Tai’s going to be interesting. She’ll obviously side with Dora but will probably ask her why did she have to fire Faye, as Tai really has no qualms showing up anywhere drunk and/or high.
I dunno if the group necessarily goes with Marten. He’s a social hub, but I don’t think he’s the social glue. When he and Dora broke up, and he was cheating on Coffee of Doom with the Secret Bakery, everyone was still friends. I don’t even think Dora and Faye can’t be friends again (because if Dora really didn’t care, she wouldn’t let Faye stay on the health insurance, which is going to cost Dora in premiums. As if you could drop insurance that quickly. Not to mention the unlikelihood of a 5 person coffee shop offering health insurance).
Where I think the real issue will be is that if Faye decides to go sober, there might be some awkward parties in the future trying to avoid drinking around her.
I think this might indicate a broader change in the way drugs and alcohol are shown in the strip. Jacques has often shown his characters heavily drinking or using drugs with no consequences beyond an occasional hangover. This obviously is the way an artist who is himself a heavy drinker wants to portray heavy drinking.
Now that Jacques is acknowledging his own drinking is a problem, I don’t see how he can maintain having his characters participate in consequence-free drinking. Faye may be only the first character who is changed.
Welp, if that means he’s going to jump on the ALL ALCOHOL IS EVIL! EVERYONE WHO DRINKS IS A POTENTIAL ALCOHOLIC train, I’m out.
Weird:
Just earlier tonight there was a QC strip up that showed Claire coming to Marten’s apartment. No dialog. Marten let’s Claire in, they kiss passionately, then the door slams in our faces. Obviously they were sexing in there.
Now #2889 is up: Faye talking to Marten about the recent unpleasantness.
Jeph’s uploader seems to have the strips all out of order…yesterday’s went up early, too.
The Claire-coming-to-Marten’s-apartment one is up now.
Oh, gosh…I’m feeling a little verklempt. She’s just so SWEET.
A great strip that understatedly establishes they do have a sexual relationship and that the details are not important to the story.
There’s an implied middle finger toward anyone who wonders what parts are going to fit where, but Jeph’s been extremely clear he’s not going there, so whatever.
Claire, Marten: hope it was epic.
I’d suspect not given that maybe eight hours earlier (in QC time) Claire was stammering out a “Do you want to watch a movie at my house” question, wondering if having their second date a day after their first date was too soon. Marten had to cancel the date when he found Faye passed out. And their first date was mainly them holding hands and Claire getting the mad blushes at any hint of sexual activity with Marten saying “Let’s get ice cream”.
So we had the first date where they gets as risque as “ice cream kisses”, the next day Marten & Claire try to set up Emily and Clinton, Claire asks Marten on a second date, Faye is fired and drinks herself unconscious, Marten finds her, cancels the date, we have the hospital and now Claire comes over. Not a lot of room for sex in there.
Not to say it couldn’t happen but it seems rather abrupt. But then I thought the same about the “Now Marten likes Claire!” plot twist so, eh, whatever.
That’s a good point: second date sexing seems a bit soon giving the training wheels playdate that was their first date.
Really, in the QC-verse, given the existence of fully functional robot hands and a space station AI that is not only sentient but capable of wanting a romantic relationship with Hannelore - not to mention that robot chick who wanted to spend her last night of freedom looking at the stars through Dale’s glasses - there’s very little excuse for Claire not to be anatomically female down to chromosome level, with only the memory of having once been anatomically male to distinguish her from a cisgirl. It’s pretty much that way in John Varley’s writing, except that people can flip back and forth as they like if they’re willing to spend the time and money.
Nah. AI and robotics advances don’t imply corresponding genetics research advances. Otherwise why would Clinton have a robotic hand? (Besides the fact it’s cool). Why would Dale and Claire and Faye and Sven still wear glasses? Why do people still get hungover in the morning?
If they had the biotech to do chromosome level sex changes, they’d have solved a lot of the more mundane and wider-ranging medical problems as well.
It’s comfort after a stressful day.
A possible support for that is that Claire transitioned after puberty and shows no Adam’s Apple, and has a feminine face. And only Marten and her brother know she used to be a he.
While I don’t think Claire has had chromosomal work or anything, I would suspect that a society with space stations, fully functional robot hands controlled by thought and sentient androids affordable by slacker 20-somethings with minimum wage jobs would be able to knock out a “traditional” sex change operation. I mean, it’s something we can largely do now so I can only guess that it’d be easier in robot-tech world.
Of course, maybe there’s a percentage of trans people who wouldn’t fully change even if it involved a magic wand and a ten second hocus-pocus chant, I dunno.
As someone noted upthread, it’s a bit frustrating that Jeph introduced a trans character, and other than demonstrating that Marten is open minded, so far her being trans adds nothing to the story. I can do without graphic detail, but why is she even called out as trans in the first place?
The story isn’t over yet. It could become more relevant later on.
And the very fact that so far it does not serve to make a specific explicit point, IS a point: the trans girl is just that, a girl like all others and it makes no difference to how she is treated or what she does with her life. The QCverse IS somewhat utopian in some aspects…
And yes, sometimes it is useful to have a character “in reserve” so to speak, in case you do get to address an issue you don’t have to suddenly conjure up a never before mentioned bit of backstory or an emergency guest visiting cousin.
I always felt the same way about Uhuru in Star Trek. If you’re never going to do a story that’s about her being black, why make her black in the first place?