatrice is just generally incompetent, just that she's not great at acting for herself.

Her day job is engineering - she's given a brief, given tools, given a subject, and she follows a meticulous process in order to document her findings along the way. She doesn't need much imagination, just follow the process and write down what happens.

Her second job has her in a charity with minimal oversight, nearly no formal procedure and no established precedent, where she oversees people who don't come with tools or a schedule. It's a very different role that suits a very different type of person.

That's all it seems like to me. She's not dumb or incompetent, she's just book-smart rather than people-smart and has found herself in a role that doesn't suit her, further suggested by the way that she's easily led by a salesman and is apparently quite grateful when Roko tells her what to do for once

That she also seems to have the self-confidence of a wet sponge probably doesn't help matters. Dildo-launching cannons don't answer back like the AI charity's clients do (hopefully!)

[Morquard]

That she also seems to have the self-confidence of a wet sponge probably doesn't help matters. Dildo-launching cannons don't answer back like the AI charity's clients do (hopefully!)

They have AI toasters... I wouldn't be so sure about the cannons...

[Wraith]

I like to think that the AI toaster is a reference to old episodes of Red Dwarf. I dread to imagine how or why a talking dildo cannon would be used once, let alone twice in media.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Beepatrice is, I think, a good example of the Peter Principle. She's pretty good in her given field, but once she's been promoted to what is shown to be quite a thankless position, she's out of her depth.

[Traab]

Honestly its been so long since this whole thing started ive forgotten but, wasnt the entire charity or whatever only recently formed when roko showed up? Beeptrice hadnt even had the chance to get settled in and suddenly here comes this aggressive action oriented person who is rushing everything right from the start and pushing things way past beeps level of experience and ability, likely leaving her heavily flustered and out at sea. And when someone that take charge starts doing exactly that, its hard to resist just letting them take charge unless you yourself have a similar mindset.

[Willie the Duck]

Its worth pointing out that her actual, literal job is to try and break things in dumb or unusual ways.

That's really a good point. A critical ingredient in idiot-proofing testing is a sufficiently-talented idiot.

She doesn't need much imagination, just follow the process and write down what happens.

I'd call it splitting the difference of all these. Beeps' day job does need imagination, and she can't really be an idiot (or at least she has to be able to do things in a scientific and documentative way, so maybe that is 'sufficiently-talented idiot'). What it requires most is a heavy dose of orthogonal thinking -- doing the insane thing to the dildo that some purchaser also would do and then need not to be injured by. So her job needs something of a space cadet, but a very specific kind of space cadet.

[PhantomFox]

Well, this certainly explains a lot.

[Cikomyr2]

Well, this certainly explains a lot.

And.. It's a bit satisfying.

I mean, it's silly. But I was a bit upset that Roko arrives and upstage the person currently in charge to the point of complete incompetence. It.. Didn't make sense, and was unfair to the person who managed to become boss.

But if she never wanted the position in the first place and was appointed against her desires? Suddenly it's a lot more acceptable. Still silly as hell, but more acceptable.

[Morquard]

Wait, if this little robot dude is Nelson... who is Arthur? (I assume it's not Bubble's plant)

[Rodin]

Wait, if this little robot dude is Nelson... who is Arthur? (I assume it's not Bubble's plant)

Isn't he Melon's roommate?

[dps]

I found the prejudice against people engaging in sport in high school weird. I know that it is an US thing I have seen enough US media and I have no comparison (because my school didn't have such stuff) to judge its veracity but it still sounds like there is a significant amount of stereotyping.

It's terribly overplayed in the media. Are there cliques in high school? Yes, absolutely, but in my experience it's not even remotely as bad as it it's often portrayed. The different cliques are neither as cohesive nor as exclusive as they tend to be shown (as someone pointed out, there's often a lot of overlap, and an individual student might be in several different cliques), and more importantly, not nearly as hostile to each other. In fact, taken as a whole, I'd say that in my high school at least, there wasn't any particular conflicts between different cliques; for the most part, the different cliques largely ignored each other. But because students often socially ignored those outside of their clique, people who weren't a member of any clique could feel terribly isolated. Most of the bullying I saw was perpetrated by people who weren't in any clique against others who also weren't in any clique.

[Vinyadan]

I found the prejudice against people engaging in sport in high school weird. I know that it is an US thing I have seen enough US media and I have no comparison (because my school didn't have such stuff) to judge its veracity but it still sounds like there is a significant amount of stereotyping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrrj0076E9U

About pent up rage against jocks from high school, has anyone here read the slaughterball arc in Dominic Deegan?

