Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT Strips 3401-3405 (23rd to 27th January 2017)

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mikmaxs:

--- Quote from: jheartney on 24 Jan 2017, 18:10 ---Looking back, I'll say that this storyline proceeded nicely. Perhaps our CGI-movie-conditioned selves expected more razzle-dazzle in the mindscape panels, and a longer bit of struggle with overcoming the encryption lock. But doing that would have been a lot of work to pull off, and wouldn't have added anything important to the story. (I think lots of Hollywood CGI-fest movies buy lots of pointless computer-generated spectacle, and are poorer as a result.) Introducing the Grey One adds another layer to the world-building of QC, but we don't learn enough about them to nail down their exact place in the order of things. Like the earlier throwaway reference to "Gary," this adds to a vague sense that the commanding heights of the new post-singularity world are much different from ours, but doesn't spell out how (which is fine, I think).

--- End quote ---
I think you're kind of misunderstanding the complaints here. We're not saying that it was solved too fast because it was visually uninteresting or didn't literally take a long time, we're saying that it was solved too fast because none of the characters had to struggle or overcome anything. There's some rising and falling action when they discover Bubbles' problem and start brainstorming ways to try and decrypt the information, (Contacting Station, talking about the problem with each other, trying to come up with alternative ways.)
Then a character we've never heard of or seen before just shows up, hands over the key, and solves the problem. They imply that Emily needs to do it, but then just hand her all the tools she needs to do it - She doesn't explore, they hand her a teleporting map. She doesn't open the lock, they hand her the key. She doesn't overcome the bad guy, they hand her a gun.

The only conflict lies in 'Do we trust this creepy robot or not?', and that question is moot, because they are OBVIOUSLY going to accept, because otherwise there's no story motion.

So it's serviceable as an emotional beat, but the plot was clearly building up to something greater than that. If they wanted to simply reveal that the memories were deleted, they just could have brought in Station, who could poke around for a moment and be like 'Yo, there's nothing here,' but instead the story decided to introduce a threat that was vastly too big to ever be solved by our characters, only to then hand over the solution within a couple of pages of presenting the issue. It's the comic equivalent of an RPG dungeon with a key sitting in the box right next to the door.

Method of Madness:
If you really think nobody's struggling, I don't think we're reading the same comic.

mikmaxs:

--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 24 Jan 2017, 21:02 ---If you really think nobody's struggling, I don't think we're reading the same comic.

--- End quote ---
Emotional turbulence is not the same thing as struggling to complete a goal. There was a problem presented that needed to be solved: How do we get Bubbles' memories back? And then the solution just appeared from thin air, mere moments after being introduced. I go pretty in-depth in explaining what I mean by this, so I'm not sure how you read my post and decided that I was talking about anything except the problem solving done by these characters during this arc.

Clubman8:
Yeah, I knew with how rushed this was that this little deus ex machina anticlimax would end as such. I'm just glad it's over.

I hate to be one of those people, but can we go back to Marten now? We've spent long enough chasing this no-outcome plot.

War Sparrow:
I am starting to wonder if Creepy are, in fact, from the government, checking in on former military AI they suspect of being exploited, or of having psychological issues.. The sort of government employee that isn't encouraged to mention their employer. And maybe not one that's officially on the books.

I have no real basis for this except the private discussion here.

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