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

[Cikomyr2]

I think I wasn't properly clear. I was specifically responding to the 'I don't want to go to college, I hate college!' side of the issue and not the 'I can't handle college!' side. This admittedly is me anticipating an argument that hasn't fully been articulated, but that I expect we will get given things Jeph has said in the past. There is a strain of thought among that kind of intellectual space that college is, broadly, a scam to trap people in debt and that they'd be better off without it and that no going to college or dropping out is a perfectly okay choice. And while, at a policy level I'm very sympathetic to problems with the academic-industrial complex in the US, at the personal level, anyone who gets into college and has a chance to graduate without taking on debt (or even just a little debt), needs to give their absolute utmost to make that happen. It is almost certainly going to be the most important professional action they will undertake in their entire lives. Yes, colleges sell this frankly somewhat bizarre idea of the 'college experience' as this academic idyll that should be the best time of your life and other garbage, but even if college is massively unfun, it's still worth it to finish in any sort of personal economic calculation.

If Ayo legitimately can't handle going to college because of her mental illness, fine, okay, that's a thing that happens. It's unfortunate, especially since colleges are generally a lot more accommodating than the sort of jobs a college dropout is likely to be able to get and therefore unless she's able to get really effective help she's liable to be broadly unable to handle life going forward, but mental illness is what it is. However, the character, as presented, doesn't feel that way. Yemisi proposes possible fixes and Ayo immediately and emphatically shoots them down.

Again, ive seen that kind of problem often nowadays. Overgrown kids who had everything picked up for them because "its whats best for you" and they end up with a genuine inability to make decisions for themselves - especially if their caretaker belittled or humiliated them for thinking independantly. Some of them may grow frustrated when they realize they never truly had a say in their life, their choices.

Just because its objectively the best course of action to earn a scholarship and get a degree, maybe its choice that a kid should be making themselves instead of merely following the motion after being told.whats best for her.

[Beelzebub1111]

Ayo's upset because she knows her sister is right. That's really all there is to it.

[Keltest]

Ayo's upset because she knows her sister is right. That's really all there is to it.

Lets be fair here, Ayo is also probably upset because her sister is treating her like an idiot who hasn't figured this stuff out for herself instead of somebody who knows they're in trouble and is looking for help. Sarcastic confrontation is not the correct response for somebody who has just had their life shattered.

[Beelzebub1111]

Lets be fair here, Ayo is also probably upset because her sister is treating her like an idiot who hasn't figured this stuff out for herself instead of somebody who knows they're in trouble and is looking for help. Sarcastic confrontation is not the correct response for somebody who has just had their life shattered.

She admits to being an idiot who hasn't figured out any steps to do anything and not thinking ahead, why shouldn't she be treated like that?

The only right thing to do is to tell her parents. There is no reason not to, Ayo can't think of a reason not to so she's tone policing her sister pointing out how ridiculous it is to not tell them. Yemisi doesn't need to be nice about this or offer to cover for her in any way. Any reaction other than "Okay, I won't tell them, you can stay here as long as you need. It's all okay." would be met with "You aren't helping".

[Keltest]

She admits to being an idiot who hasn't figured out any steps to do anything and not thinking ahead, why shouldn't she be treated like that?

The only right thing to do is to tell her parents. There is no reason not to, Ayo can't think of a reason not to so she's tone policing her sister pointing out how ridiculous it is to not tell them. Yemisi doesn't need to be nice about this or offer to cover for her in any way. Any reaction other than "Okay, I won't tell them, you can stay here as long as you need. It's all okay." would be met with "You aren't helping".

What is calling (or insinuating) Ayo an idiot accomplishing other than to make her feel worse than she already does?

[Ionathus]

This is the first Yemisi’s heard about the situation, so she’s processing it and getting mad at Ayo because it is honestly a pretty frustrating situation for your kid sister to dump on you.

Ayo meanwhile has already gone over all these points in her head — there’s no way she’s not aware of everything Yemisi is saying and hasn’t already used it against herself in her own mental self-criticism.

