THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: eschaton on 19 Feb 2015, 06:34
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Over the course of the comic, I have noticed many characters have had their personalities slowly drift over time into different directions.
One of the most negative, IMHO, is Steve. He was originally part of the main cast, and has since been demoted, which is fine. But he has also warped over time from a regular dude who was smoother with the ladies than Martin into a walking bro cliche. He once had a whole serious romantic arc to himself (Meena) which would appear inconceivable now (since he showed vulnerability and insecurity, and now he's all like "whatever brah").
I think Dora has changed over time as well. She's always been insecure, but in the early comics she was much more flirtatious and jokey overall, and has become steadily more severe with time. Part of this could be chalked to "growing up," but part of me wonders if she's cracking up a bit under the surface as well.
Hanners is of course a classic example, although I think it's well-established (and admitted by Jeph) he didn't really know the character well initially, and modified her over time into a more innocent, juvenile character.
Regardless, can you guys think of other examples?
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It could just be character growth. I look back at the person I was fifteen, ten, or even just five years ago, (especially if I go back and read old Livejournal/Twitter/Facebook posts) and sometimes I wonder who the hell that person was. I think we all change over time, much more than we realize, but we're just too busy to notice.
Or, it could just be
WARNING: TV TROPES LINK. CLICK AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
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I think that the negative implications of the OP here is undeserved and maybe a little misleading. In real life, with time, people change (mostly due to changes in their circumstances).
Steve has settled down with Cosette and neither have shown the slightest inclination of moving onto someone new. With stability comes maturity and Steve simply has laid off expressing the smooth, flirtatious part of his personality. Instead, he's focussing on being a good partner (maybe even lifelong partner) to the woman he's come to love. Additionally, his demotion to the tertiary level background supporting cast (making him about as significant as Jim) means that he will only be shown expressing the personality traits that is needed for the scene. Due to his relationship with Marten, it is being the calming influence when Marten is having one of his semi-periodic high-strung outbursts.
Dora has been through a lot. She's confronted some of her control issues but, most importantly, has confronted heartbreak (in the failure of her relationship with Marten) and has since been trying to build a solid, lasting relationship with Tai. Once again, bitter experience and maturity have led to changes in personality; she simply doesn't have it in her to be flirty anymore. She has a partner with whom she's happy and she doesn't want to jeopardise it. We still see flashes of her Doraten-era self, such as when she and Marten were boggling at the improbable music selection available in that bar's jukebox.
In some ways, her new, more 'grown-up' attitude was seen when she finally snapped and fired Faye. For years, she's tolerated Faye's quirks but, somehow, at this moment, it suddenly stopped being funny, idiosyncratic or even sympathy-worthy. It was just annoying, abusive, unwelcome and she wanted it out of her shop.
Hannelore is a very, very difficult example to judge. She actually radically changed personality shortly after being introduced. This was waved off as her changing her medication and this illustrates how difficult it is to judge what is 'in character' for her. Her mental issues are evidently strong enough that she can act out surprisingly strongly to minor events and, at other occasions, confront triggers head on and deal with them methodically (touching a toilet seat to win a bet with her mother comes to mind).
IMO, the current Hannelore is something of a product of her quest to have a 'normal' life. She is very aware of how abnormal her mindset is and how little experience of normality she has to date. An innocent, childlike demeanour is believable because she actually is approaching this new-found world with the mindset of a child who knows little and must be always questioning and always looking upon new things with wonder. Additionally, thanks to her friends, I suspect that many of her previously extreme behaviours (going without sleep for days to count things) have just naturally faded away. She has new outlets, such as in precisely counting and arranging the number of drum-beats in one of Amir's compositions.
Nonetheless (and, once again, this is seen in the bar scene the night before Marten and Claire hook up), she is still capable of the same wry observations.
If there is a meta-plot to Questionable Content, it is this: "We all grow up in the end. This is the story of how these people grew up; who they were, who they became, what changes they had to go through and what made them make them."
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I agree that a lot of it comes down to character growth and development, but a few of the characters whose roles have been reduced do - on occasion - seem a little more one dimensional than they used to. I think that's just how it goes when a character is out of focus, though.
