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Brun and Clinton?

Faye and Bubbles?

Renee and Brun?

Claire and Clinton?

Brun, Renee AND Clinton?

Marten and Claire?

Dora and Tai?

Emily and Cosette?

Hanners, Emily and Cosette?

Marigold, Dale and Momo

Any combination of the above

None of the above - Jeph will surprise us with a week of Guest Comics

A week at The Secret Bakery

Purple Gorilla Dishwasher (RIP HARAMBE)

[mikmaxs]

But how do you know when you haven't seen it?

There is nothing of anything significance in the comic you didn't see that can't be very simply inferred from reading today's comic.

A rule of thumb I use for comedy: You want the audience to do as little thinking as possible, unless their confusion is the point of the joke. The space between humor and understanding the humor should be almost nonexistent. That's why explaining a joke kills it: By the time they understand the punchline, it's taken so long to get there that it's no longer funny.

So, if your reader needs to spend time figuring out what happened and making guesses (which could be wrong) about context, you're taking them out of the moment and spoiling the joke. The line at the end about the concussion would still work, because the point is to make the reader go, "Wait, what?", but by the time someone gets to the end of the comic, they've spent so much time inferring things through context that the punchline feels like just another piece of information that needs to be inferred through context.

Missing th setup kills the joke because it makes the punchline indistinguishable from the setup.

[Tova]

I still don't see how it is so difficult to understand what they are talking about in any of the panels. It is pretty obvious, sorry.

(click to show/hide)

MARIGOLD AND DALE WERE HAVING AWKWARD SEX.

Don't have time to debate further. The joke obviously didn't work for you, you can't win them all.

A better rule of thumb: comedy works better when you let the audience join the dots instead of overexplaining it.

Edit:

A rule of thumb I use for comedy: You want the audience to do as little thinking as possible, unless their confusion is the point of the joke. The space between humor and understanding the humor should be almost nonexistent. That's why explaining a joke kills it: By the time they understand the punchline, it's taken so long to get there that it's no longer funny.

I can't agree. I've had countless experiences when I've had to stop and think about visual joke for more than a few moments, that were absolutely hilarious when realisation finally hit.

The reason explaining the joke doesn't work has nothing to do with the amount of time taken to get to the punchline, and everything to do with the audience no longer being able to mentally join the dots themselves, a crucial component to the humour.

Really am done now.

[brasca]

I still don't see how it is so difficult to understand what they are talking about in any of the panels. It is pretty obvious, sorry.

(click to show/hide)

MARIGOLD AND DALE WERE HAVING AWKWARD SEX.

Don't have time to debate further. The joke obviously didn't work for you, you can't win them all.

A better rule of thumb: comedy works better when you let the audience join the dots instead of overexplaining it.

(click to show/hide)

So is Patreon like Slipshine?

  David Willis introduced me to that and I have not been disappointed.

[ihaveavoice]

I'm going to add real quick that it's entirely possible, if not likely, that Jeph did this entirely by accident. Chances are, he just thought, "Hey, this would be a funny follow-up strip to my Patreon comic," wrote it, and published it the same as he does every other comic, without considering how it might read to a casual audience. It seems unlikely that this is a pure "Lookit-my-patreon!" Ad comic.

I could tell you right now everything that happened in the comic you didn't see.

I guarantee you wouldn't suddenly find today's comic funny.

Well, after the fact? Yeah, probably. If I had known it in advance, though? I doubt it.

He wrote that it was a reference to the Patreon strip in the subtext at the bottom of the comic. I didn't even know there was a Patreon strip and had just assumed it was a noodle incident, basically, until I read that. If he hadn't written that, everyone would just either be like "ok, noodle incident" or "lol inside joke." Btw, reading "what Marigold was yelling about" makes me kiiiinda  about whatever happened in that strip - I hadn't assumed she was actually literally yelling at him for something he did.

[Kugai]

I think there are some things you shouldn't be interfering with or interrupting there May.

