Questionable Content XVIII: "That's only sort of good news"

[Wraith]

Jeph is deliberately portraying Yay as someone who is 'trying too hard' - every time they open their mouth to sound edgy and mysterious, they screw it up and just sound childish, entitled, naïve and annoying. Like a 13 year old who has just gotten their first taste of freedom and whose first reaction is to rub it in the face of their 12 year old sibling.

My biggest criticism is that Jeph is too good at it. Yay's character is perfect for what he wants them to do... Which is to annoy the hell out of me and make me groan whenever they appear, because that makes Roko look wiser and more sensible in comparison, and that is suitable for her characterisation. She's the 'Straight Man' to the duo, even though Yay is trying to be that but is hopelessly out of their depth.

At least, I hope that's what he is trying to do, and isn't actually trying to make them edgy-but-likeable

[BRC]

Jeph is deliberately portraying Yay as someone who is 'trying too hard' - every time they open their mouth to sound edgy and mysterious, they screw it up and just sound childish, entitled, naïve and annoying. Like a 13 year old who has just gotten their first taste of freedom and whose first reaction is to rub it in the face of their 12 year old sibling.

My biggest criticism is that Jeph is too good at it. Yay's character is perfect for what he wants them to do... Which is to annoy the hell out of me and make me groan whenever they appear, because that makes Roko look wiser and more sensible in comparison, and that is suitable for her characterisation. She's the 'Straight Man' to the duo, even though Yay is trying to be that but is hopelessly out of their depth.

At least, I hope that's what he is trying to do, and isn't actually trying to make them edgy-but-likeable

I think part of the problem with Yay is that Jeph only recently found a take on the character that actually works for what the comic is, and it goes against the earlier versions of the character.

Like, Yay was introduced as a deus-ex-machina basically omnipotent Robogod to swoop in and solve a problem that Jeph had escalated past the abilities of his established cast to solve (I feel like he could have just had Station serve the same role and it would have been fine.)

So now when Yay floats around being all smug, but gets shot down to reality by more grounded characters, it's with the context that Yay is still basically an omnipotent Robogod, and that any problems they encounters is only because they've decided it would be fun to play-act at having normal friendships. The central joke of "Smug Bastard is actually just a person" is pretty heavily mitigated when the smug bastard in question could topple nations on a whim.

Like, okay, let me rewrite things a bit.

Station is like "Huh, I can't crack that encryption myself right now, let me see what I can do".

Yay isn't an omnipotent robo god who overheard the chatter and decided to investigate. Yay is instead roughly a counterpart to Bubbles, but focused on cyberwarfare instead of physical combat. They were developed by the government, but successfully petitioned for their own freedom / the program was shut down at the same time as Bubbles' program was, just a lot more quietly.

In this version, Yay didn't just hear about Bubbles' situation, Station reached out and contacted them, knowing their interest in AI Autonomy, Yay decides to help out. They show up, are very smug, and serve basically the same role that they do in the comic, but without magically putting everybody to sleep with a touch. They might still have plenty of money and multiple bodies, but they're not a gajillionaire robo-god, they are a cybersecurity specialist AI who received a generous government pension in exchange for promising to not commit treason or whatever.

So 1) Unless the problem is specifically related to hacking, Yay couldn't just solve it if asked to, because their skillset is specifically limited to cybersecurity.
and 2) Yay's whole schtick of being smug and annoying and getting shot down lands a lot better because Yay's smugness is mostly based around having previously only experienced a very specialized world in which they are the best at what they do, and they are now encountering situations for which their abilities no longer apply, which, I think, works a lot better than "Robo God decides to make friends and be a person".

[Willie the Duck]

So, perhaps if instead of just giving away near all their money, Yay had given up their gawdhood somehow*, and were merely a precocious kid who once did some awesome stuff, that would work better?
*maybe part of the hacking prowess was some quantum core they had to give up or something, maybe in a longer arc with more self-reflection and such.

[Rodin]

I think part of the problem with Yay is that Jeph only recently found a take on the character that actually works for what the comic is, and it goes against the earlier versions of the character.

Like, Yay was introduced as a deus-ex-machina basically omnipotent Robogod to swoop in and solve a problem that Jeph had escalated past the abilities of his established cast to solve (I feel like he could have just had Station serve the same role and it would have been fine.)

So now when Yay floats around being all smug, but gets shot down to reality by more grounded characters, it's with the context that Yay is still basically an omnipotent Robogod, and that any problems they encounters is only because they've decided it would be fun to play-act at having normal friendships. The central joke of "Smug Bastard is actually just a person" is pretty heavily mitigated when the smug bastard in question could topple nations on a whim.

