THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: pwhodges on 18 Dec 2022, 15:21
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With Claire being as wound up and furious as this, I'm expecting the nature of the Director to be something which completely deflates her.
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'Other.' Tho I AM thinking it's a previous character.
......
Corpse Witch?
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The allosaurus
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The floating, humming black slab with the coffee cup still attached.
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The old Claire! The one who helped Cosette with her curse. (https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1716)
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It's something Emily summoned by accident.
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2853 (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2853)
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The Director is Jeph, and things are about to get meta.
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The Director is Jeph, and things are about to get meta.
It's been a long time since he made an appearance.
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2066 (https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2066)
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Shoosh, you two motormouths, Claire can't hear herself seethe...
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So the director is an AI, that breaks some ideas of who it could be...
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So the director is an AI, that breaks some ideas of who it could be...
It’s actually Moray-prime, the original goo-puter, but they don’t have the more advanced motility functions or covering so they’re just a big ol’ open vat of oil that sometimes bulges up into vague shapes to emote non verbally.
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Claire is the worst.
I hope it’s the Allosaurus and it eats her.
*Battens down the hatches for the incoming storm from Claire’s fans
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derris you are *so* down bad for her lol
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(it's me, i am the storm)
(but i'm eating chili so that's all i got right in the chamber right now)
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I've walked out of far lesser clusterfucks than poor Claire is enduring now. I'm honestly rather impressed that she's going through with chewing out the director, rather than asking Hanners if Spaceship can give her and Marten a ride home.
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I've walked out of far lesser clusterfucks than poor Claire is enduring now. I'm honestly rather impressed that she's going through with chewing out the director, rather than asking Hanners if Spaceship can give her and Marten a ride home.
Hanners: "We can nuke it from orbit if you want."
Marten: "WHAT."
Claire: *is thinking about it*
Marten: "NO."
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Hanners: "We can nuke it from orbit if you want."
"It's the only way to be sure."
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I have saved you the trouble of googling Star Trek spaceship ambient:
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/spaceshipNoiseGenerator.php
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The strip numbers are wrong on this thread. Should be (strips 4941-4945).
Also, if it does turn out to be Yay, I will laugh and laugh and laugh.
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It's Melon and Lemon's sister, Persimmon. She's got an orange chassis with Neko ears and a r/OneOrangeBrainCell personality.
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I... dont understand the plot.
Why she is so angry about some inept staff? So a staff member supposed to do her job on the room but didn't finish it on time. So in sheer stupid panic hid away.
Apologies but it was some breaking the straw point?
But we only saw the over excited gel girl. No other redflags. And now she is getting that robot girl fired?
The plot turned in a weird way...
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I... dont understand the plot.
Why she is so angry about some inept staff? So a staff member supposed to do her job on the room but didn't finish it on time. So in sheer stupid panic hid away.
Apologies but it was some breaking the straw point?
But we only saw the over excited gel girl. No other redflags. And now she is getting that robot girl fired?
The plot turned in a weird way...
So to recap from about the mid-4920s:
- The first Cubetown contact they met was overexcited and scatterbrained, drove in an unsafe way, and was less-than-reassuring about the people who live there
- The sentient boat that took them across to the community was an asshole to her boyfriend
- Her first sight of Cubetown entailed a massive explosion which supposedly tends to be larger
- The first Cubetown worker they met feuded with their own sentient arm
- There's a mysterious quadrant of town nobody wants to talk about at all costs, and which the community can't agree on developing
- Cubetown's chief of security was lurking on the hotel room balcony (even if well-intentioned), doing their job poorly, and alluded to planetary-scale threats that periodically originate from resident scientists
- When she wants to see a higher-up, they're deep in some distant sanctum well below ocean-level which is designed to be forbidding and discourage contact
I mean, I don't think I identify with her sheer hot-bloodedness at all, but she certainly has grounds to be frustrated.
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Neither she, nor her brother have any chill (and she’s particularly odd about libraries and the sanctity thereof). But in this case, it’s 100% justified, for the reasons you mentioned.
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Yeah, if I had to sum up both their characters it would probably be "zero chill", more or less.
Although having worked in a library as a student page in my ever-more-distant high school past, I get why people would be particular about how they operate.
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Aye, but Claire treats them like some high church thing, whilst Tai treats it as one of those temples that have have rather shocking rituals.
