Spot on. Man, I still read the comic, but I don't feel any attachment to the characters anymore.
I used to feel significant emotional investment in the characters, but... that changed. I know it's not a very popular view, but I believe that several of the main characters aren't being written in a way which can be called consistent. To be more clear, I'm saying that there came a point at which I could no longer accept the current portrayal of "character x" as being the logical development of his or her own history. They became an imposter wearing the same face. This is true of several of the main characters. I believe it to have been intentional.
Why intentional? Jeph decided that he wanted the story to go in a certain way. That is his right, as the creator of the strip. It did not proceed logically from the established characters, though. Their expressed thoughts and feelings were incompatible with Jephs planned developments. No believable path of character development would take them down the paths he had planned, but he chose to ignore that in favour of telling what he thought was a good story.
Before it sounds like I'm being excessively harsh, I do appreciate that these strips were written over the course of several years, presumably without a long-term plan in mind. Jeph wants to write the storylines that seem fun at the time, and the changes are handled gracefully. It still seems like a robot was reprogrammed rather than a character changed their mind, but it is at least artfully done. I still enjoy the strips, I just find them... lacking in a certain authenticity.
It dissapoints me though. I used to really like these characters the way they were.
That's why the last few months QC hasn't been fun for me. 
With all that said, QC is still enormous fun for me. It isn't as enjoyable as it once was, when I was emotionally in the moment with the characters who seemed so real, but I still get a kick out of it. It went through a bad phase immediately after the breakup, but it has quickly returned to form. In my opinion, this is the best that QC has been in a long time.
I trust that all will see the praise in my message as well as the criticism. I admit the extreme subjectivity of my views, and don't expect anyone to share them. Please note that above all, I have enjoyed the
vast majority of QC. There was a specific period I thought was poor (at best) and a recurring subplot or two I found decidedly tedious, but overall I'm a big fan.
I'll even go so far as to admit that one character's reprogramming was for the better. Hannelore is a far better character since she has been re-conceived. She bears almost no relation to her original incarnation, and is all the better for it. There's no way to reconcile her earliest appearances with her current personality; in fact I would say this is the third distinct Hannelore we've seen. Each one worked in context of the storylines in which she featured.
It's pure bias that makes me view other, similar reprogrammings as distasteful. They too served the storyline, and probably worked in context for readers who did not have an emotional investiture. It is perhaps foolish to develop such investiture in webcomic characters, but when they seem so real and their situation so familiar and so poignant, my heart is not so hard as to be able to resist.
On an unreservedly positive note, Jim is quite simply delightful. He's also slightly creepy, and has a habit of placing his foot in his mouth without even realising it, but that does not detract one iota from my affection for him. In fact it adds to it. His clumsy attempts to be charming are only too familiar... I have a similar variety of inept charm.
He really should shave more often. The stubble makes him look much older, somehow.
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Topic: WCDT 20-24 June (1951-1955) (Read 62517 times)