Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT strips 3606-3910 (31st December 2018 to 4th January 2019)

<< < (26/34) > >>

OldGoat:
The emblem is a scrumptiously golden brown croissant.

Tova:
Merely getting a hairstyle change won't cut it anymore.  :mrgreen:

Gyrre:

--- Quote from: BenRG on 02 Jan 2019, 02:24 ---This arc and its implications reminds me of a Kim Possible/The Bionic Woman crossover that I read a few years back. In it, the titular heroine is horrendously injured in a bomb explosion and the only way to avoid her being left a permanently institutionalised cripple, barely better than a vegetable, is radical prosthetic surgery, replacing all four limbs, most of her sensory organs and skin with synthetic replacements as well as heavily augmenting her brain to interface with this amount of electronic appliances.

From there, the story starts going into Ghost in the Shell territory. Being comfortably over 75% synthetic, Kim starts questioning if she's still really is Kim Possible anymore or a sophisticated android that's using some of the late Kim's biological parts to function. There is also the more physical issue that she now weights around 250lbs because of the amount of titanium, coltan and plutonium in her rebuilt body including its micro-fission power system. Not being able see, hear, smell or even feel in the same way as a human anymore doesn't help very much.

I mention this because I think it gives something of an insight into what Roko is likely to go through in the medium-term. No matter how alike her new chassis is to her original, Roko is still going to have this feeling of dislocation - A sense that she is, at the very least, heavily changed from who she was before and, at the worst, that she is not really 'Roko' anymore but a totally different being that just has a copy of a dead woman's memories.

Additionally, Lemon and Roko's interactions in the virtual environment remind me of the early phase of the story. During the reconstructive process, the scientists use the bionic interface circuitry to 'jack' into Kim's brain and interface directly with her consciousness to help her prepare for what was happening to her and to enable her to assist them in testing all the systems to ensure they were interfacing properly with the remainder of her biological central nervous system.

--- End quote ---
"[A]round 250lbs"

I'm suddenly very conscious of the fact that I'm 5'5" (165cm) and I weigh 221lbs. Granted I've got broad shoulders and a deep chest on top of being generally stocky, but still.

BenRG:
The more I read today's strip, the more I think that it's basically a commentary and satire on Apple's upgrade policies and marketing. You're having to pay a premium price for only a very small hardware improvement and... oh, did we mention the cool new wireless earbuds? As Apple are finding out, this doesn't work forever and I'm wondering if the manufacturers of Roko's chassis will learn the same!

That aside, I'm wondering just how big the sensorium upgrade will be? I'm definitely thinking that one of the major issues that Roko will have to confront is a body that is much higher-specification than the one she's used to. Imagine being suddenly super-sensitive to the world around you so that every little touch, scent or sound is a bit clearer and more dramatic in its impact on your awareness. I strongly suspect that Roko may simply faint when she next walks into The Secret Bakery from the pleasure overload! She'll likely turn down her sensitivity settings after that but I think that she'll still find it difficult to smell Elliot without seeing the best kind of bread in her head!

So, we know that Roko's chassis is the Philomena series. ((Opens Google in another tab)) The most famous pop culture use of the name appears to be The Philomena Project, a charity named for Annie Philomena Lee, an Irish adoption rights campaigner who had her child forcibly removed from her by the church with state assistance and whose son died before she could track him down. According to Wikipedia, Ms Lee was likely named for Saint Philomena, the patron saint of children.

I've been thinking about Roko's avatar, particularly the white body-sock and the whole thing strikes me as a PG-13 version of 'Roko minus all external adornment'. I wonder if any philosophers out there might wonder if we're looking at her soul?

traroth:
Now I want to see the fancy emblem...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page