Questionable Content XIX: Give Jeph Just A *Little* Credit, Here

[Ionathus]

I should note that when I said Claire is 'teh bestest' I meant current Claire, as in the Claire who seems to have undergone a massively transformative personal experience by having Dora write 'prioritize your needs' on the Coffee of Doom blackboard. The speech Claire makes in panel 3 of comic #4996 is not a speech the Claire of a thousand comics ago would have ever made.

Perhaps Dora's CoD blackboard has magical self-actualization powers? Is that what's been slowly eradicating all sources of interesting drama from the plots?

@Ionathus is completely correct that the most recent comic, by any sort of objective evaluation, is of a person headed for a massive disaster of the personal, the professional, or both. However, would anyone here actually be willing to bet that Claire's going to fail?

Not in a million years. Claire has gone full creator's pet and will succeed at this instantly (after precisely two strips of "oh wow this is really hard but I'm gonna do it because I Believe In Liz For Whatever Reason"). I just don't think Jeph has the guts or the chops to write a failure arc. He did, once upon a time with Faye, but I think he's out of practice and he truly doesn't have any interest in doing it anymore - why risk the status quo when it's a lot easier, more gratifying, and seemingly popular with the target audience on Patreon to shoot for "cozy low-stakes" plots instead?

QC has always been some level of slice-of-life wish-fulfillment, but the small believable ways the characters struggled (Faye with her substance dependence and fraught romance life for instance) made it feel very relatable. Nowadays, I just can't relate to any part of the comic. The characters all succeed instantly at whatever job or personal struggles they have. The AI elements are suddenly way more prominent but Fear Not! They don't change society in any truly meaningful way! They're just pastel people walking around who we occasionally invoke for tonally-iffy real world social commentary.

I've been hoping that things would at least go off the rails in an interesting way. But even Cubetown is shaping up to be just more bland wacky AI hijinks. It's hard to feel much of anything about any of it.

[Delicious Taffy]

Last we saw, Claire was storming off to scream into a pillow. It looks like her and Marten are on the boat home now, but it also looks like they're on the balcony of an apartment. Whichever one it is, I guess Claire never specified which pillow she was gonna scream into.

[WKnightofHyrule]

Anyone else feels like this could be the end of the Comic like it feels like almost everyone is in a soon to be happy ever after state.

[Vinyadan]

Anyone else feels like this could be the end of the Comic like it feels like almost everyone is in a soon to be happy ever after state.

Not really: Marten is about to start a gastronomy business and Claire is about to take a job she can't do, so in a realistic model there will be a lot of cursing involved.

It's still going better than how I had imagined it: I though there would have been a scene with an exhausted Marten lost on the ice pack, pursued by a crazed Canuck with swirling eyes and a club, screaming "Come here, baby seal!", until Marten slips and falls on his back and screams to the approaching man: "I'm not a seal! I'm Marten, dammit!" And the Canuck answers: "Good, good: Martens have good fur, too!"

[Ionathus]

Isn’t Marten, like, famously bad at coffee stuff?

Like sure he’s spent a lot of TIME in coffee shops, but I feel like I remember him getting roasted (lol coffee puns) for his barista abilities and his lack of good taste.

Why coffee why not just give him a band what is happening ugh

[Rodin]

Isn’t Marten, like, famously bad at coffee stuff?

Like sure he’s spent a lot of TIME in coffee shops, but I feel like I remember him getting roasted (lol coffee puns) for his barista abilities and his lack of good taste.

Why coffee why not just give him a band what is happening ugh

Yeah, he made the worst latte Dora has ever tasted. He's never shown any ability for making coffee, he's never shown any desire to run a business, has no experience at running a business, is the wrong personality type to run a business...so of course, he's going to run a business.

Sigh.

Anyone else feels like this could be the end of the Comic like it feels like almost everyone is in a soon to be happy ever after state.

This is why Jeph explicitly said the comic won't end. Because it would, in theory, be a place to end the comic. It's about Marten's time in Northampton, it would end when he left.

