Results 331 to 360 of 1474
-
2019-07-05, 12:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
'Ban billionaires' is a political stance - which a person may or may not agree with and we can't discuss anyway due to forum rules, but that's not the issue here, at least not really. The problem is that Jeph has portrayed the idea of fixing wealth distribution problems as something can be done with hand-waving ease by the ultra-rich, which is absolutely not true. It's a complex policy question that raises considerable issues with implementation and requires certain trade-offs within the legal framework that would be theoretically erected to combat the problem. Large-scale social issues cannot be solved by individual actions, they require systems actions, which means government and bureaucracy.
Jeph's lack of awareness of the differences created by scale causes him to present them in a comically oversimplified way and this causes a break in verisimilitude that weakens the story, or, in the case of pretty much everything involving Spookybot, causes it to fall apart entirely. QC is a very small scale story, it's about a group of people in a specific small city in a relatively out-of-the-way region who are broadly disconnected from important events. In the past, there was some awareness of this and whenever they left their bubble - like the time Martin and Marigold visited Hanner's Dad's space station - the absurdity of events was played up to emphasize this.
These characters simply aren't the correct characters to engage in a story about society level issues, and it is very clear that Jeph doesn't know enough about how the relevant institutions (law enforcement, etc.) work to tell those stories properly even if they were the right characters, nor is the world of QC constructed with sufficient attention to detail to present those issues without collapsing inward in a pile of robot mess. Honestly, the world isn't sufficiently well built to even tell stories about robots in the small-town context effectively, never mind at a large scale.
I suspect a core part of the problem is that it seems like most of the major human characters have run out the sitcom string as it were. Martin, Faye, and Dora are all in seemingly stable relationships, with Dora's agreement to tai's proposal being the most recent concluding event here. Hannelore is off on walkabout, Dale and Marigold are a rather low drama couple, and most of the other human characters are either minor or long-absent. The story needs to shift to Clinton, Elliot, Brun, Renee, and that circle, but it's seemingly moved toward the robots instead, and that simply is not working.
-
2019-07-05, 01:09 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- England
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
If hoarding money is a disease, then surely the demonising of billionaires is a form of ableism?
This isn't "Check mate, Jeph! You just got owned!"; this is "You're a recovering alcoholic, perhaps we should think more carefully about criticising other people for ****ty-yet-compulsive behaviour".~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
RPG Characters What I Done Played As (Explained Badly)
17 Things I Learned About 40k By Playing Dark Heresy
Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
-
2019-07-05, 01:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2008
- Location
- Germany
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Thank you for taking the words out of my mouth, kind of.
If he considers it a disease he should consider the implications. If he uses 'disease' as an insult, he should... Just stop.
On a much more positive note, I like the fact that the situation in comic is apparently better.
-
2019-07-05, 03:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Yeah, I'm not touching the wealth hoarding topic with a 10-foot pole. Said it before and I'll say it again, Jeph needs to stop doing politics. It's not what he's good at.
He tried to shift to them, but it didn't really work. Elliot isn't an interesting enough character to hold down a major role, Renee is too unlikable. Brun being atypical makes her hard to write stories for. He's tried to rehabilitate Clinton after his poor initial impression, but I just don't have any interest in reading about him.
Mostly I get the feeling that Jeph doesn't want to do QC any more, but is afraid to lose the revenue and that his audience won't follow him to a new project. So we get him trying to write the stories in the QCverse instead.
-
2019-07-05, 04:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- England
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
It is what I was hoping for. Despite the in-universe paradoxes they create, I am starting to find Spookybot to be quite endearing, and I also like how Roko is being "Mom" to a bunch of AIs who haven't quite figured out corporeal existence.
I don't disagree, but of all the people you just mentioned I think that Clinton is the one who is being wasted the most. Jeph has written some good stuff about human relationships and seems to want to talk about robots; Clinton being a cyborg has a lot of potential in which to talk about transhumanism and a perspective from both sides of the fence, especially if he could be used as a comparison for the Faye/Bubbles and Sven/May dynamics. Although someone having a robot BOYfriend might make an interesting change, too... Elliot x Winslow? Or Hanners x Station-in-a-body?
Mostly I get the feeling that Jeph doesn't want to do QC any more...~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
RPG Characters What I Done Played As (Explained Badly)
17 Things I Learned About 40k By Playing Dark Heresy
Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
-
2019-07-05, 05:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Originally Posted by Wraith
In particular, I think he wants to tell stories with greater stakes. Unfortunately, I don't think he has either the background or the research approach (and he's writing the comic full time, so research is a hard thing to put in) to properly ground such stories. Roko's an obvious case. He just didn't have the perspective to portray a cop character effectively once she moved from side to main status, especially not when he's added the 'she's a robot' complication to the whole thing. And as for Spookybot, well, just, that's a huge mess on every level. It was a fine as a one-off to save Bubbles - the existence of a super-powered AI was just another weird backdrop element echoing the whole 'future-shocked' theme - but bringing in a god-like entity as a recurring character is fraught with peril and it's started to degrade quickly.
Personally I think he should try writing a QC story arc set somewhere other than Northampton for a while, maybe a 50-strip story or so, perhaps focused on Hannelore ending her journey of discovery, and trying to introduce new characters in a new location - perhaps somewhere in Canada - and seeing if any take and offer the potential for restructuring the current setup.
Edit: Thinking on it further, Roko - if she's going to continue to be a main character - should absolutely re-locate somewhere else. You do not want keeping living in a town where you will always be the one who quit the force, it's a bad idea on many levels, and as a robot she has far less to tie her down than any human character.Last edited by Mechalich; 2019-07-05 at 05:29 AM.
-
2019-07-05, 06:49 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2005
- Location
- Over there!
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Those of you calling for Jeph to write other styles/scopes etc of stories, did any of you read Alice Grove? Wondering what your thoughts on that were.
GNU Terry Pratchett
My DMing advice.
Hong Kong
-
2019-07-05, 07:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
-
2019-07-05, 10:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Yeah. Without getting into detailed political discussion, my own views on things like policing, wealth, etc, are... complex, to say the least.
Jeph's statements on a lot of these "Issue Items" have had all the nuance and comprehension of a splitting maul, and show the sort of absolutism and good-bad binary thinking typical of a college sophomore.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
-
2019-07-05, 10:29 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2008
- Location
- Germany
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Not at all an attempt to derail this discussion but... What is going on with Spooky's hair? At least one part of it seems to be sentient and moving on its own.
Also, why is there a black background on panel 3?
-
2019-07-05, 10:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I dunno about the background, but the hair just looks like its a lock of hair thats slowly getting more and more out of control, like spooky slicked it back and its coming loose.
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
-
2019-07-05, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2014
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
The comic before Spooky showed up, the gang was talking with Station (the most powerful AI to date, and that was saying something), and Station was pretty nervous about going in and poking around the whatever-it-is CW left in Bubbles' head. The story arc could very well have ended a few comics later with Bubbles making a hard decision to do the right thing at her own expense, we get a nice moral about how working with criminals, even seemingly-helpful ones, can end with you getting hurt, and those memories being essentially permanently locked away lead to tension and drama later in the comic when Bubbles has some regrets over the decision made.
But no. Instead we get AI God teleporting in out of nowhere to solve the problem with super-hacking tools in the hands of Emily The Literal Computer Wizard, and tie up every last loose end, to the point that even half the characters involved in the storyline can't believe this is how it's getting resolved either.
Jeph wrote himself into a corner where probably the best path forward was "sometimes you don't get a happy ending and have to live with the consequences" and instead saw an off-ramp leading to pretty literal Deus Ex Machina. CAN'T PASS UP AN OPPORTUNITY LIKE THAT, THEN MY CHARACTERS WOULD BE SAD.
Currently Recruiting WW/Mafia: Logic's Deathloop Mafia and Cazero's Graduates Of Hope's Peak - Danganronpa Mafia
Avatar by AsteriskAmp
My Homebrew
-
2019-07-05, 12:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2019-07-05, 01:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
-
2019-07-05, 11:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I know this is not really pertinent to the debate at hand, but even Scrooge has liquid assets(hopefully, I am using the correct term). In the Don Rosa's book on his origins, the last story, when Donald and nephews meet with him on Christmas, he explains as much, when Donald is shocked into believing the uncle Scrooge keeps all of his money in the bin.
As for QC... at this point, I'm reading it out of habit. It's not really enjoyable anymore, but it has not sunk to the levels where I'd say "eff this" and turn away in disgust. I suspect that point may not be too far off in the future, but it's not quite here yet.
I miss the "slice-of-life" comic. Maybe, as so many have eluded, it's that Jeph isn't good at telling larger stories. Maybe it's just my own preferences. But yeah, I miss days when it was just Martin, Faye, Dora, Hanners and Pintsize and a bevy of supporting characters. I'm just not the fan of most of the new characters.
If Jeph wants to continue down this road, more power to him. But as so many times in life, I foresee a split in the road. Whether we'll continue down the same road remains to be seen. If not, I'll wish him a safe journey and bade farewell.Adrie, half elven bard. Drawing by Vulion, avatar by CheesePirate. Colored version by Callos_DeTerran. Thanks a lot, you guys.This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here."There will come a day so dark you will pray for death. On that day your prayers will be answered."Book of shadows, book of night, wake the beast and banish light.
-
2019-07-06, 10:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2010
- Location
- Tor zur Welt
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Well, I still like reading QC.
it has it’s lows but for me the current arc isn’t one of them.
but I read it as a 5 comics a week strip without overthinking or analysing too much into it.
that might actually be less destructive overall, than what is happening IRL: Super rich having money invested in outdated buisenesses and spending millions on lobbying to keep those business models protected by politics.* my emphasis
http://dmreference.com/SRD/
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/
Things that don't kill me make me strong
Things that do kill me leave me dead
-
2019-07-07, 06:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
The scrooge method would use quite a bit of metal. But if someone just left billions lying around digitally, well would that it exist even matter except for the potential that it could be used? (Okay in a bank the bank would be using it so there it clearly does, but if we had a bitcoin system or something.)
-
2019-07-07, 08:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2019-07-07, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2004
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Not even that. All she would have required to get rid of villain!Corpse Witch, was for Bubbles to accept that she wasn't getting her memories back and walk away. It just wouldn't have been the pat "the villain gets punished" ending Jeph wanted. And he also, hundreds of strips before having Spookybot state their unwillingness to tamper with other people's minds, preemptively demonstrated that that claim could only be horsecrap; Spookybot was perfectly happy to tamper with Corpse Witch's mind and laugh about it.
Like a couple other people, I have no objection at all to the politics Jeph has stated (and Hannelore is not a good counterargument: Hannelore is not particularly rich even though she could be if she cozied up to her mother, has been working to support herself at the same stratum as the other major characters of the comic ever since she was introduced, and loudly denounced her amoral, entitled billionaire mother in her last storyline), but I think it gives him narrative trouble in cases like that one: he wants both to take a stance against powerful authoritarians, and to have problems solved in ways that require authoritarian displays of power.Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
-
2019-07-07, 12:24 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Or you know he could have Station and his buddies go like 2 or 3 strips earlier say "Ok, we give it a shot" and be them uncover the memory hole. He could have done all that, the only reason we know he can't is that he said he can't. ANd then 2 strips later super-robot shows up, doing just that.
Or Corpse Witch wouldn't have to have the killswitch Dinosaur in there, so she couldn't actually have done anything to Bubbles, that would have required massive "brain surgery" There was no indication of that thing, till Emily was inside the brain. Up till then the blackmail material was "I can delete the key faster than you can punch me". But yes as you say she would have to be willing to walk away from it.
Bubbles could have cooperated with the Police to have CW locked up, for the "the villain gets punished" ending. But I somehow feel Jeph doesn't particularly like "snitches" either.
In other words, there had been plenty of ways that he could have wrapped up that plotline without Spookybot
-
2019-07-07, 12:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
-
2019-07-07, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
It's worth noting, though, that Hannelore didn't denounce her mother for doing things like amassing wealth or flouting the laws and strictures that apply to the majority of the populace, but rather for the horrible crime of giving Hannelore a servant for free and giving Tilly a nice section on the resume as part of a negotiating tactic.
-
2019-07-07, 02:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2005
- Location
- Over there!
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
GNU Terry Pratchett
My DMing advice.
Hong Kong
-
2019-07-07, 02:43 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I thought the final nail was the way her mother treated Tilly like a disposable negotiating chip, to be discarded the moment she had what she wanted from Tilly's father.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
-
2019-07-07, 03:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- England
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Another recent tweet suggests that this is exactly it. A recent news story described how 4 cops went into a Starbucks, bought coffee, and stood around talking before their 4th of July overtime shift began only to be asked to leave by the barista because another customer had complained that the police were making them feel "uncomfortable". There's absolutely no suggestion that the cops did anything wrong - they were just buying coffee and talking, and when asked to leave they did without incident - but the story is that Starbucks' Head Office offered apologies to the officers involved for their humiliation.
Jeph's response was "F--- the police, respect to the barista.". Just completely without irony - to him, cops deserved to be discriminated against and should be ostracized just for being cops.
Cops being anything less than amoral, organised criminals doesn't seem to fit into his worldview, no matter how vaguely it might be implied and even in his fictional comic by letting them solve crimes or be competent.
To be fair, there was a couple of decades worth of emotional abuse that she escaped from before all that, and even the episode with Tilly was an example of attempted manipulation. Forcing herself into Hannelore's life, disrupting her every action and telling her it's for her own good is a lie, and classic abusive behaviour.~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
RPG Characters What I Done Played As (Explained Badly)
17 Things I Learned About 40k By Playing Dark Heresy
Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
-
2019-07-07, 03:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
That attitude about police is pretty much the same sort of broken thinking as the anti-vax movement.
Basic concern about the safety of medical procedures or medicines is rational, but the irrational counter-factual mistrust of all vaccines can only flourish in a world where vaccines have made people unaware of what a world without vaccines is like. A tiny number of people suffering almost always minor complications from vaccines, or large numbers of people sickened, crippled, or killed by the diseases the vaccines would have prevented...
Jeph's attitude towards police can only really flourish in a place and time when law enforcement is relatively effective and responsive. Bad cops should be punished, fired, and barred from working in any capacity that holds authority, but the blanket hatred of cops is missing the entire forest for the bad apple trees.
Full disclosure, my brother is a highly accomplished and decorated police officer, who has saved lives, rescued people under fire from criminals by going into the line of fire himself, and ended hostage situations with the hostages alive both peacefully and with the use of force. I doubt any of the people whose lives he's saved or whose loved ones' lives he's saved would say "F the police".
When Jeph says those sorts of things, he comes across as a clueless petulant juvenile manchild.
E: and I'm going to leave it at that, and move on to other things.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2019-07-07 at 03:37 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
-
2019-07-07, 04:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I increasingly feel like the guy in the bottom panel of this strip. I'm not reading so much for the comic itself, I'm reading so that I can keep up with the discussions here.
Not touching the cop thing though - far too political.
-
2019-07-07, 04:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- England
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Though I don't remember the specific source, I seem to recall that Jeph has shared an anecdote or two about why he dislikes police so much. It amounts to him being pulled over and drug-tested and the cop in question was quite rude to him, or his apartment was broken in to and it took a few days for someone to investigate, or something as equally trivial and white privileged.
The point is, he hardly lived through the Rodney King riots and his dislike seems to be entirely the product of what he's read on the internet - something that has been suggested before, with his half-baked research into weed use and the likes.~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
RPG Characters What I Done Played As (Explained Badly)
17 Things I Learned About 40k By Playing Dark Heresy
Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
-
2019-07-07, 04:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I wouldn't go into that much detail, but this "cops are the enemy" attitude that's festering out there is going to get some good cops, maybe someone like my brother, killed, so for me it's not political, it's personal. It already happened in Houston and NYC, just random cops shot for being cops.
Half-baked... heh.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2019-07-07 at 05:00 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
-
2019-07-07, 05:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2010
- Location
- Tor zur Welt
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Last edited by Agi Hammerthief; 2019-07-07 at 05:27 PM.
* my emphasis
http://dmreference.com/SRD/
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/
Things that don't kill me make me strong
Things that do kill me leave me dead