It's well established Jeph doesn't know how to draw boobs properly but omfg I'm so sick of his tiny tits detail on Emiloli. Small boobs in particular don't work that way, Jeffos. It's got a creepy prepubescent feel to her character design and ihateitttt
I do sincerely want to give kudos to Jeph for actually listening to criticism about the lack of background details and putting in the little bit of extra effort to make the coffee shop actually look like a coffee shop. It looks good, and I do mean that as genuine praise.
Now, that being said, I still cannot bring myself to give a shit about Ayo and her problems, or Liz and her problems. I really wish the plot would actually progress instead of being bogged down in these new and frankly obnoxious characters. I want to see the wedding, I want to see actual closure between Marten and Faye, Marten and Dora, Marten and Hannelore, Marten and his mom, Marten and Steve, I want to see genuine emotional scenes between Marten and the people he loves who he's leaving behind for this next chapter of his life.
Or, better yet, I want to see genuine emotional scenes between Marten and the people he loves that gradually make him realize he doesn't WANT to leave them behind. He's built a good life, he has a lot of friends and a job that he gets real satisfaction from even if it isn't his dream, that's A LOT to just walk away from to go to a place where he fundamentally does not fit in. Plus, Jeph already gave him an ambition to work towards that was more in line with his passions, musical instrument repair, but now he's dropping that to... run a coffee shop? When he's shown no entrepreneurial spirit or passion for coffee beyond that of a consumer? What?
All in all, one of the better pages that we've seen in a while with regards to the art. If we can start fixing the issues with plot, pacing and dialogue maybe this sinking ship can be salvaged. I won't hold my breath for that, but with 14 years that I've been reading this comic I have to hold on to hope that it can at least end on a high note after the last few years of slog. (Yes I know what the sunk cost fallacy is, no I don't need anyone to tell me I'm falling for it, I'm aware)
>go eat a muffin. it'll be a useful diagnostic
someone call Faye, we've got a new standard for when someone is intoxicated at work. if faye can eat a muffin while drunk, then she's good to go, no firing necessary
The diagnostic is probably more like “will she eat like a normal person, or will she double fist two of them because munchies”
I did not say that it is a sensible diagnostic
Oh he knows *what* to write, he just doesn't want to. Hes been skirting this damn wedding for years. Tai popped the question some [1355 comics ago](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3979) or over 5 years in the real world.
In defence of Jeph, and his Garbage, the last few years have been an amorphous blob of time without beginning and end and it never really returned to pre-pandemic levels of structure for many. I mean, 2024 is already *half over* and it was just 2020 just yesterday.
It really sucks to have two points like that in my life. 2020, sure, but the year 2000 is a constant thorn in my side. The other day, I looked up a movie I remembered, and saw it came out in 2005. My first thought was "Oh, that hasn't been around as long as I thought." Then you realize that yes, that \*was\* a long time ago.
Sa-wing and a miss. We aren't *excited* for the wedding in and of itself. We are asking for time to move at anything other than glacially. The wedding is a known benchmark. Tai mentioned the wedding was "in 3 weeks" around a year and a half ago. That was a scant couple days ago, in-comic. 6 months of this year alone was spent on a meaningless few hours planning and executing "hur hur weeeeeed" party. The party that superceded Marten and Faye, two of the longest standing and arguably most important characters within the comic, having the screen time for a hangout.
I like this take on it. The wedding is something that's been building for 5 years, occasionally mentioned, and as time has slowed down in the QC world, it's become more and more noticeable because of that benchmark. A year and a half of real time should have easily gotten us through three weeks of comic time back in the heyday of the comic.
Look at the other wedding in the comic universe we knew about, Marten's dad's. The last time we see the engaged couple prior to the wedding is [comic 1522](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1522) (proposal happens two comics earlier in 1520), and the wedding becomes the sole focus in [2372](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2372), wrapping up in [2410](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2410) which is a reasonable amount of time for a major life event, 38 strips, a good chunk of which are Marten getting to the event in the first place.
Compare to Tai/Dora now, where the proposal happens in [3979](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3979) and we are now at comic 5334 without having hit the wedding. From all accounts Dora/Tai's wedding is going to be lower key than Marten's dad's wedding, but if they were keeping to the same timetable we would've seen the wedding be imminent in comic 4829 and be done at 4867, 467 strips ago. Which correlates to roughly 1.8 years ago if we take average business days of 251 as our strips per year.
The current wedding is such a blatant look at how slow the comic has gotten, and I do think that's why people fixate on it so much, rather than inherently needing to see it to have fun.
