THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: TheEvilDog on 14 Jan 2018, 18:35
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Wow, early comic this evening.
And it looks like Evie might need someone to have a word with her about making people feel uncomfortable.
RUN BUBBLES! RUN!
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...never send Evie to Israel.
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Huh.
Today's comic makes me oddly nostalgic for freshman year in college, in which I wrote a tiny research project/essay on American fascination with Japanese culture. Not actual Japanese culture, just the parts of it exaggerated/fetishized in America and looking into why those things and in what way etc.
You can fall into a deep hole fast with this kind of thing.
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As a former Psych major, I see where Evie is coming from. Near the end, I had some freinds have to gently remind me that people were not test subjects and I needed to poke less.
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I like Evie.
Notice that she studies fear of AIs and does not show even a second of being intimidated by Bubbles.
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Would that be the 50's Rock'n'Roll Greasers or maybe the Disco Dudes? Elvisies's? Ann of Green Gables ... oh wait a sec, that's Canadian. I have no idea what I am talking about .... except maybe sleep ... it is an addiction but I just can't seem to break the habit / need and withdrawal is horribly debilitating. :psyduck:
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He hem. Anne with an E, thank you. ( it's a crucial part of her identity!)
Also on a serious note, are you okay?
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Heh. Nice! :-D
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"All of the Above" is the obvious and only answer for the poll, at least to me. The four people in Union Robotics right now have such a lot of high-stacked neuroses and inadequate social instincts that someone offending someone else is almost inevitable and all of them accidentally saying something offensive/stupid at least once is just as much so.
In some ways, I'm smiling and nodding at Bubbles' reaction here. She isn't happy with Evie's approach to her and is showing it in panel 4 but Evie clearly isn't getting the non-verbal message! Once, this would have sent Bubbles into a rage but, after being steadily inoculated to this mindset by long association with Emily and, to a lesser extent, Faye, she's only feeling annoyance and maybe a little amazed by this conversation... Well, lecture actually.
The big take-away? Whilst distrust and suspicion are instinctive reactions to something different, it takes time and effort to put energy into something as complex and sustained as hate.
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I like Evie.
Notice that she studies fear of AIs and does not show even a second of being intimidated by Bubbles.
The barrage of lecturing and not listening could be a smoke screen to cover her fear of Bubbles. I wonder how many AI's she has actually met, as opposed to theorizing distantly about them...
Edit: typo
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Actually, getting a PhD feels like being pregnant, in your head.
P.S.: This coming from a cis male, so YMMV.
P.P.S.: The old dude at the top of the hill is a mere eight years your senior and you spend most hours psyching yourself up to make an appointment where he can tell you it needs to be a bit more roundish, but other wise not half bad, and please not to forget that in the end, it's totally your responsibility to decide when it's finished.
P.P.P.S.: You take until after the graduation ceremony to realize that this meant he trusted you and your work and wasn't a sign of him DGAFing and that you were getting on everybodies' nerves with your freaking out and shanghaiing them into reading your drafts again and again because "ZOMG, old dude DGAF!" and THAT THEY HAD BEEN TELLING YOU SO FOR WEEKS but it didn't register ...
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Actually, getting a PhD feels like being pregnant, in your head.
"It's not a Doctoral Thesis - it's a MIND BABY!" :-o
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"It feels rather unpleasant to have my lived experience treated as a sociological case study."
Ain't that the truth!
P.P.P.S.: You take until after the graduation ceremony to realize that this meant he trusted you and your work and wasn't a sign of him DGAFing
Hahahahaha! And I thought I was the only one! Not that I have a PhD, but I had much the same experience with my final year honours thesis.
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"It's not a Doctoral Thesis - it's a MIND BABY!" :-o
Not to be confused with a brainchild....
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P.P.S.: The old dude at the top of the hill is a mere eight years your senior and you spend most hours psyching yourself up to make an appointment where he can tell you it needs to be a bit more roundish, but other wise not half bad, and please not to forget that in the end, it's totally your responsibility to decide when it's finished.
P.P.P.S.: You take until after the graduation ceremony to realize that this meant he trusted you and your work and wasn't a sign of him DGAFing and that you were getting on everybodies' nerves with your freaking out and shanghaiing them into reading your drafts again and again because "ZOMG, old dude DGAF!" and THAT THEY HAD BEEN TELLING YOU SO FOR WEEKS but it didn't register ...[/size]
Well, it's better than continually getting stood up when you make an appointment, and then being blamed for not involving them enough... that's when I abandoned my PhD ambition.
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"It feels rather unpleasant to have my lived experience treated as a sociological case study."
Ain't that the truth!
It sure does feel familiar, and not in a good way.
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Well, it's better than continually getting stood up when you make an appointment, and then being blamed for not involving them enough... that's when I abandoned my PhD ambition.
Welcome to Academia! Some supervisors are excellent (or so I hear), some are abysmal, some are just taking people on when they have no time, because funding. Enjoy. Also, not everyone fits in with academia, and you can't find out if you do until you've actually started going for research degrees, which means many wasted years where you could have been starting on the min wage tripe job treadmill earlier to possibly have some prospects.
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Bubbles is clearly thinking, "If I produced solid waste, I could tear her head off and
shi deposit some in her lungs."
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Bubbles is doing a commendable job of communicating.
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MELON. MELON IS ADORABLE.
Poor Faye though. :D
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You'd think Melon would have some sort of subroutine going that would instantly do an image search for new to her objects, and tell her what they were. Then again maybe she does, but she has Safe Search mode on as default.
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IIRC, Pintsize was working on an animate dildo once. If it escaped, it would -definitely- be angry.
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Straight from philosophical exposition to pure wackiness. I really enjoy the variety QC provides.
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IIRC, Pintsize was working on an animate dildo once. If it escaped, it would -definitely- be angry.
So this is how the Skynet-scenario really started…
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As soon as I read this I thought of this.
Better call King Missile
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As soon as I read this I thought of this.
Better call King Missile
In at least a few Native American cultures Coyote had a terrible time keeping track of his. (I think that might have saying the things have minds of their own.)
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Yay, a german title.
"Der Arschersetzer" means "The ass-replacer". :-D
Now i wonder if Jeph spent some time in Germany when he was in Europe.
Also: Fayes expression in panel four is priceless.
TM
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IIRC, Pintsize was working on an animate dildo once. If it escaped, it would -definitely- be angry.
I believe he did commission one with Union Robotics, but I'm not sure it was animated.
In Melon's defence, it seems just about any appliance can have AI in universe.
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Wow! Talk about coincidence! I'm almost ready to accuse Amanda of having hired Melon and asked her to come in at this very moment with this very problem! However, I think that Melon has got the impression that Faye is the 'nice repair lady' with whom she can be random and bizarre because random and bizarre are most of the products of her intelligence algorithm. Faye, meanwhile, appears to have come to accept Melon's weirdness as just being the price of having a reliable repeat customer.
IRL, you can find some weird stuff just thrown aside because people are done with it but an activated sex toy? Northampton is clearly a very, very strange place!
IIRC, Pintsize was working on an animate dildo once. If it escaped, it would -definitely- be angry.
I believe he did commission one with Union Robotics, but I'm not sure it was animated.
No, PR was referring to a much older arc (from about two years ago) when Pintsize built a self-ambulatory singing dildo that escaped whilst he and Winslow were filming an infomercial for the product. It is unlikely to be angry because Pintsize programmed it to always be happy.
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Also: Fayes expression in panel four is priceless.
I rather like the "oh, gross, where has this been NEVERMIND BRAIN DON'T THINK ABOUT IT I DON'T WANT TO KNOW" tension under her eyes in panel 5, myself.
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You'd think Melon would have some sort of subroutine going that would instantly do an image search for new to her objects, and tell her what they were. Then again maybe she does, but she has Safe Search mode on as default.
I'm going to be honest, I'd have 'Safe Search' on too in that situation.
EDIT: I wonder if QC AIs can opt for a V-chip type filter for their mind's eye.
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...
IRL, you can find some weird stuff just thrown aside because people are done with it but an activated sex toy? Northampton is clearly a very, very strange place!
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It was not thrown away, it escaped under it's own power, desperately rattling down the streets of the city.
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Sex Toy is angry because it's stranded on planet.
ST phone home.
brzzzzzt brzzt
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"It's not a Doctoral Thesis - it's a MIND BABY!" :-o
Not to be confused with a brainchild....
Great ZEUS! What a concept!
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IIRC, Pintsize was working on an animate dildo once. If it escaped, it would -definitely- be angry.
Speaking of Pintsize, wasn't Union Robotics doint some kind of... work for him?
Now, I'm scared. What will he look like next time we see him?
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Actually, getting a PhD feels like being pregnant, in your head.
"It's not a Doctoral Thesis - it's a MIND BABY!" :-o
*looks at own doctoral thesis*
"Mamas, don't let your mind babies grow up to be atomic physics"
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Sex Toy is angry because it's stranded on planet.
ST phone home.
brzzzzzt brzzt
For some reason that made me think of this
Actually, getting a PhD feels like being pregnant, in your head.
"It's not a Doctoral Thesis - it's a MIND BABY!" :-o
*looks at own doctoral thesis*
"Mamas, don't let your mind babies grow up to be atomic physics"
They will just end up entangled with all sorts of weird strange particles, playing with glueballs and end up dating one named Branon.
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Yay, a german title.
"Der Arschersetzer" means "The ass-replacer". :-D
Now i wonder if Jeph spent some time in Germany when he was in Europe.
Also: Fayes expression in panel four is priceless.
TM
He did mention studying German in school; however, conjuring up a neologism, and such a magnificent one like Arschersetzer (showcases all those nice fricatives & splosives German has! (*)), points toward a native speaker. And imo not just any old Kraut - a songwriter or poet, methinks.
(*) Best 'German sentence being awkwardbeautifulgerman': Mein Herz tanzt (My heart is dancing - refrain in 'Tanz der Moleküle' by MIA)
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Considering that we have blutooth wireless enabled sex toys NOW, a AI equipped one would not shock me...
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"I am D-3PO, human-cyborg relations. I am fluent in over six million forms of stimulation."
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Considering that we have blutooth wireless enabled sex toys NOW, a AI equipped one would not shock me...
With a faulty ground it would .... unless you were into that sort of thing :wow:
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I asked the Internet to pronounce 'Arschersetzer' for me. Didn't work.
But it did find me a Hell Orbs youtube video....
It was actually ... relevant..
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Poor Mandy!
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I sorta feel bad for Melon, really.
Still, buyer beware and all that.... :-P
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Melon must have been screaming at the insects that day when they were handing out a modicum of sense...
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Cluelessness, thy name is Melon.
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It would be interesting if Bubbles scolded Faye on being mean to Melon... :angel:
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As soon as I read this I thought of this.
Better call King Missile
In at least a few Native American cultures Coyote had a terrible time keeping track of his. (I think that might have saying the things have minds of their own.)
Don't think that has ever come up in Gunnerkrigg Court.
Wonder why.
(no I don't)
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Hopefully someone will advise Melon to give her new pet a bath. Meanwhile, two full days away from Bubbles and Evie has me concerned that that conversation may have deteriorated...
It can't have gone TOO badly, or they'd have heard it from outside by now. And/or Evie would have been escorted out, most likely.
I think they're doing fine. Awkward, maybe, but fine.
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I think that Jeph wants to make Melon his ultra-Emily. Sweet, unworldly and with no real concept of 'reality' but ultimately with a kindly soul.
I suppose that you could accuse Faye of abusing a trusting soul to get $100 for no real work on her part. However, when you look at the smile on Melon's face in panel 4, you realise that the objective truth would be a terrible cruelty to inflict on her. Instead, Faye has reduced the littering problem in Northampton and effectively got Melon and Arthur a pet. She's earned a consultancy fee if nothing else! :-D
Meanwhile, poor Amanda realises that, when one visits Union Robotics, one must check in one's sense of normality at the door!
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I suppose that you could accuse Faye of abusing a trusting soul to get $100 for no real work on her part.
If someone tried to give me money for something I hadn't done, I'd probably refuse it, but on the other hand, I have never struggled to make ends meet and pay rent. It seems reasonable in that light. And Faye's not told a word of a lie to Melon. Okay, except maybe in panel 4, but I'm pretty sure Melon is ignoring auditory input by that point.
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I bet Faye's new $100 that Pintsize ends up with a domestic robot pet soon.
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Comic's up
Melon really seems to have issues...
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I found the um toy a new home:
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/16/news/portland/volunteers-raise-more-than-4k-to-buy-maine-pony-new-penis/
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Amanda reminds me of Claire in 2482 (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2482)
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I am with Amanda here.
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Melon - begrudged Faye and Bubbles $75 for an emergency rump repair for herself, but drops $100 for the equivalent of a veterinary consultation for a wandering Willie.
Butt, I guess the bottom-build was probably worth at least $250 or $300.
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Damn it, the forum's Butts Disease is flaring up again. Right, quarantine procedures everyone!
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REALLY enjoying the range of "trying to be polite and not laugh" expressions Jeph gave Amanda in 3658.
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Melon - begrudged Faye and Bubbles $75 for an emergency rump repair for herself, but drops $100 for the equivalent of a veterinary consultation for a wandering Willie.
Butt, I guess the bottom-build was probably worth at least $250 or $300.
There’s probably a wacky explanation for this inconsistency that might be amusing to know.
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Melon has a point. I was noticing that Faye and her sister are drawn exactly the same, except for hair, glasses and expressions.
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Wow, its almost as if they're sisters and share the same parents.
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I like Faye, which is why the whole thing with her keeping the $100 really bothers me. Especially since Melon asked if it was an appropriate amount. Faye taking advantage of her would still be a shitty thing to do if she hadn't asked that... but since she did I can't justify it at all.
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I bet tonight's comic will be Bubbles calling out Faye for that.
Or maybe just Faye herself giving Melon the money back.
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Wow, its almost as if they're sisters and share the same parents.
And are drawn by the same artist! ;)
I like Faye, which is why the whole thing with her keeping the $100 really bothers me. Especially since Melon asked if it was an appropriate amount. Faye taking advantage of her would still be a shitty thing to do if she hadn't asked that... but since she did I can't justify it at all.
Things like that are often a struggle for the self-employed. Jeph's been setting this issue up for a while, ever since Bubbles called BS on Faye not budgeting for groceries.
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I just realized that Faye has been exclusively wearing that black hoodie for a *long* time now. I like it, but maybe Jeph is also using it to hint at her financial issues?
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With regards to Faye taking the money from Melon, I'd call that a consultation fee.
I know several people who would call it an idiot's fee.