Frankly, I think it would be a better idea.

Last we saw, Claire was storming off to scream into a pillow. It looks like her and Marten are on the boat home now, but it also looks like they're on the balcony of an apartment. Whichever one it is, I guess Claire never specified which pillow she was gonna scream into.

They're on the apartment balcony that crazy security person was on before.

Not in a million years. Claire has gone full creator's pet and will succeed at this instantly (after precisely two strips of "oh wow this is really hard but I'm gonna do it because I Believe In Liz For Whatever Reason"). I just don't think Jeph has the guts or the chops to write a failure arc. He did, once upon a time with Faye, but I think he's out of practice and he truly doesn't have any interest in doing it anymore - why risk the status quo when it's a lot easier, more gratifying, and seemingly popular with the target audience on Patreon to shoot for "cozy low-stakes" plots instead?

QC has always been some level of slice-of-life wish-fulfillment, but the small believable ways the characters struggled (Faye with her substance dependence and fraught romance life for instance) made it feel very relatable. Nowadays, I just can't relate to any part of the comic. The characters all succeed instantly at whatever job or personal struggles they have. The AI elements are suddenly way more prominent but Fear Not! They don't change society in any truly meaningful way! They're just pastel people walking around who we occasionally invoke for tonally-iffy real world social commentary.

I've been hoping that things would at least go off the rails in an interesting way. But even Cubetown is shaping up to be just more bland wacky AI hijinks. It's hard to feel much of anything about any of it.

The job thing is especially frustrating. I've never had a problem that everybody was working in a coffee shop and managing to pay the bills with little effort because it's meant to be a sitcom. You don't focus on the job and characters don't lose their job for longer than an episode at a time. Giving the characters instant-mega-success calls attention to the job in a very unhealthy way.

If we had this exact same arc but it was Claire interviewing for a small library I would have much fewer complaints. I wouldn't even care if the library was in Northampton - it's unrealistic that there would be a head librarian job available in the smallish town at the exact moment Claire graduates, but it's easy enough to handwave that away in service of the plot. Instead we got...this.

[Mechalich]

The job thing is especially frustrating. I've never had a problem that everybody was working in a coffee shop and managing to pay the bills with little effort because it's meant to be a sitcom. You don't focus on the job and characters don't lose their job for longer than an episode at a time. Giving the characters instant-mega-success calls attention to the job in a very unhealthy way.

It also helped that the characters were living in Massachusetts, a state with one of the highest minimum wages in the country, in a small city not in a major metro with a declining population and their apartments were decent but a long ways from posh. The characters were unreasonably comfy, but it was mostly in ways that could be elided. For example, no one ever experienced a nasty dental issue that required a $1,000+ out of pocket expense dropped into their uninsured mouth, but fictional characters can safely just live in a world were dentistry never happens.

If we had this exact same arc but it was Claire interviewing for a small library I would have much fewer complaints. I wouldn't even care if the library was in Northampton - it's unrealistic that there would be a head librarian job available in the smallish town at the exact moment Claire graduates, but it's easy enough to handwave that away in service of the plot. Instead we got...this.

There are so many ways this arc could have been done better. The central elements are that rich AIs establish a wacky research institute but it's a mess and when Claire unexpectedly gets a job offer there she ends up realizing that in order to advance her career she's going to have to wade through some deep dysfunction.

The wacky research institute part is fine. Super rich AIs already exist in the comic. Having one of them establish a wacky research institute on something the scale of a building is nothing. Real life super-rich people do that all the time. Cubetown is simply too big. Even having such a research institute hire Claire is fine, if it had been explained as a bit of unconscious networking. Claire, after all, is no more than a single degree of separation from two AI superintelligences, Station and Yay, along multiple pathways. Either one could easily nudge her application across a metaphorical desk an the appropriate moment. And, really, having a rich friend-of-a-friend or friend-of-a-parent quietly arrange to get you a job is simply bog-standard. Instead the Director is simply too weird for that very functional explanation to hold.

