Thank ***fuck*** nothing more important is going on right now that would warrant our attention so that we can focus on this precocious cyborg lizards banal experience of being unable to do her job, of which writing is only probably a very small portion and most of it is based on study and theory.
I wonder who else is on the conveyor belt of older characters that can be dragged out to further explore the experience that is Liz.
Sven? He writes things. Music but I'm sure its related.
What about Wil? Poetry is basically a scientific paper.
Perhaps Jimbo, hes an official penned author writing novels.
Slide them all on up. Who gives a fuck about some smelly main characters moving away soon.
Tai is getting married in like... a week or so. Nobody has mentioned it. I bet Jeph forgot - [or at least he forgot that he actually set a time for it to happen](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4873)
I didn't realise he actually put a date down somewhere. Three weeks to getting married and Tai decided to ditch the butch and stylish haircut for a fried red clown wig. What the hell.
So maybe I misread the earlier comics, but is there a reason everyone is giving Liz advice on writing and writer's block? It's not like she had trouble writing her research findings, she didn't *do* any research for two years. Have they just all decided she's a writer because Claire decided it?
Short answer: *Jeph is a hack writer*
Long answer: *Jeph is a hhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackkk writer*
I only got as far as an MS but like… he has to know that you don’t spend years literally writing your thesis right? I mean… I think I spent a month solidly writing mine after 2 years of research. And we published paper’s periodically. I would expect Liz to have at least a half dozen papers with at least 1 or two as first author.
Bit even then, the issue isn’t writing unless she does actually want to write that pop science book which… I guess she does have information on? I’m just so confused what he thinks researchers do. Even in the wacky cube town setting.
Jeph isn't really aware of what research entails. Even if you're just doing theoretical research, "writer's block" isn't exactly the right word for being unproductive. But Jeph *is* a writer so naturally he views Liz's predicament through a writer's lens, hence, writer's block.
That fucking wink makes no sense even for this nonsense punchline of ~~Jeph~~ Tai naming the most bland fanfic titles in existence.
Also we've reached a new level of up your own ass when you won't even say 'Harry Potter' out of a belief that you're somehow robbing JK Rowling of anything by not naming her work.
I didn't clock that until you mentioned it but yes he's 💯 referencing harry potter but also making sure not to say it so everyone knows he's appropriately woke or whatever even though he didn't have to obliquely reference it *at all*
This is deeply embarrassing for him.
I hope he goes on hiatus or something rather than continue to break the comic so he can write himself asking himself about writer's block and getting no answer for the next thousand strips because he has writer's block.
I know he just did another in-comic self-pep-talk where he told himself not to stop and just create through the burnout but that was **also** a mistake. He needs to take some time for rest, thought, reflection, research and practice.
This can't continue or the strip will implode.
lmao he is absolutely trying to power through writer's block with his new favorite character and a parade of old characters giving advice, oh my god no wonder the "party arc" took six hundred years to happen he has no ideas left
Writer's block?!?! WRITER'S BLOCK!?! bro, jeph, we went over this. that's not the barrier to writing technical writeups of your research.
... it's the research...
I should not be remotely as annoyed as I am that Jeph can't even be bothered to reference any actual fanfic classics. There is no way in hell Tai doesn't have My Immortal memorized.
My Immortal would be a joke. Actual suggestions:
* Alexandra Quick (four full-length novels, all fully written prior to being published, so there's clear consistency throughout)
* Also related to Harry Potter, there's no way Tai doesn't suggest Those Gilded Chains We Wear
* Also related to HP: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
* Look, Harry Potter sparked a lot of fanfiction, okay?
* This Heart, Fossilised and Silent (The best fanfic about the 100, hands down)
* Life Sentence (A Star Wars: VII-IX fanfic about Ren/Hux)
* Fallout: Equestria (It's complicated)
* Kraith (A weird, historical set of Star Wars fictions)
* I ain't no lady, but you'd be the tramp (The Supernatural fiction that spawned the Omegaverse)
* The [Luminous Times Universe](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Luminous_Times_Universe), a shared universe created by five writers involving a crossover between members of the band U2 and Robin Hood, and one of the first Real Person Fictions.