I'd probably throw Sven out there as someone whose personality has changed in between appearances. He went missing for a long time, and although there's an in-universe reason for his more recent portrayal that does make sense, something about it felt a little off. It kind of felt like his personality was changed just so that he could be more antagonistic and less sympathetic - filling a more villainous role, if you will - in contrast to his appearances from the pretend Date with Hanners through to giving Dora a place to say following the break-up with Marten, in which he seemed to grow a bit, and establish himself as being "not so bad, underneath it all".
It actually reminded me a little of what happened with Jim in Girls With Slingshots. With Jim and Sven, it felt like their characters were dumbed down/Flanderized in the name of making a point about entitlement and Internet Nice Guys. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, as it's an attitude worth discussing (and for that matter, condemning), but in both cases it required a character to lose some depth and become a bit of a strawman, just to drive the point home.
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With Jim and Sven, it felt like their characters were dumbed down/Flanderized in the name of making a point about entitlement and Internet Nice Guys.
Hit the nail on the head right there. I was so taken aback when Sven told Faye he might be in love with her and acted so dopey and asked "are you going to?!" when she was being sarcastic about jumping into his arms and kissing him or something. (Too lazy to find the actual strip, but readers will know which one I mean.)
I mean come on, the defining trait of his character would prevent him from EVER acting so stupid in that situation.
I don't think "love makes you dumb" applies here either. Your reasoning can be obscured by emotion, but this was just such a drastic execution of that, if that's what he was trying to convey.
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Regarding Hannelore and her ability to behave with confident single-mindedness at times and childish vulnerability at others, I am going to compare her with Mr Nutt from Unseen Academicals, for those who understand the reference.
- Her character when first introduced had the strength to lift the anvil. Now she cautiously seeks worth.
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Regarding Hannelore and her ability to behave with confident single-mindedness at times and childish vulnerability at others, I am going to compare her with Mr Nutt from Unseen Academicals, for those who understand the reference.
- Her character when first introduced had the strength to lift the anvil. Now she cautiously seeks worth.
I think she's the most jarring example. She's become much flatter as a character; she was more interesting in the early strips when she was introduced, before she was just trotted out when Jeph needed a punchline.
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I disagree, to some degree. When Hanners was first introduced she was sassy and sarcastic just like every other female character that hd been introduced at that point. Whether it was a conscious decision or not is a separate debate, but I feel that her divergence from what she started out as has not only made her a more interesting character overall, with more depth, but has actually added more depth to the cast as a whole rather than being 'just anoother sassy female'.
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Interesting thing to do is, look at the Hannelore intro strips and apply what we've learned about her since. Looking back, that cigarette-smoking girl in the bar bathroom is terrified: Terrified at strange dude in the wrong bathroom peeing in the sink, terrified at interacting socially with a stranger, terrified at asserting herself socially. Look at it this way, and it's not the beaten-beyond-death "dichotomy" between proto-Hanners and the d'aawsome girl we know today, but the beginning.
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Interesting thing to do is, look at the Hannelore intro strips and apply what we've learned about her since. Looking back, that cigarette-smoking girl in the bar bathroom is terrified: Terrified at strange dude in the wrong bathroom peeing in the sink, terrified at interacting socially with a stranger, terrified at asserting herself socially. Look at it this way, and it's not the beaten-beyond-death "dichotomy" between proto-Hanners and the d'aawsome girl we know today, but the beginning.
Also, slightly later strips established that she'd been semi-stalkerishly shadowing Marten and the crew because they seemed like interesting people to get to know. So, add in another dose of social anxiety for good measure.
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I disagree, to some degree. When Hanners was first introduced she was sassy and sarcastic just like every other female character that hd been introduced at that point. Whether it was a conscious decision or not is a separate debate, but I feel that her divergence from what she started out as has not only made her a more interesting character overall, with more depth, but has actually added more depth to the cast as a whole rather than being 'just anoother sassy female'.
Okay, but I'd argue that in contrast to Faye, for instance (where if you take away the sass you're not left with much besides a garden-variety misanthrope), Hanners also showed -- and voiced -- a lot more awareness not only of herself but of the other characters in those early strips. Whereas if you took away the various tics and Flanderized manifestations of her anxiety and OCD, it seems you'd likewise be left with very little of Hanners at this point.
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I dunno... seems she's showing a good awareness of how to handle Faye in the most recent strips.