[Vinyadan]

Am I remembering it wrong, or did Marten drink coffee in a rat-infested room from a mug he didn't know much about?

[Willie the Duck]

Am I remembering it wrong, or did Marten drink coffee in a rat-infested room from a mug he didn't know much about?

He certainly poured himself a cup, although I guess we didn't see him drink it. Why?

[Vinyadan]

He certainly poured himself a cup, although I guess we didn't see him drink it. Why?

Leptospirosis, mostly, and various other rat-borne illnesses that don't come to mind right now. Now, that would be a twist!

[Wraith]

He certainly poured himself a cup, although I guess we didn't see him drink it. Why?

In the very next comic, he pours it out into the bright yellow Hazardous Materials box behind him. Or possibly its just a random box, who knows?

I'm just aghast at how utterly bat-shot insane the logic has to be for Claire to want to stay in this place. Solving Liz's problems is NOT going to be her job either as Director of IS or as a Librarian. and it would be incredibly unhealthy for her to yoke her own personal success to solving the problems of every orphaned rando she stumbles across, and I can't stop thinking of a dozen comics where Dora has explained - in sleep deprived and partially starved detail - how hard it was to open her shop after years of working as a barista elsewhere but Marten is just 'maybe I'll do it, whatever' about opening a coffee shop in a town where 90% of the population don't have stomachs and and and

Who thinks this is good storytelling? Who wants this level of naked Author's Pet-ism? And how to we find those people and tie them into a sack and then throw that sack into the sea for their own good?

[Mordokai]

In the very next comic, he pours it out into the bright yellow Hazardous Materials box behind him. Or possibly its just a random box, who knows?

I'm just aghast at how utterly bat-shot insane the logic has to be for Claire to want to stay in this place. Solving Liz's problems is NOT going to be her job either as Director of IS or as a Librarian. and it would be incredibly unhealthy for her to yoke her own personal success to solving the problems of every orphaned rando she stumbles across, and I can't stop thinking of a dozen comics where Dora has explained - in sleep deprived and partially starved detail - how hard it was to open her shop after years of working as a barista elsewhere but Marten is just 'maybe I'll do it, whatever' about opening a coffee shop in a town where 90% of the population don't have stomachs and and and

Who thinks this is good storytelling? Who wants this level of naked Author's Pet-ism? And how to we find those people and tie them into a sack and then throw that sack into the sea for their own good?

At this point, I'm... you know what, I'm not going to say I believe Jeph suffers from schizophrenia*. I mean, there are signs pointing to it, but I honestly don't believe it.

But where does that leave us? Him pandering to the base? Lack of common sense? Already mentioned author's pet syndrome?

Speaking of it, what's the next level of author's pet? Is there such a thing? Because if we haven't sped past it already, I believe we are fast approaching it.

I'm going to say it. This is bad writing. And as, I believe it was Ionathous(apologies if I got your name wrong or if I misattributed the statement) said... it's not like I'm only reading this heap of garbage because of fond memories and hoping against hope that it will get better again, when it likely never will.

Further apologies if I got the gist of the message wrong, but I'm too tired/drunk to go back and check it.

*^{Yes, I know I just said it. Kindly disregard me putting my foot in my mouth so overtly}

[tyckspoon]

I'm just aghast at how utterly bat-shot insane the logic has to be for Claire to want to stay in this place. Solving Liz's problems is NOT going to be her job either as Director of IS or as a Librarian. and it would be incredibly unhealthy for her to yoke her own personal success to solving the problems of every orphaned rando she stumbles across, and I can't stop thinking of a dozen comics where Dora has explained - in sleep deprived and partially starved detail - how hard it was to open her shop after years of working as a barista elsewhere but Marten is just 'maybe I'll do it, whatever' about opening a coffee shop in a town where 90% of the population don't have stomachs and and and

Selling terrible coffee to customers who don't drink it and are just there for the performative experience of being in a Human Coffee Shop is probably actually a viable business plan in Cubetown, at least as long as there's no meaningful competition.

