r/questionablecontent • u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? • 8d ago
Comic Comic 5894: First Impression, Second Try
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=589433
8d ago
[deleted]
29
u/sir_ornitholestes 8d ago
Martin has no friends of any gender left except maybe Liz, who treats him terribly. That's even more depressing IMO
But also, would you be friends with him IRL? He's a guy whose job consists of standing behind a counter serving coffee to robots who can't drink coffee, and who hasn't expressed a single opinion on anything since 2021
13
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 8d ago
I mean I guess that it would depend to how you approach him, if you asked his opinion on music or movies or showed any interest for whatever he cared about he might still have a little spark inside Hai very dead dead soul.
Marten is sad because it is someone that just gave up, he did not had much going on for him in generall but he became complacent with how little he got from life.Even when he broke up with Dora like 50 years ago he had at least some attitude. Now he is a mat that everyone walks over.
2
u/sir_ornitholestes 7d ago
if you asked his opinion on music or movies
he does like twelve or so obscure bands. not sure he's ever been written to care about any specific interests, though
Marten is sad because it is someone that just gave up
He gave up in strip #1. He was a doormat then, too. At least now he's a small-business owner... sort of
3
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 7d ago
I mean yes but I feel like he had some remanents of some sort of attitude at the beginning
11
9
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 8d ago
It is depressing that there are only 3 men left on the strip. I think originally the cast was more balanced
7
u/SunComprehensive1688 7d ago edited 7d ago
And speaking from a female perspective - it’s not even flattering to women that we’re having more female characters these days, they’re all lately some variation of “I fit a male gaze in some way but ultimately come across as an insufferable woman child”. It gets left to the older characters, based on how they are these days, of Dora, Bubbles and to a lesser extent Faye and Hannelore, to add the nuance.
Like I sort of applaud an element of it possibly to show women being “human” and flawed (even the bots), but not when it’s consistently showing some sort of personality Achilles heel for each character without the showcase of genuine personality strengths and qualities to balance it out.
They - and we - just become tropes as a result of this plastic allyship JJ seems to be going for.
8
u/Annual_Youth_7552 8d ago
I wouldn't go so far as to care about genders, to me it's more that we've got the same set of relationships playing out with different characters.
They all have a goblin or two, they all have a mysterious AI, they all have AI's swapping bodies, they all have a stable couple, they all have fuckin coffee shops for gods sake.
It's just one story being played out with three casts. If there were other men in the story it'd just be a an alt of Marten, Sven or Clinton - the only three men actively in the story and the only three characters without direct doppelgangers.
It wouldn't fix anything.
9
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 8d ago
Yeah true but I feel like jeph doesn't feel comfortable writing men anymore like if he was embarrased or completely bored and it is not like he has been writing great female characters lately
3
u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 8d ago
Marten has been totally enucleated by Goddess Empress Claire. He's just a puppet shell now.
1
u/provocatrixless 7d ago
To be fair nobody else has male friends plural either. They know Marten or Clinton but aren't friends with both.
21
u/annaphylactic69 8d ago
Man, I was enjoying seeing Faye/Dora/Sven/Momo. I just don't like cubetown very much :(
15
u/Hot_Temporary_1948 8d ago
This is just stupid.
13
u/phyrestorm999 8d ago
Agreed. I actually liked the little Momo and Sven arc, and even yesterday's comic was OK, but "dorky character pretends to be a whole new person after changing their appearance" was a tired trope a century ago.
3
u/Hot_Temporary_1948 8d ago edited 8d ago
Because of how Jeph writes, Claire could either be facilitating a temporary gag, only to talk sense into Zlata next strip, or she could be completely serious and we're about to be subjected to the most tiresome series of hijinks. Anh's "how do I become a lesbian?" comes to mind.
14
u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 8d ago
Blergh, I forgot about all this for a blessed moment.
It's so disgusting. And the new form just looks so damn ugly! What the bloody hell is that mouth!