Melon has been set up to be...eccentric, that's the polite term... This was someone who blew their own ass off, has a job where she screams as insects are poured upon her and as we've just seen here, she pretty much thought that a dildo was a dick off a chassis. That points to someone who has more money than sense, Bug-Screamer sounds like a pretty niche job and niche jobs tend to pay fairly well. The thing is as well, I imagine that Melon did realise she had wasted some of Faye's time and was perhaps overpaying to save face and to apologise, all while keeping up the idea of getting a hutch for her new pet.
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I think the friction with Bubs today is due to her being frustrated with the Melon thing, possibly for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that Bubbles has been a (somewhat) naive AI that got taken advantage by someone else. It's not as horrible as what happened to her, but it's still kind of in that same realm. It's a young AI who doesn't know any better being exploited for personal gain. Whether or not Melon was doing it to save face doesn't really matter, it's the optics.
Beyond that there is the fact Faye is once again making business decisions without consulting with Bubbles. Union Robotics is supposed to be their attempt at going legit, and "tricking" someone into paying $100 just to be told that vibrators need batteries doesn't mesh well with that concept. Yes, Melon offered it, but that doesn't really make it okay. It's definitely not going to help the business if Melon mentions it to someone who knows better. It is short term gain for what could be long term problems. You don't want to get a reputation for exploiting people. If Melon did it to save face, they'll probably fine. You don't knowingly do something like that just to tell people later.. but Faye and Bubs don't really have any way of knowing that. It's an unnecessary risk.
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I think the friction with Bubs today is due to her being frustrated with the Melon thing, possibly for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that Bubbles has been a (somewhat) naive AI that got taken advantage by someone else. It's not as horrible as what happened to her, but it's still kind of in that same realm. It's a young AI who doesn't know any better being exploited for personal gain. Whether or not Melon was doing it to save face doesn't really matter, it's the optics.
Beyond that there is the fact Faye is once again making business decisions without consulting with Bubbles. Union Robotics is supposed to be their attempt at going legit, and "tricking" someone into paying $100 just to be told that vibrators need batteries doesn't mesh well with that concept. Yes, Melon offered it, but that doesn't really make it okay. It's definitely not going to help the business if Melon mentions it to someone who knows better. It is short term gain for what could be long term problems. You don't want to get a reputation for exploiting people. If Melon did it to save face, they'll probably fine. You don't knowingly do something like that just to tell people later.. but Faye and Bubs don't really have any way of knowing that. It's an unnecessary risk.
I think it might be less to do with Faye taking money from Melon and more that Evie might have pressed a couple of buttons during their conversation and Bubbles has chosen to remove herself from that situation.
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I don't think Bubbles was exactly paying attention to the whole Melon business, I also think it's because of the Evie thing.
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I honestly want to punch Evie. I immediately disliked her from the start and the way she's treating Bubbles is shitty. She reminds me of every stuck up, head up their ass academic I've ever come across. Gross.
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I think it might be less to do with Faye taking money from Melon and more that Evie might have pressed a couple of buttons during their conversation and Bubbles has chosen to remove herself from that situation.
I agree, mostly, but I think Bubbles' face is more "I have some thinking I'd like to do in solitude" rather than "I am going to duck out on this because one or more parties are annoying me".
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"I think the friction with Bubs today is due to her being frustrated with the Melon thing, possibly for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that Bubbles has been a (somewhat) naive AI that got taken advantage by someone else. It's not as horrible as what happened to her, but it's still kind of in that same realm. It's a young AI who doesn't know any better being exploited for personal gain. Whether or not Melon was doing it to save face doesn't really matter, it's the optics.
Beyond that there is the fact Faye is once again making business decisions without consulting with Bubbles. Union Robotics is supposed to be their attempt at going legit, and "tricking" someone into paying $100 just to be told that vibrators need batteries doesn't mesh well with that concept. Yes, Melon offered it, but that doesn't really make it okay. It's definitely not going to help the business if Melon mentions it to someone who knows better. It is short term gain for what could be long term problems. You don't want to get a reputation for exploiting people. If Melon did it to save face, they'll probably fine. You don't knowingly do something like that just to tell people later.. but Faye and Bubs don't really have any way of knowing that. It's an unnecessary risk."
Hold up there, respectfully there are a few leaps you seem to be making.
For one, Bubs was still talking to Evie throughout all of the Faye/Melon interaction. The fact that Amanda had to tell Evie about the experience suggests they were in a different area of the shop. Additionally, Bubbles was already being shown to feel uncomfortable about being de... I want to say depersonalised but it's not that. De-entitied? Objectified? Being compared to unthinking nuclear weapons as a veteran trying to adapt to a new life is going to uncomfortable to say the least, if not downright upsetting. I'd be very surprised if that wasn't what Bubbles is currently processing.
Secondly, I agree that Faye accepting $100 for a casual chat feels uncomfortable, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it exploitative. She didn't name the price, just accepted what was offered. Not how I would have played it, but I'm not a struggling small business owner. Furthermore calling this a business decision Bubbles wasn't involved in seems disingenuous. She was accepting payment from a customer. That's like saying Hanners should be checking with Dora every time she asks someone to pay for their coffee.
tldr, it feels like you are painting Faye's actions in the worst possible light and then using that to conclude that this means Bubbles/Faye drama. You may be right, but all things being equal I don't think that's where the strip is going.
(Also I messed up the quoting, I'm really sorry. Writing on iPhone is less than ideal)
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I think its about 50% Melon getting hustled by Faye, 50% Evie hitting a sore spot without thinking about it. Bubs will likely call Faye out, which Faye will likely get snarky with then do the right thing....I also think if Bubs does get mad at Faye over the Melon stuff her attraction (for lack of a better word) will play a part in her anger with Faye. Don't forget Bubs is an AI and being a former combat unit she might have enhanced hearing.
Warning - while you were typing 3 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.
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The comparison of AIs to nuclear weapons was too much. Can I please, please punch Evie? I want to punch her. She has just been irritating since she showed up. First saying that Faye was "negging" her, and just generally being a douche. She's super annoying.
She's just one of those people who can't see past herself and doesn't even have the presence of mind to know she's offended Bubbles and should apologize. From the first time they saw Bubbles, Evie looking at Bubbles like she was some object, then when Bubbles is like "yo dawg, you're offending me" she's like "that's fair, it's offensive, BUT I wasn't talking about ME thinking that..."
I also feel like she's subtly suggesting that racism (that she deals with) is not in any way comparable to discrimination against AIs. It's not "real" so to speak. Being a POC myself, she reminds me of so many idiots. Like "Oh, people of color have all this cultural and historical baggage, but AIs don't have to deal with any prejudice at all."
ugh. Want to punch. So. Much.
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I think its about 50% Melon getting hustled by Faye, 50% Evie hitting a sore spot without thinking about it. Bubs will likely call Faye out, which Faye will likely get snarky with then do the right thing....I also think if Bubs does get mad at Faye over the Melon stuff her attraction (for lack of a better word) will play a part in her anger with Faye. Don't forget Bubs is an AI and being a former combat unit she might have enhanced hearing.
Warning - while you were typing 3 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.
It's not the hearing that's the problem - it's the attention. It's hard to pay attention to 2-3 things at once.
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I think I agree with those who think Bubbles is upset about her conversation with Evie, rather than anything to do with Melon. There might be later tension between Bubbles and Faye, but I think it might be more " your sister's girlfriend is rude and obnoxious, had enough of that in the army thanks" rather than anything Melon based.
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The comparison of AIs to nuclear weapons was too much. Can I please, please punch Evie? I want to punch her. She has just been irritating since she showed up. First saying that Faye was "negging" her, and just generally being a douche. She's super annoying.
Wow, new QC characters REALLY get hostile receptions these days.
Evie seems bright, pretty easygoing, and clearly has some issues when it comes to processing the humanity of AI entities in practice as opposed to on paper. Nobody's perfect. This is not a flaw that calls for being punched. :\
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I realize I probably dislike Evie more than anyone else. But I really, really dislike her. Maybe she'll do something to change that, but I seriously doubt it.
She can start by apologizing to Bubbles. :x
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Judging by Faye's uncertain look back as they leave, I strongly suspect that's the direction this is headed.
Nothing wrong with disliking someone, but wanting to punch them for that is a concern. ;p
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My read on Bubbles' expression is that at least in part she sees Amanda and Evie together and is sad/jealous that it's not a double date.
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The comparison of AIs to nuclear weapons was too much. Can I please, please punch Evie? I want to punch her. She has just been irritating since she showed up. First saying that Faye was "negging" her, and just generally being a douche. She's super annoying.
Wow, new QC characters REALLY get hostile receptions these days.
Evie seems bright, pretty easygoing, and clearly has some issues when it comes to processing the humanity of AI entities in practice as opposed to on paper. Nobody's perfect. This is not a flaw that calls for being punched. :\
I disagree. I mean, I don't want to punch her (yet), or hate her in any way near how people hated Tilly, but holy shit the way she was talking down to Bubbles, and her joked not-actually-an-excuse. I'm even more angry at her than I was at Marigold when she was holding Momo's new body over her [Momo's] head.
Although, re tonight's comic, I'm not totally sure if that's why Bubbles is mad, or if she's uncomfortable with Faye taking advantage of Melon's nature for financial gain (although since it was offered, this seems a lot more minor).
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Additionally, Bubbles was already being shown to feel uncomfortable about being de... I want to say depersonalised but it's not that. De-entitied? Objectified?
I think you want 'dehumanized?'
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Additionally, Bubbles was already being shown to feel uncomfortable about being de... I want to say depersonalised but it's not that. De-entitied? Objectified?
I think you want 'dehumanized?'
Well I wondered about that. She doesn't self identify as human, so that word felt wrong there. The issue seems to be more around "personhood", although that also may be considered anthropomorphising. The point is that AI are sentient, intelligent, and have complex inner emotional lives. My point is they aren't just test subjects. They deserve respect and social awareness.
This isn't to say a respectful study of AI culture and its impact on the world couldn't be respectful. Like an anthropological study, as long as it was done sensitively and ethically it is absolutely of academic interest. Evie's mistake was to go into full "explain why my PhD is fascinating" mode without thinking about who she was talking to. I also don't think she did it at all maliciously or in bad faith, just got hyped over talking about her subject and didn't notice as her foot crept inexorably mouthwards.
I also don't want to punch her :-P
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The thing with Evie is she basically denied a very real experience that Bubbles has had at least twice: The snot nosed teen-somethings talking behind her back, and the mom nervously expecting Bubbles to squish her child on a whim. Bubbles has probably spent her entire life facing prejudice for being essentially an AI tank in a humanoid body, and Evie outright said that humans have no baggage against AI's, that they're readily accepted, and that just hasn't been the case for Bubbles.
The comparison of AIs to nuclear weapons was too much. Can I please, please punch Evie? I want to punch her. She has just been irritating since she showed up. First saying that Faye was "negging" her, and just generally being a douche. She's super annoying.
Wow, new QC characters REALLY get hostile receptions these days.
Evie seems bright, pretty easygoing, and clearly has some issues when it comes to processing the humanity of AI entities in practice as opposed to on paper. Nobody's perfect. This is not a flaw that calls for being punched. :\
Evie strikes me as someone who suffers what I like to call "Campus Syndrome." Young, high-minded people who think the relative safety of a college campus is remotely the same as life outside said campus. There's a tendency there to think you know everything, and often an optimistic view point that doesn't match reality when you're given all this sense of knowledge, freedom, and self empowerment. You forget that shit is still really backwards in the world. It's even worse now with "Safe Spaces" that try to minimize exposure to the reality that humans will be shitty to anything they encounter that isn't familiar, and AI's are still extremely new by the sound of it, and people ARE hostile towards any AI that doesn't come in a cute pintsized/momo styled package.
It's basically a major distrust I have in modern higher learning. You're more educated but...I think the last couple batches have lost something in terms of dealing with social issues like what's being demonstrated here. If you live in an echo chamber of academic optimism, this is the sort of problem that will happen.
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Judging by Faye's uncertain look back as they leave, I strongly suspect that's the direction this is headed.
Nothing wrong with disliking someone, but wanting to punch them for that is a concern. ;p
The comparison of AIs to nuclear weapons was too much. Can I please, please punch Evie? I want to punch her. She has just been irritating since she showed up. First saying that Faye was "negging" her, and just generally being a douche. She's super annoying.
Wow, new QC characters REALLY get hostile receptions these days.
Evie seems bright, pretty easygoing, and clearly has some issues when it comes to processing the humanity of AI entities in practice as opposed to on paper. Nobody's perfect. This is not a flaw that calls for being punched. :\
Holy sh*t! We're on the same side of something, Shjade. If that's not cause for scotch then I don't know what is.
Ok, people, YES, was Evie insensitive and will need a "talking to" + an apology to Bubbs be in her immediate future, yes. Is ANY of that worthy of physical violence, whether from Faye OR from forum-goers? Absolutely not. Let's calm it down, people. Evie got a bit too excited, didn't watch her fucking language like she should have and I wouldn't be shocked if when she realized her blunder she was horrified and tripped over herself to apologize to Bubbles.
......
If she doesn't THEN we burn her at the stake. :evil: :evil: :evil:
I kid, Shjade...I kid.
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...????????
So I was at a convention awhile ago, rooming in the hotel with a friend, having paid my share of the rent and parking fees. There's a bunch of other people too, and 2 beds. Come time to sleep, my host asks me if I want to use a bed.
So I stop for a moment and say "Oh, well, I...brought my sleeping bag so I don't need it...I mean, if anyone else wants it, they can have it, that's fine." So she asks me again, more firmly, if "I" want the bed. And I spent the next 10 seconds stuttering until my girlfriend ordered me to take it because of my back problems.
...And I see nothing wrong with Faye taking the money that Melon offered. I don't understand how people are saying that Faye "took advantage" of Melon - to what length is one supposed to go to to refuse a freely-offered benefit to prove themselves "not a terrible person"? Hm? Hell, in my case, I hadn't done anything to receive the bed I was being offered - if Melon believes she received something worth paying for, and Faye is out of line in accepting, then what kind of parasitic monster would that imply I am?
And I *like* Melon, it's certainly not that I don't care what happens to her. She still offered payment, of her own choosing and her own prerogative, and it isn't Faye's responsibility to force her to not to do that.
As for Bubbles, my money's on Evie's crap, with a side of jealousy.
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ChipNoir: You have no idea what a "safe Space" is, yet feel qualified to pontificate about it. Ironically enough, that's the same kind of arrogance that you are criticizing in Evie.
Imagine you're a trans person. Everywhere you go, people are shitty. Ohhhhh believe ChipNoir, if you're a LGBTQ, or autistic, or POC, or what have you, you are QUITE AWARE that the world is shitty, thank you very FUCKING much. A "safe Space" is an area where you can be assured no one's going to, say, put a bullet between your eyes because you wanted to take a piss. You can be there, and for the briefest respite, know that people accept you, you are safe...until you have to venture out to where all the shitty people are, again.
