Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

T-rex

Quetzalcoatlus

Gorgonops

something else

I ain't scared of no pterodactyl

purplemonkey dishwasher

[Gyrre]

Quetzacoatlus was an Azhdarchid pterosaur that was the size of a giraffe and evidence on fossil specimens suggest it not only spent a significant amount of its time on the ground but could also gallop in addition to being able to fly.
For reference;

(click to show/hide)

T-rex

(click to show/hide)

Quetzalcoatlus

(click to show/hide)

Gorgonops

EDIT: Added spoiler tags to the reference pics of each and swapped a reference pic to be merciful to mobile users.
EDIT 2: Names added under spoiler tags. Also, wrong member of Inostrancevia initially pictured. Image corrected to a gorgonops.

EDIT 3: Oh right, the shipper bait.
Think Elliot will ever fess up to Clinton or Brun?

[Autistic Vulture]

EDIT 3: Oh right, the shipper bait.
Think Elliot will ever fess up to Clinton or Brun?

Ever is a long time.  It could be three, four (comic) years down the road, knowing Elliot.  Remember how much difficulty he had with Padma (although most of that was before Marten made his first trip to The Secret Bakery).

And I didn't vote because I'm incapable of outrunning a baby.

[Zebediah]

Bubbles. It would be scary to be chased by Bubbles.

[DashaBlade]

Gorgonops looks like half cat, half alligator.  Which is terrifying to me because I've been chased by a 'gator and I've been bitten twice by angry cats (hard enough to require a doctor visit).

I voted "Something else" but really it's more of an "all of the above, plus also a gator or a cat."

[BenRG]

Been watching a playthrough of Resident Evil 3 Remake. In light of this, the T-103 Tyrant BOW is now officially my nightmare fuel to run away from.

[Gyrre]

Bubbles. It would be scary to be chased by Bubbles.

Sorry, I had low blood sugar when I made the poll and didn't word it very well. Hence the 3 edits.

I should have just left it between the T-rex and the Quetzalcoatlus.

[shanejayell]

New strip up!

I think EVERYONE hated Highschool. Even the popular kids.

[Wombat]

I actually liked high school for the most part, despite having a number of markers that would probably lead one to suspect otherwise (fat, queer, introverted, mentally ill, etc).

Middle school, on the other hand... (I was once working with some middle schoolers who asked me if I had liked middle school, and I replied "Nobody *likes* middle school. Which is probably also not universally true, and also probably not the best thing to say to kids who are near the beginning of their middle school experience.)

How old is Clinton supposed to be? I get the feeling he was older than me when first introduced and younger than me now, but I can't remember where he's at, exactly.

[cesium133]

Hell is other middle schoolers.

Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure nobody likes middle school. I sure as hell didn't.

[Is it cold in here?]

Wasn't Clinton in college when first introduced? The Awesome April Arcus timeline might shed some light from that point.

[hakko504]

How old is Clinton supposed to be? I get the feeling he was older than me when first introduced and younger than me now, but I can't remember where he's at, exactly.

At the time of Claire's introduction he was 21. 2281. We've had a (two?) timeskip(s) since then so he's probably ~22 by now.

[BenRG]

I think that we all did stupid and frankly shitty things when we're in high school. When you're in your early teenage years, you're desperate to find your place in your peer group (and a peer group in the first place). Lacking an adult's good sense, you tend to do whatever it takes to be accepted and that can lead you to bad places that, looking back, makes you realise that you were never quite the good guy in your story that you liked to imagine you were.

Also, Clinton? That thing with terminology is mostly a typical technical person's react to laypersons acting as if they know what they're talking about when they don't.

[DaiJB]

Just about anything extinct that was aquatic - you can't see 'em coming and I am an awkward, splashy, terrible swimmer...

edit: Just where are Elliot and Clinton going?  Are they taking the long way home? 

[Gyrre]

Hell is other middle schoolers.

Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure nobody likes middle school. I sure as hell didn't.

Ours was pretty bad.

I've seen two suggested rearrangements for how the grades are split up.
1) Add 4th & 5th along with 6th grade to make up middle school while adding 7th to high school.
2) Keep 6th as part of elementary school and make middle school 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, while 10th, 11th, and 12th remain high school.

Not sure which I like the idea of more.

Just about anything extinct that was aquatic - you can't see 'em coming and I am an awkward, splashy, terrible swimmer...
[Snip]

Oh, good point. And here I was just thinking in terms of running away from something.