[jheartney]

Perhaps I'm being thick (wouldn't be the first time), but there's something about this I don't understand. Specifically, whose place did the noodle incident take place at?

On the one hand, May is there, suggesting it happened at Dale and May's place. But then if you look at the Patreon comic, it seems that Dale was leaving in a fit of embarrassment. Why would he leave his own place? Where was he expecting to go? In fact he says he's going "home," which suggests the action is happening at Marigold and Momo's. If that's the case, why is May there? Does she follow Dale around on his sleepover nights? Her conversation with Momo says May "went in the living room." Does May usually not just follow Dale over to Marigold's, but also stay in the room with them? Whut?

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I can't work it out.

[BenRG]

Y'know, a way back when I did a poll on the oddest couples in Questionable Content, I forgot these two bickering sisters (because they do seem more and more like siblings to me).

In any case, I think that the time is approaching for May to strike out on her own. Not because she really has problems with socialisation and not even because she seems to find ways to cause trouble even when she doesn't mean it. It's just that Dale's lifestyle seems to be hazardous to her physical and mental health (first the sword incident and now this)!

The thing is...? I can see Momo moving out too. As much as she loves Marigold, I suspect, based on the 'day in the life' strips, that she finds Marigold and Dale's enthusiastically vocal intimacy pretty disturbing (on many levels) as well! I'd still like to see what an all-Synthetic household would work and these two are as close, in nature and temperament, to an Oscar and Felix as we are likely to get in QC.

Now, hands up everyone who noticed the Brun cameo in panel 1!

[Kugai]

Missed the Brun Cameo

[Penquin47]

Perhaps I'm being thick (wouldn't be the first time), but there's something about this I don't understand. Specifically, whose place did the noodle incident take place at?

On the one hand, May is there, suggesting it happened at Dale and May's place. But then if you look at the Patreon comic, it seems that Dale was leaving in a fit of embarrassment. Why would he leave his own place? Where was he expecting to go? In fact he says he's going "home," which suggests the action is happening at Marigold and Momo's. If that's the case, why is May there? Does she follow Dale around on his sleepover nights? Her conversation with Momo says May "went in the living room." Does May usually not just follow Dale over to Marigold's, but also stay in the room with them? Whut?

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I can't work it out.

My first thought was it happened at Marigold/Momo's, Marigold actually chased him through the streets to his house, and the fight ended up at Dale/May's.  That still doesn't make much sense, because of "May went out to the living room" and she was listening in and it "got funny again" when Marigold started yelling...

[Tova]

It's my turn to be thick. I didn't know that Dale had moved in, I thought he was just sleeping over there on a regular basis but still had his own place.

Feel free to correct me with a comic reference, those of you with archive-fu.

Edit: Confession time. The thought I just had: "Oh NOODLE INCIDENT HA AH HA HA HA AHA HAHAHAH that is funny, I am so so slow. Ohhhh my head hurts."

[Thrillho]

For what it's worth, I think the comic is funny as it is, I don't think we need to have explicitly see the incident to find it funny.

I mean, I don't find May funny anyway. But May is an asshole all the time, had I not known there was a separate Patreon comic (and by the way, Patreon exists so that if you pay him you get perks, that's the way this whole thing works) I would still have found it funny and assumed it referred to something offscreen. Sitcoms have done this forever.

[TinPenguin]

Y'all do know Jeph linked the Patreon strip in the comic description, right?

[Eternal_Newbie]

Y'all do know Jeph linked the Patreon strip in the comic description, right?

The problem with that is that it doesn't answer the burning question that I had. Did May's "encouragement" involve dressing up as a cheeerleader?

[Eastrim]

Also, this is totally cool. Premium paid content is to what we are generally going as a society, so why not web comics too?

Paid premium content is fine. Making it so that the free content is worse unless you also have the paid content is not so fine.

Agreed. I'm totally cool with him expanding the universe with side comics for paid subscribers. I'm not at all cool with him implying that comprehension of a main series comic is dependent on being a paid subscriber. That crosses a line.