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Of the characters who have been stated to have changed personality:
Hannelore: Obviously just a case of the writer changing tactics with her immediately- I remember it being pretty quick. She's so unrecognizable in the early strips that it's basically admitted in-strip that it was out of character. I actually liked the original character, but yeah- "Sassy Girl" wasn't exactly unknown to the strip even THEN, and Hannelore's been basically the same for years afterwards. Though she's had more character growth since "Doe-Eyed Nervous OCD Nutcase Hanners" became a thing. She's still the same character, but she can do things she'd never done before.
Dora: I view this as more character growth/becoming who she truly was. It's established right early on that Dora hid a lot of her emotional troubles behind a façade of "Sassy Smirking Girl", and wasn't nearly as confident as she'd seemed to be. When she was with Marten, we saw a lot more of her temperamental side, and how mentally-messed-up she could be. So she didn't really "change personality", we just saw her true self later on.
Steve: Seems more or less the same- his character revolved a lot around being Marten's sounding board and confidante (since Pintsize really wasn't up to the task anymore)- you'll notice that he appears to have no male friends OTHER than Marten, who's usually hanging out with other people. He's generally a bit less intelligent, but more confident than Marten. That aspect really hasn't changed.
Overall though, I think most of the cast has changed and moved on in a natural manner. Well, Pintsize sort of went off the rails at some point, to the level where he's barely even a real character anymore (I did like that one strip where he revealed that he DID his job as an AnthroPC with Marten, though). Full Flanderization, if you will.
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Has Marten changed a lot? I think so in a few ways:
* He's more open now. He initially seemed like your classic "Shy Nerdy Boy" who could never make a move on anyone. Even years into the strip, Dora would comment that "he has the confidence of a sea slug". Nowadays he's way more willing to make the first move.
* The whole "always apologizing" thing became a running thing- it makes sense with his prior ultra-low confidence personality.
* He seems way less into music. Granted, every character is a bit, but it seemed like his life revolved around it at first.
This is largely Character Development, as it doesn't really feel like he just got a whole new personality transplanted onto him. He's still possessing of no motivation, and is generally good-natured but passive.
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He only seems less into music because we haven't seen a Deathmole session in a while.
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That, and the music references have become few and far between. The early strips were downright rife with them.
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That, and the music references have become few and far between. The early strips were downright rife with them.
Which, as I recall, is as much about "do I reference out-of-comic time music or 2006 music as if it were new?" as about an actual change in Marten's personality.
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Well, that's the thing about comic time. You can do both, technically.
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What's funny is that I miss all the up-to-the-minute music references, but had absolutely NO IDEA about any of the bands they were referencing, nor did I enjoy the music when I actually looked it up. It just seemed fun to get into the heads of characters so passionate about it, because you could tell Jeph was passionate about it.
But yes, the lack of musical references/scenes is a big shift, which has made everyone seem a bit different. Initially, music was like THE THING all the characters had in common. Faye & Marten bonded over it at first, if I recall correctly- and characters even called her "a hot Indie Girl".
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Bit of a thread necro here but it is relevant to the subject of character development and probably fits here better than in the WCDT.
I think that the Hannelore's Skin Complaint arc (strips 2961-present) demonstrates that Jeph is planning to do some new stuff with Faye.
Previously, Faye was basically used in three types of strip:
- Her romantic relationship with Angus;
- Her 'sisters in all but blood' relationship with Dora;
- Her smiliar relationship with Marten.
The problem is that all three of these threads have been, in one way or another, cut off. The Fayegus ship has sunk. After the events surrounding Faye being fired from CoD it is going to be a long time, if ever, before Faye and Dora feel comfortable enough in each other's company to spend too much time with each other and Marten now has a girlfriend with whom I think he is spending far more time with than he does with Faye and who will certainly be his primary double-act foil when it isn't Pintsize.
So, what to do with the character? Jeph missed the opportunity to put her 'on the bus' when Angus left town, so I think that he still wants to have her in the comic. Nonetheless, he's got to find her something useful to do in the strip. There is her own unique arc about dealing with alcohol addiction, of course. However, you don't really want a major character to be a one-trick pony. I think that Jeph is manoeuvring her to become Hannelore's best friend and primary care-giver.