A "Safe Space" isn't a place for white cis etc people to go to avoid rude people or people being shitty bigots to each other, though I'm sure that's a convenient notion for justifying your notion of the cloistered college campus.
"Safe Spaces" often exist on college campuses BECAUSE the environment brings together so many people who've experienced various forms of bigotry, and the students, far from running away, decided to CONFRONT that by establishing an area where bigoted threats are not tolerated.
And for the record, it isn't anybody's duty to educate you about such things. You are capable of learning about them on your own, if you truly care. I simply decided to do so of my own prerogative.
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Someone with more recent first-hand experience feel free to correct me. but I was under the impression that universities were environments very aware of injustice and bigotry.
Which makes Evie hard to understand. Her research absolutely must have put her in touch with robophobic attitudes. Why doesn't she act more aware?
I don't hate her for over-intellectualizing around an injured person, but agree that such a degree of nerdery requires consent. Bubbles was politely but unmistakably signaling discomfort.
Evie should try to catch her in a different mood. Bubbles is educated and thoughtful. A conversation like Evie was trying to start could actually succeed.
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Wow, I think that Evie must have really upset Bubbles but I don't think that it was anything that was said on Monday. I'm thinking that it was something that happened off-panel whilst Faye and Amanda were exploring the endless fields of wonder that is Melon.
Here's a prediction: Based on panel 4, I think that Faye is going to be so worried about Bubbles that she'll bail and go back early to see her. That's when we'll find out exactly what Evie said and Faye probably will want to make Bubbles feel better as a priority (that will probably happen next week).
It's possible that this may be a big breach between Amanda and Faye. Faye may never want to be around Evie again if she thinks she's been sufficiently thoughtlessly cruel to Bubbles and Amanda might make it a "love me, love my girlfriend" thing. Siblings have had long-running feuds for far less but that would, IMO, be something of a tragedy.
Someone with more recent first-hand experience feel free to correct me. but I was under the impression that universities were environments very aware of injustice and bigotry.
Which makes Evie hard to understand. Her research absolutely must have put her in touch with robophobic attitudes. Why doesn't she act more aware?
One of the first things most sciences of this type teach (intentionally or otherwise) is intellectual distance. You can't easily research and diagnose if your perceptions and intellect are cluttered with empathy. It's possible that Evie is so good at thinking about her insights as if she's researching an impersonal 'faceless other' that's she's more-or-less lost the ability to see the people behind the research at all.
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ChipNoir: You have no idea what a "safe Space" is, yet feel qualified to pontificate about it. Ironically enough, that's the same kind of arrogance that you are criticizing in Evie.
Imagine you're a trans person. Everywhere you go, people are shitty. Ohhhhh believe ChipNoir, if you're a LGBTQ, or autistic, or POC, or what have you, you are QUITE AWARE that the world is shitty, thank you very FUCKING much. A "safe Space" is an area where you can be assured no one's going to, say, put a bullet between your eyes because you wanted to take a piss. You can be there, and for the briefest respite, know that people accept you, you are safe...until you have to venture out to where all the shitty people are, again.
A "Safe Space" isn't a place for white cis etc people to go to avoid rude people or people being shitty bigots to each other, though I'm sure that's a convenient notion for justifying your notion of the cloistered college campus.
"Safe Spaces" often exist on college campuses BECAUSE the environment brings together so many people who've experienced various forms of bigotry, and the students, far from running away, decided to CONFRONT that by establishing an area where bigoted threats are not tolerated.
And for the record, it isn't anybody's duty to educate you about such things. You are capable of learning about them on your own, if you truly care. I simply decided to do so of my own prerogative.
The rub here is I am LGBT. Invisibly so, and full of privilege as white gay male, I grant you, but I grew up with violent displays of bigotry during my coming out days in high school, so yes, I know what what a relief Safe Spaces brings. But the problem is that safe space limits your exposure to how to handle those situations when you can't control your environment. You can't shout at a biggot and shame them into vanishing into a puff of evil smelling smoke. This is something I've witnessed first hand with some younger friends that have come out of college, and gotten into nasty situations where they thought they could just shout down biggotry, and got VERY hurt, so perhaps this is giving me a biased view. I have to go with my own protective instincts on this, and what I see as not working to help people in the long run.
I really do feel like there's so much pressure to push that kind of stuff out that when graduated students are faced with it alone post-college, they're not going to have the tools and resources to deal with it except to lash out violently, be it physical violence, character assassination (Something I'm prone to doing a lot on social media till recently) I understand why; It's to protect what you hold to be important. But methods can actually destroy that.
I'm already seeing people comment that they want to punch Evie. That kinda visceral reaction happens when people don't have the resources to resolve a problem any other way, and I'm seeing more and more people take this kinda mentality when dealing with anything they perceive as a threat, which provides little long term solution. It just creates lines in the sand, and generational conflict. You can shame a biggot all you want, but it won't make them vanish into thin air.
Every time I see Bubbles encounter biggotry, I have a TON of admiration for her. She could have hurt a lot of people, and by a lot of people's moral beliefs today, that'd be accepted, because biggotry has no easier answer than to punch it in the jaw. But every time, even with the apex of evil that was Corpse Witch, she's taken the higher ground. It breaks my heart that Evie walks all over her deep rooted traumas unknowlingly, but I do think Bubble's approach to this is the best possible one. She controls her own agency, and she reaches out to people she knows will listen, and decides when where and IF she'll have a conflict with someone. I really do admire that.
I want to amend this by stating that I do not claim you are wrong. You could very well be right, and I'm out of line. I'm even adding a like to your comment, because this is what I feel is more important than safe spaces: Talking with people, even if you think they're literally so wrong they might as well be saying the sky is green. One or both of us will think about this now, and reflect on how we think about the situation. I know I will, and that's far more important to me.
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Someone with more recent first-hand experience feel free to correct me. but I was under the impression that universities were environments very aware of injustice and bigotry.
As a university educated person, a POC , and a person with a broken mental state, I can only offer you these three words: "Bigots Are Everywhere.".
And a few years at Uni are very rarely going to erase a lifetime of learned prejudices and hate. Thus the inherent problems with so called "safe spaces".
Thank, Fate, that foolishness was a few years after my time. >.>
Now, as I said above, Evie is not an AI bigot, I believe, she's just excitable about a subject she's been studying forEVER(lol) and suffers from something I like to call "foot in mouth" diseases. Sure, you don't mean any harm but that won't cause you from causing it.
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Melon has a point. I was noticing that Faye and her sister are drawn exactly the same, except for hair, glasses and expressions.
There seems to be a sizing issue with them at times though.
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...And I see nothing wrong with Faye taking the money that Melon offered. I don't understand how people are saying that Faye "took advantage" of Melon - to what length is one supposed to go to to refuse a freely-offered benefit to prove themselves "not a terrible person"?
That's an easy one.
"Is $100 Dollars enough?"
"Nah, that's WAY too much... gimme a $20."
(And even *that* would exploitation)
Faye's reaction showed quite clearly that she KNEW Melon had no idea how much she should be offering.
But she still took the money.
However... as someone stated above - this may well be an indication that Faye isn't doing too well financially - IE casting aside her moral compass to keep the cash she sorely needs, from someone who doesn't "know the value"... but it doesn't make it any less exploitative.
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Oh man, I get to be the ray of positivity for once. I love it when this happens.
I'm calling her Ev for short, because I think it suits her, and it's easier to type. Moving briskly on.
I really like Ev. I think she's cool, she's been rolling with Faye's punches really well, we've seen her be generally positive and well meaning. Sure, she's said some stuff that Bubbles has taken the wrong way, but largely she's been very... gracious about it?
She's learning her audience by making mistakes there, and when Bubbles signals discomfort she doesn't backpedal hard, but she does clarify intent immediately rather than doubling down on it.
Basically, she takes Bubbles being uncomfortable about certain things seriously without pushing either of them into defensiveness.
Remember that Bubbles is a naturally defensive, wounded character. It might not be a reflection of Ev, but of Bubbles hangups getting poked. And there are so many other reasons Bubbles could feel weird right now, Ev being only one of them. Faye's sister, Bubbles seeing someone in a happy relationship with someone so Faye-like, them all openly ogling her, Bubbles having very low self esteem etc. etc. are all also things happening right now.
Remember. Ev can say things that are hurtful to Bubbles in a way that reflects more on Bubbles for being hurt, than Ev for being hurtful. That can just be a true thing.
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MrNumbers, I just don't think anything she said is a problem of not knowing her audience. It's rude and dehumanising (although yeah I agree that this isn't the best word given the topic), not to mention that it is gross in a very familiar way, for one to talk over other's lived experiences to enforce their opinions or (likely flawed) studies.
edit - and I'm not saying that means she's the worst character or a bad person; I know people can get tied up in academics and forget that people aren't just statistics. I'm saying she is being objectively rude and offensive, whether or not she means to be
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fellas is it cool to make a black woman the strawman thoughtless academic in your story arc about racism/dehumanization of fake robot people
it seems like there might be some problems with that
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fellas is it cool to make a black woman the strawman thoughtless academic in your story arc about racism/dehumanization of fake robot people
it seems like there might be some problems with that
If anything, I think that might be the most appropriate choice for this arc. It sends the message that anyone can be bigoted, not just historically privileged peoples.
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The comparison of AIs to nuclear weapons was too much. Can I please, please punch Evie? I want to punch her. She has just been irritating since she showed up. First saying that Faye was "negging" her, and just generally being a douche. She's super annoying.
Wow, new QC characters REALLY get hostile receptions these days.
Evie seems bright, pretty easygoing, and clearly has some issues when it comes to processing the humanity of AI entities in practice as opposed to on paper. Nobody's perfect. This is not a flaw that calls for being punched. :\
Yeah, I'm with you on this.....I'm surprised and kind of shocked to see some people here exhibiting such hostility towards Evie.
I recently left academia after almost 20 years in it in multiple countries, and while I agree that there are many stuck-up, head-in-ass academics, I would at the moment certainly not place Evie in that category. She is overexcited about her research and clearly has not quite learned yet how to reconcile her interest/knowledge in AI psychology with appropriate interactions with AIs to not inadvertently dehumanize them. I don't see any ill intent or any of the typical academic arrogance in her (yet).
A desire for physical violence towards her seems somewhat....disturbing, but that's just my two cents.
As for Bubbles' current state of mind, I am also curious to see if this perhaps has to do with Faye taking advantage of Melon instead of whatever Evie may have said. Since Melon specifically asked whether $100 was an appropriate amount, any ethically sound business would point out that that's too much. If after pointing that out Melon would still like to give $100, then that's fine. Now it just looks as exploiting somebody's naivete, which is not a good look.
Plus, it's a bad business decision in the long run too, because if Melon finds out that she way overpaid and spreads word about it, that could likely hurt Union Robotics.
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I honestly want to punch Evie. I immediately disliked her from the start and the way she's treating Bubbles is shitty. She reminds me of every stuck up, head up their ass academic I've ever come across. Gross.
Guess it must be frustrating to see how often ones' knee-jerk antipathy and prejudices against members of a despised out-group turn out to be perfectly justified by the behaviour of fictionalized descriptions of members of said group in serialized comedic media.
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I honestly want to punch Evie. I immediately disliked her from the start and the way she's treating Bubbles is shitty. She reminds me of every stuck up, head up their ass academic I've ever come across. Gross.
Guess it must be frustrating to see how often ones' knee-jerk antipathy and prejudices against members of a despised out-group turn out to be perfectly justified by the behaviour of fictionalized descriptions of members of said group in serialized comedic media.
"Knee-jerk antipathy and prejudices against members of a despised out-group turn out to be perfectly justified by the behaviour of fictionalized descriptions of members of said group in serialized comedic media", is the name of my K-Pop 'Punk' album !
:parrot:
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For me, todays comic is more about Faye and Bubbles.
Faye noticed immediately that something is bothering Bubbles, and the three last panels clearly show her in a state of worry. I think it's safe to say that, while Faye does care very deeply for all of her friends, Bubbles holds a special place in her heart.
My hypothesis is that this week's comics could very well be a setup for Bubbles to question if there can be any chance for her and Faye (or any human for that matter) to be more than friends. Think about it: Back when we first met Bubbles she really was little more than a walking tank. She was Corpse Witches bodyguard/enforcer.
Faye helped her to become so much more than that. Removing her armor and changing her hairstyle are clear signs (at least to me) that Bubbles is trying to further grow as a person, to open up to others, especially to Faye, and the main reason for those changes is her deep friendship with Faye.
Then along comes someone like Evie, and Bubbles (with no cruel intentions on Evie's part) is compared to a tank, AIs in general are compared to weapons (of mass destruction no less). Almost every sentence in their brief dialogue reminds Bubbles in a blunt way, that she is in fact an artificial mind inhabiting an artificial body… After that, Bubbles herself says that she does not eat. She is not human. Where does that leave her and her feelings for Faye?
Maybe Bubbles has to chew on those thoughts for a while.
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I honestly want to punch Evie. I immediately disliked her from the start and the way she's treating Bubbles is shitty. She reminds me of every stuck up, head up their ass academic I've ever come across. Gross.
Guess it must be frustrating to see how often ones' knee-jerk antipathy and prejudices against members of a despised out-group turn out to be perfectly justified by the behaviour of fictionalized descriptions of members of said group in serialized comedic media.
"Knee-jerk antipathy and prejudices against members of a despised out-group turn out to be perfectly justified by the behaviour of fictionalized descriptions of members of said group in serialized comedic media", is the name of my K-Pop 'Punk' album !
:parrot:
That the one with last summer's hit-single "People in this country have had enough of experts"?
(https://images.theconversation.com/files/129362/original/image-20160705-801-bwg1i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop)
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Ugh - that photo pollutes the forum.
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I sorta hope Faye dumps the girls and goes back to see Bubbles. Guess we'll see ...
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...And I see nothing wrong with Faye taking the money that Melon offered. I don't understand how people are saying that Faye "took advantage" of Melon - to what length is one supposed to go to to refuse a freely-offered benefit to prove themselves "not a terrible person"?
That's an easy one.
"Is $100 Dollars enough?"
"Nah, that's WAY too much... gimme a $20."
(And even *that* would exploitation)
Faye's reaction showed quite clearly that she KNEW Melon had no idea how much she should be offering.
But she still took the money.
However... as someone stated above - this may well be an indication that Faye isn't doing too well financially - IE casting aside her moral compass to keep the cash she sorely needs, from someone who doesn't "know the value"... but it doesn't make it any less exploitative.