If you didn't find it funny, then knowing something about what caused it won't make it funnier.

I disagree. There have been many times where, once an inside joke was explained to me, I cracked up at imagining the situation that they were cracking up at having been through, despite being utterly perplexed when parrots came up in the conversation.

So is Patreon like Slipshine? David Willis introduced me to that and I have not been disappointed.

Not at all. Slipshine is a subscription to an aggregate of content providers, like a newspaper or most other porn sites- for the specific returns of access to the back catalog and to the episodic updates for the duration of your subscription. Patreon is specifically patronizing a single artist or artwork (a band, say) with highly variable returns, often based on tiers. Sometimes you get nothing that anyone else can't get except warm fuzzies, sometimes personalized art just for you, sometimes content completely removed from the reason you know them, like a music blog.

Y'all do know Jeph linked the Patreon strip in the comic description, right?

That link was not there initially. Presumably he added it after enough people said Not Cool Jeph.

[brasca]

It's my turn to be thick. I didn't know that Dale had moved in, I thought he was just sleeping over there on a regular basis but still had his own place.

Feel free to correct me with a comic reference, those of you with archive-fu.

Edit: Confession time. The thought I just had: "Oh NOODLE INCIDENT HA AH HA HA HA AHA HAHAHAH that is funny, I am so so slow. Ohhhh my head hurts."

I don't know what all the fuss was about.  Even after following the link the whole retelling of the incident works just fine without it. 

I would note that Marigold went over to Dale's place for a bootycall and because he was so embarrassed about whatever dirty thing he whispered into her ear he was willing to walk out of his own apartment which is part of the joke. 

[Sullivan]

All the stuff about the Patreon strip aside...

Why wouldn't a sentient AI in the QC universe be able to shut off her or his own microphones?

ok, maybe there's a requirement to "keep listening", just as we meatfolk have to do. Why wouldn't s/he be able to turn off conscious awareness of Dale and Marigold's voices for the duration? A background task, below the level of consciousness, could monitor for stuff the AI really needs to hear.

Heck, we can do all this now, with computers far less powerful than what must be in May's head.

[Method of Madness]

Y'all do know Jeph linked the Patreon strip in the comic description, right?

The problem with that is that it doesn't answer the burning question that I had. Did May's "encouragement" involve dressing up as a cheeerleader?

That's not a problem unique to non-Patreon subscribers. The comic is all we got, too. But it's not necessarily a problem, imagination kicks in where canon leaves off.

[Tova]

I don't know what all the fuss was about.  Even after following the link the whole retelling of the incident works just fine without it. 

Of course it does. Maybe Jeph underestimated how upset people would be at being unable to say "I understood that reference," I don't know. I can understand how you might not have found the comic funny. What I don't get is how seeing the referenced comic would have changed that.

No, don't bother trying to explain it to me again. I doubt it will be any more convincing than what I've already read.

The ironic thing is that, when I read today's comic for the first time, you know what I was thinking? And I am being completely honest here. I thought to myself, "Dang, this would have been even funnier if I hadn't seen the comic this is referencing." Basically because most of the panels are more or less simply describing what I'd already seen.

So, go figure.

Whole thing is much ado about nothing. Jeph should have just kept quiet about the Patreon-only comic, and no-one would have been the wiser. Some people might still have found it unfunny, but no-one would be here claiming they still can't understand it.

I would note that Marigold went over to Dale's place for a bootycall and because he was so embarrassed about whatever dirty thing he whispered into her ear he was willing to walk out of his own apartment which is part of the joke. 

I like that interpretation.

[pwhodges]

To my mind the Patreon comic was not necessary to make the main comic funny.  TBH, it was (in isolation) so meh as to be a failure as an advertisement for the benefits of subscribing.

[Zebediah]

The thing everyone has missed amid the furor over Patreon vs. non-Patreon comics...

... is that May is walking around in a tank top while everyone else (including Momo) is wearing jackets.

Sure, May's a robot and may not be as sensitive to the cold as meat-based life forms. But she isn't even trying to blend in any more.