Both are pretty natural reactions to the start of a life shaking revelation like this. I don’t begrudge either of them their initial feelings — though of course once they’ve “got it all out of their systems” there will definitely need to be more work done to fix it.

This is the most relatable the comic has been in maybe years and I’m here for it.

[Beelzebub1111]

What is calling (or insinuating) Ayo an idiot accomplishing other than to make her feel worse than she already does?

The point is to convince her that she should tell her parents and to point out how short sighted she's being. As well as point out when she's doing the exact same thing that got her into that mess, especially with that last one. She isn't directly calling her an idiot or stupid. she is poking holes in a poorly thought out "plan" until she admits that there is no other option than to tell the truth ASAP. Hiding makes it worse and, again, what caused her situation.

[Mechalich]

Ayo meanwhile has already gone over all these points in her head — there’s no way she’s not aware of everything Yemisi is saying and hasn’t already used it against herself in her own mental self-criticism.

Maybe, then again, maybe not. While people struggling with this kind of mental roadblock can be remarkably self-aware, they can also be consciously in a tremendous amount of self-denial and there's no way for anyone else to know which is true without going through all of it.

I'm not sure I'd rate Ayo's self-awareness all that high. How long does she reasonably expect to be able to hide her drop out status from her parents? Most college students go home at the end of each semester. Staying on campus requires some kind of special arrangement and her parents will presumably be kind of miffed when Ayo doesn't show up at their house in a couple of days.

[Manga Shoggoth]

...And, by the look of it, this is far from the first time this kind of thing has happened. I don't blame her for being snarky about it.

[Wraith]

It's often been rumoured that despite his protests to the contrary, Jeph does lurk on Reddit and Twitter to see feedback about QC.

After today's comic (and not for the first time) I'm now very strongly suspecting that he lurks on GitP and reads my comments as well.

[Durazno]

Doesn't he have a buffer? I thought this comic would have been made a while ago.

Maybe I'm getting this comic mixed up with others.

[Ionathus]

It's often been rumoured that despite his protests to the contrary, Jeph does lurk on Reddit and Twitter to see feedback about QC.

After today's comic (and not for the first time) I'm now very strongly suspecting that he lurks on GitP and reads my comments as well.

Which parts in particular?

Honestly I’d be surprised if he could even feasibly have a way to find this forum. The Algorithm(TM) ain’t exactly pushing it

[Beelzebub1111]

Well that ended like a wet fart.

[Wraith]

Doesn't he have a buffer? I thought this comic would have been made a while ago.

Apparently it varies. I'm not a patron, but I've read elsewhere that he has sometimes addressed their comments in-comic within a couple of days. Charitably, that could just mean he's got 5 weeks of comics ahead and just needs to edit one a little when he feels like so it's not a great indicator, however he doesn't edit for art mistakes like people missing fingers, or spectacles glitching through peoples' faces, so... *shrug*

Which parts in particular?

Just to be clear, I was joking - I don't actually think that Jeph Jacques stealthily stalks me across the internet and steals my ideas for plot points. Unless he's really good at doing it and I just haven't seen any proof, of course....

But in broad terms, I have predicted in this arc alone; Ayo being Yemisi's sister, Ayo being a childish and/or neurotic wreck, Ayo's 'executive malfunction' likely being a convenient excuse, Ayo not actually having dropped out but having fled before anything official was said, Ayo's poor prioritising of informing her parents, and this arc being very nearly a carbon-copy of Liz, just with one edgelord AI idiot rather than one moron AI idiot.