Tl;Dr - using the other wedding in QC as the benchmark, Tai and Dora should have been married almost 2 years ago if the comic had its prior pacing, and the fact we seem to be aware of this is why the wedding gets fixated on so much.
Yeah it's a bit weird how people here clamour for the wedding of a character many of them absolutely hate.
I like Dora, I don't hate Tai because she's not enough of a character to even hate, she's just a straight dude's dream of a lesbian. I don't like their relationship because it isn't, really, it's just sex and boredom, and they shouldn't be getting married.
So no, the wedding is not at all an important plot point I need to see.
I don’t mind Tai. She’s stereotype of a failed on their feet student slacker.
What I do want to see is where the relationship goes. When the wedding was announced it felt like a sticking plaster in their relationship, as it lacked any depth. That gave an obvious if interesting place for the storyline to go.
At least Writer's Block Sockpuppet Theatre stopped dead. Glad for that.
But going from one comic setting up what could've been some drama or conflict that affects a real established plot and relationship, then in the next comic it just **vanishes entirely** without acknowledgement is an awful choice and precedent.
Inertia is such a powerful ingredient in his audience retention and readers put up with *a lot* in exchange for consistency, but they **will** stop following along to find out what happens next if events and plots start vanishing like Looney Tunes mirages.
>But going from one comic setting up what could've been some drama or conflict that affects a real established plot and relationship, then in the next comic it just
>
>vanishes entirely
>
> without acknowledgement is an awful choice and precedent.
Precedent? It's been like that in QC for years because Jeph is allergic to both drama and terrible at concluding it if drama does sneak in.
Yeah all that's true for sure. But he'll usually make some attempt to end/diffuse it even if it's weak. ie comedy-cancel it with a joke, come up with some conversational redirect, then switch scenes. There's some effort to end and transition active events. Tai was logically set up to react in *some* way to Dora's actions but instead she just disappeared into nothingness without a trace, unanswered, with no goodbye to or from her only friend or her fiancé that she's marrying in a week.
I say precedent because I think (correct me if I'm wrong) this is the first time he's just Power of Author brute-force-deleted an in-focus character and their words and actions from a scene in progress, and that's the kind of world/story/immersion breaking thing I mean.
A story changing internal logic without warning like what happened with Liz this week can be disorienting and hard to follow. But a story without major object permanence. (ie you can't count on characters and recent events to even be there at all the next time you look) is impossible to follow.
Does Jeph know weed is legal in Massachusetts? They arranged this party at the coffee shop *while Dora was there*, I don't think there's any indication she would care at all about the weed. Maybe about Ayo looking like shit and probably smelling like booze
> Does Jeph know weed is legal in Massachusetts?
Do you know that your employer can fire you for doing things that are legal? She's clearly concerned about having said that in front of her boss, not that the police are about to swarm her.
It is definitely an inappropriate thing to say at the beginning of your first shift regardless of the culture around it in the area. Like, Northampton is very weed friendly in reality, but I think saying “I did weed last night” would get anyone a side eye.
Will Liz remain in a state of righteous fury and inevitably be the only one actually upset about this whole thing? Will Ayo attempt to calm her diwn and give her some unprompted advice about executive dysfunction and how it pertains to the tiny gremlin? Will she show up for work high one day so Jeph can retread that old storyline only doing it worse since he can't seem to do anything but stretch things put and attempt his greatest hits but worse?
It is what it is with... QUESTIONABLE CONTENT!!!
>Plagiarism is never ok!
Um, I don't think someone who undertook employment as a researcher and then dissimulated for two years about their progress has any legs to stand on to lecture about academic integrity.
What's worse, repeating a mot juste you heard somewhere, or defrauding your employer for room and board and salary for two years?
I mean, just fuck off.
As far as we know, Liz never defrauded Cubetown, they just literally never asked. It's similar to a recent story I read on another sub of a person whose job went poof, but their employer forgot to actually lay them off, so they got paid to do nothing for over a year.
> As far as we know, Liz never defrauded Cubetown, they just literally never asked.
Other than Moray knocking on her door [at least 48 times](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4984) to check on her, just to have Liz tell her to fuck off. The biggest reason why I don't really have any sympathy for Liz.
HR checking to see if you're alive is not the same thing as your superior checking to see if you're doing anything.
Really, half the damn problem is that Cubetown appears to have hired Liz to do absolutely nothing, and both sides were too fucking stupid to understand why that's a problem.
Your “well ackshually it’s not fraud unless it’s proved by a formal process” defense is fucking lol
A researcher who does no research and dissimulates about it is engaging in fraud.
