Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3656-3660 (15th to 19th January 2018)
mnshaw:
I'm with JoeCovenant on this. Here's a post I made a few minutes ago, moved here after I found out about the weekly thread:
I think I know why Bubbles is upset. Faye basically ripped Melon off, for a significant chunk of money, in the previous comic - and she's unhappy about that.
I am as well. I was kind of shocked that she'd take advantage of Melon's naivete like that - as crusty and difficult as Faye can be sometimes, I don't see this kind of sharp business practice as part of her makeup.
Maybe we'll find out on Friday.
SpanielBear:
--- Quote from: JoeCovenant on 18 Jan 2018, 09:27 ---
--- Quote from: SpanielBear on 18 Jan 2018, 07:45 ---Her confused reaction to Melon offering $100 could be because she feels that's a lot, but she's gonna take it because a) small business and b) she did work for a customer.
That's supposition on my part, I accept, but it does seem to fit with what we're shown
--- End quote ---
Quite apart from the fact that Faye's reaction (I would not remotely call it "confusion") came from the fact that she KNEW being offered $100 for turning off a battery powered... 'massage device'... was utterly insane... (By the sounds of things she didn't even give her new batteries. ("It NEEDS new batteries", not, "It only needed new batteries")
$100 for a 30 second 'fix'? Nah, Faye was *wrong* to take it.
And the important part is not that the $100 was offered. It's that it was offered with the words "Is that a good amount to offer you?"
Faye, instead of saying "Whoa! Dude! That's like WAY too much!", saw the cash and answered in a literal sense that it "was" a "good amount" to give to her, because $100 is a good amount of money. That was what her reaction was.
But she knew she was exploiting Melon... that is undeniable.
And that's what is jarring when we look at Faye's character.
As has been mentioned above, if that little nugget got out, the business would collapse screaming.
And it really seems out-of-character for Faye to rip someone off like that... that's all.
--- End quote ---
If I take my laptop to a repair shop, they check it over and see it is just a broken battery, and tell me I need a new one, they would still charge me a consultation fee. It's them valuing their time and the fact that they provided a service I could not. And that's before I make them touch something of unknown provenance. I'd find $100 bucks expensive (and very weird as I live in the UK), but a flat £40 consultation fee (around $50 I think?) isn't unusual.
What's more, you keep saying exploited like Melon is a vulnerable adult without agency. We know she holds down a job (however creepy), can manage interpersonal relationships and decide whether something is of reasonable value to her (see her complaining about the $75 ass repair). She may not know what a sex toy is, but she isn't an absolute naif. Faye could have asked for Melon to give her less, but to say that she *had* to or else exploitation is essentially saying Melon is a child who needs protection, which is not something the strip has ever implied.
What's more more, Faye is utterly surrounded by wacky AI high-jinks(tm). In one week she may be expected to create a robo-dong, fix an ass, repair a fighting obsessed accountant's punching arm on daily basis and then diagnose an angry sex toy. Trying to impose logic was a lost cause about 3000 strips ago, now just rolling with the punches is how she gets through the day. She has learned that AI's are agents, but not necessarily human ones with human drives or decision making. So she doesn't question when they do things she finds weird, especially on the rare occasions it benefits her.
What's more more more... I got nothing. Rule of three.
dutchrvl:
--- Quote from: fayelovesbubbles on 18 Jan 2018, 09:00 ---From the time she appeared I just knew she was going to be shitty. You know when you meet someone and you just KNOW, like "Ugh, this one is going to be a problem"?
--- End quote ---
While some of your points are well-taken, you do realize that you are telling us here that you were already prejudiced towards Evie before getting to know her (in fact, nobody has really gotten a chance to get to know her yet).
You know. the same type of prejudice that many of us suffer from regularly and you have probably suffered from yourself at some point....
Vern LaVey:
It's scary to me that someone who is being unintentionally (or even ignorantly) offensive is causing far more hate and discussion here than someone who is being intentionally exploitative and dishonest.
Neither is a good thing, but someone being exploited should be the far bigger worry over someone being offended.
OldGoat:
I've come around to embrace the it's-Evie-that's-eating-Bubbles theory, although I'm sure we haven't heard the last of the $100 Willie repair.
I've got some flies for the Mandy/Evie ointment, having seen out of balance real life relationships like their's before. Mandy's probably of average intelligence - Evie's brilliant. Mandy's also ultra-cute and in awe of Evie, which Evie finds quite flattering. At some point, though, brilliant Evie's going to start getting tired of explaining p-values and the like to average Mandy - from her expression in the last panel she may be there already. I fear Mandy's in for a broken heart at some point. From a writing standpoint, these two could provide Jeph with material for story arcs for years as they wander in and out of each others' lives.
The Evie/Bubbles interaction rang a bell. There was something that I read by a Native American author several years ago (I wish I could remember who it was) who called summer "anthropologist season" or "anthropologist moon" for the scads of socially clueless grad students descending upon the reservation to do research, seeing the inhabitants not as people but as subjects for observation. Evie isn't the first.
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