So either I have the crappiest superpower ever conceived, or that last one was so close to the truth as to make no difference

[Ionathus]

Sure, but I feel like I see that happen in any webcomic fan forum. I've seen it several times on actual OotS discussion threads where someone has said "look, look! Rich is answering our debate directly! He clearly squeezed in [exposition] because he saw us arguing about it!" when in reality, that plot point was clearly planned ahead of time and it just took awhile to get there because, y'know, the talky-talky boxes do occasionally need to have pictures in them

Feels like a unique situation for webcomics. No other artform is published at such a steady but granular rate, one page at a time instead of one collection/book/storyline at a time. It gives fans something to talk about in online discussions, but it's also high octane fuel for the fan-theory realm because you can't even get through a single scene all at once. It's like pausing a TV show every 2-5 minutes and then spending the rest of the day debating what will happen next with your friends. If you're good at reading a narrative arc, you can usually make a pretty good guess for how the rest of the scene will go. But I don't really consider that something that I'm "expected " to be speculating about, as opposed to other longer-term mysteries that are clearly more set up for speculation.

Yeah I know you're joking and I'm sorry if I'm taking it too seriously This is just something that I see all the time with webcomic discussions and it's my personal theory that, usually, anytime you "guess" a webcomic development correctly, the artist thought of it long before you did, and no, you don't deserve a storywriting co-credit

Just to be clear, I was joking - I don't actually think that Jeph Jacques stealthily stalks me across the internet and steals my ideas for plot points. Unless he's really good at doing it and I just haven't seen any proof, of course....

But in broad terms, I have predicted in this arc alone; Ayo being Yemisi's sister, Ayo being a childish and/or neurotic wreck, Ayo's 'executive malfunction' likely being a convenient excuse, Ayo not actually having dropped out but having fled before anything official was said, Ayo's poor prioritising of informing her parents, and this arc being very nearly a carbon-copy of Liz, just with one edgelord AI idiot rather than one moron AI idiot.

So either I have the crappiest superpower ever conceived, or that last one was so close to the truth as to make no difference

Now in your specific situation, the answer is quite clear to me: Jeph has no idea this forum exists, but he is also predictable as hell, so you made a good guess with what you know about his writing tendencies and, presto, got it in one. Congrats

[Wraith]

Yeah I know you're joking and I'm sorry if I'm taking it too seriously This is just something that I see all the time with webcomic discussions and it's my personal theory that, usually, anytime you "guess" a webcomic development correctly, the artist thought of it long before you did, and no, you don't deserve a storywriting co-credit

There's a British magician/mentalist called Derren Brown. His gimmick is to predict an incredibly unlikely outcome involving a trick being 'performed' by a member of the public - one I remember is that he magically predicted that he would flip a coin 10 times and gets 10 Heads in a row, then live on camera, he does it right in front of us. Another one was that he gave a random lady a betting slip for 10 horse races, then she won very single race in first place in a row.

Late in his career, he revealed how he did these tricks - he just stood in front of a camera for 14 hours flipping coins until, statistically inevitably, he managed 10 heads. The lady betting on horses? He also did exactly the same thing with ~1499 other random people, each one betting on different horses to win the same races, so that after 10 races he MUST have someone who won 10 times. All he really had to do as 'work' was to record 1500 interviews where he introduced each person to the trick as though they were the only one.

That's me, at this point. Throw enough darts, eventually you'll have to hit 10 bullseyes in a row.

Now in your specific situation, the answer is quite clear to me: Jeph has no idea this forum exists, but he is also predictable as hell, so you made a good guess with what you know about his writing tendencies and, presto, got it in one. Congrats

Nope. Superhero. I refuse any other explanation.

[halfeye]

That's me, at this point. Throw enough darts, eventually you'll have to hit 10 bullseyes in a row.

There isn't enough room in a bullseye to hit it ten times without removing darts in between throws. Also, bullseye isn't the highest score on a dartboard.

[Mechalich]

Now in your specific situation, the answer is quite clear to me: Jeph has no idea this forum exists, but he is also predictable as hell, so you made a good guess with what you know about his writing tendencies and, presto, got it in one. Congrats

Yeah. I mean, I've predicted a lot of recent plot developments in QC too - ex. in this arc I made a comment to the effect of 'where is Ayo's stuff' and it was addressed in the very next comic. Now, I do think that Jeph very often leaves gapingly obvious plotholes in place in one comic, sees commentary somewhere and then quickly slaps on a patch job in the next. It's probably not this forum, but the general publication pattern of the past few years suggests a definite pattern of rapid response to fairly easy-to-spot problems with ongoing arcs.

