It’s only a 3-week skip, IIRC.
Which is clearly a set-up for storylines around Claire, the Director, and Cubetown; how badass must he be, if he scares Yay?
I hope Yay comes back, though – I really enjoy their interactions with Roko, who’s one of my favorite characters in the strip.
The wedding sequence feels like fanservice. Although I’m enjoying emo Sam and Dark Emmitt.
That’s an angle I’ve not seen anyone else consider. They’re all wondering if this means Yay will basically neuter themselves, like they said they might to avoid being caught. They’d rather be a regular AI and free than themselves and controlled.
But yeah it did establish that the Director is at minimum on Yay’s level (and thus above everyone else).
I don’t agree the wedding seems like fanservice. Basically everyone was upset that he skipped to the end. Even in the big fans. I can’t think of any work of fiction that plays up a proposal of beloved characters and then skips it all.
I meant that in the sense that the wedding sequence does seem to be advancing any storylines; just playing around with the characters and giving the fans - and maybe Jeph himself - the payoff we want. Checking in with characters we haven’t seen in a while, like Steve and Sam. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t seem like he’s telling a story with these strips.
I never much cared for the Yay character since the Spookybot days. Making them less of a deus ex machina might go some ways towards making the character palatable to me. Having that happen via them getting casually owned by another AI only makes it better.
I was fine with the wedding jump because, c’mon, we’ve all seen every wedding-related plotline in media a million times. I wouldn’t have been upset by yet another story about wedding cakes or jitters or wacky band mishaps, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out either. I suppose if someone was especially vested in the Tai/Dora pairing, they might be let down.
So Anh is Tai’s sister? And Anh is an heiress? Does that make Tai an heiress? I don’t remember that.
Brian
(at work, do not want to access QC)
No. The “at my sister’s wedding” is from Sven’s perspective.
I could buy Sven’s inner crisis about wanting something beyond zipless hookups but not really about being that bad at “normal” dating.
And Hannelore thinking out loud what would be a literal answer of what tangibles is she an heiress to, rather than just say “my dad is a big AI pioneer and my estranged mom is an industralist CEO” is just so on-brand… years of deliberately avoiding thinking of herself as such can’t just switch off.
(So, Anh’s initial characteristic is the person who immediately thinks the worst of everyone’s motivations? “writing awful people is fun” indeed — once in a while one likes seeing a character who just is annoying. But then I remind myself it’s 50/50 if Jeph then decides to give her some “special quirk”)
FYI, Jeph just posted on Patreon that there will be no new QC strips in December. In part:
He always has the Thanksgiving turkeys and the dumb barbarian filler stuff, so it’s not really like a break is unprecedented. And it’s only a month.
Hell, I still follow Something Positive and Milholland has breaks like that all the time (and not for nice holiday reasons)
Is dumb modifying barbarian, filler, or both? I’ve always enjoyed Bembo.
Barbarian, definitely. Bembo’s fine.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who dislikes the barbarian. Just not interesting. The turkeys are kind of a waste of time, too. At least we haven’t seen Yelling Bird in a long time. Totally happy to never see that obnoxious one-“joke” “character” again.
Ditto. I didn’t mind Bembo so much, but Yelling Bird and the turkeys kinda sucked.
A slightly longer than usual hiatus (a month plus instead of one or two weeks) doesn’t seem out of place. It may seem to some unexpected right after an in-comic timeskip but it probably also provides an opportunity to resume after the hiatus with the post-skip status more clearly being the new baseline.
Anyone confused by the Dec 2 commentary? The strip (#4827) has nothing to do with the commentary as far as I can tell - the commentary is about the space station ark, but the comic has nothing to do with that.
The Dec 1 commentary does match (talks about #1)
Brian
Total mismatch from what I saw, referencing Hannelore, who wasn’t even IN the strip.
I think it’s been fixed already. Or at least it matches for me.
Yes, the description matches the comic now.
Brian
Now if he could fix his spell-checker screwing up “palette” vs. “palate”…