[oddtail]

I'll never understand why "High School is terrible" is so prevalent in Western media (and, it seems, in memories of people who went to HS in Western countries).

Give me High School over ANY part of my education, save perhaps university, any day. I didn't even really have any friends in High School, compared to all other schools I went to. It was still infinitely better. Elementary school, on the other hand? THAT was Hell. Small kids are little monsters, with virtually no exceptions. A child is functionally a psychopath minus the intelligence and the life experience. And they get away with enough that they don't have to limit their worst impulses in any way.

Older teenagers can be bad, but they're already a close approximation of an adult. Even when they're shitty to each other, they have some social impulse and a conscience.

[Gyrre]

Gorgonops looks like half cat, half alligator.  Which is terrifying to me because I've been chased by a 'gator and I've been bitten twice by angry cats (hard enough to require a doctor visit).

I voted "Something else" but really it's more of an "all of the above, plus also a gator or a cat."

Kaprosuchus did cross my mind, but low blood sugar. So I went with gorgonops.

[Is it cold in here?]

Ah yes, elementary school. The principal lectured me that he had no obligation to intervene for my safety because it was all training in real life. Funny thing, in the many decades since leaving I have never once been assaulted in a restroom. Perhaps it was not realistic training after all.

I enjoyed reading Lord of the Flies. It was such a relief to see someone tell the truth.

[Theta9]

Middle school, on the other hand... (I was once working with some middle schoolers who asked me if I had liked middle school, and I replied "Nobody *likes* middle school. Which is probably also not universally true, and also probably not the best thing to say to kids who are near the beginning of their middle school experience.)

"Junior high school" as we called it, is the deepest pit of hell.

Clinton's "It's an ongoing process" reminds me of something a friend said on Facebook some time ago: "Unfucking yourself is a life-long process."

[Autistic Vulture]

2) Keep 6th as part of elementary school and make middle school 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, while 10th, 11th, and 12th remain high school.

This used to be the arrangement in my province, except 7-9 was called junior high.  (Grade 9 is now part of high school.)

Not that it mattered to me; my hometown is small enough that K-12 are in one building.  Being an undiagnosed autistic in the same general group of people for 13 years was torture.

Also to note - my mother was a substitute teacher for most of that time.  Junior high was bad enough that even though the school had a long roster of substitutes, only my mother and a former vice-principal were willing to do junior high.  It was known not to screw with my mother, ever.

[Penquin47]

Shortly after I left, my high school had grown so much that they took over the middle school next door and isolated all of 9th grade there, except for things like band and sports.  9th grade is such a *weird* time for most kids.

[Theta9]

2) Keep 6th as part of elementary school and make middle school 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, while 10th, 11th, and 12th remain high school.

This used to be the arrangement in my province, except 7-9 was called junior high.  (Grade 9 is now part of high school.)

I went to school in California and Washington, and every school system I was in used a 6/3/3 division of grades. Elementary was K-6, junior high was 7-9 (though 9th-graders were still called "freshmen"), and high school 10-12.

A couple of years ago I drove a bus for the Forest Grove/Cornelius district here in Oregon, where it seems to be elementary school for K-4, with grades 5-6 "upper elementary", 7-8 "middle school", and 9-12 "high school".

[notStanley]

"bits and bytes"  --  My first IT job was writing business applications in Assembler on IBM mainframes.  Then they started using Cobol.  Those fools used THREE BYTES for a literal "yes" or "no " flag, instead of fitting 8 bit level flags into a single byte.  On a machine with 512KB RAM (yes Kilo, not Mega or Giga, and Tera was not even being used in SciFi yet), that adds up.  As well as the CPU overhead of invoking micro-code for string compares vs a single clock cycle for a native binary test.  <huf> <huf> <rant /off>

[shanejayell]

New Comic up.

Oh poor Elliot.  Wonder if he'll run back to Clinton's or...?

[Gyrre]

Renee accidentally jinxed him twice over.

[DaiJB]

"Chekhov's Skunk" - Dammit, Jeph already said what immediately came to my mind! 
 