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I suppose a part of that might simply be humour aimed at librarians and frequent library patrons rather than being super critical to their characters.
Now that I think about it a bit more, I find that since QC became so heavily AI-focused and -centred, I actually kind of appreciate a sort of storyline that brings this post-singularity godlike-AI worldbuilding a bit back down-to-earth. That AIs, for all their advancement and processing capability, are so prone to thinking themselves down so many random, entropic tangents that they might actually be crap at building and operating a functioning community in the real world.
Something that demonstrates that there might actually need to be an ongoing societal symbiosis between humans and AI-kind, because humans need the AIs' drive to push the boundaries in new dimensions just as much as the AIs need humans' practicality and experience to keep them grounded. Reminds me of V'ger returning to seek the Creator to gain the ability to leap beyond logic, but reversed -- here, the AIs need their human counterparts to remind them what logic and practicality are.
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Also all of her previous interaction on the phone, and some research, indicated this is a shitshow, which is being confirmed by a lot of the experiences. this implies a *lot* of headaches coming up if she takes this job.
she's also in negotiation to be a *department head*, essentially. in a high-stakes negotiation at that; this is the opportunity of a lifetime, on top of being a shitshow. so... no pressure lol
also whether she means to or not, a show of power on her part is a pretty valid strategy. if she's being invited to wrangle these quantum cats vibrating and disappearing all over the place, figuratively, well... there's no getting around that you have to use the stick sometimes. there's different ways to do it, and no she's arguably not being perfect. but we're finding out whether or not she's got fire *and* iron in her belly, as it were.
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Still curious who the director will be.
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and i have to admit some personal bias here. i've worked in shitshow companies and shitshow projects. They tend to be massively vulnerable to grift and abuse on ridiculous scales. And even when they aren't, they tend to be so busy putting out fires, bailing water, patching hull, and fucking around that they don't *write down what they discover*. so much valuable work and data lost in the churn of no/bad infrastructure.
creativity is important, but it needs to be fed, sheltered, comforted, recorded, protected, and taken care of.
Right now, there's only a little indication that upper management of Cubetown gives a damn about that, arguably. you can only throw money at things willy nilly for so long. the lordlings, at least in our reality, make up financiers and management caste? they tend to be a complex mix of evil, selfish, and easily bored. and they usually have enough leverage that they won't be the ones eating shit when the skimming on repairs, inspections, and safety supplies means the 1 o'clock explosion causes shrapnel that tears 3 people apart. or when the funding dries up and everyone that actually gives a damn or needs to make a living are out on their ass. or when an experiment goes off the rails and causes a power surge that fries the data storage racks that weren't shielded and protected properly cuz of an installation failure on the part of overworked, self-trained, and under-supported techs. and it turns out the automatic backups broke 2 months ago, and the bad software patch that did for it also broke the auto-alerts that should have warned someone, but there's been no one with the time and energy to remember to check. or boring but critical-to-comfortable-operation supplies like toilet paper, air filters, lightbulbs, pens have run out because inventory's just straight-up FUCKED, so worker's bonuses had to (well "had" to) be spent on rush shipment from further away and/or inflated prices cuz ops can't hold out until a market price dip. the list goes on.
ceos, directors, and that, they don't have to worry about house payments, groceries, medical bills. they don't eat shit unless they piss off enough other lordlings, otherwise they get to go into a cushy exile at worst, usually. a new "job" at a new company. a new contract payout or new scam.
infrastructure is part of how we protect the rest of us
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as anyone who's put up with me in discuss forum knows, i uh... have Ideas and maybe get to typing too much lol :psyduck:
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While true that Claire is displaying zero chill here, this place has absolutely not earned any chill. The job interview isn't just about the interviewee showing the company why they should want to hire them. It's about the company showing the interviewee why they'd want to come work there. The only thing Cubetown has shown Claire so far is, "We have NO fucking idea what we're doing."
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It's been a year since I delurked and strangely enough it was Claire's attitude that drew me out back then.
Last year I found her annoying for being upset over her mother mistakenly thinking she got the job she was dreaming about instead of a temporary job at Coffee of Doom. Now I'm not sure how much time has actually passed since then, but there was a bit of a time jump and Cubetown is the first place that's actually extended a job offer to her. I'm not sure what librarian jobs are available in the world of Questionable Content, but looking around my corner of it I'd say beggars cannot be choosers especially when you consider the alternatives. Would she be happier working in one of those red states that pass laws that censor what books libraries can have or lend? And then there's their stand on LGBTQ rights. Yes. Cubetown is dysfunctional, but I would think by now she'd be used to it. She shares an apartment with Pintsize. She works at Coffee of Doom. She lives in Northampton.
