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2 (3.6%)

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9 (16.4%)

Other (please explain for the rest of us)

5 (9.1%)

Total Members Voted: 50

[pwhodges]

Why is Momo spilling blood out of her left eye?

Are we reading different comics? All I see are her eyes going in two entirely different directions.

Oh for frells sakes....last panel of the strip.

Which has the same red iris/pupil as the artist has used for the whole strip; the left eye (our right) is looking down while the other looks up, is all.

[Method of Madness]

I don't get it. Checking the linked Twitter account just confused me more.  Although I think I remember Jeph mentioning "transethnic" on Twitter the other day and that it's apparently a Bad Tumblr Thing.  I have no idea what it is, though.

[Eternal_Newbie]

I don't get it. Checking the linked Twitter account just confused me more.  Although I think I remember Jeph mentioning "transethnic" on Twitter the other day and that it's apparently a Bad Tumblr Thing.  I have no idea what it is, though.

As far as I can tell a "transethnic" is someone who is genetically and socially WASP but feels they are actually African-American.

[pwhodges]

The tumblr seems to me to be a send-up of various aspects of discrimination and anti-discrimination culture, based on a reductio ad absurdum; but I'm worried that I might be being discriminatory in interpreting it like that instead of literally...

[bhtooefr]

As far as I can tell a "transethnic" is someone who is genetically and socially WASP but feels they are actually African-American.

See, I've usually heard it as the slur commonly used against blacks (of African or other descent), but with the beginning N replaced with a W.

[Skaltura]

Tumblr, birthplace of our generation's new age hippies?

[Near Lurker]

I first heard it as a parody of transsexuality from some radfem idiot.  I still can't believe it's a real damn thing.

"Oh hey guys, let's coopt the rhetoric of a marginalized group to claim our brains are wired opposite to our bodies across a distinction that, biologically*, basically doesn't exist and is largely determined by an ancestry we don't have, so that we can try to reap the paltry advantages of another marginalized group that largely stem from our overarching culture's fetishization of marginality and the ruling class's attempts to mitigate and thereby maintain white privilege, without having to give up our own white privilege!"

(*I will point out the obvious that cultural distinctions between races are very real, just to stem accusations of total assimilationism.)

[no one special]

This is getting a bit circular... Tai is saying she should be happier because she's successfully running a business, and you're countering that, saying she shouldn't be happy because she isn't really happy... 

I'm not saying anything about how Dora is acting. Her being happy about her business would be awesome, and she DOES seem to enjoy it. My problem was with Tai's wording. The comparison part was what I found messed up. It wasn't how she was measuring Dora's success, it was how she was measuring everyone else to the same metric.

Dude, you're reading way too much into this.  Dora's shop is just the biggest way in which she's content in life, in that it gives her focus and drive.  Most of the other people (by their own admission) and still searching for that thing that drives them in life.  It doesn't have to be a job, it could be anything - but by and large, they haven't found it.  Dora seems to have done so, and she's good at it, so that kicks ass. 

Also, Tai never mentioned any particular metric by which she was measuring everyone.  I was the one who brought jobs, for better or worse. 

[Soulsynger]

[ ... ]
"Oh hey guys, let's coopt the rhetoric of a marginalized group to claim our brains are wired opposite to our bodies across a distinction that, biologically*, basically doesn't exist and is largely determined by an ancestry we don't have, so that we can try to reap the paltry advantages of another marginalized group that largely stem from our overarching culture's fetishization of marginality and the ruling class's attempts to mitigate and thereby maintain white privilege, without having to give up our own white privilege!"
[ ... ]

.... mind if I frame that? (WITH the duck.)

[jwhouk]

So - what SHOULD we call ourselves?

QC-kies    1 (2.4%)
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QCkers    8 (19.5%)
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Waffle Lovers of Pioneer Valley    2 (4.9%)
International Spathe Ham Society (ISHS)    2 (4.9%)
QC PonyLeakers    1 (2.4%)
"Fans of Questionable Content"    7 (17.1%)
Other (please explain for the rest of us)    4 (9.8%)

Total Members Voted: 41

[Boxilar]

Beyond clicking links to look at stuff that Jeph has posted, I don't have any real contact with Tumbler. Or Twitter for that matter. So I really don't get today's guest strip. It's not the artists fault that I'm technologicly/socialy backwards in that way, but one of the things I like most about QC is that it gives me a window into a culture that I would normaly never experience. And Jeph makes that culture accesable to me. When the strip was refrencing obscure Indy rock bands left and right, it didn't matter that I didn't know any of the bands. What mattered was Marten and company's reactions and interactions. Yesterday's strip worked for me because it was a new take on the characters with another artist's perspective and it was something that felt "cannon" to the QC 'verse. It meshed with everything that has come before.