[Vinyadan]

Selling terrible coffee to customers who don't drink it and are just there for the performative experience of being in a Human Coffee Shop is probably actually a viable business plan in Cubetown, at least as long as there's no meaningful competition.

It could just be the same cup of coffee over and over, like the peanuts of certain bars in real life...

[Wraith]

Selling terrible coffee to customers who don't drink it and are just there for the performative experience of being in a Human Coffee Shop is probably actually a viable business plan in Cubetown, at least as long as there's no meaningful competition.

Well, I guess this concludes any mystique over Marten's inevitable success.

He opens a 'coffee shop' that has some sparkly lights projected on the ceiling, plays some vaguely non-chart music from a bluetooth speaker in the corner, sells shots of Draino, and becomes wildly successful as a "sensory experience" to the sheltered, pastel cretins of Cubetown who fall over themselves to throw money at him. He makes one cup of actual coffee per month, which gets mounted atop a floating black monolith who then ascends into the sky for unknown reasons.

Dora then justifiably turns purple and explodes through sheer outrage, because 10 years of putting blood, sweat and tears into your personal passion is for chumps.

[PhantomFox]

Could it be that they're being written out of the story and this is their happily ever after with the details being glossed over since they're not going to be focused on again outside of the occasional cameo?

[Ionathus]

Speaking of it, what's the next level of author's pet? Is there such a thing? Because if we haven't sped past it already, I believe we are fast approaching it.

The (original) subreddit has a running joke that all the other characters should start saying “Where’s Claire?” any time she’s not in a scene. I think that’s about the only step left to take, short of renaming the comic to Clairestionable Clairecerns.

(apologies if I got your name wrong or if I misattributed the statement)

No no, you pretty much hit the nail on the head - unfortunately :P

Selling terrible coffee to customers who don't drink it and are just there for the performative experience of being in a Human Coffee Shop is probably actually a viable business plan in Cubetown, at least as long as there's no meaningful competition.

Ugh, that’s what it’s gonna be, isn’t it? Wacky AI hijinks to prop up Marten’s *sigh* coffee business, handily justifying why he manages any success despite literally every factor being against him.

Could it be that they're being written out of the story and this is their happily ever after with the details being glossed over since they're not going to be focused on again outside of the occasional cameo?

Never in a million years. If Jeph writes Claire out of his comic, I will eat my hat. Hell, I’ll eat everyone’s hats.

[halfeye]

Never in a million years. If Jeph writes Claire out of his comic, I will eat my hat. Hell, I’ll eat everyone’s hats.

I'm pretty sure the "they" in question was the other characters.

[The Glyphstone]

Have we just abandoned any pretense of not being a Dominic-Deegan-style hate/snark thread by now?

[Vinyadan]

Never in a million years. If Jeph writes Claire out of his comic, I will eat my hat. Hell, I’ll eat everyone’s hats.

Dude, we already have a Wraith in this thread, we don't need a Ghost of Ionathus trapped between worlds because, while in life, he promised to eat everyone's hat and now some maiden of pure heart has to eat her grandad's hat so the curse can be broken.

[Wraith]

Have we just abandoned any pretense of not being a Dominic-Deegan-style hate/snark thread by now?

Not quite. Jeph has posted on his Patreon that he is A) definitely not ending the comic and B) will be switching between Cubetown and Northampton as his whim dictates, and if the comic is going to be 50% non-Cubetown then that is a 100% improvement over the current status quo and I'm kind of willing to see what he can do with the other characters while they're not sucked into its terrible terrible orbit.

Dude, we already have a Wraith in this thread, we don't need a Ghost of Ionathus trapped between worlds because, while in life, he promised to eat everyone's hat and now some maiden of pure heart has to eat her grandad's hat so the curse can be broken.

For the record, I only promised to eat my own posts - and have never yet been required to follow through with that promise.

