a new questionable content (webcomic) thread open spoilers tho

Cafe Society
#1

Ok I finally did it after reading the old thread on it I read the whole strip from one to yesterdays strip

heres a few random rambles I have:

great comic but one a few things he needs to do is figure out on how to write out characters if he’s done with them and currently trim about 2 or 3 out but

he seems to forget about some of the more minor ones like the coroner chick Steve dated for a week and then didn’t write about them for a month and then wrote her out with one or 2 lines like he just remembered he was writing about them a while back and thought “oh I need to finish that” but at least hes not killing the characters off just for kicks like another webcomic I used to read …

Also I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice but the only 2 that have anything near a normal romantic relationship other than martens’ mom are the two WOW nerds…

I hope hanners gets to come back but am I the only one that wishes at some point a boy or girl or other would just throw her over their shoulder and carry her off for a few hours of physical romance just so she can get over a few things ?

and I foresee there’s a story on why Emily’s such a space cadet like shes had her mind wiped too many times

And when dora fired faye I thought the strip was going to go down hill but the characters were rather mature (for QC) about it but the strip has matured along with jephs world view

And even though I thought it was annoying at first I miss the miniblog he used to write under the comic … I remember reading when he met his first wife then they moved in together and then split up …I think due to his mental difficulties and reading abut his health problems …id of given the strip up…

Is he still married to his second wife and living in Canada ?

#2

tell me something when the discussion of whether Claire is pre or post op happened he pretty much said well never know and even banned the discussion saying people shouldn’t be judged on what parts they may or may not have

But don’t ya think in the back of his mind hes smiling cause its a pretty good troll …

#3

I don’t care what junk Claire has; she’s boring as hell and I can’t stand her*. Her one note is “I’m so adorkable!” and she doesn’t do that as well as Emily who already had the job.
*Well, in a “how much I bother to think about webcomics” sort of way. She doesn’t haunt my days or anything.

#4

C’mon, give Jeph some credit. You forgot Claire Character Trait #2: She seems to be really obsessed with her hair.

She also had that really great line in one of her early appearances…”Doesn’t anyone ELSE here WANT TO BE A LIBRARIAN?” I’ve been working that into my daily conversations for years.

#5

That’s pretty typical for an open-ended strip like this, where he’s not writing to a predetermined ending. He doesn’t write characters with “endings,” he writes characters as long as he has something for that character to do. If he doesn’t have any ideas, he puts them back in the box until he does, and moves on to write for a different character. Sometimes, the character never comes back out of the box.

I think it works for the kind of comic he’s writing, as well. I had lunch earlier this month with a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year. The last time I saw him, I didn’t know I wouldn’t see him again for over a year - it just worked out that way. Same with QC. Sometimes people just drop out of your social life, without any big denouement or drama.

I’m guessing by “normal” you mean “straight?” Because I’d argue that Claire and Martin are the most normal, in that their relationship functions more or less the way you’d expect it to for two people at that age. Marigold and… Dale? are both working through their relationship from this weird place of arrested adolescence. I think this is the first relationship either have been in, and they’re both in their mid-twenties? That’s not normal – and I say that as someone who didn’t have his first relationship until his mid-twenties.

Dora and Tai are second place for “most normal,” which kinda bothers me. Dora’s got massive insecurities around trusting her partners to be faithful, and Tai was super poly before she hooked up with Dora. Honestly, that relationship should have imploded in, like, three months, tops.

Ugh, no. Dick ain’t Prozac. Having a character show up to fuck the crazy out of Hanners would do a huge disservice to the work Jeph’s been doing in presenting a pretty solid depiction of someone successfully living with serious mental issues.

I think it’s more likely that he knows some trans people in real life, and wanted to write a trans character in a way that was both respectful, and that made a really important point about how to treat trans people in real life.

#6

But didn’t tai and marten have a big discussion where tai was tired of sleeping around and she wasn’t going after some girl because the girl didn’t want to be monogamous like a week after he started working there?