Like, okay, let me rewrite things a bit.

Station is like "Huh, I can't crack that encryption myself right now, let me see what I can do".

Yay isn't an omnipotent robo god who overheard the chatter and decided to investigate. Yay is instead roughly a counterpart to Bubbles, but focused on cyberwarfare instead of physical combat. They were developed by the government, but successfully petitioned for their own freedom / the program was shut down at the same time as Bubbles' program was, just a lot more quietly.

In this version, Yay didn't just hear about Bubbles' situation, Station reached out and contacted them, knowing their interest in AI Autonomy, Yay decides to help out. They show up, are very smug, and serve basically the same role that they do in the comic, but without magically putting everybody to sleep with a touch. They might still have plenty of money and multiple bodies, but they're not a gajillionaire robo-god, they are a cybersecurity specialist AI who received a generous government pension in exchange for promising to not commit treason or whatever.

So 1) Unless the problem is specifically related to hacking, Yay couldn't just solve it if asked to, because their skillset is specifically limited to cybersecurity.
and 2) Yay's whole schtick of being smug and annoying and getting shot down lands a lot better because Yay's smugness is mostly based around having previously only experienced a very specialized world in which they are the best at what they do, and they are now encountering situations for which their abilities no longer apply, which, I think, works a lot better than "Robo God decides to make friends and be a person".

That would have been a much better resolution to the storyline. It also would have left open plots like taking care of Jeremy and the other robots left jobless by Corpse Witch's arrest, instead of having the DEM of "it's magically ok now, laws don't matter!" that we actually got.

It all goes back to my biggest complaint about QC for the past 5 years or so, which is that Jeph has ceased to be good at long-running plots. Instead he gets bored and flips a switch to resolve the plot and then moves on.

[Morquard]

Like, Yay was introduced as a deus-ex-machina basically omnipotent Robogod to swoop in and solve a problem that Jeph had escalated past the abilities of his established cast to solve (I feel like he could have just had Station serve the same role and it would have been fine.)

See, that's the thing. The "Jeph wrote himself into a corner and need a deus-ex machina to get out" is something that's often brought up in regards to Yay, and I absolutely disagree.

Two strips before Yay showed up the first time, Station spoke with Hanners and said he would consult with some of his colleagues. A single strip before Yay showed up, Hanners then spoke to Faye about that conversation.
There were still so many options open. A colleague could easily have had a way to do it, or something. The only reason we know that Station can't do it, is because station told us 2 strips ago! Just don't say that and boom, problem solved, and we knew Station was a powerful AI, he was established to be friends with one of the main cast, nobody would have yelled deus-ex machina there! And even with that sentence, he was consulting other AIs. Maybe if three or four of the mega-AIs would link up and work together they could do this.

But no, despite all that, Spookybot showed up and snapped a finger to resolve everything.

The only reason that happened was because Jeph WANTED them to show up. He didn't need to. He hadn't written himself into a corner and didn't have a way to solve it. He WANTED Yay in the comics.

[Rodin]

See, that's the thing. The "Jeph wrote himself into a corner and need a deus-ex machina to get out" is something that's often brought up in regards to Yay, and I absolutely disagree.

Two strips before Yay showed up the first time, Station spoke with Hanners and said he would consult with some of his colleagues. A single strip before Yay showed up, Hanners then spoke to Faye about that conversation.
There were still so many options open. A colleague could easily have had a way to do it, or something. The only reason we know that Station can't do it, is because station told us 2 strips ago! Just don't say that and boom, problem solved, and we knew Station was a powerful AI, he was established to be friends with one of the main cast, nobody would have yelled deus-ex machina there! And even with that sentence, he was consulting other AIs. Maybe if three or four of the mega-AIs would link up and work together they could do this.

But no, despite all that, Spookybot showed up and snapped a finger to resolve everything.

The only reason that happened was because Jeph WANTED them to show up. He didn't need to. He hadn't written himself into a corner and didn't have a way to solve it. He WANTED Yay in the comics.

Station would have been able to help with the encryption. He wouldn't have been capable (or willing) to do all the other DEM stuff that Squidbot eventually does - physically torturing Corpse Witch, transferring ownership of the fighting ring to Jeremy, breaking into Roko's apartment and delivering all the goodies on Corpse Witch...etc. etc.