[Rodin]

Not quite. Jeph has posted on his Patreon that he is A) definitely not ending the comic and B) will be switching between Cubetown and Northampton as his whim dictates, and if the comic is going to be 50% non-Cubetown then that is a 100% improvement over the current status quo and I'm kind of willing to see what he can do with the other characters while they're not sucked into its terrible terrible orbit.

That seems like a really odd decision, authorially. You have two groups of characters with no intersecting points, other than very occasional crossovers (Marten going to Dora's wedding). Any plots would run completely independently at the expense of the other location, exacerbating the jokes about not seeing a particular set of characters for a lengthy period of time. There have always been characters who don't interact much, but they've always had a shared core group.

For that matter, there's not a lot of story currently going on in Northampton. There's the wedding plans, and Jeph could finally decide to advance Faye and Bubble's business storyline. Other than that, what is there? More Marigold goblin hijinks? More Mommy-Milkers? Repeat Roko's Relentless Robot Rights Riot?

[georgie_leech]

I mean, there are worse developments the comic could have than the creation of a specifically Whacky Robot Shenanigans setting that is far away from the more sitcom-y bits everyone is complaining are getting overshadowed by the whacky robot shenanigans

[Rodin]

I mean, there are worse developments the comic could have than the creation of a specifically Whacky Robot Shenanigans setting that is far away from the more sitcom-y bits everyone is complaining are getting overshadowed by the whacky robot shenanigans

Don't get me wrong, less than 100% Cubetown (and less Claire as she is currently being written) is an absolute win.

It's just a really weird thing to do. If QC is a sitcom, then Cubetown is the spinoff. Only he isn't going all-in on doing a spinoff.

Chief O'Brien moves with his family to DS9, and we get introduced to a whole new cast of characters. This is required, because he has no contact with the old Enterprise crew. Throw in Worf too, even though it took him several seasons to move over.

Only instead of an episode of DS9 every week, we might get an episode of TNG instead. Or not. Who knows? They aren't running concurrently, and each show only gets an episode depending on the whims of the author that week.

Does that sound like a healthy setup?

[Ionathus]

Have we just abandoned any pretense of not being a Dominic-Deegan-style hate/snark thread by now?

I try not to purposely engage with things I dislike, because who has the time for that, but it's hard to separate that from "I used to like this thing and I want to like it again." Venting about the direction QC is going and talking to others who feel the same is cathartic for me, at least for now. Not sure how long I'll cling to that if I continue to actively dislike the story.

Dude, we already have a Wraith in this thread, we don't need a Ghost of Ionathus trapped between worlds because, while in life, he promised to eat everyone's hat and now some maiden of pure heart has to eat her grandad's hat so the curse can be broken.

I've never haunted a webcomic thread before - an exciting opportunity!

Not quite. Jeph has posted on his Patreon that he is A) definitely not ending the comic and B) will be switching between Cubetown and Northampton as his whim dictates, and if the comic is going to be 50% non-Cubetown then that is a 100% improvement over the current status quo and I'm kind of willing to see what he can do with the other characters while they're not sucked into its terrible terrible orbit.

This is my hope. I really enjoyed the old dynamic, and even some of the new stories too. If the comic splits into two narratives, it would be easier (if tedious) to just skip the parts I don't care about and come back when we return to Northampton.

For that matter, there's not a lot of story currently going on in Northampton. There's the wedding plans, and Jeph could finally decide to advance Faye and Bubble's business storyline. Other than that, what is there? More Marigold goblin hijinks? More Mommy-Milkers? Repeat Roko's Relentless Robot Rights Riot?

This will probably be the thing that makes it or breaks it for me. If we use the Northampton time to actually dig in to Union Robotics or Pintsize grappling with being a real boy or May being a horrible gremlin, I'd keep reading. If we fixate on Yay, Roko's RRRR, Clinton & Elliot's toothless milquetoast romance, and more horrible vtuber plots, I think my days as a reader are numbered. And yes, I realize how ludicrously naïve it sounds to expect the former when the latter is clearly Jeph's line of interest :(

[Wraith]

That seems like a really odd decision, authorially. You have two groups of characters with no intersecting points, other than very occasional crossovers (Marten going to Dora's wedding). Any plots would run completely independently at the expense of the other location, exacerbating the jokes about not seeing a particular set of characters for a lengthy period of time. There have always been characters who don't interact much, but they've always had a shared core group.