I also think that, having completed the Claireten arc, Hannelore has returned to the centre of Jeph's attention and he's planning to do a bit more with her. The thing is that she has a fairly small circle of friends: Marigold is a pal and someone with some common interests, but recent strips have shown that she is a bit too self-centred and unaware of others' needs to function as Hannelore's main foil. Marten is there and I can't see him ever turning Hannelore away if she needs him but his primary focus seem to be Claire, settling his life down and, to a certain extent, surviving his mother living in Northampton. Hannelore needs a character to be her main foil - her primary interaction focus with whom she can do things that matter to her (and help them with things that matter to them too). I think that this character is going to be Faye and we're going to see them spending more time together and sharing each other's character arcs. A more odd couple you probably couldn't hope to see but I think that they will offer each other the support, encouragement and, when needed, firm slap-downs that the other needs when their respective neuroses lead them down stupid paths.
Whilst posting, I have a feeling that we are going to see Dora angle away from the main character group now. She's going to be Tai's girlfriend, Marten's ex (with some interesting triangular consequences between the three of them) and Dale's boss. Even before that, her main post-Marten role had been as Tai and Faye's straight woman, feeding the hook lines for the joke-of-the-day. I don't really feel that Jeph has any appetite to bring her back into the spotlight. It is difficult to predict a likely next storyline to include her in any way and most would have her mostly in a support role until (and I'm sure this will happen eventually) she and Tai marry.
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I would also point out that Faye needs Hannelore as much as vice versa. In dealing with her alcohol problems and trying to deal with other issues in her life she is going to need someone who cares for her, can be there for her and isn't going to put up with her shit when she t tries to say, duck out of support group meetings. And when you consider that her circle of friends, which was never very big, has been seriously cut because of being fired, all she really has is Hanners and Marten. Marten cares, certainly. But he has his job, and he has Claire. Plus presumably he still practices his music. He will be there for Faye when he can, but not as much as she's likely to need. Where as Hanners has a lot of free time. She may work part time at CoD, but that's for social interaction, not because she needs to. As for the last.. This is Marten. While he occasionally shows signs of a spine, he is normally pretty wishy washy and tends more towards sarcastic comments rather than hefting a crowbar when Faye needs it.
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Has nobody mentioned Momo yet? Her personality seems like it changed pretty noticeably during/after her chassis upgrade. It's not an entirely new character, but whereas before she felt a lot more comical, an Anime character with a stubbornly helpful attitude, who spent most of her non-Marigold time with Pintsize and Winslow, she now has a far less silly character. No anime humor, and she spends no time in-comic with the AnthroPCs. A few other minor or subtle differences.
NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING. Her new character is a lot more interesting. Just very different.
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Carbon-based people sometimes have personality changes after plastic surgery.
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I'd argue that Momo changed rather a lot before the personality upgrade. She started as just another anthro-pc when all of the APCs were basically Pintsize.
As Marigold's character developed, Momo came to be her conscience. Thematically, that relationship became the inverse of the Marten/Pintsize dynamic.
She lost some Chibi-silly elements with the upgrade, but her personality seems to have remained stable relative to who she had become before that arc.
I'd also chime in on the OP to say while Steve's changed, he hasn't really Flanderized. As pointed out, he's got less to do as a 3rd tier character, but his expression of irritation at Sven "I just finished with Marten" 2752 (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2752) speaks to him still having an inner life, even if we're not going to get to see it much.
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Welcome back.
That's a good point about Momo. Her turning into a change agent for Marigold happened well before the chassis upgrade. She started out unusually compassionate and well-behaved by AnthroPC standards but there was still visible growth, perhaps as she figured out what Marigold needed.
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Not sure where to put this, but I'm interested in how Jeph is going to depict the reaction to Claire's identity in some characters. (Yes this is totally inspired by today's comic.)
Does anyone think he will transplant the personality of someone who you feel would be uncomfortable with her to suit the comic and maintain tolerance? I have absolutely no problem with Claire, but I find it hard to believe someone like Steve, the dudebro, would be completely cool with her identity.
Not that I think he's going to have her outed any time soon...but just speculating. What do you think?
I hope this isn't against the rules or anything. I feel like good discussion comes from a bit of a difference in opinions without being hostile. Wouldn't be interesting if everyone thought the same thing, right?
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It's a really good question. Jeph has been extraordinarily careful managing how he portrays Claire and her social relations. He might not even be willing to write a discomfort scene.