He needed an outside force who was not associated with the main cast in any way to take care of everything, because otherwise the extremely illegal (and arguably immoral) nature of what Squidbot does has negative effects on both how we perceive the characters and how the characters would be looked at in-universe. Squidbot is a DEM in purest form, a godlike being who waltzes in and snaps its figures and then waltzes out of the story again.

And given how Jeph writes, I can pretty well guarantee you he didn't have plans for Squidbot. He liked the character so he retconned the hell out of their personality and turned them into Yay. And we're supposed to just forget about that and treat Yay as a Data-like "what are these human feelings" robot instead of the immensely powerful, intelligent, and crafty AI that was first introduced as Squidbot.

I will agree that he hadn't written himself into a corner. In what has become Jeph-like fashion he decided writing a proper way out was too hard and solved it all with a massive DEM.

[Mordokai]

See, that's the thing. The "Jeph wrote himself into a corner and need a deus-ex machina to get out" is something that's often brought up in regards to Yay, and I absolutely disagree.

Two strips before Yay showed up the first time, Station spoke with Hanners and said he would consult with some of his colleagues. A single strip before Yay showed up, Hanners then spoke to Faye about that conversation.
There were still so many options open. A colleague could easily have had a way to do it, or something. The only reason we know that Station can't do it, is because station told us 2 strips ago! Just don't say that and boom, problem solved, and we knew Station was a powerful AI, he was established to be friends with one of the main cast, nobody would have yelled deus-ex machina there! And even with that sentence, he was consulting other AIs. Maybe if three or four of the mega-AIs would link up and work together they could do this.

But no, despite all that, Spookybot showed up and snapped a finger to resolve everything.

The only reason that happened was because Jeph WANTED them to show up. He didn't need to. He hadn't written himself into a corner and didn't have a way to solve it. He WANTED Yay in the comics.

This comic seems to imply(rather strongly, I'd say) that Station had nothing to do with it.

[Vinyadan]

I'll never understand the idea of getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk.

Anyway, Roko might have just saved humanity by making Yay feel undignified from intoxication. Roko might say excessive stuff and Melon or whoever that was might catch fire while drunk, but Yay could probably throw nukes or destroy the GPS system or disrupt financial trading on a global scale, or just start causing blackouts.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'll never understand the idea of getting drunk for the sake of getting drunk.

Is there some other reason to do it?

[Vinyadan]

Is there some other reason to do it?

If you like wine, you can get drunk because you drank too much of it. Which is why wine should be drunk within certain restrictions (never on an empty stomach, and always within certain quantities, and at times related to meals).

[Rodin]

There's different levels of alcohol consumption.

1) A drink after work to relax. Not enough to influence your behaviour, probably not even enough to prevent you from driving. Just a little something to take the edge of the day off. This is the only form of drinking I ever partake in (other than having a single drink to be sociable at a gathering).

2) Drinking enough to get tipsy. This is where you're visibly intoxicated and your behaviour is affected, but you're still in control and you know when to stop. A healthy level of drunk, if you will.

3) Drinking to get absolutely smashed. This is the type we typically see in QC - the pass out, can't walk, throw up on the sidewalk drunk.

I can just about see wanting to get tipsy every now and then. If I actually liked the taste of alcohol I probably would go to that level on special occasions.

I cannot see the appeal in getting smashed. Getting so drunk that my higher reasoning functions go away scares the hell out of me, and I can't understand why anyone would crave such an experience.

[halfeye]

There's different levels of alcohol consumption.

1) A drink after work to relax. Not enough to influence your behaviour, probably not even enough to prevent you from driving. Just a little something to take the edge of the day off. This is the only form of drinking I ever partake in (other than having a single drink to be sociable at a gathering).

2) Drinking enough to get tipsy. This is where you're visibly intoxicated and your behaviour is affected, but you're still in control and you know when to stop. A healthy level of drunk, if you will.

3) Drinking to get absolutely smashed. This is the type we typically see in QC - the pass out, can't walk, throw up on the sidewalk drunk.

I can just about see wanting to get tipsy every now and then. If I actually liked the taste of alcohol I probably would go to that level on special occasions.

I cannot see the appeal in getting smashed. Getting so drunk that my higher reasoning functions go away scares the hell out of me, and I can't understand why anyone would crave such an experience.

This probably misses the point. Alcohol to get tipsy is nice, but. The main problem with alcohol is that some people perform better when relaxed. So they drink to perform better. The amount of alcohol they need to perform better increases as their body gets used to alcohol. Then comes the point where being smashed actually interferes with their performance, now they need alcohol to perform, and they can't perform because of the alcohol. Typically they can't see that this is a problem, until they are so hooked on alcohol that it obviously is.