If she's going to be this way the least she could do is recommend her brother for the job.
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Personally, to whatever extent she's entitled to feel peeved, there are ways of conducting oneself gracefully and respectably, if only not to lose the moral high ground. THIS... is not it. This is a teenage "uh, like, whatEVER" sulk. If I were Marten (let alone security woman, who should have noped out of there ages ago) I would have put up with about two minutes of this surliness, then said "OK, I'll be at the exit; see you whenever you're done". And I usually like Claire. I think maybe Jeph's gone a bit too far in trying to convey she's disillusioned; it's just making her look tiresome and self-absorbed.
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Personally, to whatever extent she's entitled to feel peeved, there are ways of conducting oneself gracefully and respectably, if only not to lose the moral high ground. THIS... is not it.
Quite vehemently agreed. Claire has a record of taking firm stands against incompetence and poor organization, but what's with the glaring stolid snapping at Marten who didn't do anything? And why is she so mad at the awkward pink security lady? She spends half her life talking to socially awkward tall people.
Her grim face heading to the office seems to be evoking Hanners' similar relentless march on her own mother, but Hannelore was rightfully enraged at being manipulated and at having another person's life manipulated on her unwilling behalf. Claire is seemingly super angry at everyone around her for finding out exactly what multiple people had told her previously and what her own research had confirmed; Cubetown is not well-run. It's an open-ended AI-headed concept shop with no particular limiters in place, like some sort of technophilic version of Leary's house or John Lilly's lab.
She knew the risks when she chose to come down here, and now she's mad that the place that is world-famous for not running especially well is not running especially well.
I think she should be more amazed that Cubetown is ongoing DESPITE everything that's happening constantly. Clearly there's SOMETHING functional here, and someone so centered in organizational design should be eager to find out what it is.
... but yeah, no, snap at Marten some more.
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Yeah, like the least you can do when you're angry is to keep that anger directed at the actual legitimate recipient(s), instead of malignantly taking it out on everyone around regardless of whether they contributed anything to the problem or have any real power to correct it.
Anger does not "control" the person who is angry; it's the other way around. Lack of self-control when frustrated, angry, enraged, etc. is not a feature, it's a flaw. And not correcting that character flaw reflects on the person choosing to do that.
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I think that Claire should take the job. She can set Cubetown up with a simple wiki. Which would be massively better than the mess they have now. Then she can leave with an interesting addition to her resume.
( this will not happen because it is a simple solution that would derail the plot )
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Something else to consider...
What if they are "putting on a show" so to speak? We know Cubetown needs help, but what if they really aren't as bad off as they are making it out to be, and just want to see how well she can handle disorder?
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New Comic
Welp, no one guessed who the Director was....
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Ah yeah, that was my second guess.
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Beats a robotic Cthulu, or a cyborg cat, I suppose.
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Claire has no working experience in library except the short stint as intern under marten in local university library.
The cubetown personnel did not show any malice to her nor show toxicity of the work culture.
We got confirmation that they are very well funded so there will be no issues with them making payments on her salary and accommodation.
What she got instead is a place which definitely needs help with organisation and culture building, a position for which is 100 percent underqualified but seems like she already got based solely on the potential to grow into.
She is in the wrong being so angry and poor marten is trying to change the mood and is being shut down.
Furthermore, as a person who she is, she really should be more open to people not really fitting into the society norms.
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Yeah, like the least you can do when you're angry is to keep that anger directed at the actual legitimate recipient(s), instead of malignantly taking it out on everyone around regardless of whether they contributed anything to the problem or have any real power to correct it.
Anger does not "control" the person who is angry; it's the other way around. Lack of self-control when frustrated, angry, enraged, etc. is not a feature, it's a flaw. And not correcting that character flaw reflects on the person choosing to do that.
Yeah, even then her anger seems bizarre to me.