The comic could clearly improve if Jeph did more advance research, planned ahead a little better, or ran his drafts by a test audience before slapping them up on the internet. There are just too many 'thirty seconds of googling could have avoided this' problems with the comic.

[Ionathus]

Yeah. I mean, I've predicted a lot of recent plot developments in QC too - ex. in this arc I made a comment to the effect of 'where is Ayo's stuff' and it was addressed in the very next comic. Now, I do think that Jeph very often leaves gapingly obvious plotholes in place in one comic, sees commentary somewhere and then quickly slaps on a patch job in the next.

Very probably.

The question of Ayo’s luggage never bothered me all that much: maybe because it never occurred to me, but mostly just because it’s not worth spending panel space on compared to the main question of how her family was gonna react. I can come up with several plausible answers that don’t require more assumptions: she stashed it in the alley before walking into CoD, she left everything in her dorm, she rented a locker somewhere, etc.

Granted, I still think it’s fairly likely Jeph forgot, and then JEPH was bothered by it, which is fair. And I didn’t mind the way it got addressed in comic (even though it’s yet another ditzy-forgetful joke, it worked better than usual since it got the wordplay setup of “there’s a lot to unpack here” and thus was, Y’know, an actual punchline instead of just being another “isn’t [character] behaving so quirky??” cop-out punchline )

Reminds me of the OotS forum debate early on in the Durkon-Redcloak fight, where a bunch of commenters had been saying “tell Redcloak about TDO not surviving to next world!!” and it never came up during actual negotiations, and when Minrah tried it later during the fight, it became obvious why Rich didn’t include that in the actual discussion: Redcloak is automatically suspicious and dismisses it as “convenient”, which is fair. It’s a weak argument if your target doesn’t trust you to be telling the truth. Durkon was right not to lead with it, but as I remember some commenters thought this was Rich shoehorning an answer to something he forgot. Which doesn’t make sense if you actually try to fit that bit of exposition anywhere into the negotiation panels. It works best as something for Redcloak to reject when he’s already rejected diplomacy.

Whether or not Jeph forgot about Ayo’s luggage, I feel like the moment he acknowledged it was the right moment. Earlier than that and it would’ve probably stretched the pre-Yemisi scene even longer and deflated whatever was left of the tension.

Sometimes an author holds something back, or guides a conversation away from a certain topic, because even if it’s what a real human would ask in that situation, it’s less interesting to take that detour right now, so they save it for later.

The unique problem with webcomics is that “later” can sometimes be weeks or months, and the audience has had plenty of time to pick apart the fictional conversation already and extrapolate the next points.

[Durazno]

The conversations here are giving me new appreciation for how weird webcomics are, as a medium. I'd never really thought about them that way before.

Also, Ionathus is here living up to the thread's title!

[Mechalich]

The conversations here are giving me new appreciation for how weird webcomics are, as a medium. I'd never really thought about them that way before.

It's not really webcomics, specifically, it's any format that's published serially, ranging from daily all the way up to monthly. This impacts traditional print comics that run daily (ex. Doonesbury), pretty much the entirety of manga, and even webnovels. It's also not new. Serial publication was common for novels in the 19th century, which often published a chapter once a week in major newspapers. It you read unabridged versions of Dickens, Dumas, or similar authors who published this way it's very obvious - The Count of Monte Cristo is particularly notable in this regard, because Dumas regular spends several thousand words describing some room or building as a very clear 'I couldn't think of how to advance the plot this week' stalling measure. Still an all-timer of a novel, but there's parts of it you really don't need to read.