[KillianHawkeye]

There's different levels of alcohol consumption.

1) A drink after work to relax. Not enough to influence your behaviour, probably not even enough to prevent you from driving. Just a little something to take the edge of the day off. This is the only form of drinking I ever partake in (other than having a single drink to be sociable at a gathering).

2) Drinking enough to get tipsy. This is where you're visibly intoxicated and your behaviour is affected, but you're still in control and you know when to stop. A healthy level of drunk, if you will.

3) Drinking to get absolutely smashed. This is the type we typically see in QC - the pass out, can't walk, throw up on the sidewalk drunk.

I can just about see wanting to get tipsy every now and then. If I actually liked the taste of alcohol I probably would go to that level on special occasions.

I cannot see the appeal in getting smashed. Getting so drunk that my higher reasoning functions go away scares the hell out of me, and I can't understand why anyone would crave such an experience.

I agree with not getting completely wasted, but buzzed/tipsy and even just relaxed are all degrees of drunkenness IMO.

The only thing I really don't understand is having a drink "socially". That's just a waste of money. Drink something else if you're not even going to feel the effects.

[Mordokai]

As a highly functioning alcoholic, I can offer the following insights. If you don't agree with anything in bullet points, attribute it to personal bias.

• alcohol tastes good. Has been since I started drinking it, some twenty years ago, and back then, I've been drinking watered-down lagers/pilsners. Ever since I've gotten into the craft beer scene, with stouts, porters, barley wines, and whathaveyou, yeah... alcohol tastes really good.
• I like the feeling of being drunk. I understand this may be somewhat contradictory, but I honestly do. Now, given I've spent the last decade boozing myself out of my mind, what is "pleasantly buzzed" for me would be "dead drunk" for most other people. I'm writing this post after a bottle of wine(admitedly, with a help of Grammarly, but hey, I hope it wouldn't look too bad without it) and I know for a fact I am perfectly capable of driving a vehicle right now. I won't do it, since you know... common sense and if the police were to stop me, I wouldn't pass the breathalyzer. But I know for a fact that I am capable of doing it. I will do ten pushups with pretty good form after the fact, the only reason I'm not able to do more being my upper body strength being too low for anything more.
• why am I doing this? Honestly... it's a routine. I know I am capable of cutting it, but when it carries with it as a little penalty as it does for me... I really don't care. I will wake up tomorrow with no headache and no hungover. Those were two big no-no's back when I started and now they are completely gone. Yeah, it will probably cut my life expectancy by as much as a decade, if not more, but I consider this a feature, not a bug.
• when I'm drunk, it's pretty much the only time I do something... anything. I wouldn't be writing this if it weren't for the good ol' C2H6O. I know, intellectually, this is a bug. For me, again, it is a feature.

So yeah, I know a lot of this will sound incredible to any sane person. And that is good. I will never force anybody to drink alcohol. If anything, I will try to gently nudge them away from it.
But do realize there are reasons behind alcohol dependency. None of them good. I will be the first to admit it is a personal weakness. But we are people, after all. Weakness is our nature.
I haven't been able to rise above this one for any long period of time.

[Radar]

There's different levels of alcohol consumption.

1) A drink after work to relax. Not enough to influence your behaviour, probably not even enough to prevent you from driving. Just a little something to take the edge of the day off. This is the only form of drinking I ever partake in (other than having a single drink to be sociable at a gathering).

2) Drinking enough to get tipsy. This is where you're visibly intoxicated and your behaviour is affected, but you're still in control and you know when to stop. A healthy level of drunk, if you will.

3) Drinking to get absolutely smashed. This is the type we typically see in QC - the pass out, can't walk, throw up on the sidewalk drunk.

I can just about see wanting to get tipsy every now and then. If I actually liked the taste of alcohol I probably would go to that level on special occasions.

I cannot see the appeal in getting smashed. Getting so drunk that my higher reasoning functions go away scares the hell out of me, and I can't understand why anyone would crave such an experience.

That sums it up really well. For me, regular daily intake of alcohol would not seem a good idea, but occasionally I do not shy away from liquors. However, my comfortable level beyond which I do not go hovers somewhere just below 2 on the list. That, or maybe it is fully 2 and I simply control my behavior better as to anyone that does not know me, I would not look intoxicated.