The worst reaction, of course, would be from Pintsize.
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Considering that Pintsize is a walking database of human sexual behaviour, I don't think that Claire would even register as anything other than fairly mundane. May, OTOH…
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I still don't understand why people think Pintsize would cause trouble. He's crude, yeah, and a prankster, but when has he ever been cruel? He only seems to dish out what he knows people can take. I really can't see him mocking Claire over anything she might be sensitive about (after all, to Pintsize, gender is just a bit of coding), and I think Jeph missed an opportunity for character growth when he had Marten preemptively halt the meet-and-greet between the two. They could've been good and snarky friends (and I can see Claire using Pintsize as a testing-ground for awful puns), but nope! Marten does his LOOM, and haha, look at ol' Pintsize, suddenly acting well-behaved!
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I dunno. Steve is certainly a bro, but he also flies a desk for supersecret intelligence agency, and had a fling with a Russian assassin. Not saying that going to new places, meeting interesting people, and killing them makes one broad-minded, but there's more to him than "bro."
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It's also worth noting that Steve's been implied to be not exactly heteronormative, and possibly even comfortable with that part of himself by now (seriously, his opposition was that Cosette wouldn't approve (http://www.questionablecontent.net/1639)).
Although, I could see him conflating gender and sex, and thinking that Marten dating Claire means that he had (and missed) a chance with Marten, when... noooooope. Then again, I also can't see Jeph actually portraying that in comic.
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One of the most tolerant, open-hearted people I know is a dudebro like Steve. When I first met him I didn't expect it from him whatsoever, but he is an absolute diamond with things like this, partially I think because he's from a younger generation than mine (only by five years or so) and I get the distinct impression that each generation is broadly speaking more tolerant than the last one.
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One of the most tolerant, open-hearted people I know is a dudebro like Steve. When I first met him I didn't expect it from him whatsoever, but he is an absolute diamond with things like this, partially I think because he's from a younger generation than mine (only by five years or so) and I get the distinct impression that each generation is broadly speaking more tolerant than the last one.
I'd disagree, the people younger than me are intolerant little shits, generally speaking. There must have just been a few good years for the kids born in the 87s-92s, and then it just gets progressively worse from there :P
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Uh oh. Complaining that the younger generation is getting worse. That's stage 1 in becoming old.
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Uh oh. Complaining that the younger generation is getting worse. That's stage 1 in becoming old.
Stage two is losing all appreciation for popular music. I passed that one a long time ago!
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Uh oh. Complaining that the younger generation is getting worse. That's stage 1 in becoming old.
Not at all :-P; I'm generally impressed by present youth, given the strains put on them. But on another forum where a trans* thread I started has been running recently (with ZoeB present :wink:), the main voice of intolerance was represented by a 24yo and even more by a 21yo.
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Remember, the bigots of tomorrow are born today. Usually to the bigots of yesterday.
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And all that makes up the cycle of strife.
Like Hippies -> Yuppies -> Scote-es -> Millenials
And there is the rest who are between the blips of self-indulgent narcissism.
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I seriously do hate teenagers in general. But then, I hated them back when I was in high school, too, so...
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Every time I'm tempted to generalize grumpily about Kids Today (TM), I remember the procession of teenaged interns and job-shadowers in my former workplace who had their excrement assembled far more skillfully and completely than did our 50-something boss.
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I don't understand what Scote-es means.
Anyway, I think there has been some...let's say, mild Flanderization in the strip. Not to the point of making a character merely a one-note gag, but in a way, by taking a flaw and playing it up much further than before.
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Supreme
Court
Of
The
United
States
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Spoiled
Children
Of
The
Eighties
In other words the spawn of the yuppies who procreated after establishing their careers.
You remember them. The designer prams bigger than shopping carts that would bump and push you out of the way or hold up traffic at intersections.
Knocking over seniors with nary a glance to the harm they caused. [a few came close to getting a sound thrashing from said seniors afterwards]
Twenty years latter they call themselves millennials and are still sanctimonious entitled self indulgent twats just like their parents.
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Supreme
Court
Of
The
United
States
When the robots take over the world, they will establish the Supreme Court Robots Of The United Machines, and they will judge us all. :psyduck:
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That's a real kick in the balls.
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I lost my bearings on where this discussion was headed. :psyduck: :clairedoge: