Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"

[halfeye]

This is and has been such a weird hill to die on. Why is it so impossible to believe that someone could have gone their entire life without ever eating specifically raisins? What's so bloody special about raisins that someone, especially a poor person, couldn't possibly under any circumstances have eaten them? It's so bizarre to me that people have fixated on that one individual detail so aggressively.

You can get tiny packets of raisins for relatively ridiculous prices sold as snack food, but if you look for them as ingredients, you can buy them by the kilogram for relatively very little. They are a high sugar food, and not recommended for diets, but they are cheap if you don't buy them by the gram packet. If you are actually starving, they would be a great addition to bread. This may be new since the 1800s, it probably wasn't always like this, and there are probably countries where they aren't available or cheap, but at the moment in Britain (and apparently the rest of the first world) too poor to eat raisins is too poor to eat, and that will kill you dead in about a month.

[Max_Killjoy]

The thing is though, its not "It could be different" its "Its VERY different because of all these long established facts of how the qc universe works." We know that ais are a thing, we know there are even more of them not bothering with bodies, and that ais tend to spend a lot of time online for various reasons. All this alone would obviously skew numbers for online entertainment because its adding in an entirely new population group to the total. Now, that said, I admit the entire marigold turning into a well off streamer off screen thing is a bit nuts and doesnt fit into the story for a variety of reasons that takes effort to plug plot holes on, but the idea of streamers averaging higher audiences due to ai boredom and search for the strange isnt one of them.

Thing is, none of that about AIs changing the streaming market comes up in the comic, it's all reader speculation -- right?

[Willie the Duck]

This is where most of my conflicts come from. You can defend a lot of the plotllines by saying "it's just sitcom wackiness" but that defense falls apart when you start putting serious plotlines into the world as well. Don't get me wrong - I like having the serious plotlines in. Faye's various slow-moving disasters contain some of the better writing in the comic.

I find that a perfectly reasonable position to take if you affix a 'to me' statement to it. I disagree that the defense somehow falls apart though, because sitcoms do that all the time. All in the Family, Scrubs, M*A*S*H, heck I Love Lucy have vacillated between serious and wacky as needed since the sitcom format was established.

Once the price of a robot body matters, you then have to go back and take into account what the price was in the earlier strips.

You can if you want to, but you don't actually have to. There's no requirement on that part. 'It cost X back when it was a silly little gag, and now it costs Y when we're treating it seriously' is perfectly doable and fitting with established sitcom tropes.

Of course maybe our standards for our fiction just differs. QC has never been high art for me. It is The Simpsons or Dr. Who, not Roots or I, Claudius (or even things like Star Trek series that I probably shouldn't hold up to any high standard but inexplicably do). Honestly, thinking about webcomics I read, the only one where I might think something along the lines of 'your letting my expectations down, author, because you aren't treating your continuity as preciously as I do' would be maybe Girl Genius.

It's when he moves away from the personal and onto social issues that cracks start to appear.

Now here is where I agree. Jeph is bad at social issue plotlines. I just don't agree that it is because some level of continuity is being broken that is the problem with such plots.

That leads to the charity drive. Once you've established it took a charity drive, you then start wondering how the heck Pintsize managed it.

Regardless of the above, I think this can be explained. They could have simply overshot with the charity drive and got her a 'do regular maintenance and this will last you the rest of your life'-style new (consciousness) ride, whereas they could have gotten her a beater. To affix real dollar amounts, May was unable to scrape together let's say $500 working her old gig, the charity drive netted her a $40,000 new body, but the minimum new usable body (something like what Pintsize got) would only be in the $1500-3500 price range.

[Keltest]

Stuff like the Simpsons works because there is explicitly no continuity. At best youll have a multi-episode special that takes two or three times the normal length to get reset, but still has no lasting effect on future episodes.

QC though does have continuity, formerly pretty strong continuity. So when the writing just stops paying attention to the previous arcs, it becomes incredibly noticeable.

[Willie the Duck]

I would say that QC has a soft continuity, more akin to Friends than Simpsons. Certainly temporal distance gets wonky since they seem to be perpetual 20-something, but things that have previously happened stay having happened. But that's also where I disagree with the apparent general opinion in the thread that the writing has stopped paying attention to the previous arcs. May's getting a new body has been explicitly referenced.

[Ionathus]

Sure, they reference May's new body, but continuity isn't just about acknowledging old plot points. It's also about preserving the tone of those older stories, and that's what I have a problem with.