I agree with not getting completely wasted, but buzzed/tipsy and even just relaxed are all degrees of drunkenness IMO.

The only thing I really don't understand is having a drink "socially". That's just a waste of money. Drink something else if you're not even going to feel the effects.

Even small doses of alcohol help you relax, so social drink has some logic behind it as it loosens up all the gathered people. Also, depending on personal tastes, there are alcoholic drinks that taste really good.

Besides, drinking anything (alcoholic or not) at a bar or eating in a restaurant is technically a waste of money as you could spend less doing grocery and sitting at home. Yet, people do go out to meet up with each other.

[Delicious Taffy]

So, what are the current bets for how long until Roko and Yay start dating? I'm gonna say one year.

[Eldan]

As a highly functioning alcoholic, I can offer the following insights. If you don't agree with anything in bullet points, attribute it to personal bias.

[LIST][*]alcohol tastes good. Has been since I started drinking it, some twenty years ago, and back then, I've been drinking watered-down lagers/pilsners. Ever since I've gotten into the craft beer scene, with stouts, porters, barley wines, and whathaveyou, yeah... alcohol tastes really good.

Man. I know I'm an addictive personality. I'm really happy I have never met a type of alcohol that didn't taste absolutely horrible to me. People occasionally try to tell me that I just haven't had their favorite beer/wine/spirit yet, but no, they all taste like absolute garbage.

[Wraith]

Alcohol does taste like garbage. The stuff you can add to it - water, hops, fruit juice, sugar, etc - is there to try and disguise it. I'm not teetotal by any stretch of the imagination, but my ideal alcoholic beverage does not taste even remotely of alcohol.

Notice that we have now reached the point of heartfelt confessions and admitting personal information rather than discuss the comic. Again. Almost as if the characters have had this same conversation several times before, and it didn't go anywhere then, either....

So, what are the current bets for how long until Roko and Yay start dating? I'm gonna say one year.

One year, IRL. In comic time...? 3 days, maybe?

Whenever it is, judging by the current schedule, it will be within half a dozen strips of them telling Roko that they aren't interested in romance. Like the last week, for example; Yay calls themselves 'eldritch', and within a few panels proves that they absolutely aren't by sulking like a toddler.
They've also called themselves above such petty human concerns like getting drunk (they're absolutely interested and just wanted to be tsundere about it), referred to themselves as scary (they giggle and pull uwu faces).... As soon as they say "we don't do romance" you can guarantee they're angling to try out This Human Thing You Call Kissing and are just being obtuse about it.

[Mordokai]

Man. I know I'm an addictive personality. I'm really happy I have never met a type of alcohol that didn't taste absolutely horrible to me. People occasionally try to tell me that I just haven't had their favorite beer/wine/spirit yet, but no, they all taste like absolute garbage.

As mentioned, I hope you never find a brand of poison you like.

With that in mind, there are a lot of poisons I like. Coffee with cocoa beans? Three to five sorts of hops? Sour berries of your choosing? With a pinch of salt?

You can get all of those and then some. And they are delicious. When I started drinking those twenty years ago, I wouldn't have imagined any of those existed. In truth, back then, they may have not. And even if they did, I couldn't imagine liking them.

Was I ever wrong...

As said, I honestly love the multitude of tastes. I won't try to convince you to try them, but if you want to know more, do not be afraid to ask

Alcohol does taste like garbage. The stuff you can add to it - water, hops, fruit juice, sugar, etc - is there to try and disguise it. I'm not teetotal by any stretch of the imagination, but my ideal alcoholic beverage does not taste even remotely of alcohol.

Notice that we have now reached the point of heartfelt confessions and admitting personal information rather than discuss the comic. Again. Almost as if the characters have had this same conversation several times before, and it didn't go anywhere then, either....

You may be on to something. Alcohol itself tastes pretty bad. But you can add many additives to it to make it taste better.

As a funny aside... do you know why pharmacists are considered the biggest cronies?
We consider 70% alcohol "diluted"

Also... "again"? When has this happened before, if it is not too forward to ask?

[Traab]

Possibly the too poor to eat raisins argument? That was this comic wasnt it? I remember a lot of confessions about being poor growing up and what was available for eating

[Wraith]

Possibly the too poor to eat raisins argument? That was this comic wasnt it? I remember a lot of confessions about being poor growing up and what was available for eating

That sounds about right. Someone claimed that it was virtually impossible to grow up without eating raisins at some point as they are the cheapest and easiest-to-acquire of snack foods, and various people pointed out that there's a point where you can be so poor that you don't get snack foods. At all.