 Today's strip is apparently a series of one liners based on Tumbler culture. Without the context of that culture to put it in, it makes no sense to me. It'd be like a comedian standing on stage screaming punchlines to jokes I'd never heard. Said comedian might be hilarious to folks that knew the jokes, but I'd be lost. And from the preceding posts, Tumbler is something I probably don't want to dive into. So I guess, Pretty good art and, I don't get it?

[Method of Madness]

(*I will point out the obvious that cultural distinctions between races are very real, just to stem accusations of total assimilationism.)

This needs a discuss thread. I'm not sure I agree that being a different "race" makes one inherently different.

[Carl-E]

Not inherently different, but the traditional separations of races has led to different cultures evolving in many parts of the world.  And there are always examples of people (past and present) who have been raised cross-culturally or in mixed cultures. 

[helloandgoodbye]

Predictably, people on tumblr were offended by this strip. XD

[Kugai]

Oooooookaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy

[Wagimawr]

And from the preceding posts, Tumbler is something I probably don't want to dive into.

Tumblr is just a different kind of blogging; it's not that you want to avoid, but rather most unregulated (and even some regulated!) political and social discussion on the internet. It doesn't always end well.

[Akima]

"Oh hey guys, let's coopt the rhetoric of a marginalized group to claim our brains are wired opposite to our bodies across a distinction that, biologically*, basically doesn't exist and is largely determined by an ancestry we don't have, so that we can try to reap the paltry advantages of another marginalized group that largely stem from our overarching culture's fetishization of marginality and the ruling class's attempts to mitigate and thereby maintain white privilege, without having to give up our own white privilege!"

(*I will point out the obvious that cultural distinctions between races are very real, just to stem accusations of total assimilationism.)

I don't know how far this was seriously meant, but it is freighted with massive unspoken and unexamined assumptions about race and culture.

The idea that there is no biological difference between races is extremely debatable, and normally forms part of a propaganda narrative that pretends that race does not exist, so racism can't exist, so that members of ethnic minorities can't be experiencing racial discrimination, and should just shut up. It is legitimate to argue that the biological differences between races are trivial compared to what they have in common, or that the differences should not matter outside a few specialised medical contexts, but to argue that there are no biological differences at all strikes me as extremely dubious on factual grounds. If there were no biological difference between the races, rates of lactose intolerance, or density of melanin in the skin, for example, would be statistically uniform across the global human population, and this is simply not so.

The very idea of human "races" is profoundly and inescapably tied to ethnic appearance, which is a matter of biology, and not simply a cultural construct. When I walk down the street in Sydney and people perceive me as "Asian", it is not my culture that they are observing, but my phenotypic ethnic appearance which is biological.

[Tova]

This needs a discuss thread.

[cesariojpn]

Randy is not a shrew.

[tabereins]

"Oh hey guys, let's coopt the rhetoric of a marginalized group to claim our brains are wired opposite to our bodies across a distinction that, biologically*, basically doesn't exist and is largely determined by an ancestry we don't have, so that we can try to reap the paltry advantages of another marginalized group that largely stem from our overarching culture's fetishization of marginality and the ruling class's attempts to mitigate and thereby maintain white privilege, without having to give up our own white privilege!"

(*I will point out the obvious that cultural distinctions between races are very real, just to stem accusations of total assimilationism.)

I don't know how far this was seriously meant, but it is freighted with massive unspoken and unexamined assumptions about race and culture.

The idea that there is no biological difference between races is extremely debatable, and normally forms part of a propaganda narrative that pretends that race does not exist, so racism can't exist, so that members of ethnic minorities can't be experiencing racial discrimination, and should just shut up. It is legitimate to argue that the biological differences between races are trivial compared to what they have in common, or that the differences should not matter outside a few specialised medical contexts, but to argue that there are no biological differences at all strikes me as extremely dubious on factual grounds. If there were no biological difference between the races, rates of lactose intolerance, or density of melanin in the skin, for example, would be statistically uniform across the global human population, and this is simply not so.