I've mentioned before that I think Jeph's job of creating daily content is terrifying. The pressure to think up a joke or a single story, however vague, can't be easy after a couple of years, let alone 15 or more, which explains why he hammers every situation to repetitively and goes back to things that had a natural finish and keeps going with them no matter what. The urge to use every scrap of inspiration and never let a single one go unused, no matter how illogical, must be overwhelming, because if you don't use it today, what will you use...?

If this is what it takes to flex his creativity or to give him a way to experiment without affecting his main product... fair enough. He can always get Claire fired and move back to Northampton if he needs to, there's far less way out if he ends QC and fails at starting a new comic.

Other than that, what is there? More Marigold goblin hijinks? More Mommy-Milkers? Repeat Roko's Relentless Robot Rights Riot?

There's a bunch of relationships to go back to - Clinton/Elliot, Brun/Millifeulle, Rene/Dan, Sam/Emmett, May/Sven, to name a few. Plus whatever Pintsize is going to do if Marten moves away, more yoga with Willow and Iris, Hannelore doing her thing training Claire's replacement, even Winslow adjusting to working at the AI non-profit some more? That's not even considering marginal characters like Momo, Jim and Veronica... I'd quite like to see more of the last two, to be honest, I like their dynamic.

[The Glyphstone]

If we're bringing old characters back, can we get Will and Penelope?

[Rodin]

If we're bringing old characters back, can we get Will and Penelope?

I was about to say. That list of characters is...oof. I don't like most of them. It's weird that Momo is a marginal character to Millefuelle.

On running a webcomic - it's super impressive that Jeph has kept up a 5-day webcomic for so long. No snark, that's just damn impressive.

But I can't help feel that we would be getting a better comic if he would give up on doing that. Move to 3 days a week. Take a month off to build up a strip buffer and plan story arcs. He updates more often and more regularly than webcomics authored by multiple people (The Foglios, Gabe and Tycho, Dr. McNinja when it was running, etc. etc.) and I think that's to the strip's detriment at times. Just look at the latest arc, where we took a week to get through a backstory other webcomics would tell in a day. The need to fill space becomes really obvious sometimes.

[Wraith]

I was about to say. That list of characters is...oof. I don't like most of them. It's weird that Momo is a marginal character to Millefuelle.

The last time I remember seeing Momo was way before the yoga arc, when May was first hired as Marigold's assistant. That's... what, 450? 500 strips ago? She didn't show up at all throughout the vtuber stuff, to which she was sort-of-kind-of adjacent, and the last time she had a story arc to herself was.... Talking to Bubbles about the fighting ring while she still worked there some 3000 strips ago?

As for the others, I don't necessarily like a lot of them, but I am still interested in seeing how they might get into trouble with each other and what sort of mess they can make - not that I want to see them suffer, but seeing them screw up and deal with the consequences has way more potential than Cubetown, which clearly isn't going anywhere.

[Johanny]

But I can't help feel that we would be getting a better comic if he would give up on doing that. Move to 3 days a week. Take a month off to build up a strip buffer and plan story arcs. He updates more often and more regularly than webcomics authored by multiple people (The Foglios, Gabe and Tycho, Dr. McNinja when it was running, etc. etc.) and I think that's to the strip's detriment at times. Just look at the latest arc, where we took a week to get through a backstory other webcomics would tell in a day. The need to fill space becomes really obvious sometimes.

IIRC, he said that he tried building a buffer and that it ended being a bad solution for him.
Also he always had a need to fill space, but he stopped all but Bembo's fillers.
No I'd say that the problem is that we moved away from his target audience.
I liked Roko's crusades and her dissociations problems. But since years, solutions to the cast's problems are way too quick and flawless to begin to draw interest...