[Morquard]

Isn't he Melon's roommate?

Why is he working at the nonprofit suddenly, especially totally unseen so far? Did Jeph just confuse names?

[tomandtish]

That's really a good point. A critical ingredient in idiot-proofing testing is a sufficiently-talented idiot.

It's amazing how many people don't understand this. One of my extra tasks at work used to be software testing (seeing how new software interfaced with our existing system or if software upgrades worked as intended). I was allowed to pick 4-5 people to help me. I always picked 2 people who were experts, and 2 people who had trouble using it. Invariably it's the 2 people who had trouble who would hit the right combintation of "X + Y =s a wiped out database (when the database was supposed to be read only for an end user).

THose are the people who will do something so totally off the wall that a normal user would never think to check that.

[Keltest]

It's amazing how many people don't understand this. One of my extra tasks at work used to be software testing (seeing how new software interfaced with our existing system or if software upgrades worked as intended). I was allowed to pick 4-5 people to help me. I always picked 2 people who were experts, and 2 people who had trouble using it. Invariably it's the 2 people who had trouble who would hit the right combintation of "X + Y =s a wiped out database (when the database was supposed to be read only for an end user).

THose are the people who will do something so totally off the wall that a normal user would never think to check that.

Its almost always really, really visible to me when a program or device was created without any "average idiot" testing in place. They would work perfectly fine if you followed the train of thought of the engineer who designed it... and otherwise would consistently fail if you didn't already understand all the ins and outs of the system. Our self checkout at the store I work at is a major offender, basically failing to function at all unless you know the secret handshakes it wants.

[Felius]

Yes, it would have been very nice if you knew that before you signed up. It was also your responsibility to do your due diligence and research up the organization you were planning to join. What did you do, put "AI Charity" in google and picked the first NGO result to join with no further research? Hell, I'm surprised you didn't ended joining up some organization that was actually a front for something less palatable, or at least mired in corruption and misuse of funds, like so damn many NGOs.

[DaveOTN]

It looks like in our world Massachusetts non-profits need at least three board members (e.g., https://www.harborcompliance.com/inf...-massachusetts) so it's entirely possible this organization isn't so much a "non-profit" as a "pile of money getting slowly wasted." I doubt Jeph meant to make a legal plot point out of this, but we'll see.

[Keltest]

It looks like in our world Massachusetts non-profits need at least three board members (e.g., https://www.harborcompliance.com/inf...-massachusetts) so it's entirely possible this organization isn't so much a "non-profit" as a "pile of money getting slowly wasted." I doubt Jeph meant to make a legal plot point out of this, but we'll see.

Regardless of the legalities, I think it has up to this point 100% been a pile of money getting slowly wasted.

[Rodin]

Why is he working at the nonprofit suddenly, especially totally unseen so far? Did Jeph just confuse names?

Today's comic seems to confirm that Jeph forgot the names of his tertiary characters. Nelson and Beeps are the only ones working there.

[Willie the Duck]

Yes, it would have been very nice if you knew that before you signed up. It was also your responsibility to do your due diligence and research up the organization you were planning to join. What did you do, put "AI Charity" in google and picked the first NGO result to join with no further research? Hell, I'm surprised you didn't ended joining up some organization that was actually a front for something less palatable, or at least mired in corruption and misuse of funds, like so damn many NGOs.

I suspect she just looked down the block to the conveniently advertised AI Charity that she walked by every day. There is a slight justification in that this is a small MA college town, but even still Jeph makes his world exceedingly small.

[halfeye]

Today's comic seems to confirm that Jeph forgot the names of his tertiary characters. Nelson and Beeps are the only ones working there.

He could be Arthur Nelson or Nelson Arthur.

[Willie the Duck]

Today's comic seems to confirm that Jeph forgot the names of his tertiary characters. Nelson and Beeps are the only ones working there.

Forgot, goofed, called the teacher 'mommy,' however you want to think of it. He made an error while entering the text.

He could be Arthur Nelson or Nelson Arthur.

I look forward to that author saving throw in the next day or two.

[dps]

It looks like in our world Massachusetts non-profits need at least three board members (e.g., https://www.harborcompliance.com/inf...-massachusetts) so it's entirely possible this organization isn't so much a "non-profit" as a "pile of money getting slowly wasted." I doubt Jeph meant to make a legal plot point out of this, but we'll see.

You can be a board member with an organization and not actually work there.

In fact, it's probably more likely than not that most board members don't actually work within the organization that the board oversees.