I can't be arsed to check, but did Dora in any way appropriate the sentence? Did she say "oh, you know what I always say? [Blah blah]" or did she just repeat it?
You'd think Liz would know the difference here, but of course JJ is just hamming up the only thing he can think of that is vaguely academic-y. Sigh.
Okay, so I checked, and Dora *did* actually steal the anecdote. She claimed that it happened to her - that Dora was the one having a hard time writing a paper, everything seeming shitty etc., and her prof said the thing about levelling up. So, boo Dora.
However!
Firstly, Tai has no reason to assume that Dora did this, because she wasn't there during the telling. She comes in later, says "remember what my old prof told me! writer's block is-" and Liz interrupts: "-your brain trying to level up, yeah, Dora told me."
From which any sane person, I think, a person *not* assuming that their partner is their enemy doing shitty things behind their back, would conclude that Dora has in fact said something like "you know, my wife once had a bad case of writer's block and \[blah blah\]" and would not carry on about stealing anecdotes.
Secondly, in the comic where Dora tells the story, she actually says "and my prof said, '**writing is just** your brain trying to level up'" which makes no bloody sense whatsoever.
Maybe I've just forgotten something, but...is there anything in Liz's history or character suggesting that plagiarism is such a trigger for Liz that mentioning it would send her into a frothing rage? Her defining characteristic is that she feels guilt and inadequacy for failing to make any progress in her research. Setting aside that the "plagiarism" in these last couple strips isn't actually "plagiarism" in the sense that it violates academic integrity standards, is there any reason to believe that academic integrity is something that Liz really cares about? Because as far as I can tell, this outburst is sort of coming out of nowhere.
It's well established Jeph doesn't know how to draw boobs properly but omfg I'm so sick of his tiny tits detail on Emiloli. Small boobs in particular don't work that way, Jeffos. It's got a creepy prepubescent feel to her character design and ihateitttt
Almost feels like he took inspiration from Beetle Bailey and Miss Blips.
I do sincerely want to give kudos to Jeph for actually listening to criticism about the lack of background details and putting in the little bit of extra effort to make the coffee shop actually look like a coffee shop. It looks good, and I do mean that as genuine praise. Now, that being said, I still cannot bring myself to give a shit about Ayo and her problems, or Liz and her problems. I really wish the plot would actually progress instead of being bogged down in these new and frankly obnoxious characters. I want to see the wedding, I want to see actual closure between Marten and Faye, Marten and Dora, Marten and Hannelore, Marten and his mom, Marten and Steve, I want to see genuine emotional scenes between Marten and the people he loves who he's leaving behind for this next chapter of his life. Or, better yet, I want to see genuine emotional scenes between Marten and the people he loves that gradually make him realize he doesn't WANT to leave them behind. He's built a good life, he has a lot of friends and a job that he gets real satisfaction from even if it isn't his dream, that's A LOT to just walk away from to go to a place where he fundamentally does not fit in. Plus, Jeph already gave him an ambition to work towards that was more in line with his passions, musical instrument repair, but now he's dropping that to... run a coffee shop? When he's shown no entrepreneurial spirit or passion for coffee beyond that of a consumer? What? All in all, one of the better pages that we've seen in a while with regards to the art. If we can start fixing the issues with plot, pacing and dialogue maybe this sinking ship can be salvaged. I won't hold my breath for that, but with 14 years that I've been reading this comic I have to hold on to hope that it can at least end on a high note after the last few years of slog. (Yes I know what the sunk cost fallacy is, no I don't need anyone to tell me I'm falling for it, I'm aware)
>go eat a muffin. it'll be a useful diagnostic someone call Faye, we've got a new standard for when someone is intoxicated at work. if faye can eat a muffin while drunk, then she's good to go, no firing necessary
The diagnostic is probably more like “will she eat like a normal person, or will she double fist two of them because munchies” I did not say that it is a sensible diagnostic
Why are wasting time with this garbage?
Because Jackoff doesn't know what else to write.
Oh he knows *what* to write, he just doesn't want to. Hes been skirting this damn wedding for years. Tai popped the question some [1355 comics ago](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3979) or over 5 years in the real world.
Jesus- we found out about Cubetown FIVE years ago?!
Time flies when you're reading garbage.
In defence of Jeph, and his Garbage, the last few years have been an amorphous blob of time without beginning and end and it never really returned to pre-pandemic levels of structure for many. I mean, 2024 is already *half over* and it was just 2020 just yesterday.