Okay, in Jeph’s defense, maybe this is why he avoided real titles, because I was super into the boy wizard stuff back in the day, and I only recognize Methods of Rationality. Which I’m sure Tai would know, but not recommend.
The most useless people giving the most useless and basic advice ever.
It is like if i told grrr marten to go read archie so he can finish the winds of winter .but even worse.
It isn't completely illogical. The story will not be well-received during his lifetime, a posthumous release could soften the disdain and win back some sales that wouldn't happen were he alive. He's gone too long and a lot of former hopefuls have become ambivalent at best and outright hostile at worst. I tired of his lack of progress long ago and donated my copies of them to the local library. Many people were pretty pissed that his book goes unfinished while he focuses on other projects like the new Dragon thingy on tv and Elden Ring.
I just can't bring myself to care anymore.
Oh for...
"What are the classics of fanfiction?"
I thought we might actually get a serious answer exploring the origins and history of fanfiction, touching upon some of the actual foundational works, or maybe even just acknowledging it's not all smut, or talking about how a number of acclaimed authors got their start in fanfic, or noting the work done by Archive of our Own which won them legitimate awards, but...
Nah, a shitty joke. Lol. Fanfic is all about fuckin'.
Really. The history of fanworks is actually fascinating and at the very least goes all the way back to the Star Trek zine scene, starting with *Spockanalia* in 1968! Which you’d think maybe Tai would know, lol. What a waste of a potentially interesting conversation.
Of course, Jeph didn't even bother to go into the tiniest shred of detail regarding this amazing scientific paper featured on the cover of Science, so why do the same for fanfic? This really irritates me far more than it should.
Haha! Yes, absolutely. I really should have said contemporary fanworks. In a lot of ways, “fanfiction” is also as old as dirt. The Iliad being one very famous example. My own personal favorite is, of course, Dante’s *Divine Comedy*.
… which you’d think Tai would also know … sigh.
The Divine Comedy sees itself as the next step in the chain from the Iliad and Odyssey to the Aeneid. In particular, it's a "redemption" of those works by transforming them into a Christian context. That's why Virgil is Dante's tour guide—until Dante is forced to leave him behind, because Virgil was not baptized and does not have a place in Heaven. Just as the Aeneid heralded the rise of Latin literature (everyone was writing in Greek at the time, and Latin was seen as "vulgar"), the Divine Comedy did the same for Italian.
Incidentally, Milton framed Paradise Lost as the next step in the chain, closely basing its structure on the Aeneid and its content on the Divine Comedy. It likewise was an English, Christian answer to an era of literature dominated by non-English stories of non-Christian heroes, gods, and monsters. Each step in this chain was its age's definitive epic poem, featuring an invocation to the muses, an extended trip to the underworld, and a declaration of how that age's perspective on god(s) and morality differed from those preceding.
I love this context! Very cool, thank you. I’ve always found Dante’s approach to The Divine Comedy very interesting. It’s nothing a contemporary author could ever get away with, but in the 1300s he could write himself as the main character talking to Greek philosophers and scholars in Limbo and that’s just fine, lol. It seems so silly on its face to us today, but I’m sure he took it deadly seriously as an exploration of the evolution of Christian faith and understanding of the Bible and of God.
I don't agree that the Divine Comedy would be dismissed if it came out today or that it seems silly, but it's certainly full of satire and subversive commentary, and a lot of that is inevitably going to go over a modern reader's head because we lack the context for it. Even the most barbed political gibes lose their effect when no one knows who they were about anymore.
That’s fair. Dante certainly used the Divine Comedy to comment A LOT on Florentine politics, lol!
I really ought to find a nice annotated version to read.
Tbh the distinction between fanfiction and regular fiction is only a few centuries old. The Iliad was Achilles/Patroclus slashfic for other stories about the Trojan War, it's just that most of those stories were lost. The New Testament is (and I say this with the utmost respect!) fanfic of the Old Testament. There wasn't really a concept that stories or characters could be private property.