That's OK, I'm sure Clinton's mother will be happy to oblige with a tomato juice bath - and with the whole Clinton/Elliot shipping thing , plus her own proclivity for younger men, it's pretty easy to see that this is going to be the most embarrassing night of Clinton's life 

[BenRG]

Okay, here's my interpretation: The skunk is symbolic, in meta terms. As the strip title says, Elliot has blown it by missing several opportunities to get closer to Clinton. Being skunked and thus not able to quickly revisit those opportunities is Jeph's way of emphasising that there is no going back for now.

[TorporChambre]

If it's extinct, it can't chase me.

That's OK, I'm sure Clinton's mother will be happy to oblige with a tomato juice bath - and with the whole Clinton/Elliot shipping thing , plus her own proclivity for younger men, it's pretty easy to see that this is going to be the most embarrassing night of Clinton's life  :-D

Connaissais! (Reviendraient vers Octaviorum, M^me auront apprécié l'odeur;) c'est de fragrances meilleures.

(click to show/hide)

2020-04-01: (Pardonnerez tu ma Anglais) not maman Augustus,..

Pardon my French

(click to show/hide)

[Cornelius]

Connaissais! (Lorsque reviendraient vers Octaviorum, M^me auront apprécié l'odeur;) Cette est de meilleures fragrances.

Anyone else who can't exactly make heads or tails on that french? I mean, I speak french on a daily professional basis, but really... With all due respect, but the ungrammaticality of that phrase is grating.

Edited to include the quote.

[Theta9]

Connaissais! (Lorsque reviendraient vers Octaviorum, M^me auront apprécié l'odeur;) Cette est de meilleures fragrances.

Anyone else who can't exactly make heads or tails on that french? I mean, I speak french on a daily professional basis, but really... With all due respect, but the ungrammaticality of that phrase is grating.

Edited to include the quote.

Probably why they said "Pardon my French" 

[Theta9]

Quetzacoatlus was an Azhdarchid pterosaur that was the size of a giraffe and evidence on fossil specimens suggest it not only spent a significant amount of its time on the ground but could also gallop in addition to being able to fly.

Q (1982)

[Cornelius]

Connaissais! (Lorsque reviendraient vers Octaviorum, M^me auront apprécié l'odeur;) Cette est de meilleures fragrances.

Anyone else who can't exactly make heads or tails on that french? I mean, I speak french on a daily professional basis, but really... With all due respect, but the ungrammaticality of that phrase is grating.

Edited to include the quote.

Probably why they said "Pardon my French" 

Afterwards. But appreciated.

[Theta9]

Probably why they said "Pardon my French" 

Afterwards. But appreciated.

I always say "...if you'll pardon my French" whenever I use a phrase such as coup d'etat or raison d'etre.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

...That's OK, I'm sure Clinton's mother will be happy to oblige with a tomato juice bath - and with the whole Clinton/Elliot shipping thing , plus her own proclivity for younger men, it's pretty easy to see that this is going to be the most embarrassing night of Clinton's life 

Somehow Clinton will manage to get skunked too in a display of bro solidarity.

[Stoutfellow]

I always say "...if you'll pardon my French" whenever I use a phrase such as coup d'etat or raison d'etre.

In my experience, the phrase is more often associated with the use of four-letter Anglo-Saxon.

[cesium133]

Hell is other middle schoolers.

Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure nobody likes middle school. I sure as hell didn't.

Ours was pretty bad.

I've seen two suggested rearrangements for how the grades are split up.
1) Add 4th & 5th along with 6th grade to make up middle school while adding 7th to high school.
2) Keep 6th as part of elementary school and make middle school 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, while 10th, 11th, and 12th remain high school.

Not sure which I like the idea of more.

I don't think there's any arrangement that would make it better. They're just at the age where they're old enough to be capable of doing horrible things, but too young to be socialized into behaving like a civilized human being.

For what it's worth, my school was K-6 elementary school, 7-8 junior high (at the high school but in a separate building), and 9-12 high school.

[Theta9]

I always say "...if you'll pardon my French" whenever I use a phrase such as coup d'etat or raison d'etre.

In my experience, the phrase is more often associated with the use of four-letter Anglo-Saxon.

I'm aware of that; that's the joke - that I associate it with actual French rather than Anglo-Saxon.

[sitnspin]

I always say "...if you'll pardon my French" whenever I use a phrase such as coup d'etat or raison d'etre.

In my experience, the phrase is more often associated with the use of four-letter Anglo-Saxon.

I'm aware of that; that's the joke - that I associate it with actual French rather than Anglo-Saxon.