This is after all a job interview for all its intents and purposes. If she doesn’t like what she sees, that’s fine she can simply say “no thanks” and leave. Cube town is not obligated to function a certain way, and Claire is certainly not entitled to anything, yet that is how she’s acting here. Besides self absorbed, she also behaves in a high and mighty fashion, as if it’s somehow an affront that cubetown dares to function this way in her presence. A bit more humility and a simple sense of wonder about how different things could be approached would suit her (and make her more likable).
I suppose it could maybe be framed as “she is already acting as if she works there and therefore showing she has what it takes” but it’s a massive stretch tbh
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I still fail to understand how any of this could possibly have been a surprise to her (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4887).
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Well, yes... :-D
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Something else to consider...
What if they are "putting on a show" so to speak? We know Cubetown needs help, but what if they really aren't as bad off as they are making it out to be, and just want to see how well she can handle disorder?
You got me thinking of a town I know of where all the city personnel who deal with job applicants are instructed to be rude and obstructionist to people applying for police jobs. Candidates who lose their cool don't get hired.
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derris you are *so* down bad for her lol
I would pay money, REAL MONEY for Jeph to write her out of the comic.
Her holier than thou attitude.
Her zero chill.
Her bullying of her brother.
My least favorite character in the comic by miles.
But that’s not gonna happen so I just vent here from time to time.
After all its just a webcomic.
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I am amused that in response to Claire's demand for light, the Director fires up their photophores.
What else goes on down here? I was sorta expecting a giant squid, but we were told 'AI'.
( ignore the man behind the curtain )
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It's something Emily summoned by accident.
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2853 (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2853)
In light of the reveal, this still may be case.
I am amused that in response to Claire's demand for light, the Director fires up their photophores.
What else goes on down here? I was sorta expecting a giant squid, but we were told 'AI'.
( ignore the man behind the curtain )
Same.
Sounds like a deep sea marine life survey/study
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*Battens down the hatches for the incoming storm from Claire’s fans
Heavy clouds but no rain. Disappointed? :lol:
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Get well soon, Jeph. Covid is no joke. I got it last week of september. The coughing is almost gone, now...
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Claire is very chill. Ths "director" looks more like a villain from a superhero movie...
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That could be the greatest leap JJ has taken from our world. Now, QC's world and the real world have not so much in common anymore. If you compare with the beginning of the comic, the divergence is really huge!
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ugh, that fucking cough
the rest of it sucks a lot too, but god did that linger when that plague finally got us earlier this year.
seconded
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I still fail to understand how any of this could possibly have been a surprise to her (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4887).
Well exactly. And what an amazing number of red flags she's putting up for Cubetown: inflexible, unadaptable, liable to fly off the handle at any perceived slight. Add to that her total lack of real world experience and you have someone who is only going to add several more layers of hot mess...
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I still fail to understand how any of this could possibly have been a surprise to her (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4887).
Well exactly. And what an amazing number of red flags she's putting up for Cubetown: inflexible, unadaptable, liable to fly off the handle at any perceived slight. Add to that her total lack of real world experience and you have someone who is only going to add several more layers of hot mess...
About that last one: she does have real-world experience and education, it's probably just not nearly adequate to tackle such a many-layered, n-dimensional foldspace hot mess as Cubetown is. And also seems decently adaptable, though not extraordinarily so.
But inflexible and liable to fly off the handle? Yeah, that's there. Although it seems to me that maybe she was in denial in the face of all the mounting evidence that Cubetown is a dumpster fire, and finally some straw broke the AI camel's back and now she's flipped to "burn it all down" mode.
Her holier than thou attitude.
Her zero chill.
Her bullying of her brother.
My least favorite character in the comic by miles.
If the even more holier-than-thou, zero-chill, bullying, boundary-trampling ShittySpookybot didn't exist in the webcomic, then I'd be inclined to agree. That stupid, smug gestalt AI vampire needs to get nuked off the face of the (fictional) universe.
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So the Morays are extentions of the Director. Huh.
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I for one welcome Library Ian.
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I for one welcome Library Ian.
I'm Library Ian and so is my wife!
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I for one welcome Library Ian.
When Claire eventually leaves Cubetown (for whatever reason), she will leave the Information Science Department in the capable hands of Library Ian...
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So the Morays are extentions of the Director. Huh.
Would that make these "eel-infested waters" then?
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Also, I have to say I'm belatedly getting heavy vibes of the Great Link from this Director (or rather, Founder? They are in the Dominion of Canada, after all).
The drop becomes the ocean; the ocean becomes the drop.