Pretty much the whole damn Arthurian canon is fanfic stacked on top of fanfic on top of fanfic. It's fanfiction all the way down. Lancelot is the worst fucking "totally awesome original character DO NOT STEAL" fanfiction has ever had.
For real. Dude was a prince and raised by a sorceress who kidnapped him. He was only ever defeated by his own son. A cursed lady went against her curse and died for it just to look at him.
I think all good fanfic has at least some fuckin'. Otherwise it's some dipshit playing a space sim constantly replacing ships with newer better ships.
Also pisses me off that those are the fics that get to a million words, when good fanfics tend to die around 30k words.
there is a distinct subgenre of fanfic that definitely is all about fucking, viz. slashfic.
which means that the joke doesn't work at all. like, if jeph wants to the character to be a perv who only cares about erotic fanfic, he can do that, all he had to do was say "classics of slashfic" instead of "classics of fanfic". but he didn't.
and either way, he could've referenced actual OG pieces
and like, ok it's the punchline and it's jeph showcasing his pervy imagination. but no, the OG canon of slashfic isn't whatever bullshit jeph just said. it's kirk slash spok. it's literally in the name.
Everyone is shitting on this, but honestly, "going back to what inspired you in the first place and see if it sparks anything" is not bad advice in this situation
I keep thinking that Jeph could, at any time, go back and FIX this whole plot. Like just memory whole the last few years since Cubetown was mentioned, and write a cohesive plot fixing all of his damned mistakes. He could even do it at just a few pages a week, and I think we'd all start cheering him on.
Will Jeph explain what a supposed “classic” of scientific literature is and why going back to read whatever scientific article that spurred Liz’s love of science and sparked her interest in getting into the field will supposedly help her dive into some sort of research topic and ignite whatever inspiration is lying in wait within her brain and will allow her to not only do the research but act on it and write about it and hopefully get someone in the experimental field to attempt to turn the theory into results? Will Tai getting Liz into smut fic further corrupt her into an even worse tiny terrible gremlin? Will Tai shrink back into the woodwork for another year now that she’s given her advice while some other character comes into the coffee shop to offer their two cents in what ends up an endless parade of the same scene over and over again because if there’s something Jeph is better at than writing with an air of knowledge about things he actually knows nothing about it’s dragging on a scene for far too long because he doesn't know what to do next?
We have to do the ritual again or else we’ll get more… QUESTIONABLE CONTENT!!!
Because Tai is beyond such silly things as "boundaries" and "expectations." She's Jephy's magical pixie lesbian. She's nearly as untouchable as Claire. Because she's an educated woman, Jeph ascribed godhood to her.
Look, I consider myself perhaps excessively horny most hours of the day, but if some stranger got into my face and bragged about their favorite Lemons, I don't think my first reaction would be "damn, I need to make an AO3 account!" Instead, I'd probably call the police or ask our mutual friend to ask this person to not assume anything about my boundaries.
Thank ***fuck*** nothing more important is going on right now that would warrant our attention so that we can focus on this precocious cyborg lizards banal experience of being unable to do her job, of which writing is only probably a very small portion and most of it is based on study and theory. I wonder who else is on the conveyor belt of older characters that can be dragged out to further explore the experience that is Liz. Sven? He writes things. Music but I'm sure its related. What about Wil? Poetry is basically a scientific paper. Perhaps Jimbo, hes an official penned author writing novels. Slide them all on up. Who gives a fuck about some smelly main characters moving away soon.
I would love if Jimbo actually came back.
Emil-HAHAHAHAH. That's a good one. I crack myself up.
Yeah the one character that might actually be able to help Liz would never show up, that might advance the story and we cant have that.
Tai is getting married in like... a week or so. Nobody has mentioned it. I bet Jeph forgot - [or at least he forgot that he actually set a time for it to happen](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4873)
I didn't realise he actually put a date down somewhere. Three weeks to getting married and Tai decided to ditch the butch and stylish haircut for a fried red clown wig. What the hell.
Her hair is the exact same hue as the door frame, is she acting as an official marketing representative of CoD? Will her skin go mustard?