The trick is that an author who is publishing in serial format needs to be aware of how the audience is receiving the content and to adjust the presentation of information accordingly. A good example is how, if a character is put through some circumstance that might have killed them, with the truth to be revealed later, 'later' needs to come quickly in real-time terms because leaving the audience hanging for a prolonged period is not acceptable practice.

[Durazno]

Webcomics aren't the only medium to have serial publication, but it hits the audience differently than, say, the Count of Monte Cristo would have, because now we can instantly get together and remark directly to other readers about the five lines of dialog we just read. The page-by-page presentation, the teeny-tiny chunks, is what I was remarking on. If an explanation is deferred by even a sentence, it could be delayed to two or three days later - in such circumstances, I don't think there's any way to avoid having a bunch of people complaining about plot holes for those two or three days.

I used to wonder why the El Goonish Shive author would write such long comments explaining things in the comic, but this may be part of the reason. (Also, perhaps a lack of confidence in himself or the readers? It could come across that way.)

[Ionathus]

It's not really webcomics, specifically, it's any format that's published serially, ranging from daily all the way up to monthly. This impacts traditional print comics that run daily (ex. Doonesbury), pretty much the entirety of manga, and even webnovels. It's also not new. Serial publication was common for novels in the 19th century, which often published a chapter once a week in major newspapers. It you read unabridged versions of Dickens, Dumas, or similar authors who published this way it's very obvious - The Count of Monte Cristo is particularly notable in this regard, because Dumas regular spends several thousand words describing some room or building as a very clear 'I couldn't think of how to advance the plot this week' stalling measure. Still an all-timer of a novel, but there's parts of it you really don't need to read.

The trick is that an author who is publishing in serial format needs to be aware of how the audience is receiving the content and to adjust the presentation of information accordingly. A good example is how, if a character is put through some circumstance that might have killed them, with the truth to be revealed later, 'later' needs to come quickly in real-time terms because leaving the audience hanging for a prolonged period is not acceptable practice.

Good point, though I’d echo Durazno in saying that even with serially published novels, you weren’t splitting actual conversations into multiple updates - it was more like chapters, or “episodes” in a way. So each chapter could still be a single self-contained scene that the author gets to put out all in one go.

Great point about daily run newspaper comics - especially those serious ones that made no sense to me as a kid reading the funnies, which could spend multiple weeks on one scene. That genre definitely predates the internet, and while there would’ve been no forum space for people around the world to come together and instantly analyze the first half of a conversation, small groups of fans probably did so frequently. So webcomics weren’t actually the first to have this weird “half a conversation” dynamic.

[Errorname]

I used to wonder why the El Goonish Shive author would write such long comments explaining things in the comic, but this may be part of the reason. (Also, perhaps a lack of confidence in himself or the readers? It could come across that way.)

I think they mostly just like explaining things, but there's definitely some examples you could cite where the commentary admits that comics were influenced heavily by reader reactions to the pages that had immediately preceded them.

[Johanny]

Here's a link to how Monte-Cristo was published in the Journal des débats:
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k446719b/f2.item
It's the two first pages bottom (the part which is called... feuilleton): in no way a chapter or a narrative unity.
People used to gather at cafés and discuss it during the day (not especially Monte-Cristo).
Some authors were known to edit texts before getting a collection book published, others were known to edit while it was going to the press, between the first and the final draft.
Dumas is not considered as a good writer - Zola, who used to plan ahead and not change much, wasn't at his time bc of his grammmar (which is by our standards totally correct) and is now considered one of the greatest. But here I have to question the sources, because Monte-Cristo was published in feuilletons between 1844 and 1846 but was also published as a book... in 1845... so was he really trying to hide the fact he didn't know what to write that day? Especially considering he made several hiatuses, and had at least one, some say several, people writing in his stead under his name?

[Wraith]

Imagine, if you will...

Marten, because he has no qualifications in librarianing (It's a word, shut up), finally loses his job at SMIF. It doesn't have to be traumatic, Redeployment is a huge of part of HE staff turnover, maybe he gets shuffled sideways into Student Services or school admin - after all, there's at least a couple of Deans who owe him a favour and he's on good terms with at least one senior Professor - and Claire is recruited to fill his role, as probation for becoming a fully fledged Librarian.