[Tova]

The thing everyone has missed amid the furor over Patreon vs. non-Patreon comics...

... is that May is walking around in a tank top while everyone else (including Momo) is wearing jackets.

Sure, May's a robot and may not be as sensitive to the cold as meat-based life forms. But she isn't even trying to blend in any more.

Ha! I didn't notice that.

But maybe May just can't afford "luxuries" like coats. She only had so much cash to buy clothes with.

[cesium133]

Buying new clothes would just get in the way of her goals. She still has to save up for that rocket launcher...

[Neko_Ali]

My impression is that the unseen incident happened at Marigold and Momo's place. May was there visiting... either she and Dale came over to visit together and he and Marigold... did their thing. Or May was there on her own. She and Momo were in Momo's room. Hence the comment about 'how can you sleep through that?' Basically, the bedrooms are right next to each other, and May tried to escape to the living room. But still couldn't get away so she did what she does, and snarked off.

As far as May and no coat goes, I doubt she has a lot of money. As far as we know she only has the one part time job. She probably doesn't spend money on anything she doesn't have to, and wearing a coat for a robot is a 'don't have to thing'. Besides, she has blue plastic skin and hair. She's not going to fit in no matter what she wears. I'm not sure what the texture of her new face covering is like, but the color, especially against the rest of her skin doesn't look like human skin unless it was very, very pale. Maybe she could get away with it if she was entirely covered from the chin down with clothes and pretended to be a shut in who never saw the sun and had dyed hair... But yeah.. This is May. It's not like she cares.

As far as the Patreon reference goes.. meh, I didn't like it. It is way to much like I see in a lot of 'free to play' games that remind you all the time that 'if only you were subscribed/paid us money you could have so much more!'. This is a one off thing though, not happening all the time so it's not like it's bad. Just a knee jerk reaction to something I dislike seeing in other environments.

[Thrudd]

Buying new clothes would just get in the way of her goals. She still has to save up for that rocket launcher...

I thought she was still fixated on getting a very fast drone air-frame.
Maybe she has tempered her goal from military grade to a civilian design she can 3-D print herself?
It's not like she could get something approaching the X-43 in capability but she could contract Niels Herbrich to design and build her an air-frame to fulfill her need for speed and acrobatics.

[eschaton]

When did May's face turn from khaki to white? 

[Gyrre]

Well what term would you want to be used for the clinical condition, if not autism? Should I have used "a person of the spectrum", or something?I know it has not explicitly spelled out yet, but won't you all agree that Brun does a bunch of things that stereotypically go with that disorder. Not all the things, mind you; she's not an over-flanderized caricature. She does have almost a normal range of expressions for example, no blank stare, no over-pronoinced "cartoon expressions" either and no eye-contact problems.Her basic expression seems to be :O , she has her mouth open a lot.

'Hallmarks'. The word you're looking for is 'hallmarks'. Jeph doesn't seem the ableist type and often does a fair bit of research on things and traits he includes in the comic. Stereotypes tend to be a lot less nuanced.

I used to volunteer at the local mental health center, one of the things I heard a lot was "they're a person first, not they're diagnosis". This was usually said to the over-bearing soccer-mom type parents who had no clue how to raise a child with , and who want the doctors to 'fix' their child because they're not "normal".

It's entirely a matter of social stigma. The labels "crazy" and/or "unstable" get applied regardless of the diagnosis or it's severity, and regardless of whether it's a nuerological (structural, biochemical or electrical abnormalities) or a psychological (behavioral, thinking paterns, information processing, or etc) disorder.
Thankfully, some folks are more understanding and accepting of it than others. And then there's the people who pretend to be but and are actually condescending, self-righteous, assholes about it (see 'the horseshoe effect' or 'horseshoe theory').

[cesium133]

I just noticed now that in the new CSS scheme for the website, most of the newsposts below the comic are now missing in the archive.