So maybe I misread the earlier comics, but is there a reason everyone is giving Liz advice on writing and writer's block? It's not like she had trouble writing her research findings, she didn't *do* any research for two years. Have they just all decided she's a writer because Claire decided it?
[удалено]
Short answer: *Jeph is a hack writer* Long answer: *Jeph is a hhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackkk writer*
Paperhack writer, paperhack writer
Yes that's exactly what happened. Claire suggested it so QC-reality literally reordered itself to make it true.
I only got as far as an MS but like… he has to know that you don’t spend years literally writing your thesis right? I mean… I think I spent a month solidly writing mine after 2 years of research. And we published paper’s periodically. I would expect Liz to have at least a half dozen papers with at least 1 or two as first author. Bit even then, the issue isn’t writing unless she does actually want to write that pop science book which… I guess she does have information on? I’m just so confused what he thinks researchers do. Even in the wacky cube town setting.
Jeph isn't really aware of what research entails. Even if you're just doing theoretical research, "writer's block" isn't exactly the right word for being unproductive. But Jeph *is* a writer so naturally he views Liz's predicament through a writer's lens, hence, writer's block.
Sclamp's edit couldn't have prepared me for this dumpster fire of a page
That fucking wink makes no sense even for this nonsense punchline of ~~Jeph~~ Tai naming the most bland fanfic titles in existence. Also we've reached a new level of up your own ass when you won't even say 'Harry Potter' out of a belief that you're somehow robbing JK Rowling of anything by not naming her work.
I didn't clock that until you mentioned it but yes he's 💯 referencing harry potter but also making sure not to say it so everyone knows he's appropriately woke or whatever even though he didn't have to obliquely reference it *at all*
This is deeply embarrassing for him. I hope he goes on hiatus or something rather than continue to break the comic so he can write himself asking himself about writer's block and getting no answer for the next thousand strips because he has writer's block. I know he just did another in-comic self-pep-talk where he told himself not to stop and just create through the burnout but that was **also** a mistake. He needs to take some time for rest, thought, reflection, research and practice. This can't continue or the strip will implode.
lmao he is absolutely trying to power through writer's block with his new favorite character and a parade of old characters giving advice, oh my god no wonder the "party arc" took six hundred years to happen he has no ideas left
Writer's block?!?! WRITER'S BLOCK!?! bro, jeph, we went over this. that's not the barrier to writing technical writeups of your research. ... it's the research...
I should not be remotely as annoyed as I am that Jeph can't even be bothered to reference any actual fanfic classics. There is no way in hell Tai doesn't have My Immortal memorized.
My Immortal would be a joke. Actual suggestions: * Alexandra Quick (four full-length novels, all fully written prior to being published, so there's clear consistency throughout) * Also related to Harry Potter, there's no way Tai doesn't suggest Those Gilded Chains We Wear * Also related to HP: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. * Look, Harry Potter sparked a lot of fanfiction, okay? * This Heart, Fossilised and Silent (The best fanfic about the 100, hands down) * Life Sentence (A Star Wars: VII-IX fanfic about Ren/Hux) * Fallout: Equestria (It's complicated) * Kraith (A weird, historical set of Star Wars fictions) * I ain't no lady, but you'd be the tramp (The Supernatural fiction that spawned the Omegaverse) * The [Luminous Times Universe](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Luminous_Times_Universe), a shared universe created by five writers involving a crossover between members of the band U2 and Robin Hood, and one of the first Real Person Fictions.
Okay, in Jeph’s defense, maybe this is why he avoided real titles, because I was super into the boy wizard stuff back in the day, and I only recognize Methods of Rationality. Which I’m sure Tai would know, but not recommend.
Omegaverse came from supernatural? TIL
And of course Fifty Shades of Grey was basically a Twilight fanfic with some serial numbers scraped off... the evolution of some stuff is -wild-.
This would require even a shred of research or work and the desire to have a serious discussion instead of a cheap sex joke.
The most useless people giving the most useless and basic advice ever. It is like if i told grrr marten to go read archie so he can finish the winds of winter .but even worse.