This is something I only just noticed/thought of, but given the disagreement it's worth mentioning- when Melon first brought in the free-range sex toy, it was buzzing and Amanda described it as 'angry'. This at least means it already had batteries in it, and may mean it was broken. Given it seems to have been, uh, pacified by the next comic, that means that Faye would have:
- handled a strange sex toy found on the street
- maybe fixed any mechanical faults
- worked out how it functioned (I.e how to turn the damn thing off) and shown Melon how to do so.
Given the above, and *especially* point one because even with gloves that's pretty squicky, she has actually earned a wage there. 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
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My reaction to Evie's behavior is WANTING to punch her. I wouldn't actually punch her if she was a real person, but I would definitely tell her that what she's saying is not cool.
She has a very bad case of campus brain. And her being a black, gay woman is perfect because it does show that yes, even oppressed minorities can be shitty to others. Being a half black, mixed race pansexual woman myself, I think I can safely say there's no need for Evie to act like this. I do think she's so soaked in the echo chamber of academia that she forgets basic manners. I started to rage when Bubbles CLEARLY told her she was being offensive by comparing AIs to nuclear weapons, then Evie backpedaled. No apology, just "that's fair, it's an offensive comparison, BUT I meant OTHER people think that." I'm sure Bubbles is already perfectly aware that ignorant people make that comparison, Evie is just talking out her ass at that point. The correct response would be "I'm sorry. I did not at all mean to draw a comparison like that, I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just got so caught up talking about my research." She seems not to understand that Bubbles is a PERSON.
For me the last straw was when Bubbles said "my life isn't a case study" and Evie was like "I KNOW, right? My friend is studying me studying robots." Just the sheer obliviousness...ugh.
A few things:
Evie has been annoying in other ways besides how disgustingly rude she was to Bubbles. 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"?
Faye at this point is unaware of the conversation that took place between Evie and Bubbles. When she finds out what Evie said there will definitely be consequences for Evie. Faye is around AIs all the time and has a real understanding of the bullshit they put up with. Evie is going to go on her shit list pretty fast. This goes double because of how Evie has treated her friend.
Evie is not winning any points with her potential future sister in law.
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The horse on the dining room table here is that until a few years ago AnthroPCs were treated as pets at best, property at worst.
Evie knows that.
So why claim that AIs don't carry the persecution baggage that other minority groups carry?
I can see why someone might want to fool themselves on the subject but that's a really inappropriate thing for a researcher to do.
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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
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.
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I think we're getting caught up in the Melon panels here with regards to Bubbles reaction. I reserve the right to be dead wrong, but here are my thoughts:
Historically, when someone in QC is aware of a conversation, but not part of it, there is at least one frame showing that they are paying attention, especially with regards to Bubbles. As another note, if Bubbles was concerned that Faye was taking advantage of an AI or harming their business, she would speak up. We have seen her unafraid to do so with regards to UR. What Bubbles seems to have trouble with (historically) is speaking up for and defending her personhood to strangers, especially when they are discussing facets of her identity.
Given the framing of these panels, Bubbles behavior in the past, and to be honest the general vibe I got, she is reacting poorly to Evie's seeming inability to recognize and respect her discomfort.
As an IT professional, a lesson you learn repeatedly that real experiences should never be trivialized. If someone is describing an experience/issue, responding with "Okay, but here's why that's wrong" is not helpful to either party. You don't learn anything by rejecting their experience, and they're certainly not better helped by your rejecting their reality.
I do reserve the right to be totally wrong about the outcome tho.
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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.
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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
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.
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.
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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"?
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....
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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.
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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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You know when you meet someone and you just KNOW, like "Ugh, this one is going to be a problem"?
Yes.
"... feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice
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If you happen to remember the author, could you share with the class?
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
You know what? Probably. I mean, you could probably limit yourself to the odd harmless interaction now and then and otherwise live in a cave and MAYBE you'd be able to live a life in which you didn't hurt others. But for most of us? We hurt people's feelings, whether intentionally or not. So I think it's important to be able to own what you've done and try to learn from it, to be better moving forward. (It's also great to get better at forgiving people, in my opinion, but it's a lot easier when people take responsibility for what they've done and apologize.)
As for Evie, she doesn't seem to realize that she hurt Bubbles. That's not great, but also not at all uncommon. People who aren't trying to be offensive often don't realize that the reactions they get from others may, in fact, be offense. Some are better at picking up at it than others; Evie seems like the type who might need a "HEY THAT WASN'T COOL" shoved in her face. I'll judge her character more from how she reactions when that (hopefully) happens.
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.
I assume it has to do with tone; the tone of the Melon strip, as most strips with Melon, was humorous and ridiculous. In the strip with Evie and Bubbles, while there may be some humor in Evie's obliviousness, there was less of a sense of "cartoon wackiness," and so it invokes more of a serious, real-world response. Then there's the element of people being more invested in Bubbles as a character compared to Melon and her interaction with Evie perhaps resonating with more commenters' experiences than Faye and Melon.
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
Kind of like the one guy on the pub that brags he's never even had a citation, much less an accident with his car. He doesn't have one, but quite regularly has to be picked out of a ditch he drunkenly drove his bike into.
Sometimes I get that impression too, and not just here. But then, closing oneself off gives other problems again, which, sometimes, may provoke much the same outcome.
Personally, I think Bubbles' reaction might also have to do with the fact that this is the first time she sees Faye with family. She might just be very lonely right now. Do remember, the people she cares about most have been deleted from her memory, leaving just the pain of mission them. A feeling that Evie's quasi lecture will have exacerbated. After all, no matter what happens, Faye knows she has a sister somewhere. Bubbles, on the other hand, stands very much alone. No doubt we'll see more clearly tomorrow.
I doubt that it had anything to do with what she accepted from Melon. Bubbles would have been more direct. Besides, she did tell Melon the truth on what she found. If she then insists on the alternate explanation, and offers that much, I think Faye can accept. Just think how much you'll pay a vet just to tell you your pet is fine, and not to worry.
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If Melon can just freely fork over 400 dollars, but never bother to get a real tie, and has the kinda 'furnature' that she and her partner have, I kinda get the feeling that besides rent and utilities, they really don't feel like they need money for much else. Soooo it's her money to waste as she pleases.
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Okay, so how is a party of three going to have an easier time getting a table than a party of four? They are just going to end up with a four person table anyway.
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They're going to that weird restaurant that has triangular tables. I think Melon works there.
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Okay, so how is a party of three going to have an easier time getting a table than a party of four? They are just going to end up with a four person table anyway.
Unless they're going to one of those hipster places with "community tables," in which case I guess the three of them would have an easier time finding places to sit. I took Bubbles comment as being meant to be an obvious "I-need-to-make-an-excuse" kind of statement.
Though one time I was in a group of five people, and we went to a restaurant that was absolutely baffled at how to seat us. They were fairly busy, but there were a couple open tables. Only we couldn't be seated at a four person table, even though there really was plenty of table space and some spare chairs. And we couldn't be seated at a larger table, because what if a larger party came in and neede to sit at it? Eventually this Goldilocks problem was solved as another group cleared from a table that the restaurant dubbed just right for us.
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Ooor it’s because Bubbles is seven feet tall and five hundred odd pounds; not many places have chairs in her size.
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Ooor it’s because Bubbles is seven feet tall and five hundred odd pounds; not many places have chairs in her size.
Well the steel reinforced restaurant chairs are something of a niche market.
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
There's innocent accident, and then there's failure to inform yourself about courtesy, then there's negligence, then there's malice.
All require corrective action. Innocent accidents turn into insults if not apologized for.
Where is Evie on that scale? I lean to her being negligent. Maybe even reckless, given that she's been warned. Repeatedly. Clearly.
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Faye gave Melon honest answers. I think Melon appreciates that.
She finds it natural that some robots might have penises. (And our reality already has Real Dolls)
(I can't help wondering how Pintsize made out with that tugboat)
As for Evie, I'm willing to cut her some slack. This isn't "Estimable Content" after all...
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Soooo it's her money to waste as she pleases.
No one's saying that Melon shouldn't be allowed to give Faye money, just that Faye was being dishonest with how she took it. If Faye had been truthful and Melon had still insisted, then fair enough. As it was though Faye lied and abused Melon's trust. Mechanics of any sort who take advantage of their customer's gullibility open themselves up for some backlash.
I guess it bothers me even more because up until now I've always viewed Faye as a good person. She has her flaws, and has made mistakes, but was never a bad person until now.
Some people are speculating that it's because Faye really needs the money, but that's no excuse. A homeless person can be just as likely to give back a dropped wallet as a rich person. It doesn't speak for their current state, but for the content of their character... and Faye's has shown to be lacking.
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Faye gave Melon honest answers.
Melon: Thank you for your help. Here's a hundred dollars. Is that a good amount of money to give you?
Faye: Uhhhhh yeah that's a good amount.
Manda:*snicker*
I wouldn't call that honest.
Melon even questioned why Manda was snickering, giving Faye a second chance to say it was too much, but Faye just waved it off.
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Soooo it's her money to waste as she pleases.
No one's saying that Melon shouldn't be allowed to give Faye money, just that Faye was being dishonest with how she took it. If Faye had been truthful and Melon had still insisted, then fair enough. As it was though Faye lied and abused Melon's trust. Mechanics of any sort who take advantage of their customer's gullibility open themselves up for some backlash.
I guess it bothers me even more because up until now I've always viewed Faye as a good person. She has her flaws, and has made mistakes, but was never a bad person until now.
Some people are speculating that it's because Faye really needs the money, but that's no excuse. A homeless person can be just as likely to give back a dropped wallet as a rich person. It doesn't speak for their current state, but for the content of their character... and Faye's has shown to be lacking.
But Faye didn't lie. She told Melon exactly what the object was and what it needed- Melon just didn't listen. Unless you mean saying "uhhhh yeah" to the question "is $100 dollars a good amount to give you" as a lie. But I'd say, given the price of consulting fees (which Bubbles herself refers to back when they are fixing officer basilisk's foot) as well as the unpleasantness of handling an abandoned sex toy, Faye is within her rights to accept payment offered.
As to Amanda's snickering- she was laughing throughout the exchange. In fact, Amanda laughing at the funny AI is kinda uncomfortable in context, while Faye was trying to maintain a professional environment despite her. That was what she was covering, or at least that's how it seems to me.
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Melon has a point. I was noticing that Faye and her sister are drawn exactly the same, except for hair, glasses and expressions.
There seems to be a sizing issue with them at times though.
slightly different noses as well.
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If the argument is really "$100 wasn't too much to give her" I disagree, but I can't really debate that.
I'll just go back to lurking for another 9 years. :psyduck:
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If the argument is really "$100 wasn't too much to give her" I disagree, but I can't really debate that.
I'll just go back to lurking for another 9 years. :psyduck:
In fairness, I know where you are coming from about feeling $100 is too much. That does feel expensive to me too. I guess the reason I'm arguing is because people seem to be portraying Faye as A Bad Person for accepting it, which to me seems unfair. Faye's being pragmatic and mercenary- very in character, not especially heroic or "good", but not committing sins worthy of high censure.
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To everyone arguing over whether accepting an offer of $100 for what is at bare minimum a consulting fee plus a "rubber-glove policy" fee (and quite possibly more, Jeff has a habit of not showing the in-progress scenes in instances like this) I have a short anecdote.
I used to work at a locally-owned and operated computer repair shop. We had very reasonable prices for our services, and made a habit of "questions are free and quick fixes should be cheap." Want to know why I don't work there anymore? It folded.
Business can be somewhat ruthless, and just because you think something ought to be cheap doesn't mean it is, and you don't stay in business long by haggling yourself down.
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As a side note, Melon paid $75 to fix her ass, something she didn't seem overly attached to.
She's already thinking of the robo-dick as a pet and is showing attachment. For her, she probably got her money's worth, and isn't likely to bad-mouth the shop.
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Given Faye's fondness for snark, she could have been much cruder --- I'd say this was subtle, for her.
And if she had wanted to be exploitive, she could have spun Melon a tale out of moonbeams and fairy dust.
So we are left with arguing about whether $100 was a fair fee for a few moments of expert consultation.
Didn't Scotty once say, "Never make it look easy"? (Well, he should have)
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Didn't Scotty once say, "Never make it look easy"? (Well, he should have)
I bet that's what O'Brien whispers to himself alone in the teleporter control room.
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We know she holds down a job (however creepy)
Does she, though? We don't see her interacting with co-workers or a boss, or depositing any paychecks. I'm more inclined to believe that Melon knows that "jobs" are things that humans do all day, and that her Cloudcuckoolander brain somehow led her to the conclusion that laying on a floor with snakes and rats was a perfectly normal thing to do with one's time.
And it's always possible that Melon is on a financial support program.
can manage interpersonal relationships
She knows how to be friendly, sure, but her memory is also indicated as being pretty spotty (she forgot that she told Arthur she had a new favorite "meal", for instance), and we know nothing about how reliable she is as a roommate or how helpful she would be if Arthur had a crisis.
and decide whether something is of reasonable value to her (see her complaining about the $75 ass repair)
She never complained that $75 was too expensive. She was under the misconception that Faye was doing an act of charity, and was frustrated that she misread the situation (and
also felt inconvenienced because she didn't have her wallet on her).
Honestly, trying to get a read on Melon at this point is about as fruitful as trying to find the correct answer to a Rorschach test. Everyone is going to see something different.
As a side note, Melon paid $75 to fix her ass, something she didn't seem overly attached to.
:psyduck:
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As a side note, Melon paid $75 to fix her ass, something she didn't seem overly attached to.
(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/000/681/what-you-did-there-i-see-it.thumbnail.jpg)
Didn't Scotty once say, "Never make it look easy"? (Well, he should have)
I bet that's what O'Brien whispers to himself alone in the teleporter control room.
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
There's innocent accident, and then there's failure to inform yourself about courtesy, then there's negligence, then there's malice.
All require corrective action. Innocent accidents turn into insults if not apologized for.
Where is Evie on that scale? I lean to her being negligent. Maybe even reckless, given that she's been warned. Repeatedly. Clearly.
Really? When? I don’t recall there being a scene where Bubbles said “I’m uncomfortable with this, please stop.”
Keep in mind Evie knows about Faye from what Amanda told her and witnessed herself so it would be a reasonable assumption to think that if Bubbles can put up working with Faye then she’s not so delicately thin skinned that a discussion about AI sociology would hurt her feelings.
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fellas is it cool to make a black woman the strawman thoughtless academic in your story arc about racism/dehumanization of fake robot people
it seems like there might be some problems with that
As a fellow "thoughtless academic", I can tell you that it's easy to get wrapped up in a topic you're particularly passionate about and forget to be considerate of others' feelings.
Page 1 of this thread has a similar comment from a psych major.