The very idea of human "races" is profoundly and inescapably tied to ethnic appearance, which is a matter of biology, and not simply a cultural construct. When I walk down the street in Sydney and people perceive me as "Asian", it is not my culture that they are observing, but my phenotypic ethnic appearance which is biological.

It is interesting to note that if you define races by how genetically similar the people are, there are several races in Africa, and one other race that includes everybody else. I, a white guy in America likely share as many genes with a black guy in South Africa as that guy shares with a black guy in Kenya, and I share more genes with an Asian guy in Korea than the previous South Africa and Kenya comparison. This is because people left Africa a lot earlier than the various splits of people going to the ends of Asia and Europe and crossing the ice bridge to America, so there was a lot more time for branching and variation.

Of course we define race mostly by skin color and various secondary characteristics, but from a biological standpoint, there's no reason to.

[Tova]

I'm just going to say that the comics for the last couple of days have been somewhat surreal, and leave it at that.

[pwhodges]

I felt that I understood yesterday's, but today's doesn't do anything for me - not yet, anyway.

[Tova]

I understood yesterday's comic - it was the world that the comic introduced me to that was surreal, to put it mildly.

[Method of Madness]

Today's comic reminded me of Steve's flashback comic.  Just a day at the office for Pintsize.

[Akima]

I felt that I understood yesterday's, but today's doesn't do anything for me - not yet, anyway.

Me too. Guest comics...

[Soulsynger]

... all I'm getting is "trite"... for some reason. Oo

[DSL]

I rather liked the Multiverse guest comic. Day at the office for a 'bot everyone sees as a little slacker pervotron.
The Tumblr-verse guest comic I could wrap my brain around after a while and "get" the joke, but the gag seemed unfinished to me, more like notes for a concept someone realized they had to finish and submit because holy cow, here's the deadline. Those sometimes work spectacularly, sometimes land with a clunk.

Of course, all that means is that I liked one better than I liked the other, and other folks have other preferences.

EDIT: That pistol's not gonna work.

[Soulsynger]

EDIT: That pistol's not gonna work.

Winning at Russian roulette due to having no fingers .. inGENIOUS! Maybe thats why he's grinning so self-assuredly.

[Overkillengine]

EDIT: That pistol's not gonna work.

Winning at Russian roulette due to having no fingers .. inGENIOUS! Maybe thats why he's grinning so self-assuredly.

I'd think it was more due to his head being likely more cosmetic than functionally required with the bulk of his "brain" being in the main case that would be be a torso on a organic humanoid*.

*distinction of organic humanoid made due to Momo. Have no damn idea how her innards are laid out. Technically guessing in Pintsize's case too, but oh well.

[dreed]

His brain is in the head as he was shown to be able to speak and interact without his rest of the body. 

[DSL]

No, I mean that pistol's not gonna work. No travel for the hammer, no way for ammo to be in the cylinder. Unless that's a disguised semiauto or energy weapon, and Russian Roulette with either one is kind of a foregone conclusion, unless you can convince the other guy to go first.

[Carl-E]

Hitler?  He never goes first. 

Unless it's a road trip to Poland. 

[DrBear]

His brain is in the head as he was shown to be able to speak and interact without his rest of the body.

Nope. Wi-Fi

[DSL]

Hitler?  He never goes first. 

Unless it's a road trip to Poland.

I don't have the video chops to do it, but did anyone ever consider a QC-related "Downfall" meme?
The obvious one is "Hitler reacts to Marten and Dora breaking up." You could just thrown in lines from forum posts for that month as the subtitles.

Alternatively, "Hitler tries to place a phone order with Coffee of Doom."

[Method of Madness]

Ehhh, don't they not let those on YouTube anymore?

[DSL]

Ehhh, don't they not let those on YouTube anymore?

Last I checked, admittedly months ago, new ones were going up as fast as YouTube was taking them down.

[Emperor Norton]

No, I mean that pistol's not gonna work. No travel for the hammer, no way for ammo to be in the cylinder. Unless that's a disguised semiauto or energy weapon, and Russian Roulette with either one is kind of a foregone conclusion, unless you can convince the other guy to go first.

Its a double action revolver, you only have to pull back the hammer on a single action. With a double action revolver, pulling the trigger pulls back the hammer, rotates the cylinder and then releases the hammer, so before the trigger is pulled the hammer would be in the rest position.