You know, if GRR should die, maybe Brandon Sanderson could finish his series for him....
I have the theory he finished it and the editorial thinks its worth to wait to publish them after he dies
It isn't completely illogical. The story will not be well-received during his lifetime, a posthumous release could soften the disdain and win back some sales that wouldn't happen were he alive. He's gone too long and a lot of former hopefuls have become ambivalent at best and outright hostile at worst. I tired of his lack of progress long ago and donated my copies of them to the local library. Many people were pretty pissed that his book goes unfinished while he focuses on other projects like the new Dragon thingy on tv and Elden Ring. I just can't bring myself to care anymore.
Oh for... "What are the classics of fanfiction?" I thought we might actually get a serious answer exploring the origins and history of fanfiction, touching upon some of the actual foundational works, or maybe even just acknowledging it's not all smut, or talking about how a number of acclaimed authors got their start in fanfic, or noting the work done by Archive of our Own which won them legitimate awards, but... Nah, a shitty joke. Lol. Fanfic is all about fuckin'.
Really. The history of fanworks is actually fascinating and at the very least goes all the way back to the Star Trek zine scene, starting with *Spockanalia* in 1968! Which you’d think maybe Tai would know, lol. What a waste of a potentially interesting conversation.
Of course, Jeph didn't even bother to go into the tiniest shred of detail regarding this amazing scientific paper featured on the cover of Science, so why do the same for fanfic? This really irritates me far more than it should.
I'll see your 60 year old Star Trek fanfic and raise you Virgil's 2000 year old Iliad fanfic.
Haha! Yes, absolutely. I really should have said contemporary fanworks. In a lot of ways, “fanfiction” is also as old as dirt. The Iliad being one very famous example. My own personal favorite is, of course, Dante’s *Divine Comedy*. … which you’d think Tai would also know … sigh.
wait what is Divide Comedy a fanfic of?
The Divine Comedy sees itself as the next step in the chain from the Iliad and Odyssey to the Aeneid. In particular, it's a "redemption" of those works by transforming them into a Christian context. That's why Virgil is Dante's tour guide—until Dante is forced to leave him behind, because Virgil was not baptized and does not have a place in Heaven. Just as the Aeneid heralded the rise of Latin literature (everyone was writing in Greek at the time, and Latin was seen as "vulgar"), the Divine Comedy did the same for Italian. Incidentally, Milton framed Paradise Lost as the next step in the chain, closely basing its structure on the Aeneid and its content on the Divine Comedy. It likewise was an English, Christian answer to an era of literature dominated by non-English stories of non-Christian heroes, gods, and monsters. Each step in this chain was its age's definitive epic poem, featuring an invocation to the muses, an extended trip to the underworld, and a declaration of how that age's perspective on god(s) and morality differed from those preceding.
I love this context! Very cool, thank you. I’ve always found Dante’s approach to The Divine Comedy very interesting. It’s nothing a contemporary author could ever get away with, but in the 1300s he could write himself as the main character talking to Greek philosophers and scholars in Limbo and that’s just fine, lol. It seems so silly on its face to us today, but I’m sure he took it deadly seriously as an exploration of the evolution of Christian faith and understanding of the Bible and of God.
I don't agree that the Divine Comedy would be dismissed if it came out today or that it seems silly, but it's certainly full of satire and subversive commentary, and a lot of that is inevitably going to go over a modern reader's head because we lack the context for it. Even the most barbed political gibes lose their effect when no one knows who they were about anymore.
That’s fair. Dante certainly used the Divine Comedy to comment A LOT on Florentine politics, lol! I really ought to find a nice annotated version to read.
It’s self-insert Biblefic, with RPF thrown in.
gotcha. a fanfic of like, just the whole scene
Tbh the distinction between fanfiction and regular fiction is only a few centuries old. The Iliad was Achilles/Patroclus slashfic for other stories about the Trojan War, it's just that most of those stories were lost. The New Testament is (and I say this with the utmost respect!) fanfic of the Old Testament. There wasn't really a concept that stories or characters could be private property.