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In #3656, look at literally EVERYTHING Bubbles says to Evie. Evie just goes on, ignoring her. "There are still those who hate us." "Hey, I don't like being compared to nuclear weapons." "Hey, my life isn't your case study." Notice how Evie ignores. And ignores. And ignores. And keeps talking, and talking, and talking, but there's not much listening going on.
Mandy has a way of picking crappy girlfriends, and I have to say, I think she done it again. I'm sure Evie lives in an echo chamber full of academics who think she has a brilliant mind, but to Bubbles, she is coming off as an asshole.
Again, I dislike Evie far more than anyone else here. She just rubs me the wrong way. But quite frankly, we have heard enough from her to understand that she can be oblivious, ignorant, and easily butthurt (in the case of Faye) along with being blind to what AIs go through. It's pretty clear that she doesn't have a close personal relationship with any AIs as Faye does with Bubbles.
My guess is that Evie is going to reveal what she said during dinner and Faye is going to end up yelling at both of them and storming out, with Faye delivering a well deserved parting shot. "Way to go Mandy, you sure know how to pick em" before running back to comfort Bubbles.
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I also want to point out that it's SUPER OBVIOUS to me that Evie doesn't listen because she doesn't think Bubbles has anything to teach her. She's the smartest person in the world and obviously she's right about everything. She's talking AT Bubbles, not TO her. And i think this is a communication problem she has with a lot of people. Even her comment to Amanda reveals that she's constantly correcting people and acting smarter than thou.
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Evie is the worst? You must’ve skipped the last chapter then. And I’m not referring to Tilly.
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Evie is not THE WORST character in the comic. Evie is someone I dislike very much so far. Maybe my opinion will change if she does something to redeem herself, like, oh, I don't know, apologize to Bubbles maybe.
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Evie is the worst? You must’ve skipped the last chapter then. And I’m not referring to Tilly.
I didn't personally say that so I can't speak on it, but I mean, I think Beatrice is on a different tier entirely, so she doesn't really come to mind.
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Evie is the worst? You must’ve skipped the last chapter then. And I’m not referring to Tilly.
Correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but when fayelovesbubbles says, "I dislike Evie far more than anyone else here," I think they mean "more than anyone else on the forums dislikes Evie," not, "more than any other QC character."
Edit: Evie I guess is so wrapped up in her research and perhaps eagerness to impress that she forgot about simple sympathy and listening. Evie shouldn't be trying to tell Bubbles about her own experience. Evie should be listening. Hopefully this will become a learning moment for her.
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I'm just imagining that Evie has a parent, or an aunt, or an uncle, who'd look at her performance today and say, "Evie, I bless the world in which you can have possibly grown up so blessedly ignorant about how this shit works and how it feels, but we need to have a talk...."
And, seriously, that's just about all I've got for Evie. She's young. She's ignorant. She's wallowing in privilege and, like most young ignorant people wallowing in privilege, she can be hurtful without realizing it. This is called the arrogance of youth, and it tends to wear off eventually. But I don't see any actual malice. She doesn't need a punch in the face, she needs a remedial course in empathy and some learning experience. As a person of color, she likely has some relatives who can provide both.
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Evie is the worst? You must’ve skipped the last chapter then. And I’m not referring to Tilly.
Correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but when fayelovesbubbles says, "I dislike Evie far more than anyone else here," I think they mean "more than anyone else on the forums dislikes Evie," not, "more than any other QC character."
Edit: Evie I guess is so wrapped up in her research and perhaps eagerness to impress that she forgot about simple sympathy and listening. Evie shouldn't be trying to tell Bubbles about her own experience. Evie should be listening. Hopefully this will become a learning moment for her.
That is correct, I meant more than anyone else on this forum, not more than anyone else in the comic. Clearly a misunderstanding here.
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I'm just imagining that Evie has a parent, or an aunt, or an uncle, who'd look at her performance today and say, "Evie, I bless the world in which you can have possibly grown up so blessedly ignorant about how this shit works and how it feels, but we need to have a talk...."
And, seriously, that's just about all I've got for Evie. She's young. She's ignorant. She's wallowing in privilege and, like most young ignorant people wallowing in privilege, she can be hurtful without realizing it. This is called the arrogance of youth, and it tends to wear off eventually. But I don't see any actual malice. She doesn't need a punch in the face, she needs a remedial course in empathy and some learning experience. As a person of color, she likely has some relatives who can provide both.
Part of my reaction to her is probably partly because of dealing with women like her in my women's studies courses when I was in college. Graduate students can be the absolute worst.
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That's just it. Evie is still technically a student. Everything she has learned is from a textbook or is the secondhand experience of her lecturers. She has the theoretical knowledge, she just doesn't have the practical experience to temper youthful enthusiasm. In a real life setting away from college, if she acted like that towards a more volatile person, she'd probably get a bollicking that would teach her a lesson.
But here's the thing, sharing of knowledge and communication are two way streets. If two people are having a conversation and one is oblivious to the discomfort they are causing, its up to the other to say to them "Look, can you stop? You're making me feel really comfortable with the way you're talking." Straight away, you're telling someone that they are screwing up and they'll listen (or at least, they should). That inability to communicate is actually one of Bubbles' main flaws, she doesn't tell people how she might feel which deepens her problems which leads to more lack of communication and we get into a vicious circle.
The questions we should be asking might be more to do with Bubbles and less to do with Evie. Both Evie and Amanda are only serving as the catalyst and launch point for this story, they aren't necessarily the ones who will change for it being told. That's Faye and Bubbles.
Basically, its pointless getting upset over a character who is only doing what they are written to do and who will most likely disappear in a couple of strips anyway.
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New comic.
I feel like Evie and Amanda are looking at Faye with shipper-eyes. Like, maybe those are "what you just said is really cute" eyes, but they feel like shipper eyes. And don't get me wrong, I'm personally all aboard this ship, but I don't see anything Faye just said as particularly romantic? Maybe it's in Faye's expression. Could also be tonally, but since Jeph is aware this is a comic, probably not.
Or those aren't shipper-eyes and I'm dumb, idk.
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That looks painful. They should see an optician asap.
(also I'm colourblind so could someone just clarify for me- are their eyes red? Do we have a Code Stoker situation here!?)
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Funnily enough, all their eyes are brown.
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Brown with little pink hearts in the centre.
Yeah, shipper eyes.
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Awwww. :-D
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Well after all this heaviness it's nice to end the week with something sweet.
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I didn't know "Robo Shipping" is a thing. There really is a trope for everything it seems...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RoboShip (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RoboShip)
Faye and Bubbles are mentioned in the Web Comic section.
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New comic.
I feel like Evie and Amanda are looking at Faye with shipper-eyes. Like, maybe those are "what you just said is really cute" eyes, but they feel like shipper eyes. And don't get me wrong, I'm personally all aboard this ship, but I don't see anything Faye just said as particularly romantic? Maybe it's in Faye's expression. Could also be tonally, but since Jeph is aware this is a comic, probably not.
Zoom in on their pupils. Definitely "romantic"; their pupils are little pink hearts.
Looks like shipping to me.
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"Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind."
--The Doctor, "Twice Upon a Time."
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New comic.
I feel like Evie and Amanda are looking at Faye with shipper-eyes. Like, maybe those are "what you just said is really cute" eyes, but they feel like shipper eyes. And don't get me wrong, I'm personally all aboard this ship, but I don't see anything Faye just said as particularly romantic? Maybe it's in Faye's expression. Could also be tonally, but since Jeph is aware this is a comic, probably not.
Zoom in on their pupils. Definitely "romantic"; their pupils are little pink hearts.
Looks like shipping to me.
Oh, I could tell they were hearts on my first read through. I just also get heart eyes when I see something like a dog and a cat who are best friends, so as much as it seems like shipper eyes, I leave room for things like hearts, sweetness, love, etc. to be non-romantic.
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Took me a second look to see the hearts. I feel like they're going to embarrass Faye horribly. I can feel it.
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Brown with little pink hearts in the centre.
Yeah, shipper eyes.
Ha, I totally missed the little pink hearts in their eyes until you pointed them out. Thank you!
And yes, I agree, those are shipper eyes.
Oh, I could tell they were hearts on my first read through. I just also get heart eyes when I see something like a dog and a cat who are best friends, so as much as it seems like shipper eyes, I leave room for things like hearts, sweetness, love, etc. to be non-romantic.
Hmm, good point. Okay, yes, they could be "Aww, isn't that sweet" eyes... But I'm still betting on shipper eyes.
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Oh dear, I think I'm as creeped out by this situation as Faye is.
Maybe because I'm not shipping Faye and Bubs at all. I like them and love to watch their friendship develloping. But thinking of them as romantically inclined gives me shivers.
Great, now I'm thinking of it.
*shiver*
If Jeph wants to explore the twists and turns of robosexuality (is that the correct word?) I'd prefer any other couple. Momo and Sven for example. Or May and Marten. That would really be interesting. :-D
But not Faye and Bubbles, please.
Timemaster
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I think y'all are thinking about this one too hard.™
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It's What We Do Here.™
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Oh dear, I do think that Amanda and Evie have entered the 'Faybles Squee' zone! Seriously, I can see how they could interpret this as Faye talking about how she's gone about romancing Bubbles; she isn't but I could see how they could interpret it that way. I'm pretty sure that there was zero intent to romance Bubbles on Faye's part; Bubbles seems to have fallen in love with her anyway.
I think that Faye, in her own way, has hit the nail on the head. In various ways, Bubbles has suffered a lot of abuse in her life and that has left behavioural and emotional scars. When you're dealing with people like that, you have to give them time and space to open up in their own way and on their own terms so that they don't feel threatened anymore.
What am I expecting next week? I'm thinking that Faye will get annoyed with her two new shippers and go back home to complain to Bubbles about how ridiculous their entire viewpoint is. It's at that point that she realises that maybe it isn't ridiculous, at least on Bubbles' part (possibly just by a judicious use of some flashbacks) and she'll then have to figure out what she feels and what to do about it.
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If Jeph wants to explore the twists and turns of robosexuality (is that the correct word?) I'd prefer any other couple. Momo and Sven for example.
I suspect that if that ship were ever to set sail, Momo would first need to switch to a chassis that doesn't look like a young teenager. Also, as far as character goes, she'd have to undergo some develop a bit, IMO.
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robosexuality (is that the correct word?)
It has been used before in the forums (including a post by myself IIRC) to describe (mostly May's) the exploration of sexuality between robots and humans, so I think it's appropriate.
If Jeph wants to explore the twists and turns of robosexuality I'd prefer any other couple. Momo and Sven for example.
I suspect that if that ship were ever to set sail, Momo would first need to switch to a chassis that doesn't look like a young teenager. Also, as far as character goes, she'd have to undergo some develop a bit, IMO.
There might be laws preventing the installation of specific options in robots that could be taken for a human teenager (or younger). There was a bit in Swedish newspapers a while ago about realistic sex-dolls of younger girls being seized by customs because they were (quoting from memory) "enabling the production of child porn".
That said, Momo and Sven would be interesting to see how that works out: The innocent robot and the womaniser. I don't think it will happen though, so far we've only seen Momo (and May) show any interest in that ship and nothing at all even remotely romantic from Sven towards Momo.
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Oh dear, I think I'm as creeped out by this situation as Faye is.
Maybe because I'm not shipping Faye and Bubs at all. I like them and love to watch their friendship develloping. But thinking of them as romantically inclined gives me shivers.
Great, now I'm thinking of it.
*shiver*
If Jeph wants to explore the twists and turns of robosexuality (is that the correct word?) I'd prefer any other couple. Momo and Sven for example. Or May and Marten. That would really be interesting. :-D
But not Faye and Bubbles, please.
Timemaster
I mean, it's been made very clear that Bubbles has feelings for Faye. Why exactly are you so creeped out by it?
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Bubbles seems to have fallen in love with her anyway.
Thank you for acknowledging this. For months, people have been dancing around it, pretending it away, and I'm sick of it. Bubbles is in love with Faye.
My username is the unknown quantity, to be fair. I do think Faye loves Bubbles, but maybe not in the way Bubbles wants.
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I also want to point out that it's SUPER OBVIOUS to me that Evie doesn't listen because she doesn't think Bubbles has anything to teach her. She's the smartest person in the world and obviously she's right about everything. She's talking AT Bubbles, not TO her. And i think this is a communication problem she has with a lot of people. Even her comment to Amanda reveals that she's constantly correcting people and acting smarter than thou.
Part of my reaction to her is probably partly because of dealing with women like her in my women's studies courses when I was in college. Graduate students can be the absolute worst.
Please tell me all this drama is not you hating on your old TA from way back when because she had the gall of doing her job?
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Nobody has seen THAT coming, right? :lol:
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I also want to point out that it's SUPER OBVIOUS to me that Evie doesn't listen because she doesn't think Bubbles has anything to teach her. She's the smartest person in the world and obviously she's right about everything. She's talking AT Bubbles, not TO her. And i think this is a communication problem she has with a lot of people. Even her comment to Amanda reveals that she's constantly correcting people and acting smarter than thou.
Part of my reaction to her is probably partly because of dealing with women like her in my women's studies courses when I was in college. Graduate students can be the absolute worst.
Please tell me all this drama is not you hating on your old TA from way back when because she had the gall of doing her job?
I honestly don't know how you arrived at that conclusion based on what you quoted; for one they (she? Sorry, don't really know people) said womEn IN her courses. Beyond that, from what she said, had she been referring to a TA, there would have been lots of room to view said hypothetical TA as having done her job poorly.
I don't agree with the condemnation of Evie, but jeez.
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Anime Eyes! -- just sayin'...
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Please tell me all this drama is not you hating on your old TA from way back when because she had the gall of doing her job?
Nope. Evie is annoying, and thoughtless, and reminds me of smarter than thou women I encountered in college. Some of them were my teachers, yes, but disliking Evie has nothing to do with them. I only made the association after some discussion here, like "ohhhh...those are the annoying as shit people she reminds me of."
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What do you mean by "smarter than thou," exactly? Do you mean arrogant?
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What do you mean by "smarter than thou," exactly? Do you mean arrogant?
This poster (fayelovesbubbles) kind of seems to have a negative opinion on women. I wonder if they are a male or woman.
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This poster (fayelovesbubbles) kind of seems to have a negative opinion on women. I wonder if they are a male or woman.
That's a sweeping condemnation, being based on a single dislike (which after all would have a ~50% chance of being female). What's more, they've also just told us they are on a "women's studies" course, which would seem unlikely if they had a general dislike of them.
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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
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.
As someone who went through a fair deal of counseling for a phobia on the following matter, GERMS!
That thing was in one or more of someone else's three main orifices.
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You wouldn't use someone else's toothbrush, after all...
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Please tell me all this drama is not you hating on your old TA from way back when because she had the gall of doing her job?