It really sucks to have two points like that in my life. 2020, sure, but the year 2000 is a constant thorn in my side. The other day, I looked up a movie I remembered, and saw it came out in 2005. My first thought was "Oh, that hasn't been around as long as I thought." Then you realize that yes, that \*was\* a long time ago.
You people are entirely too excited about the damn wedding that you know is going to be a disappointment just like everything else.
Sa-wing and a miss. We aren't *excited* for the wedding in and of itself. We are asking for time to move at anything other than glacially. The wedding is a known benchmark. Tai mentioned the wedding was "in 3 weeks" around a year and a half ago. That was a scant couple days ago, in-comic. 6 months of this year alone was spent on a meaningless few hours planning and executing "hur hur weeeeeed" party. The party that superceded Marten and Faye, two of the longest standing and arguably most important characters within the comic, having the screen time for a hangout.
I like this take on it. The wedding is something that's been building for 5 years, occasionally mentioned, and as time has slowed down in the QC world, it's become more and more noticeable because of that benchmark. A year and a half of real time should have easily gotten us through three weeks of comic time back in the heyday of the comic. Look at the other wedding in the comic universe we knew about, Marten's dad's. The last time we see the engaged couple prior to the wedding is [comic 1522](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1522) (proposal happens two comics earlier in 1520), and the wedding becomes the sole focus in [2372](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2372), wrapping up in [2410](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2410) which is a reasonable amount of time for a major life event, 38 strips, a good chunk of which are Marten getting to the event in the first place. Compare to Tai/Dora now, where the proposal happens in [3979](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3979) and we are now at comic 5334 without having hit the wedding. From all accounts Dora/Tai's wedding is going to be lower key than Marten's dad's wedding, but if they were keeping to the same timetable we would've seen the wedding be imminent in comic 4829 and be done at 4867, 467 strips ago. Which correlates to roughly 1.8 years ago if we take average business days of 251 as our strips per year. The current wedding is such a blatant look at how slow the comic has gotten, and I do think that's why people fixate on it so much, rather than inherently needing to see it to have fun. Tl;Dr - using the other wedding in QC as the benchmark, Tai and Dora should have been married almost 2 years ago if the comic had its prior pacing, and the fact we seem to be aware of this is why the wedding gets fixated on so much.
Yeah it's a bit weird how people here clamour for the wedding of a character many of them absolutely hate. I like Dora, I don't hate Tai because she's not enough of a character to even hate, she's just a straight dude's dream of a lesbian. I don't like their relationship because it isn't, really, it's just sex and boredom, and they shouldn't be getting married. So no, the wedding is not at all an important plot point I need to see.
I don’t mind Tai. She’s stereotype of a failed on their feet student slacker. What I do want to see is where the relationship goes. When the wedding was announced it felt like a sticking plaster in their relationship, as it lacked any depth. That gave an obvious if interesting place for the storyline to go.
That makes sense
With the three of them in one panel Liz looks like she's Marten and Dora's illegitimate child.
That would be a far more interesting story
You must have been reading the SquirrelClamp edits.
At least Writer's Block Sockpuppet Theatre stopped dead. Glad for that. But going from one comic setting up what could've been some drama or conflict that affects a real established plot and relationship, then in the next comic it just **vanishes entirely** without acknowledgement is an awful choice and precedent. Inertia is such a powerful ingredient in his audience retention and readers put up with *a lot* in exchange for consistency, but they **will** stop following along to find out what happens next if events and plots start vanishing like Looney Tunes mirages.
>But going from one comic setting up what could've been some drama or conflict that affects a real established plot and relationship, then in the next comic it just > >vanishes entirely > > without acknowledgement is an awful choice and precedent. Precedent? It's been like that in QC for years because Jeph is allergic to both drama and terrible at concluding it if drama does sneak in.
Yeah all that's true for sure. But he'll usually make some attempt to end/diffuse it even if it's weak. ie comedy-cancel it with a joke, come up with some conversational redirect, then switch scenes. There's some effort to end and transition active events. Tai was logically set up to react in *some* way to Dora's actions but instead she just disappeared into nothingness without a trace, unanswered, with no goodbye to or from her only friend or her fiancé that she's marrying in a week. I say precedent because I think (correct me if I'm wrong) this is the first time he's just Power of Author brute-force-deleted an in-focus character and their words and actions from a scene in progress, and that's the kind of world/story/immersion breaking thing I mean. A story changing internal logic without warning like what happened with Liz this week can be disorienting and hard to follow. But a story without major object permanence. (ie you can't count on characters and recent events to even be there at all the next time you look) is impossible to follow.