[Eastrim]

To my mind the Patreon comic was not necessary to make the main comic funny.  TBH, it was (in isolation) so meh as to be a failure as an advertisement for the benefits of subscribing.

The problem for me was, the after text was basically "This is an in joke!, in order to be in on the joke, you must not simply be a faithful reader, you must also give me money, or be forever kept in suspense!"
Yes, he put a link hours later, presumably after people complained, and yes, once I could see the comic it turned out to still be a noodle incident between the two strips, but that can't change that initial interpretation (also visible in a different tone from freeman and cucumber error in their posts after mine). Jeph's Patreon was one of the ones on my "to support when I have enough money to throw some of it at Patreons" list and now it's not because that was a Not Cool move.

[Zastie]

All I know if that May's face still looks freaky to me..

[jaquio]

Question:

When Jeph publishes the QC books, are the Patreon-only comics going to be included?

Because free is free so whatever, but if I pay full price for a QC book, and it's got comic strips that are referencing Patreon-only strips that are hidden to me behind another paywall, then that's Not Cool™

[Welu]

Not a Patreon subscriber. Still understood and was amused by today's comic. Bottom text was a little nod to Patreon people and if there wasn't a reference to another comic, I wouldn't have felt like I was missing anything. Still don't now that Jeph added the comic below.

All that said, don't yell at someone for going soft, that's not helpful.

[renfield1969]

How often does Jeph do bonus strips on Patreon?

[bhtooefr]

Very rarely.

[Method of Madness]

As far as I know it's just this and the return of Sara and her allosaurus.

[Gyrre]

Yet there is no malice about her; she's motivated entirely by the view that she needs to push people in the right direction because they can't see it themselves for various reasons. It's a conceit, yes, but it's a nice conceit
 

The problem is, this is exactly how religious bigots think. They think they know better than you and try to force youto follow their idea of how you should live your life, for your own food. Actually the same could be said for far left liberals, too, the kind who want to outlaw smoking and junk food. There are always people who want to make you do what they feel is best for you, no matter what you want for yourself. A lack of malice does not make the behaviour any less shitty

It even has a name; horseshoe theory.

An extension of it also implies that the further one goes within either extreme, the less rational the people are.

[Akima]

All I know if that May's face still looks freaky to me..

Her face, and only her face, being a different tone from the rest of her body looks a little strange, but it is the result of a repair.

As for the Patreon thing? Meh... Jeph's got to earn a living, or we wouldn't get the comic. I whitelist his website on my ad-blocker too. I think the current strip stands on its own perfectly well.

[jheartney]

When did May's face turn from khaki to white?

I think it's a better look with white than khaki; beige with baby blue is not a good combo. Maybe May bleached it.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Or maybe the pigment was unstable. Remember this was done with whatever old stuff they had lying around...

[Tova]

Comic!

If she'd found a job, she still would have needed another dozen croissants.

To, you know, celebrate.

WTB a dozen croissants PST.

[brasca]

Perhaps Brun should live in a city or town with more drunks.  She'd easily find a job in my old hometown. 

And we get to see Wil again, but only to confirm that there aren't any jobs available there so it doesn't appear that she'll be working with Elliot. 

I do wonder if the AI bartender is related to Punch Bot.  Maybe he's also named Punch Bot because of a proficiency is making rum punch. 

[BenRG]

You know that you're running out of employment options in your favoured career track when a robot tells you that they're not hiring! I guess finding semi-skilled service-level work in a college town is pretty hard!

I find myself wishing to see more of what happened in the bar in panel 2. 'Nope' is such a brush-off that I'm wondering if Brun tried a variant approach that didn't exactly resonate well with the lady with whom she's conversing. Either that or it's a high-class place (as opposed to The Horrible Revelation, which just likes to act like it's a high-class place) and she was getting the snobby 'get lost, peon' treatment.

I do wonder if the AI bartender is related to Punch Bot.  Maybe he's also named Punch Bot because of a proficiency is making rum punch. 

Nah, it's probably just a common chassis type.

Note, I did get the pun, I'm just not reacting to it for safety reasons.