Nope. Evie is annoying, and thoughtless, and reminds me of smarter than thou women I encountered in college. Some of them were my teachers, yes, but disliking Evie has nothing to do with them. I only made the association after some discussion here, like "ohhhh...those are the annoying as shit people she reminds me of."
I don't understand why people dislike Evie. In the #3656 comic, she hurted unwillingly Bubbles' feelings, but that happens. If you speak with people, you will sometimes hurt their fillings, most of the time without even knowing it. And as for Bubbles saying it feels unpleasant to have her living experience treated as a sociological case study, that's what we all are, for sociologues (and for a whole bunch of researchers), it's in no way specific to robot AIs. She has reasons to be hurt and to be really sensitive, but Evie has no way to know that. Evie seems to be passionnate for her domain of study, and that's actually great, in my opinion.
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
That's pretty much why I very rarely talk to people, and never unless spoken to first. If someone at work gets a haircut, and my thought when I see it is 'oh wow, that looks great', I'd never think of saying it out loud, lest I be reprimanded for harrassment or something. There's something most people can do that's called 'reading a room', I think? Where they seem to know what will be okay to say and what won't, not based on the thing being said but the people it's being said to? That's pretty much magic from my perspective - can't do it at all. I try to be respectful and kind to everybody when I do have to talk, but that'll only get you so far. So yeah, like you said, only way to avoid hurting someone, making someone angry, getting into hot water, or otherwise causing a big mess ... is to just keep your mouth shut. Especially for us charisma-impaired folks.
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What if Bubbles discovers she's been compared to a nuclear weapon and a dog on the same day?
Faye meant it in a way consistent with respect but who's going to bet Bubbles would take it that way?
BTW:
"Robosexuality" is a term that's been used in the comic.
Bubbles herself says she doesn't know what her feelings toward Faye are. Love is a very real possibility, but so is a crush or an unusually tender friendship.
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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
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.
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.
Hmmm.. see, *I* think that what you just described to me above.. *is* exploitation...
(I don't see any correlation whatsoever in checking a laptop's battery with unscrewing the battery cap on a 'massage aid'.
And any business that charged a full hour's "consultation" fee for 10 seconds of work would soon lose a LOT of work.)
Don't get me wrong... there are always REALLY weird things in this strip about money.
(Remember the "consultation fee" that Clinton was basically menaced out of?)
But this one jarred, because Faye isn't like that...
Yes, it was a joke, but at detriment to character.
(Sorry, I'm all caught up in "story-telling" right now (you probably notice din the Star Wars thread... things like this are appearing like raw, open wounds to me just now!) :) )
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You wouldn't use someone else's toothbrush, after all...
But you also wouldn't charge someone $100 dollars to look at it for 10 seconds and tell them they needed new batteries in it.
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Just one more thing: Yeah, it is a shitty comparison, Faye...
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You wouldn't use someone else's toothbrush, after all...
But you also wouldn't charge someone $100 dollars to look at it for 10 seconds and tell them they needed new batteries in it.
Yeah, for that price, I would at least expect the new batteries to be provided! :-D
Actually, my comment was related to the previous comment about germs...
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The impression I get from a lot of people on this board is the only way to avoid ever hurting someone’s feelings is to avoid interaction altogether. :roll:
The discussion about this , I am sure, could garner it's own thread.
Suffice it to say that on the whole, I agree.
But not because of "the people on this board"... it just seems to be the way the human race is looking right now.
"The Offended" have never been so quick to play "The Victim" card.
And, touchy subject though it may be, the insidious "New Puritanism" is also a part of this Mega Offense Offensive that seems to be en vogue at the moment.
Few people actively go out of their way to deliberately offend people, unless they are media shills touting for the outrage dollar (Hi Katie! Got another job yet!?) but it's almost getting to the point where having ANY opinion which differs from ANYONE else's is being viewed as a slur...
(Case in point? Tova directed me to an article about the new Star Wars movie. Those who dislike it are explaining why (for the most part) intelligently and with reasonable debate... And those who like the movie are adding the words "these Fanboy" into their responses... which serves only as an attempt to undermine the actual meat of the argument as something trivial. (As if ANY side of such a debate ISN'T! Ultimately it's only a bloody movie... but that's speaking from a point of SOLID logic and ignoring any culture around it))
The culture of casual insult has seen the birth of a culture of constant offense.
I dunno what the answer to it is other than to scrutinise every single word and parse ever single sentence you may speak before you ever do so.
And that way leads both madness and a lessening of the human race.
Do we need offense? No, but we DO need to stop LOOKING for it... because if you are looking for offense in every interaction you make... you WILL find it.)
NB: And, now to ensure YOU don't take offense, I add this at the end to remind readers that the *you* at the end of my sentence is generic...
(See what I mean!) :)
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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
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.
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.
Hmmm.. see, *I* think that what you just described to me above.. *is* exploitation...
(I don't see any correlation whatsoever in checking a laptop's battery with unscrewing the battery cap on a 'massage aid'.
And any business that charged a full hour's "consultation" fee for 10 seconds of work would soon lose a LOT of work.)
Don't get me wrong... there are always REALLY weird things in this strip about money.
(Remember the "consultation fee" that Clinton was basically menaced out of?)
But this one jarred, because Faye isn't like that...
Yes, it was a joke, but at detriment to character.
(Sorry, I'm all caught up in "story-telling" right now (you probably notice din the Star Wars thread... things like this are appearing like raw, open wounds to me just now!) :) )
Star Wars is a can of wyrms...
No need to apologise for defending your point of view, as long as we aren't de-railing the thread I've been enjoying the discussion. And it's not like I *know* what Jeph intends to do or how he wanted that interaction to be perceived- next week could easily prove me wrong.
That said, I am interested in what you mean by exploitation here, because that seems to be where our main disagreement lies. 'Cause even I think $100 is a lot of money. But to me, exploitation would be where an individual or organisation in a position of power takes advantage of a weaker entity, in an unbalanced relationship where the weaker entity feels or is actually unable to prevent the relationship occurring.
So why I don't think it applies in this case is two-fold: Firstly, the imbalance isn't there- Melon and Faye are operating in a regular client/customer relationship, and there is no indication that either is acting outside of those common roles. Secondly, even if we do assert that this relationship is unequal (say due to Faye's human privilege), it still remains that Melon was not in a position where she was forced to give Faye the money- she offered it freely. If that is problematic, we are back to arguing as to whether Melon has capacity, or should be seen as especially vulnerable, which I don't think she is.
tldr- Melon paid first #awfulStarWarsjoke.
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Does anyone remember when Raven compared Faye being mean to a kitty scratching someone? Faye's comparison isn't unique to AIs. I don't think Faye meant anything bad by it.
I can be abrasive and I know I've even made the comparison of myself to cats that nobody takes at the shelter because they aren't immediately sweet and friendly.
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Does anyone remember when Raven compared Faye being mean to a kitty scratching someone? Faye's comparison isn't unique to AIs. I don't think Faye meant anything bad by it.
I can be abrasive and I know I've even made the comparison of myself to cats that nobody takes at the shelter because they aren't immediately sweet and friendly.
One might argue that being compared to a cat is not nearly as insulting as being compared to a dog. Yeah, it's unfair for the dogs...
In several languages, "dog" is an insult. I don't know any where "cat" is.
Fun fact: Faye's comparison works exactly the same with a cat. Maybe she should have chosen a more purring animal...
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tldr- Melon paid first #awfulStarWarsjoke.
Excuse the snippage... (Page is becoming too "JoeCovenant Quote" heavy even for MY liking, so I can imagine others chagrin! :) )
I think your tldr actually sums up my problem.
Melon didn't *pay* - she asked if the money she offered was enough.
IE: Melon put herself into Faye's hands re: what this should cost (if ANYTHING).
Faye took it all = Exploitation.
(That's basically my entire argument in three sentences! Why can't I do that all the time!??!?)
("Yeah, Dude! Why CAN'T you!?" - Entire Forum Readership... :)
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Does anyone remember when Raven compared Faye being mean to a kitty scratching someone? Faye's comparison isn't unique to AIs. I don't think Faye meant anything bad by it.
I can be abrasive and I know I've even made the comparison of myself to cats that nobody takes at the shelter because they aren't immediately sweet and friendly.
One might argue that being compared to a cat is not nearly as insulting as being compared to a dog. Yeah, it's unfair for the dogs...
In several languages, "dog" is an insult. I don't know any where "cat" is.
'Catty' can be seen as an insult.
'Pussy' certainly can!
But yeah.. Dogz ROOL! :) (or is that Dogs Drool??)
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Does anyone remember when Raven compared Faye being mean to a kitty scratching someone? Faye's comparison isn't unique to AIs. I don't think Faye meant anything bad by it.
I can be abrasive and I know I've even made the comparison of myself to cats that nobody takes at the shelter because they aren't immediately sweet and friendly.
One might argue that being compared to a cat is not nearly as insulting as being compared to a dog. Yeah, it's unfair for the dogs...
In several languages, "dog" is an insult. I don't know any where "cat" is.
'Catty' can be seen as an insult.
'Pussy' certainly can!
But yeah.. Dogz ROOL! :) (or is that Dogs Drool??)
Now you are stretching things a bit. If you go that road, "bitch" is also an insult, but it's not the same word and not the same meaning. Ok, I confess I didn't knew the word "catty". I'm always happy to enrich my english vocabulary... :-)
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She didn't *pay* - she asked if the money she offered was enough.
IE: She put herself into Faye's hands re: what this should cost (if ANYTHING).
Faye took it all = Exploitation.
Snip-snip :-)
So to be reductive, our disagreement becomes (and do correct me if I'm wrong)
"That's awful! All she did offscreen was look at a vibrator for a few seconds! She can't possibly justify taking that much money"
"Hmmm. I guess offscreen she checked over the object, handled an unsanitary product and served a customer. Maybe that's worth $100. I can see why she took the money"
In which case, we are now arguing about fictional events we never saw. Which is certainly the point at which I start to feel a little silly.
So a courteous bow to you sir and others as worthy opponents. I find honour to be satisfied and withdraw from the duel. :wink:
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I don't know any where "cat" is.
English: "She's a catty woman".
Oops - didn't notice the new page...
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There is an alternative that people have not considered.
What if Melon wanted to give the business money?
Its clear that Union Robotics isn't doing that well if Faye isn't budgeting money for something vital like food. Sure, they're doing repairs and doing a little ink, but that's not going to keep things afloat for too long.
Word might have gotten out that UR is fairly quiet and to an eccentric AI like Melon, she might want to help without looking like she's helping. Therefore, grab a dildo, take it in for a "check", pays the fee and throws in a substantial tip.
Sure, this is a wild theory, but it still certainly merits some thought.
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There is an alternative that people have not considered.
What if Melon wanted to give the business money?
Its clear that Union Robotics isn't doing that well if Faye isn't budgeting money for something vital like food. Sure, they're doing repairs and doing a little ink, but that's not going to keep things afloat for too long.
Word might have gotten out that UR is fairly quiet and to an eccentric AI like Melon, she might want to help without looking like she's helping. Therefore, grab a dildo, take it in for a "check", pays the fee and throws in a substantial tip.
Sure, this is a wild theory, but it still certainly merits some thought.
That's an excellent theory!
I don't care if it's based on nothing but supposition - I will die on this Hill, because it's either that or ;
a) Faye was an exploitative... person
or
b) Melon is WAY to infantile to be given money!
:)
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Dear Robo-Willie consultation fee debaters;
Far, far to much is being projected onto just a couple of snap-shot time slices such that you are picking the fruit long before it is ripe then complaining about how bitter it is. Please give Cheph Jeph a chance to finish the arc before passing final judgement upon Faye for a single occurrence. I believe we are to be served an entertaining Faye Guilt Stew in the near future.
Sincerely,
Geriatric Caprinea ("Old Goat")
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One of the more interesting aspects to the £100 dollar consutation is that melon thought that 75 dollars was a lot for a new butt.
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Speaking of offensive comparisons to dogs...
Adoption fees for a pet can be fairly high. IIRC I paid an 80 dollar fee to adopt my cat. From Melon's perspective, that's exactly what she's done: she's adopted a new pet. Faye told her what it was and how to care for it, therefore she's the one who gets the adoption fee. Still wouldn't really justify Faye *taking* the money, I suppose.
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Those eyes in the second last panel are terrifying.
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There is an alternative that people have not considered.
What if Melon wanted to give the business money?
Considering that her friend kicked down UR's door (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3486) during their last visit, one might regard that as 'making amends' as much as 'charity'?
(Otoh, we're talking about Melon here, so ... yes)
I don't care if it's based on nothing but supposition - I will die on this Hill, because ...
Hope that comes out the right way: You, my friend, are a veritable one-man-one-hill occupation force! :-D
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Part of my reaction to her is probably partly because of dealing with women like her in my women's studies courses when I was in college. Graduate students can be the absolute worst.
Yeah, I got that distinct impression that your impression of Evie has been somewhat (heavily maybe?) colored by your own negative experiences in college. Mostly because you seem to be transferring negative personality traits of those you encountered onto a cartoon character we know virtually nothing about. Some of your suppositions "I'm sure Evie lives in an echo chamber full of academics who think she has a brilliant mind" is not really based on anything.
If anything, PhD students are never treated as brilliant in academia, even when they may be. If anything, PhD students are reminded continually that they know basically nothing. I will say though that I am only speaking of those in STEM, I can't speak for those in humanities and social studies.
I agree though that graduate students can be the worst though...
Oh by the way, please note that I respect your opinion and am in no means trying to harp on you, it's mostly since your opinion on Evie seems to be by far the most negative here, and based on what we know atm I am surprised how anyone could have any particularly strong opinion yet about who she is. A strong opinion on how she interacted with Bubbles, sure, but sweeping conclusion on her personality/character or even upbringing (I think Morituri said 'wallowing in privilige', wonder where that came from??) are rather premature.
I will stop about this now.
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Bubbles herself says she doesn't know what her feelings toward Faye are. Love is a very real possibility, but so is a crush or an unusually tender friendship.
Yeah, I am also wondering what kind of love there is, even from Bubbles' side.
I agree that she clearly loves Faye, but you're right, she doesn't even know herself what exactly she feels.
Is it a real romantic interest? A very strong friendship-kind of love? The rather common crushing on your 'rescuer/savior'?
I'm leaning towards the first or last considering her "you're beautiful" comment, but who knows?
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Now you are stretching things a bit. If you go that road, "bitch" is also an insult, but it's not the same word and not the same meaning. Ok, I confess I didn't knew the word "catty". I'm always happy to enrich my english vocabulary... :-)
Being called a "tomcat" isn't exactly a compliment in most cases either. Maybe not overtly insulting, but...