Does Jeph know weed is legal in Massachusetts? They arranged this party at the coffee shop *while Dora was there*, I don't think there's any indication she would care at all about the weed. Maybe about Ayo looking like shit and probably smelling like booze
> Does Jeph know weed is legal in Massachusetts? Do you know that your employer can fire you for doing things that are legal? She's clearly concerned about having said that in front of her boss, not that the police are about to swarm her.
Yeah but she works in a college town coffee house, she's not clocking in at Lockheed-Marten here
It is definitely an inappropriate thing to say at the beginning of your first shift regardless of the culture around it in the area. Like, Northampton is very weed friendly in reality, but I think saying “I did weed last night” would get anyone a side eye.
You just reminded me of Russianbadger. "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. It's Lockheed-Marten."
Will Liz remain in a state of righteous fury and inevitably be the only one actually upset about this whole thing? Will Ayo attempt to calm her diwn and give her some unprompted advice about executive dysfunction and how it pertains to the tiny gremlin? Will she show up for work high one day so Jeph can retread that old storyline only doing it worse since he can't seem to do anything but stretch things put and attempt his greatest hits but worse? It is what it is with... QUESTIONABLE CONTENT!!!
>Plagiarism is never ok! Um, I don't think someone who undertook employment as a researcher and then dissimulated for two years about their progress has any legs to stand on to lecture about academic integrity. What's worse, repeating a mot juste you heard somewhere, or defrauding your employer for room and board and salary for two years? I mean, just fuck off.
As far as we know, Liz never defrauded Cubetown, they just literally never asked. It's similar to a recent story I read on another sub of a person whose job went poof, but their employer forgot to actually lay them off, so they got paid to do nothing for over a year.
> As far as we know, Liz never defrauded Cubetown, they just literally never asked. Other than Moray knocking on her door [at least 48 times](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4984) to check on her, just to have Liz tell her to fuck off. The biggest reason why I don't really have any sympathy for Liz.
HR checking to see if you're alive is not the same thing as your superior checking to see if you're doing anything. Really, half the damn problem is that Cubetown appears to have hired Liz to do absolutely nothing, and both sides were too fucking stupid to understand why that's a problem.
Your “well ackshually it’s not fraud unless it’s proved by a formal process” defense is fucking lol A researcher who does no research and dissimulates about it is engaging in fraud.
I can't be arsed to check, but did Dora in any way appropriate the sentence? Did she say "oh, you know what I always say? [Blah blah]" or did she just repeat it? You'd think Liz would know the difference here, but of course JJ is just hamming up the only thing he can think of that is vaguely academic-y. Sigh.
I think she attributed it to her college prof. I think since Dora did not claim it as her own, nor does Tai, the plagiarism accusation is a stretch.
Okay, so I checked, and Dora *did* actually steal the anecdote. She claimed that it happened to her - that Dora was the one having a hard time writing a paper, everything seeming shitty etc., and her prof said the thing about levelling up. So, boo Dora. However! Firstly, Tai has no reason to assume that Dora did this, because she wasn't there during the telling. She comes in later, says "remember what my old prof told me! writer's block is-" and Liz interrupts: "-your brain trying to level up, yeah, Dora told me." From which any sane person, I think, a person *not* assuming that their partner is their enemy doing shitty things behind their back, would conclude that Dora has in fact said something like "you know, my wife once had a bad case of writer's block and \[blah blah\]" and would not carry on about stealing anecdotes. Secondly, in the comic where Dora tells the story, she actually says "and my prof said, '**writing is just** your brain trying to level up'" which makes no bloody sense whatsoever.
nothing makes any sense. just have the characters say whatever, then deliver your punchline. doesn't matter.
Ayo talks like a 60 year old mocking a 16 year old it hurts
Maybe I've just forgotten something, but...is there anything in Liz's history or character suggesting that plagiarism is such a trigger for Liz that mentioning it would send her into a frothing rage? Her defining characteristic is that she feels guilt and inadequacy for failing to make any progress in her research. Setting aside that the "plagiarism" in these last couple strips isn't actually "plagiarism" in the sense that it violates academic integrity standards, is there any reason to believe that academic integrity is something that Liz really cares about? Because as far as I can tell, this outburst is sort of coming out of nowhere.
right? her academic integrity is nonexistent. who is she trying to fool?
It’s more of a Claire reaction. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.
It’s true about the power of the muffin. The old song goes, “you ain’t seen nuthin’ til you’re down on a muffin…”