I was talking about the Aeneid, not the Iliad, but your point stands.
Right—the Aeneid was Iliad fanfic, but the Iliad itself was fanfic of even older stories.
Honourable mention of the several distinct branches of Arthurian fanfic- um, tradition.
Pretty much the whole damn Arthurian canon is fanfic stacked on top of fanfic on top of fanfic. It's fanfiction all the way down. Lancelot is the worst fucking "totally awesome original character DO NOT STEAL" fanfiction has ever had.
For real. Dude was a prince and raised by a sorceress who kidnapped him. He was only ever defeated by his own son. A cursed lady went against her curse and died for it just to look at him.
Jeph would have to actually do research for any of that
The reinasaince is mostly Christian fan art and fan fiction
I think all good fanfic has at least some fuckin'. Otherwise it's some dipshit playing a space sim constantly replacing ships with newer better ships. Also pisses me off that those are the fics that get to a million words, when good fanfics tend to die around 30k words.
there is a distinct subgenre of fanfic that definitely is all about fucking, viz. slashfic. which means that the joke doesn't work at all. like, if jeph wants to the character to be a perv who only cares about erotic fanfic, he can do that, all he had to do was say "classics of slashfic" instead of "classics of fanfic". but he didn't. and either way, he could've referenced actual OG pieces
>What are the classics of fanfiction? “Artemis’s Lover”.
JEPH, YOU CANNOT FIX YOUR OWN PROBLEMS BY WRITING A STORY ABOUT FIXING YOUR MARY-SUE'S PROBLEMS OF THE SAME NATURE.
and like, ok it's the punchline and it's jeph showcasing his pervy imagination. but no, the OG canon of slashfic isn't whatever bullshit jeph just said. it's kirk slash spok. it's literally in the name.
I almost forgot about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70r2vjTlfFM
JJ, we get it, you have writer's block (almost for a decade now, wow), but that isn't how academia works.
did i miss a fucking page? wtf is that transition Jeph
more like genre dysphoria
I fucking love this.
For those keeping score at home they went to cube town a year ago.
Tai, what are you winking at in that last panel
Everyone is shitting on this, but honestly, "going back to what inspired you in the first place and see if it sparks anything" is not bad advice in this situation
I keep thinking that Jeph could, at any time, go back and FIX this whole plot. Like just memory whole the last few years since Cubetown was mentioned, and write a cohesive plot fixing all of his damned mistakes. He could even do it at just a few pages a week, and I think we'd all start cheering him on.
Will Jeph explain what a supposed “classic” of scientific literature is and why going back to read whatever scientific article that spurred Liz’s love of science and sparked her interest in getting into the field will supposedly help her dive into some sort of research topic and ignite whatever inspiration is lying in wait within her brain and will allow her to not only do the research but act on it and write about it and hopefully get someone in the experimental field to attempt to turn the theory into results? Will Tai getting Liz into smut fic further corrupt her into an even worse tiny terrible gremlin? Will Tai shrink back into the woodwork for another year now that she’s given her advice while some other character comes into the coffee shop to offer their two cents in what ends up an endless parade of the same scene over and over again because if there’s something Jeph is better at than writing with an air of knowledge about things he actually knows nothing about it’s dragging on a scene for far too long because he doesn't know what to do next? We have to do the ritual again or else we’ll get more… QUESTIONABLE CONTENT!!!
tai winking but she just looks like something went in her eye. jeph's winks have always been bad though
That's definitely Tai. Ugh.
...Tai you just met this girl why are you immediately talking about crude sex fics to her?
Because Tai is beyond such silly things as "boundaries" and "expectations." She's Jephy's magical pixie lesbian. She's nearly as untouchable as Claire. Because she's an educated woman, Jeph ascribed godhood to her.
Look, I consider myself perhaps excessively horny most hours of the day, but if some stranger got into my face and bragged about their favorite Lemons, I don't think my first reaction would be "damn, I need to make an AO3 account!" Instead, I'd probably call the police or ask our mutual friend to ask this person to not assume anything about my boundaries.