On topic: my concern at the moment is Amanda and Evie (especially Evie) potentially setting back any relationship development between Faye and Bubbles with not only unsolicited encouragement/enthusiasm, but Evie finding the relationship fascinating and wanting to intellectually dissect it, to their detriment.
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I dunno what the answer to it is other than to scrutinise every single word and parse ever single sentence you may speak before you ever do so.
How is that different from checking for pedestrians before you drive your car through an intersection?
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There is an alternative that people have not considered.
What if Melon wanted to give the business money?
Its clear that Union Robotics isn't doing that well if Faye isn't budgeting money for something vital like food. Sure, they're doing repairs and doing a little ink, but that's not going to keep things afloat for too long.
Word might have gotten out that UR is fairly quiet and to an eccentric AI like Melon, she might want to help without looking like she's helping. Therefore, grab a dildo, take it in for a "check", pays the fee and throws in a substantial tip.
Sure, this is a wild theory, but it still certainly merits some thought.
I think it's a better theory then straight up assuming Melon is an idiot, Faye is being exploitative, and Jeph is a terrible storyteller.
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I really want Melon, Emily and Evie to interact. Especially Melon and Emily.
Edit- And this made me notice a business opportunity:
Dora and Faye should open a Coffee of Doom branded Tea kiosk inside Union Robotics. The AI clients will love it and we, the audience, can get to interact more with whatever part of the CoD staff that's working there for the day.
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I dunno what the answer to it is other than to scrutinise every single word and parse ever single sentence you may speak before you ever do so.
How is that different from checking for pedestrians before you drive your car through an intersection?
When you run someone over in a conversation, it's a metaphor, when you run them over in an intersection, it's (potentially) negligent manslaughter?
P.S.: Please don't take that as my arguing against your point, IICIH, it's just ... maybe not the best example to illustrate it?
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I dunno what the answer to it is other than to scrutinise every single word and parse ever single sentence you may speak before you ever do so.
How is that different from checking for pedestrians before you drive your car through an intersection?
Checking for pedestrians is a relatively simple (and nearly-instinctive) exercise in visual pattern recognition. Checking for offence in a written comment requires a prolonged consideration of every phrase attempting to predict in advance how the most unpredictable thing in psychology - the human consciousness - will respond to any given phrase for motives about which you can only speculate and are always mutating into new variations.
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And yet with exercise, over time some aspects of it will start to become habit. It's not as though we don't already have controls in our thinking and speaking, after all.
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Just so. Maybe a better example is checking spelling and grammar before releasing a document. All part of not embarrassing yourself, and consideration for your audience.
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And yet with exercise, over time some aspects of it will start to become habit. It's not as though we don't already have controls in our thinking and speaking, after all.
The chances of me putting my foot in my mouth are Oh so very high with what I'm about to say. But that seems relevant.
Language changes. And it does so quite quickly, within decades at the moment. Words and descriptions that were commonplace in my childhood are now offensive and taboo (this is almost always a good thing. This is not one of *those* posts.)
Problem is, we don't clock the language changes at an equal rate. For example, cis as a description of heterosexuality (See- this is *wrong*, and it's to do with gender as was kindly pointed out below, and if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go scream into a pillow for a while) became the accepted word faster than I realised, and I got caught out by it back in the day. And because humans don't always learn things well or perfectly, we still get caught out even after learning the new language once, twice or however many times before it becomes habit.
So while it's true to say we can control what we say and how we say it, it's more a case of trending towards the common norm, not reaching a point of perfection. Sadly.
That all said, I think that concluding that all human interaction becomes a minefield of offense so bad one may as well return to the trees we swung down from is wrong (and probably hyperbole on the parts of those who said it anyway). We only learn by talking and listening, and there's a reason loneliness is seen as an epidemic- we're too social a species to survive well on our own. Even if we do get on each others nerves, like, all the time. So many nerves. All of the nerves.
So yeah, I'm not exactly disagreeing, but just reflecting that getting language right isn't a smooth process.
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For example, cis as a description of heterosexuality became the accepted word faster than I realised,
This connects to your point, so I hope you don't mind me saying it-- "cis" does not refer to heterosexuality; there are plenty of cis gay people, for example. Cis refers to gender and means that one's gender identity aligns with the gender one was assigned at birth.
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater...uh, I mean Jacques!
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I feel like it's kind of pointless to attach these deep levels of meaning to a strip involving Melon. Doesn't it feel to you as though whenever she comes on panel, the comic just takes a break from all that which is serious and / or rational? That it just becomes all about the punchline, in a way that QC normally is not? That's my take on it.
If you insist on looking at it seriously, Melon didn't seem in any way unhappy with the transaction. Doesn't that count for anything? Last time when she expressed dismay at the $75 fee for her ass, it was partly because she had expected or hoped to get emergency treatment for free. Which, at least in my culture, is not an entirely unreasonable thing for an intelligent being to expect. She had also lost (launched into orbit) her wallet, which is another reason she wouldn't be thrilled to pay out for her new ass.
Once the idea of payment was established, she didn't seem to object to the specific price.
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Part of my reaction to her is probably partly because of dealing with women like her in my women's studies courses when I was in college. Graduate students can be the absolute worst.
Yeah, I got that distinct impression that your impression of Evie has been somewhat (heavily maybe?) colored by your own negative experiences in college. Mostly because you seem to be transferring negative personality traits of those you encountered onto a cartoon character we know virtually nothing about. Some of your suppositions "I'm sure Evie lives in an echo chamber full of academics who think she has a brilliant mind" is not really based on anything.
If anything, PhD students are never treated as brilliant in academia, even when they may be. If anything, PhD students are reminded continually that they know basically nothing. I will say though that I am only speaking of those in STEM, I can't speak for those in humanities and social studies.
I agree though that graduate students can be the worst though...
Oh by the way, please note that I respect your opinion and am in no means trying to harp on you, it's mostly since your opinion on Evie seems to be by far the most negative here, and based on what we know atm I am surprised how anyone could have any particularly strong opinion yet about who she is. A strong opinion on how she interacted with Bubbles, sure, but sweeping conclusion on her personality/character or even upbringing (I think Morituri said 'wallowing in privilige', wonder where that came from??) are rather premature.
I will stop about this now.
Like I said, I dislike her more than anyone else on this forum. And I'm fine with that. I don't really agree that we don't see who she is yet, but that's what you think, and that's fine.
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Transference seems to be the number one cause of venemous character reactions on here. Goes all the way back to that skinny kid in the first strip... What was his name again?
;)
Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk
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Marven.
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Like I said, I dislike her more than anyone else on this forum.
How do you objectively quantify anything as subjective as love or hate?
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Marven.
No, no; Marvin was the robot.
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No, no, I think cesium133 is talking about the comic book publisher.
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Things started going off the rails when Tannelore went to Jupiter to find herself.
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If we're going there, it all really started because Tanners was neglected by Neatrice.
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No need to scream into a pillow. Life is an endless course of continuing education. I try to allow for people who are a week behind the accepted vocabulary :-)
(Make sure to get up to speed before you visit the trans thread of course).
One of my pet ideas is that keeping up with the latest vocabulary is what economists call "signaling".
If you follow some nonsensical rule like taking your hat off when you enter a building, there is no direct benefit to the host. But you have just proven you will follow social norms even at the expense of doing something that makes no sense. That's not proof, but a heuristic, that you will follow other social norms like not torturing them to death. It's a reassuring thing to have evidence of.
Not saying it's "nonsensical", but there's a similar dynamic interacting with minorities. If they see that you've kept up with all the memos and are using the current word for their ethnic group, that gives them a tentative impression that you're not going to commit a hate crime. It means you have provably put effort into addressing them respectfully. It's a reassuring thing to have evidence of.
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And yet with exercise, over time some aspects of it will start to become habit. It's not as though we don't already have controls in our thinking and speaking, after all.
Ja, but some people's brain-mouth filter don't always work.
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I notice a lot of people hating on Evie for her utterly clueless, obnoxious, and appalling behavior towards Bubbles. Her behavior is inexcusable, but natural.
Any graduate student in the grips of their dissertation research, in any domain, lives that work. It's all that matters -- it is your life, at least if you actually want to get those extra three letters. Evie is just behaving naturally. (Trust me: it was a good thing for me that many of my friends during my last year of my graduate studies were also dissertators. They understood why I kept going on about things that they knew nothing about and would not have cared about if they did know anything about them.)
So, yes, Evie's a total jerk in so many ways, and her behavior is inexcusable. Unfortunately, inexcusable or not, it is understandable.
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Seconding this. When I was a graduate student, my social circle consisted only of math grad students and their significant others. Comes naturally when a bunch of people relocate themselves across the globe to go to grad school.
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Some work environments can have the same effect, though. The more intensive computer workplaces of my working life would probably qualify.
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Poll Results!
Faye- 6 (10.7%)
Bubbles- 1 (1.8%)
Amanda- 11 (19.6%)
Evie- 13 (23.2%)
Someone else (Please list)- 1 (1.8%)
All of the above!- 24 (42.9%)
I suppose everyone did screw up somehow this last week.
Well, lets see how they top that over the coming week.
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I notice a lot of people hating on Evie for her utterly clueless, obnoxious, and appalling behavior towards Bubbles. Her behavior is inexcusable, but natural.
Any graduate student in the grips of their dissertation research, in any domain, lives that work. It's all that matters -- it is your life, at least if you actually want to get those extra three letters. Evie is just behaving naturally. (Trust me: it was a good thing for me that many of my friends during my last year of my graduate studies were also dissertators. They understood why I kept going on about things that they knew nothing about and would not have cared about if they did know anything about them.)
So, yes, Evie's a total jerk in so many ways, and her behavior is inexcusable. Unfortunately, inexcusable or not, it is understandable.
Seconding this. When I was a graduate student, my social circle consisted only of math grad students and their significant others. Comes naturally when a bunch of people relocate themselves across the globe to go to grad school.
Thirded (and the relocation bit seems strictly optional)
And that's before accounting for the "proneness for monomania" that comes with my particular brand of congenital non-standard neurology ...
If we're going there, it all really started because Tanners was neglected by Neatrice.
Despite all those C-beams to the Tannhauser gate ...
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One of the more interesting aspects to the £100 dollar consutation is that melon thought that 75 dollars was a lot for a new butt.
She never complained about the price of the butt, just that she had to pay for it in the first place, despite it being an emergency. And then she got Arthur to pay for it because her wallet was eaten by a leopard seal.
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FWIW, I suspect that Melon and Arthur fit into the category of 'eccentric and well-off'.
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Any graduate student in the grips of their dissertation research, in any domain, lives that work. It's all that matters -- it is your life, at least if you actually want to get those extra three letters. Evie is just behaving naturally.
I know this is what many PhD students think, but this is really only true if you have a dictator as your advisor. There are plenty of those around, of course, but they're still by far a minority. With most 'normal' advisors (talking in the USA now), you can get your PhD perfectly fine by still working hard (e.g. 50-60 hr workweeks) but not having to be excessive or obsessive about it.
Personally, I was lucky enough (well, I did chose him I suppose) to have such a normal advisor, and while I probably could've graduated 1-1.5 yr sooner had I been excessive about it, I was much happier by taking a little longer but having a perfectly normal live and treating my PhD as a more or less normal job with only the occasional craziness. I was by no means an exception either, it's mostly about the right advisor.
It also doesn't help that many PhD students convince themselves that they HAVE to be excessive about their PhD in order to graduate, even when their advisor would not even expect it...
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Thirded (and the relocation bit seems strictly optional)
Conceding the point about relocation being optional. But the experience is more intense if you also uproot yourself from your homestead.
And that's before accounting for the "proneness for monomania" that comes with my particular brand of congenital non-standard neurology ...
I speak no psychobabble. Can some kind soul confirm my suspicion that this is a generalization of graduate students' creed: "We are proud to be a math nerds! We are proud to work 80+hours per week." (implying that we look down on the peers who don't)
I know this is what many PhD students think, but this is really only true if you have a dictator as your advisor. There are plenty of those around, of course, but they're still by far a minority. With most 'normal' advisors (talking in the USA now), you can get your PhD perfectly fine by still working hard (e.g. 50-60 hr workweeks) but not having to be excessive or obsessive about it.
Personally, I was lucky enough (well, I did chose him I suppose) to have such a normal advisor, and while I probably could've graduated 1-1.5 yr sooner had I been excessive about it, I was much happier by taking a little longer but having a perfectly normal live and treating my PhD as a more or less normal job with only the occasional craziness. I was by no means an exception either, it's mostly about the right advisor.
It also doesn't help that many PhD students convince themselves that they HAVE to be excessive about their PhD in order to graduate, even when their advisor would not even expect it...
Since I have supervised/advised 4 PhD students to graduation I feel like commenting. I didn't insist that they would be doing math 24/7, but they did tell me that I half expected them to. Two of them did work "hard enough" for me. Even though one of those (quitter!) once excused themself for family reasons just when the team was close to completing the proof of a result.
But, my only female PhD student also wanted to spend time on things like yoga, travelling, and teaching outside the Uni on the side. Causing me to frown. So I don't think very highly of her math, but she is very successful. The only one of us who has advanced to the position of a professor! Among other things she is very skilled in getting funding for herself, the rest of the team as well her students, so there's that :-) (may be my sour grapes talking?)
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Now you are stretching things a bit. If you go that road, "bitch" is also an insult, but it's not the same word and not the same meaning. Ok, I confess I didn't knew the word "catty". I'm always happy to enrich my english vocabulary... :-)
Being called a "tomcat" isn't exactly a compliment in most cases either. Maybe not overtly insulting, but...
On topic: my concern at the moment is Amanda and Evie (especially Evie) potentially setting back any relationship development between Faye and Bubbles with not only unsolicited encouragement/enthusiasm, but Evie finding the relationship fascinating and wanting to intellectually dissect it, to their detriment.
Let put me it that way: take the exact phrase said by Faye : "it's like makin' friends with a dog that got kicked. If you go right in for belly rubs, you're gonna get bit". Let's simply change the word "dog" for the word "cat". To me, it somehow sounds far less insulting. Does it make any sense?
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Any graduate student in the grips of their dissertation research, in any domain, lives that work. It's all that matters -- it is your life, at least if you actually want to get those extra three letters.
I've not been there; but as a counter-example I offer my wife, who got her PhD in the usual three years, part time while having a full-time job. It involved some seasonal field work (the grass concerned needed to be in flower), and she fitted in travel to Scandinavia for some of that.
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Let put me it that way: take the exact phrase said by Faye : "it's like makin' friends with a dog that got kicked. If you go right in for belly rubs, you're gonna get bit". Let's simply change the word "dog" for the word "cat". To me, it somehow sounds far less insulting. Does it make any sense?