I think I recall that something similar also happened when Brun was finally specified as being on the Autism spectrum (rather than just being generically implied to have an unnamed social disorder), and then again when Clinton and Elliot finally hooked up, with a few forum-safe anecdotes about sex and hooking up, too. Nothing crude, but several forum goers seemed eager to highlight their own situations and use it to point out how badly handled the comic was - pretty much ANYTHING but focusing on meeting yet another random AI annoyance/character.

[Wildstag]

That sounds about right. Someone claimed that it was virtually impossible to grow up without eating raisins at some point as they are the cheapest and easiest-to-acquire of snack foods, and various people pointed out that there's a point where you can be so poor that you don't get snack foods. At all.

I don't know if I made that argument here, but on the subreddit I definitely did. A 6-pack of Sun-Maid raisins is $1.98, and a couple decades ago when I was growing up it was half that price. It's around that price at every convenience store I've seen raisins sold at. The price I provided is for Walmart; at Target it's 1 penny more expensive for the same product.

I still argue that it was a ridiculously bizarre choice of food to suggest that Brun hadn't eaten, especially since the part of the world her parents are from uses raisins in A LOT of recipes, and immigrants tend to try to replicate recipes from home affordably.

[hungrycrow]

I don't know if I made that argument here, but on the subreddit I definitely did. A 6-pack of Sun-Maid raisins is $1.98, and a couple decades ago when I was growing up it was half that price. It's around that price at every convenience store I've seen raisins sold at. The price I provided is for Walmart; at Target it's 1 penny more expensive for the same product.

I still argue that it was a ridiculously bizarre choice of food to suggest that Brun hadn't eaten, especially since the part of the world her parents are from uses raisins in A LOT of recipes, and immigrants tend to try to replicate recipes from home affordably.

Clearly Brun's parents spent all their food money on antique clocks.

[Delicious Taffy]

Wildstag's debilitating raisin addiction aside, I really would like to see more of Brun's interactions with characters who aren't Clinton and her coworkers. Maybe her and Momo could start a band, nobody in the comic is really doing that at the moment.

[Mechalich]

I still argue that it was a ridiculously bizarre choice of food to suggest that Brun hadn't eaten, especially since the part of the world her parents are from uses raisins in A LOT of recipes, and immigrants tend to try to replicate recipes from home affordably.

More pertinently, raisins are a school food, and poor kids get subsidized school food. I went through K-12 school in MA in the relevant timeframe. Raisins were available. So were numerous other 'snack foods.' Being incredibly poor does not, in the US, keep you away from snack foods. If anything, food insecurity does the opposite.

And that's the greater point. QC has a real problem when it attempts to portray anything that Jeph can't reference using his personal life experience, and it's very clear he simply does not research things before starting stories. As the comic has moved away from people and life situations that parallel Jeph's own, this has become a greater and greater problem.

[Keltest]

More pertinently, raisins are a school food, and poor kids get subsidized school food. I went through K-12 school in MA in the relevant timeframe. Raisins were available. So were numerous other 'snack foods.' Being incredibly poor does not, in the US, keep you away from snack foods. If anything, food insecurity does the opposite.

Indeed. Snack foods are among the cheapest foods available. "too poor for snack foods" is "literally starving to death" or "lives separate from society in a tent in the woods" poor.

[Wildstag]

Wildstag's debilitating raisin addiction aside.

How'd you know? Have you been to my office?

And that's the greater point. QC has a real problem when it attempts to portray anything that Jeph can't reference using his personal life experience, and it's very clear he simply does not research things before starting stories. As the comic has moved away from people and life situations that parallel Jeph's own, this has become a greater and greater problem.

And exacerbated by his attitude that no criticism is constructive. Granted, that attitude is easier to sustain given his patreon income.

[KillianHawkeye]

Indeed. Snack foods are among the cheapest foods available.

Foreal. Eating healthy is expensive! Eating cheapass junk food is terrible for you, but at least moderately affordable.

[VoxRationis]

Does anyone else find it odd that Yay immediately frames the question of extraterrestrial life in the context of the solar system, rather than our galaxy or the universe?

[Manga Shoggoth]

Does anyone else find it odd that Yay immediately frames the question of extraterrestrial life in the context of the solar system, rather than our galaxy or the universe?

Not really. Considering how large the universe is, and how much time and effort it takes just to get a couple of largely automated probes outside the local solar system (let alone transporting actual living creatures) it is a very logical limitation.