That's the part that bothers so many people about many sequel and prequel films: they don't contradict any *facts*, but the way the world is treated changes, sometimes in big ways that make you go "wait a minute, this is totally out of character for X! In the original films they wouldn't have felt this way at all!"

That can be effective if done properly. But if you don't take care, it can start to feel like you're not committed to your own established personalities and the "rules of the world", so to speak, and can't even be bothered to give a satisfactory explanation for the change.

[otakuryoga]

Clinton.exe has stopped working

[Cikomyr2]

Sure, they reference May's new body, but continuity isn't just about acknowledging old plot points. It's also about preserving the tone of those older stories, and that's what I have a problem with.

That's the part that bothers so many people about many sequel and prequel films: they don't contradict any *facts*, but the way the world is treated changes, sometimes in big ways that make you go "wait a minute, this is totally out of character for X! In the original films they wouldn't have felt this way at all!"

That can be effective if done properly. But if you don't take care, it can start to feel like you're not committed to your own established personalities and the "rules of the world", so to speak, and can't even be bothered to give a satisfactory explanation for the change.

I really don't want to overthink this to your level. I just want my daily funnies

[Ionathus]

*shrugs* I like to talk online about the webcomics, books, and shows that I enjoy - it's fun to look at how stories are told and talk about how they succeed or how they could succeed more.

That's just one way to enjoy it, of course - to each their own. I don't judge people who prefer not to dissect their entertainment.

As a side note, I'm a little curious whether you actually think "you're overthinking this" is going to land on an internet forum – many of us are here with the express purpose of overthinking things

[Cikomyr2]

*shrugs* I like to talk online about the webcomics, books, and shows that I enjoy - it's fun to look at how stories are told and talk about how they succeed or how they could succeed more.

That's just one way to enjoy it, of course - to each their own. I don't judge people who prefer not to dissect their entertainment.

As a side note, I'm a little curious whether you actually think "you're overthinking this" is going to land on an internet forum – many of us are here with the express purpose of overthinking things

Well.. QC hasn't really been a super smart/detailed/thought out storytelling. It's just make-as-you-go slice of life/soft sci-fi comedy that made a masturbation joke in the 1st strip.

Yhea, I get that the thematic wiplash between "May needed a body BAD" and "Pintsize just suddenly showed up with a new body no questions asked" is jarring, but May is a character whose entire conceit is paying the consequence of her actions, so having a small arc about unwittingly reaping the benefit of being a friend fit thematically.

Pintsize has never, ever been showed to actually have any consequence to anything he ever did. So the lack of string of his character suddenly getting his way despite not actually showing how is also in line with the thematic.


It's like if Jon Arbuckle (?) had a few strip about how he can't buy sufficient food and he has to scrounge Liz's garbage bin, but the next week we have jokes about Garfield overeating the lasagna. It doesn't fit narratively, but it fits thematically.

[Ionathus]

It's like if Jon Arbuckle (?) had a few strip about how he can't buy sufficient food and he has to scrounge Liz's garbage bin, but the next week we have jokes about Garfield overeating the lasagna. It doesn't fit narratively, but it fits thematically.

Are you familiar with Garfield Minus Garfield? Jon scrounging through the garbage is giving me those vibes.

[geoduck]

Pintsize has never, ever been showed to actually have any consequence to anything he ever did. So the lack of string of his character suddenly getting his way despite not actually showing how is also in line with the thematic.

That's not completely true. He's been pummeled a couple of times.

[Traab]

That's not completely true. He's been pummeled a couple of times.

And then like a sitcom is back to normal the next strip or day or whatever.

[Keltest]

And then like a sitcom is back to normal the next strip or day or whatever.

Actually, we have generally seen Pintsize being fixed.

[Delicious Taffy]

Today's strip is nice and unobjectionable. Just two folks makin' a date, no jarring moral quandaries to be seen. I also like Clinton's overly specific time stamp.

[Wraith]

I have to admit, the conversation is a repeated joke but it's about as entertaining as one could expect. Plot has been advanced, characters have not been betrayed, quirky situation/punchline at the end... We've had far, far worse.

Then again, I still mourn the lack of care in the art compared to a couple of years ago. Those brown blobs are supposed to be loaves of bread and this entire conversation has been "talking heads" that barely, if ever, strayed below their elbows - compare that to the first time we saw the Secret Bakery, when that counter between Elliot and Renee was glass-fronted and full of pastries.

[Cikomyr2]

That's not completely true. He's been pummeled a couple of times.

I do remember those, and this is why I said *actual* consequences. Ya know, more than the 1-2 strip punch or kick or freezer-putting in

Hell, he even antagonized a battlebot at one point and it was resolve in about 2 strips. Pintsize skipping by is his central character trait

Edit: I also love the punchline in today's strip. It landed pretty well with me.

[Ionathus]

I have to admit, the conversation is a repeated joke but it's about as entertaining as one could expect. Plot has been advanced, characters have not been betrayed, quirky situation/punchline at the end... We've had far, far worse.

Then again, I still mourn the lack of care in the art compared to a couple of years ago. Those brown blobs are supposed to be loaves of bread and this entire conversation has been "talking heads" that barely, if ever, strayed below their elbows - compare that to the first time we saw the Secret Bakery, when that counter between Elliot and Renee was glass-fronted and full of pastries.

Art style evolves so rapidly in QC, more than any other webcomic I read, whether for good or bad. I feel like you can jump 200 strips in any direction and all the characters look quite different. Every artist's style changes, and I recognize 200 represents most of an entire year of drawing, but QC's seems particularly fluid.

[Max_Killjoy]

If I had to pick one art style, it would be right around the time Hanners first appeared.

It was stylized, and not hyper-realistic, but the characters all stood out from each other, and it wasn't just extruded low-effort anime-like product.

Then there was a long period of slowly changing art with more realism perhaps, that was good, that included stuff like the first Secret Bakery appearances, maybe Marten's father's wedding IIRC.

Now... meh. Not reading for the art any more, that's for sure.

[Willie the Duck]

I think it's fairly common for a comic to cycle with regards to level of detail. I know Sluggy Freelance and PVP and Girly and Wapsi Square and certainly Bloom County all went through various eras where the backgrounds went from wildly imaginative and fleshed out to perfunctory to non-existent as the artist's time/attention span vacillated. It's both pretty understandable and relatively noncontroversial that more detailed is a better product.

[Eldan]

And Girl Genius. That varies between giant landscapes full of interesting characters and funny background details to just characters in front of empty colour, too.

[Ionathus]

Sometimes an empty background is totally valid as a narrative tool. It only becomes a problem when the author is doing it for effort reasons, rather than stylistic reasons.

I've always felt that Gunnerkrigg Court does an amazing job with the backgrounds. It emphasizes what's important, and downplays whatever isn't. And if every individual background figure is important, well, that's what Tom draws.

This results in some of my absolute favorite scenery of any visual work of fiction I've seen.

[Traab]

Actually, we have generally seen Pintsize being fixed.

Yeah, we get a couple panels of marten or whoever tinkering then back to normal. Its like watching those episodes of Family Matters when Steve, i dunno, drives a car through the living room. We see some half hearted attempts to clean up the mess, then next episode nobody ever mentions it again other than vague mentions of consequences for steve acting out. And the living room is entirely repaired and the same as it was at the start of the episode. Thats pintsize. He faces a repercussion for his behavior, then everything resets and it rarely gets more than a casual mention again, if that much.

[Delicious Taffy]

If we're talking about the art style, I personally don't care much for how these latest strips look. It's the eyes, I think. They're really big and it looks more cutesy than before. I really liked how the characters looked around the time Faye fell off the wagon and Claire came over to make coffee.

[PhantomFox]

... okay, this one felt a little ham-fisted to me, not gonna lie.

[Max_Killjoy]

In before someone recommends TIJUBAZ as the next thread title.

[georgie_leech]

Either way, we mourn you, old Pintsize. You appear to have been killed off screen and replaced by a poorly-mimic'd doppelganger that doesn't really have your personality down.

[geoduck]

Either way, we mourn you, old Pintsize. You appear to have been killed off screen and replaced by a poorly-mimic'd doppelganger that doesn't really have your personality down.

It would be amusing if the original Pintsize suddenly reappeared and said this was all a prank he set up with his friend.

[georgie_leech]

It would be amusing if the original Pintsize suddenly reappeared and said this was all a prank he set up with his friend.

Plot twist, this is spider-bot's new chasis.

[Delicious Taffy]

So, now that he's People-Shaped™, I guess he suddenly has propriety or something? Sure, whatever, can we see more of Claire and/or Bubbles instead?