Yeah, but a cat is likely to scratch you regardless of prior kicks if you go for the belly - dogs have a reputation for generally being more placid, with the chomping being a direct result of being kicked here. I can see your point, though I disagree with it, and feel that the quote wouldn't work as well with a cat. Also, part of the insulting insinuation is related to stuff like"gone to the dogs", I presume, which will be intentional. Not like Bubbles is in the best state!
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Thirded (and the relocation bit seems strictly optional)
Conceding the point about relocation being optional. But the experience is more intense if you also uproot yourself from your homestead.
I didn't get to that part until my first postdoc, but I'm absolutely ready to take your word on the intensity-bit.
And that's before accounting for the "proneness for monomania" that comes with my particular brand of congenital non-standard neurology ...
I speak no psychobabble. Can some kind soul confirm my suspicion that this is a generalization of graduate students' creed: "We are proud to be a math nerds! We are proud to work 80+hours per week." (implying that we look down on the peers who don't)
Errrhnope - I live with (I refuse to say "I suffer ...") a neurological disorder called ADD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder) ("predominantly inattentive subtype" - though there's controversy about the usefulness of the whole subtype-idea, here I'll use "ADD" as meaning the former, "ADHD" as meaning "predominantly hyperactive/impulsive subtype" and "AD(H)D" when I refer to all three subtypes) since my birth (hence the 'congenital'), and have been wrestling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder) (OCD) for more than two decades (though it's been a while since I last experienced acute 'Brainlock' (https://www.amazon.de/Brain-Lock-Yourself-Obsessive-Compulsive-Behavior/dp/0060987111); these days it's more like general anxiety and what is called "ruminations" (https://www.ocduk.org/types-ocd) - and with the SNRI's I get for that one, the anxiety is manageable).
ADD is a congenital (neuro-)developmental disorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_disorder) (language disorders, learning disorders, motor disorders and autism spectrum disorders, ADD/ADHD ...) and people who were born with those specific flavours of borked headmeat are referred to as 'neuroatypical' (as opposed to the 'neurotypical', i.e. the rest of humanity. "Born this way", so to speak ... :-D). Contrary to what many people in the 80s believed (including my family's physician), AD(H)D does not only afflict children - roughly one third of those diagnosed with AD(H)D in childhood "continue to experience significant symptoms into adulthood", and I am part of that third.
OCD, too, can by traced to a dysfunction of a part of the brain called caudate nucleus (in my understanding, the CN is part of the brain's internal 'taskmanager' - the part that adds a "done"-flag to a thought-process. But that's layperson-talk), so all the talk about neurosis notwithstanding, the root of OCD is also organic, i.e. neurological. Furthermore, I vaguely remember reading about speculation that when AD(H)D and OCD appear together, the former sort of 'induces' the latter - makes sense to me, since my most long-lasting intrusive thoughts revolve(d) around functioning and executive functioning, which touches on the areas where I'm "non-standard" -> "Am I even talented enough to understand math?" was a longtime tormentor companion (After the second advanced degree with high honours, it started feeling a little out of place, I guess :evil:), more recently, it's cousin "You really sure there's no sign-change in that exponent? You only checked three times - maybe spend another three weeks checking the whole thing with Mathematica?" is applying for "resident torturer", despite my insistence that the position is no longer available ("Thank the Lord for Serotonine re-uptake inhibitors!")
ADD is basically about focus control : Nothing wrong with my ability to focus - in fact, like many people with ADD, I can access hyperfocus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus) (and with medication, I can 'control' that state ... in the broadest sense of 'control'). The problem of the ADDer is controlling focus - my 'gaspedal' basically only knows the settings 'idle' and 'flank speed ahead' (and 'Are you nuts?', sometimes), and the latter highly depends on factors like 'interest in the topic' and carefully balancing eustress and distress (https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/types-of-stressors-eustress-vs-distress/) (Trouble is that most employers don't really appreciate 'This stuff is simply too boring for me to perform well' as an explanation for underachievement, even if it's the literal, scientifically proven truth). I'm basically built for "panicked last-minute binge-learning", because anxiety is stimulating, which kicks in the hyperfocus. But that's kinda hit-and-miss, too: Miss the "stress-balance", and instead of "alert & driven, but not yet paralysed by fear", you end up really focussed on how royally screwed you are. That 'system' worked in school and the first semesters of Uni, but brute force sprint-learning simply doesn't cut it past a certain point - not to mention that it's not by any means enjoyable, even for a young person. I used to call that particular semiconscious mindgames-with-myself-but-pretending-not-to-notice "getting before the breaking wave", like a surfer getting into a 'tunnel' - with the implication that you'll be treated to a good trashing at best if you miscalculate and fall behind. There is a theory that AD(H)D might be related to an evolutionary adaptation in hunter-gatherer societies; I get where they're coming from (afaik, lots of folk with ADHD seriously enjoy extreme sports), but that one always felt a little too neat for me - either way, that's about as 'enjoyable' as that strategy of 'freaking yourself out just short of panicking' is: Like hunting a (dangerous) animal. When it works, it's a blast for a few seconds, but the rest of the time, it means constant anxiety to keep the guilt and self-doubt company (Nice to fantasise that my neurology would make me Mr. Big-swinging-cod-Mammoth-hunter in a stone age tribe - trouble is, it's not the Holocene anymore ...).
The only other thing that works longtime is stimulant medication - and tons of therapy for the OCD and the after-effects of decades of guilt, anxiety and crippling self-doubt (One of the nasty things about ADD is that you know that you underperform, but you have no proof in the form of grades, and as much as any parent would like to believe their academically struggling offspring that they're really much smarter than their grades ... which struggling student wouldn't like to believe that they're much smarter than their grades? I have been dismissed by a psychiatrist as "giving myself ideas above my station/intelligence" when I was 12 and seeking help - sadly, that sick asshole is dead, so I can't make him eat a copy of my PhD-evaluation along with his words. Before reporting him to the "Ärtztekammer" ...)
And OCD ... well it's not called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder because it's conducive to a regular and steady working/learning style, know what I mean? The resulting working/learning style I ended up with is ... not really standard. I have to use the tools I was given, I can't simply be someone I'm not. Stimulant medication for ADD doesn't make the ADD go away, it's more that it "makes the ADD go all the way until it works" (that's the way it feels, at least). And I'm still kind of a obsessive/compulsive character, even now that I'm "kindasorta cured".
Part of that strategy is "slow down to go faster" - painful, straightforward working against the disorders (e.g. like forcing myself to "think slowly and step by step" which my ADD-brain isn't really fond of. I've gone as far as making myself copying/extending a lecture in longhand just to force myself to "slow down") and part of it is trying to kind of 'harness' the strengths implicit in the disorders where they're useful: Sticking to rituals e.g. is really soothing, even if they're not the rituals your OCD wants to force you into - like tricking a kid by sweetening medicine that tastes bad. Especially when aided by medication, adhering to step-by-step "slow thinking" and simultaneous documentation has the side-effect that I can keep the whole calculation in my long-term memory (ADD is associated with weakened working memory) - at which point my proneness to associations and intuitive leaps turns from a weakness (association + weak short-term memory => distractability/loosing train of thought) into a strength (creativity, being good at making connections, seeing stuff that others overlook). But I need either medication for that, or meticulous, long-term preparation. I've heard that Actor Jim Caviziel, one of the "no meds, just working out and working through it"-faction, operates in a similar fashion: Meticulous preparation, in all levels of detail. Makes sense to me: I'm really, really bad at prioritizing, but when I 'simply' work through all the details, I have a mental model I can 'walk around in' and my ADD becomes an advantage. Sort of "Your working memory is weak and your shit at realtime prioritizing? That sucks. Here's pen & paper - your long-term memory is perfectly fine, and you don't need to prioritize in real-time if you write it all down". It's a strategy that nobody with a neurotypical brain would even think of trying - but there's tasks where this method not only compensates for the disorders, but actually gives me an edge.
And on top of that, I took to the "You're leaving? It's not even 8 pm!"-school of thought of getting a PhD that you mentioned above like a duck takes to water very anxious PhD-student whose advisor was one of those wunderkinder who finished his PhD in 18 months, got his Dr.Habil at 27, and considered stuff like "We'll limit your contract to two years initially - that should help motivate you" as helpful employer/employee interaction.
P.S.: Skewbrow? I think you're good people, but I'm not really cool with words like 'psychobabble', and especially not in the context of mental health trouble that cost me decades of heart-, and headache. Neither am I cool with the suggestion (or suspicion) that it might not exist at all. My headmeat stuff is not as difficult to deal with as that which many, many other people hereabouts live with daily - like autism spectrum disorders, major depression, or psychosis - and as far as I understand it, it's a walk in the park compared to gender dysphoria, but it's certainly not nothing, or 'psychobabble'. Or a generalization of what normal people do (not even for NatSci grad-student values of 'normal'). Both conditions were diagnosed by experienced mental health professionals, not the oft-cited "1st semester psych major bloke I met on Tumblr". Both conditions are listed in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" - one requirement for the entry into that manual is that the condition "causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning". In other words: "No fun at all".
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Now you are stretching things a bit. If you go that road, "bitch" is also an insult, but it's not the same word and not the same meaning. Ok, I confess I didn't knew the word "catty". I'm always happy to enrich my english vocabulary... :-)
Being called a "tomcat" isn't exactly a compliment in most cases either. Maybe not overtly insulting, but...
On topic: my concern at the moment is Amanda and Evie (especially Evie) potentially setting back any relationship development between Faye and Bubbles with not only unsolicited encouragement/enthusiasm, but Evie finding the relationship fascinating and wanting to intellectually dissect it, to their detriment.
Let put me it that way: take the exact phrase said by Faye : "it's like makin' friends with a dog that got kicked. If you go right in for belly rubs, you're gonna get bit". Let's simply change the word "dog" for the word "cat". To me, it somehow sounds far less insulting. Does it make any sense?
Depends on how you look at it. Dogs are consistently the animal that has been closest to humans for a large part of our history, to the point where we describe them as "Man's Best Friend". They embody traits we find admirable and desirable, such as loyalty, friendship. What Faye is saying here is that Bubbles is someone who has been betrayed and will lash out at someone she perceives as a threat towards her. But in taking her time, Faye regained some of that inherent loyalty and got Bubbles to open up. So by changing that to cat, you've kind changed the whole thing to where it makes no sense.
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All right kids, story time:
Many years ago I adopted a cat who had been abused by his previous owner. He was a very sweet and gentle cat who never once tried to bite or claw me. But it took a solid year before he would stop flinching every time I reached down to pet him. Eventually he relaxed, at least around me - he finally realized that I was never going to hurt him. But he was still wary around other people, and absolutely terrified of one guy I knew who must have reminded him of his previous owner.
I have been around abused dogs, and their behavior is similar. On top of that, this cat gave me some insight into some of my own behavioral patterns - I realized I was constantly going into a (metaphorical) defensive crouch regardless of whether the situation warranted it or not, due to years of emotional abuse.
So speaking from personal experience, I’d say that Bubbles may very well recognize the similarities between her own behavior and that of an abused animal. The psychological reaction seems to be similar regardless of species.
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Bubbles seems not to have had experience as a pet caretaker, though. I'm thinking of her over the top reaction to being responsible for a house plant.
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Her analogy is sound though, so I imagine she's at least spoken to, or read about, someone who has had that experience.
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P.S.: Skewbrow? I think you're good people, but I'm not really cool with words like 'psychobabble', and especially not in the context of mental health trouble ...... In other words: "No fun at all".
I apologize. Bad choice of words. I attempted to convey my own ignorance about psychology in general and psychological terminology in particular, but that's not how it came out. Sorry.
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P.S.: Skewbrow? I think you're good people, but I'm not really cool with words like 'psychobabble', and especially not in the context of mental health trouble ...... In other words: "No fun at all".
I apologize. Bad choice of words. I attempted to convey my own ignorance about psychology in general and psychological terminology in particular, but that's not how it came out. Sorry.
No sweat & I was sure it was something like that - it's good to have confirmation, though. Thanks for that.
P.S.: I'm not really used to talking about it. This is sort of me learning to talk about the conditions, and the period of time during which I learned to 'deal with them' (not sure about the past tense. Not at all ...). So I'm probably a bit more defensive and mistrusting than warranted - still learning. There definitely are uncaring assholes, or even those who put the knife in, but ... they have a different 'smell' to them.
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P.S.: Skewbrow? I think you're good people, but I'm not really cool with words like 'psychobabble', and especially not in the context of mental health trouble ...... In other words: "No fun at all".
I apologize. Bad choice of words. I attempted to convey my own ignorance about psychology in general and psychological terminology in particular, but that's not how it came out. Sorry.
Having said that I still have some bangs of guilt. You see, in my youth I had a strong tendency to dismiss sciences other than the exact sciences as, well, less exact. Something where "truth" varies from one decade to another has not IMNSHO really reached the "maturity" of the exact sciences. Later in life I have come to acknowledge that a field of study is worth pursuing even if they are still looking for the solid foundation. But, the comment exchange brought me back to those worry-free years of my youth. I dare not speculate whether attitudes I entertained back then also resurfaced here (subconsciously?) affecting my choice of phrase.
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Having said that I still have some bangs of guilt.
Please don't, least not on my behalf.
I was serious about the issue being 'done' for me - believe me, we are golden, k? Thanks for your understanding and kindness.
You see, in my youth I had a strong tendency to dismiss sciences other than the exact sciences as, well, less exact.
/begin_wstyle{sarcasm}
Remember who you're talking with? One of the lesser priests of the "Queen of Sciences" -> we talk to Mathematicians, and maybe also Chemists & Biologists, provided they make an appointment, remember their place and clean up nicely ... :lol:
But Psychology? Is that even a Science ...?
/end_wstyle{sarcasm}
I know exactly what you mean, and have been guilty of that exact same hubris many, many times myself.
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Well, we in the Arts, are not joining you natural philosophers, in calling what we do science.
As to psychology as a science, that reminds me of an anecdote that was used to underscore the importance of falsification in the scientific method. Freud* posited that there was no dream that was not caused by an underlying, unconscious desire. One day, a man came to him, saying he had a dream that could not possibly be anything he desired. Freud, up to challenge, invited the man to explain his dream to him. And so he did. When he was done teling his dream, Freud was looking very pensive indeed. "My dear sir," he said, "clearly, your unconscious desired to try and prove my theory wrong."
*It might be that that's not quite correct, but I'm relating it as I remember it.
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(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png)
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Meanwhile those of us who studied philosophy sit in our crumbling ivory towers and reminisce about the good old days, when all of this was ours.
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But take comfort in the mouseover text of https://xkcd.com/903/.
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Meanwhile those of us who studied philosophy sit in our crumbling ivory towers and reminisce about the good old days, when all of this was ours.
Does that tower come with appropriate CITES documentation?