/American

/I've never actually fired a gun so /badamerican.

[cesariojpn]

Burnt donkey hair does not smell like coconuts.

[DSL]

It does if you use a cartoon cigarette lighter shaped like a gun that couldn't possibly work.
And filled with coconut oil.

[Jynto]

The tumblr comic made me curious enought to google fictive headmate. I'm quite glad I did. I've found out some interesting stuff about headmates and multiplicity.

[LTK]

The tumblr comic made me curious enought to google fictive headmate. I'm quite glad I did. I've found out some interesting stuff about headmates and multiplicity.

Link? I'm as curious as you are, and the first few Google results are not helpful.

[Jynto]

The tumblr comic made me curious enought to google fictive headmate. I'm quite glad I did. I've found out some interesting stuff about headmates and multiplicity.

Link? I'm as curious as you are, and the first few Google results are not helpful.

This is helpful. So is this and this. Oh, and this too.

For anyone else wondering, a headmate is a term for a person who shares your body. Although the term seems to be limited mostly to tumblr, the idea of multiplicity dates back at least as far as 2002. A fictive headmate (or more commonly just 'fictive') is one that is based on a fictional character.

If like me you googled 'fictive headmate' and then just 'headmate' you'll have found a load of tumblr posts with the headmate tag, which isn't very helpful because none of them explained the context. But some of these mentioned multiplicity and multiple systems. So in the end I found out that 'multiple system -atrophy multiplicity' is a much better search term (without the quotes, but you knew that).

Edit: this one too, but it's a google cache and the link will probably break soon.

[jwhouk]

Ah, "Mults".

It's called MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) when one of the personalities happens to be self-harming or harming of others.

Of course, some psychologists suggest we all have some form of MPD, where we play various "roles" in our everyday life.

And I won't go further, since this is the WCDT - though said week has ended.




"We need another comic to restore sense to this thread." - Paul Hodges

[TinPenguin]

This is irrelevant to recent comics, but I didn't think it warranted its own thread. I just noticed something trivial:

Faye has sex with Sven, she asks "Are you always this smug after you ravish a lady?"
Faye has sex with Angus, she asks  "Are you always this hyperactive after sex?"

Clearly, Faye possesses a scientific interest in the post-coital activities of the human male.

[LTK]

This is helpful. So is this and this. Oh, and this too.

For anyone else wondering, a headmate is a term for a person who shares your body. Although the term seems to be limited mostly to tumblr, the idea of multiplicity dates back at least as far as 2002. A fictive headmate (or more commonly just 'fictive') is one that is based on a fictional character.

If like me you googled 'fictive headmate' and then just 'headmate' you'll have found a load of tumblr posts with the headmate tag, which isn't very helpful because none of them explained the context. But some of these mentioned multiplicity and multiple systems. So in the end I found out that 'multiple system -atrophy multiplicity' is a much better search term (without the quotes, but you knew that).

Edit: this one too, but it's a google cache and the link will probably break soon.

Hmmmmm. I'll be honest, from Spike's guest comic and the Tumblr.txt twitter I felt like their dismissive attitude to these aspects of tumblr may have some merit. The glossary on astraeasweb reeks of layman psychologist wank as well, or in the worst case, outright self-perpetuating delusions. But the bits about people experience multiple personalities in a non-pathological way is actually really interesting, because unlike the claims of being a different age, of a different species, or in a different world than you actually are (those are all supposed attributes of multiple personalities), it's entirely possible that a person's self-perception is a fluid thing and can play the role of different personalities. After all, your self-perception is entirely in your head, so how you feel as being is unquestionably real.

I once said to someone that every one of us is an actor who only knows how to play one role. Maybe a good enough actor can convince themselves that they can, in fact, play more than one role as their own self.

[Near Lurker]

I'm pretty sure I heard people talking about "fictive headmates" back in the nineties...

[jmucchiello]

But after that I must say I am rather disgusted by Tai. Not the fact she is gunning for Dora now but the fact that she was gunning for her while she was still with Marten. And instead of giving Dora some time and space to recover after the break up, which is what she is trying to do, she is going on the offense (and damn what a good one to!).

This is ironic considering how fast Dora jumped when Faye gave the greenlight for her to hit on Marten. Do you hate Dora for that too?

[Method of Madness]

Not quite the same, since Marten and Faye were never actually together, but that's a good point.