While adjusting to his new role in the School of Physics/Science/Whatever, he is approached by a gremlin-like researcher who has fallen through the cracks, and tries to convince him to tell Claire not take the full-time post. She's working in the basement under the library or owes $50k in overdue books fines, or something, but as soon as SMIF makes room for a new Librarian, her secret is out and she'll be publicly outed and humiliated.

You can still have people swoon over Claire - as sort-of established, it was the start of the school year and an entire cohort of wacky AI freshmen could wander through to say 'Hi' while comically misunderstanding what A Librarian is. You can still have a stupid gooey HR person turn up, we've never seen the admin staff at SMIF but they assuredly have one, somewhere. You can still hire a naive, childish wreck of a person to work at the coffee shop because Claire has vacated her post to go work in the Library.

Notably, you could write all the zany antics you like but you wouldn't have to write a ridiculous Deus Ex Machina of a job to solve all of Claire's money problems, you wouldn't need an entire insane and lore-breaking island of nonsense, or two side-by-side stories about University drop-outs, AND coffee shop drama, and then have them cross-over for vaguely explained but also very inadvisable reasons.

...Nope, sorry. I forgot what I was talking about. My bad. Forget it.

[Durazno]

Minor thought: I'm not actually predicting this, but it would be kind of funny if the next time we see Ayo and Hannelore, it's after a Willow-explosion and they're stunned.

It's possible that Ayo could end up living with Yemisi because she has to pay Willow's part of the rent.

[Errorname]

Notably, you could write all the zany antics you like but you wouldn't have to write a ridiculous Deus Ex Machina of a job to solve all of Claire's money problems, you wouldn't need an entire insane and lore-breaking island of nonsense, or two side-by-side stories about University drop-outs, AND coffee shop drama, and then have them cross-over for vaguely explained but also very inadvisable reasons.

Didn't Jeph move to Canada recently? I feel like that explains the decision to have some of his characters move away to a new location.

Like I think a lot of the details of Cubetown are silly, but I think those details all sprung out of "I want to have these characters get a job north of the border and have to move away"

[Wraith]

"Recently" would be 2015. It would also make some semblance of sense if Claire and Marten were originally intended to stay in the comic (they were supposed to be written out, but Jeph found he liked Cubetown too much) and if they had moved to the place he is familiar with instead of inventing an island off the coast that doesn't resemble... well, anything.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not inherently against wacky hijinks or moving people around to create new situations; it's just how its been done in such a way that answers no questions and flaws so many characters which were already pretty paper-thin to begin with.

[Mechalich]

"Recently" would be 2015. It would also make some semblance of sense if Claire and Marten were originally intended to stay in the comic (they were supposed to be written out, but Jeph found he liked Cubetown too much) and if they had moved to the place he is familiar with instead of inventing an island off the coast that doesn't resemble... well, anything.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not inherently against wacky hijinks or moving people around to create new situations; it's just how its been done in such a way that answers no questions and flaws so many characters which were already pretty paper-thin to begin with.

Yeah, Cubetown is completely unnecessary. Claire could have just gotten a job at a perfectly normal library or think tank in Halifax. Jeph could even have dodged the immigration issues by making Claire a dual citizen through her father, who is conveniently offscreen - as an aside this would have induced some real drama as opposed to wacky AI hijinks, since Claire would have had to consider following her dream at the cost of acknowledging and aspect of her parentage she'd prefer to forget. Any library in Halifax could still have wacky AIs and weird obsessive researchers involved, and since a normal library would offer a normal salary, the saga of 'Marten needs a job in Halifax' would have real stakes attached (though he still needs to marry Claire before he can move with her to Canada).

The whole Cubetown mess is pretty much the worst possible way to handle this scenario. Like, if I were teaching a class on sitcom writing I'd use it as an example of how not to handle a character relocation subplot.