Then later got in a fght because Dora flipped out over some thing so tai went home and didn’t come around for like a day or so and tai made her promise to get thepary when they made up

#7

poor pintsize but I didn’t that was Robocop chick either … although that reminds me of something that bugged me about that story line

The only reason the fight club was illegal was it didn’t have business liscences … No one but faye really cared the robots were killing each other if fact when the one robot started to get it reopened one of the selling ponits were " hey its not actual people getting killed "

Sort of like in sw’s clone wars where there was a report that a huge amount of clones died and it was like "well as long as no real people died "

#8

Are you the only one who wishes Hannelore would be raped? God, I hope so.

#9

No, she asked about that at the job interview and Corpse Witch pointed out that NOBODY dies in these fights, they just need lots of repairs sometimes.

Also, Jeph admitted that he was trolling us pretty hard when he had Marten & Claire falling asleep together on the wedding weekend.

Also, I totally did not recognize Roko as Pintsize’s date in this week strip. Good news is, getting toast launched into her face is not the worst thing that’s happened to her since she came to town.

#10

I feel like pintsize is really out of place in the strip - everyone else seems to be decent, but he routinely sexually harasses and assaults people, and all anyone responds is ‘oh, that rascally pintsize did it again!’ If there was a human guy that acted like that, I don’t think any of the characters would think it was cute, or put up with it.

The AIs weren’t killing each other, their personality and memory is all stored in a fairly compact hard-to-destroy module that can be moved from body to body. They were trashing each others non-pain-feeling, repairable bodies, but would still be on friendly terms with whoever ripped them in half this week. This isn’t some kind of fanwank explanation, there was a series of strips where they showed two robots who had badly damaged each other talking happily to each other after a fight, and showed the memory module thing.

#11

so basically the old “personality chip” trope that transformers used to use which makes sense … and I like the yelling bird strips …anyone who can joke like that about themselves

#12

If I’m honest, I’d have to say that one of the things I’m thankful for every Thanksgiving is that Yelling Bird only shows up on Thanksgiving week.

Speaking of which, why does Jeph the Canadian take his Thanksgiving break in November instead of October?

#13

[QUOTE=nightshadea;20807104…the only 2 that have anything near a normal romantic relationship other than martens’ mom are the two WOW nerds…
[/QUOTE]

I have the opposite problem with the strip; he does too much “normalizing.” He keeps introducing female characters with edgy, interesting, potentially abrasive characteristics and then sands all the edges off of them until they’re just another cuddly and often insecure member of the group. Hannelore or Marigold when first introduced vs. today are probably the best examples, but Faye, Dora, Tai, Bubbles, and the foul-mouthed AI fit this mold, and the AI cop is headed there. So many of his storylines seems to be, “underneath this difficult exterior is a woman who just wants to fit in somewhere.”

I don’t think it’s a sexist thing, because it’s kind of the same way with his male characters; they just don’t even start off with much edge. Pint-Size at least provides a little bit of continuing energy, but it probably would be to the good if he could find a better niche than playful pervert.

#14

Have you seen How I Met Your Mother?

I got the sense Jeph watched some WWE for background.

#15

Never watched it, but isn’t it a sit-com? I don’t take characters seriously in sitcoms, they’re just there to drive silly situations. This comic usually tries to be about interpersonal relationships and takes that part generally seriously, with the characters generally responding unfavorably to boorish behavior, so the fact that they’re generally cool with Pintsize except for one incident of threatening to kill him if he messed with Clair seems jarringly out of place.

#16

Well, “generally cool” when they’re not literally beating him out of shape.

*HIMYM *has a regular cast member, Barney, who would in any normal group be a crass sex criminal, but somehow he’s laughed off. I feel like he and Pintsize are kindred spirits.

#17

Barney Stinson and Pintsize in Vegas…<shudder>

#18

I suppose you’d have to ask whoever this “Jeph the Canadian” is. Jeph Jacques, the author of Questionable Content, is an American. If I recall correctly he moved to Halifax a few years ago, but it is plausible that most of his family is still in the US.

#19

I thought he was American and just moved up there recently…

here’s a question …is jeph working up to a human ai/robot romance story soon?

I mean there’s the Faye/bubbles thing and I think Claire’s brother and robo-cop (:D) aren’t done "bumping " into each other

#20

In 2015.