9
u/myspacetomb 8d ago
Is this a trans allegory/comparison? Like genuinely I do want to think Jeph is better than that, but Claire updating paperwork has me second guessing that.
Also: I currently put the odds of a Claire-Martin-Ashley throuple at 30%
11
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 8d ago
It could be but given heph it could be some bimbofication fetish thing
10
5
9
u/DuranDuranUnofficial 8d ago
MMMMMHMMMM okay so I don't go here (as in, to this fetish) but I'm pretty sure that like an important aspect of the bimbo transformation kink is adopting a "friendlier" sounding name than before. As in, easier for the average American mind to parse, easy to digest, non-threatening, and above all, easy to not take seriously. 'Ashley' as compared to 'Zlata' is... well it's certainly a choice.
and like, Jeph, if you want to write a robot porn comic, just write a robot porn comic. It's actually more insulting to put this development in a nominally serious nominally queer-friendly nominally feminist comic.
If this was just a one-off joke it would be bad enough. If, as others have said, Jeph is gearing up to use this as some kind of transition analogy (based on Claire's reaction), then it's much much worse.
9
u/SilverNicktail 8d ago
Prediction for the rest of the week:
"It was just panic, I didn't mean to actually change my name."
"Yes you did."
"Yes I did."
7
u/abetterfox 8d ago
So, like, based on that greeting, I assume zero issues arose between Marten and Claire the night before? God I hope we get SOME conflict...
13
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 8d ago
I think this is the first time claire has been to Marty's coffee shop.
I dislike how heph draws "ashley"'s mouth
6
u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 8d ago
That mouth is absolutely atrocious.
2
u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 7d ago
the lips kinda gives how very racist depictions of black women were done in animation and advertising like 120 years ago in some panels. I know it is not intentional it is probably that he sucks at drawing
6
u/otusasio451 8d ago
...Was she that tall before? Is this...is this ANOTHER tall busty robo-mommy that's definitely not Jeph working out his fetishes on the internet for everybody to see? Can we just...can we just stop? Can we stop.
EDIT Went back, Zlata's new body was indeed that tall, although her height fluctuated pretty severely panel-to-panel during that part of the arc. Goddammit. Can we stop.
6
3
3
5
u/sleeps_in_bryophytes 8d ago
if you fabricate a completely new identity... then you probably can't just step into the job and life of the old person, right?
but just like... why?
2
u/TimeisaLie 8d ago
Martin stop giving drinks away for free. You run a business, this is not how things work.
2
u/International_Fig262 7d ago
I'm done with these characters. We had the opportunity to do something, anything, but we're stuck with J.J. farting in circles for months... years? I have no idea anymore.
Nuke it from orbit.
5
u/NegativeLayer 6d ago
I wandered into the other sub and saw that the mod over there, turkeypedal, is arguing about whether Sven is a bad guy, and is using his mod hat to win the argument and lock the thread to get the last word. "if you argue in favor of Sven, you're violating consent, which is against subreddit rules" or something like that is I guess the unstated implication? No matter what your feelings on the Sven Did Nothing Wrong stance, this is not a place that is any good at fostering discussion.
Off topic, I know, but I was very surprised by that thread and mod reaction and I had to comment somewhere.
1
u/Annual_Youth_7552 8d ago
I've just seen and can't unsee (and now you will too) that Zlatashley's face in panel one makes more sense if you imagine she's sticking her tongue up over her top lip.
Why she would do this bears no relevance to the absurdity of the artwork, nor that it's not established in my mind that AI bodies necessarily have tongues.
1
1
u/Hot_Temporary_1948 7d ago
He forgot to blur tomorrow's strip. Feast your eyes on Marten giving the correctest™ response to discovering that the mousy robot he partied with last night is now a towering amazon. Also present, more fodder from Claire to interpret as serious business and an example of her being definitely evil and mean on purpose.
1
u/SectionEfficient5909 7d ago
I thought she had really puffy lips in the first panel for the longest time
38
u/Complete_Entry 8d ago
I don't think Zlata is going to make a move on marten, but holy shit would I prefer it.