[Tova]

Yes, that would provoke from forumites a real cocktail of responses.

[foolsguinea]

Why is yesterday's link to the Patreon comic on the front page instead of the relevant page?

[brasca]

You know that you're running out of employment options in your favoured career track when a robot tells you that they're not hiring! I guess finding semi-skilled service-level work in a college town is pretty hard!

I find myself wishing to see more of what happened in the bar in panel 2. 'Nope' is such a brush-off that I'm wondering if Brun tried a variant approach that didn't exactly resonate well with the lady with whom she's conversing. Either that or it's a high-class place (as opposed to The Horrible Revelation, which just likes to act like it's a high-class place) and she was getting the snobby 'get lost, peon' treatment.

Maybe.  But she is holding a tablet so maybe she was checking the career link.  It could be a franchise place where everything has to be done through their particular company website and she just verified that there are no jobs available. 

[Tova]

Why is yesterday's link to the Patreon comic on the front page instead of the relevant page?

I would guess because it's a news post, which isn't tied to the specific comic. The home page shows the most recent one.

[BenRG]

I've been thinking about what may happen next week. This is only a guess but we know three things, thanks to Jeph's Twitter feed:

• David M Willis (of Dumbing of Age fame) will really like strip 3302;
• Clinton is going to be awkwardly upbeat about something in this arc.
• Brun will be shown looking over her shoulder whilst walking away

Only a guess but I think that, after getting her comfort croissants, Brun will text Clinton to either vent or ask his advice (Renee being either too busy or too unhelpful). I suspect that Clinton and Claire will just be exiting the tattoo parlour; Claire will initially be all atwitter about Brun contacting Clinton out of the blue so soon after their last meeting. However, after it becomes clear that she's in distress, she'll invite herself along to try to help. Claire might have something to say about understanding how people who don't fit into arbitrary definitions of 'normal' can sometimes have a hard time and say that she wants to help.

I'm basically expecting the next 5-10 strips to be the Augustus siblings' attempts to help with plenty of dry humour whilst Clinton redefines 'awkward' in his attempts to keep up Brun's morale. The eventual solution will arrive by accident. I'd still like for Brun to get a job at Smif or UMass; maybe working in a student facilities role (either the canteen or the dorm receptionist role). Someone with a highly organised and structured mindset would, IMO, do very well in the latter.

[Gyrre]

To my mind the Patreon comic was not necessary to make the main comic funny.  TBH, it was (in isolation) so meh as to be a failure as an advertisement for the benefits of subscribing.

The problem for me was, the after text was basically "This is an in joke!, in order to be in on the joke, you must not simply be a faithful reader, you must also give me money, or be forever kept in suspense!"
Yes, he put a link hours later, presumably after people complained, and yes, once I could see the comic it turned out to still be a noodle incident between the two strips, but that can't change that initial interpretation (also visible in a different tone from freeman and cucumber error in their posts after mine). Jeph's Patreon was one of the ones on my "to support when I have enough money to throw some of it at Patreons" list and now it's not because that was a Not Cool move.

It sounds like you and Brun both need a hug [no offense or malice intended].

I'm just glad it wasn't a large swathe of a chapter/story arc. I know there's a few webcomics that have done that sort of thing in the past. Though, 'Spinnerette' is the only one I can think of off-hand (some fluff/side stories to be fair, but also a few serious main-line ones as well).

This was one that worked as even if a reader weren't a patron, it still read just fine as a 'noodle incident'.

[sitnspin]

I honestly don't know what people are complaining about. I read the comic and got the joke just fine. I didn't even know it was referencing another strip until I came here and saw people complaining about it. I just thought it was mentioning something that happened off camera, the details of which were unimportant to the humor of the joke. It was the reaction to the invisible incident that mattered.

[themacnut]

Ah, the joys of job-hunting. As in there being none, the whole process sucks donkey balls.

[Kugai]

I sense that Jeph is leading to something here - maybe a job at CoD or The Secret Bakery?

May be just me projecting.