Explaining the joke makes it funnier. This is just a hard fact of the universe.

[Theta9]

Also I stole it ("...if you'll pardon my French") from Neil Gaiman, who used it in the story "Keepsakes and Treasures" (in the collection Fragile Things).

[Tova]

I'm appreciating just how well written the Faye/Bubbles storyline was.

[Mr_Rose]

I'm appreciating just how well written the Faye/Bubbles storyline was.

Yeah, people were still denying the inevitable right until the strip where they kissed for the first time even as other people had metaphorically already ordered gift baskets, set up the champagne glass pyramid, and hung the Arbor Day banner.

This time it’s more a question of who’s going to be more surprised by the first kiss, Elliot, Clinton, or Brun…

[Tova]

Yes, but not just that. In that storyline, Jeph was able to develop multiple story threads at the same time and express those through Faye's and Bubbles' developing relationship. Faye's battles with alcoholism and intimacy, Bubbles' locked off memories and dealing with Corpse Witch, fending off Basilisk.

Whereas here, if you're not entertained by the shipping storyline, there's not much else going on.

[Theta9]

Whereas here, if you're not entertained by the shipping storyline, there's not much else going on.

[cesium133]

Well, if you’re tired of that ship, you can try the one in the new update on for size...

[Tova]

Maybe QC is not for me after all, I dunno.

[shanejayell]

New strip.

Can robots turn their noses off, or are they stuck with skunk stink?

[Autistic Vulture]

New strip.

Can robots turn their noses off, or are they stuck with skunk stink?

Probably depends on the model.  Most likely can, but a May or other low-end make might be stuck.

Yes, but not just that. In that storyline, Jeph was able to develop multiple story threads at the same time and express those through Faye's and Bubbles' developing relationship. Faye's battles with alcoholism and intimacy, Bubbles' locked off memories and dealing with Corpse Witch, fending off Basilisk.

Whereas here, if you're not entertained by the shipping storyline, there's not much else going on.

The storyline needed something to happen as it had been gone for nine months.  There are twists that could happen.  Thing is, to be honest, it's difficult to see a pairing that would end in a happy long-term relationship.  But maybe that's the ultra-cynic in me.  (The ultra-cynic in me also thinks that Jeph doesn't know how to proceed.)

After nine weeks, it's time to head elsewhere for a while, but let's not drop it for nine months again.

[Tova]

I'm perfectly happy for something to happen with this story line. I'm maybe not being as clear as I think. I want more storylines to progress concurrently - not fewer!

I know.  I just want everything! 

I think the issue is that May, for example, does have a dramatic plot in progress, but no romantic subplot. Whereas Elliot and Clinton are the other way around - all romantic subplot with no dramatic plot sitting on top. So we're cutting back and forth and progress on both is slow. If we could just combine the two somehow...

[Gyrre]

I'm perfectly happy for something to happen with this story line. I'm maybe not being as clear as I think. I want more storylines to progress concurrently - not fewer!

I know.  I just want everything! 

I think the issue is that May, for example, does have a dramatic plot in progress, but no romantic subplot. Whereas Elliot and Clinton are the other way around - all romantic subplot with no dramatic plot sitting on top. So we're cutting back and forth and progress on both is slow. If we could just combine the two somehow...

Incidentally, it looks like Elliot and Yay will become acquainted.

[St.Clair]

re the bottom right note:

I would have thought he was closer to Desire.

[BenRG]

I suspect that this will be the storyline where Yay realises that the universe is not only stranger than they imagine, it is stranger than they can imagine. Melon has already made them suspect that but the interactions of Elliot with... well with everyone and anyone will probably be a significant new data-point. Yay never really understood romantic interactions. Then they inadvertently got roped into helping Elliot untangle his knotted relationships!

Jeph noted that Elliot actually came close to death when he came up behind Yay in panel 2. We know that chassis has electromagnetic inductors in the hands. I wonder what other advanced technology with combat applications are hidden away in that chassis?

Can robots turn their noses off, or are they stuck with skunk stink?

Well, Melon obviously likes it and Yay's chassis is clearly different enough in its base technology and concept that I image they do not necessarily react to sensory data in the same way as other synthetics do.

That said, yes, I can see Roko, with a clothes peg on her nose, helping a couple of Yays and a disappointed-looking Melon to scrub Elliot down with stiff-bristled brushes and several dozen cans of pureed tomato.