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how long do you think before jeph notices he accidentally uploaded the "library ian" version?
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So if the Morays are just extensions of the director then the enthusiasm of the director's abilities by Moray as in https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4861 get, if not actually sinister, evidence of a very atypical psyche.
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i do appreciate you linking that comic, jim, since there's the director-speak, yup. a good reminder for me
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So Morays are baloons of HIIIIGH pressure fluid. I'm glad nothing went wrong in that car trip.
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So the director is an AI, that breaks some ideas of who it could be...
It’s actually Moray-prime, the original goo-puter, but they don’t have the more advanced motility functions or covering so they’re just a big ol’ open vat of oil that sometimes bulges up into vague shapes to emote non verbally.
Ah, cool, so I was sorta half-right.
One question; what’s the etiquette on humans giving birth in front of you unexpectedly?
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So Morays are baloons of HIIIIGH pressure fluid. I'm glad nothing went wrong in that car trip.
Who said they had to be high-pressure fluid? They can just as easily be a form of gel, and hold together with no inherent issues.
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https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4864
also the kid in the airport put their hand... in? her. sort of in her.
and the note. though that was eaten through the mouth.
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also i know the things i've said about Cubetown and extremely possible horrible scenarios that could go down there, but i fear that i may not be communicating that, well... a very large part of me very much wishes I could be there. danger and incompetence aside, the possibilities, the apparent open acceptance of the strange, the PURPOSE.... yes. yes some of me very much wishes.
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So Morays are baloons of HIIIIGH pressure fluid. I'm glad nothing went wrong in that car trip.
So long as its an incompressible fluid then no big deal. For instance steam locomotive boilers are initially tested with high pressure water 'cause if something goes catastrophically wrong you just get a flood, whereas with steam you get an explosion. So yes, incompressible fluid. Incompressible gel, whichever, not really an issue.
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Well, one wonders WHY the Director made Cubetown? WE probably won't see until next year....
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So sounds like this'll be the last QC comic while this forum is running.
It was a good run everybody.
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So sounds like this'll be the last QC comic while this forum is running.
Yes, I was about to say I feel a week of solid exposition coming on, but now it's a week of Bembo, and we (sob) won't be here when the exposition gets...expositioned.
It's been fun, peeps! Live long and prosper. Or something.
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(Pssst... There is a Discord you can join)
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I plan to check in on Reddit. *lol*
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So the Morays are extentions of the Director. Huh.
Would that make these "eel-infested waters" then?
If that was the intended punchline, does this count as a brick joke?
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(Pssst... There is a Discord you can join)
That makes sense...I may need to do that soonish
As to the current comic I kind of like that Claire has been...weirded out of her anger for lack of a better term. She seems more intrigued here and in a sense I also appreciate that the director being this way does sort of explain at least a bit of why things are as strange as they are. Honestly I wonder if part of why things have relatively speaking worked as well as they have for a while has been more due to a combination of mutual interest in certain advanced useful projects and outside interests in same concepts or intrigue at novelty
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Well, I guess the cubetown philosophy to date has been "lets throw everything at the wall and see what sticks". But that will only get you so far before everything becomes a pile at the foot of the wall.
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And so, the forum will close. Not with a bang, but with a Bembo.
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I’m so glad that this ridiculous Bembo shit is how these forums will go out, lmao
It’s poetic
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I thought the satire on your tax system quite amusing.
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Yes, Claire is over-reacting, but she's had a *long* freaking day. Getting up early to drive to the airport, a long flight, a long drive, a long boat ride... all she wanted was an hour to rest and decompress in the room, and she didn't even get that! I don't know about you folks, but I've certainly been known to flare up sometimes in situations like that...
It just feels like the folks who like Claire anyway are willing to cut her some slack, and the ones who don't are not. Guess that tells you how I feel about her. 8-)
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And so, the forum will close. Not with a bang, but with a Bembo.
Probably a good way to do it. I think also that whatever happens with QC in the near future, whether it focuses on Marten and Claire in Cubetown and writes the rest of the cast out, or this is to put them on a bus, it's a major change and however things go, on top of every reason Jeph gave us for killing this thing, it's probably a good move to let any crazy fandom stuff happen somewhere that isn't "under his roof", and that isn't associated with him. I don't know his mind, but it would be rather sensible, and an out with the old in with the new for the coming year.