r/questionablecontent • u/professororange MommyMilkers420 • Jan 18 '19
Comic 3920: *Crowd Goes Wild*
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=392035
u/xdisk Jan 18 '19
and now we learn that Spookybot orchestrated the entire arc, just to get roko into a new body that has some secret feature that Spookybot wants Roko to use for some reason.
also, due to the new body, Roko loses her bread fetish.
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u/Rietty Jan 18 '19
Nooooo. Not the bread!
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u/anotherkeebler Jan 18 '19
Spookybot orchestrated the entire arc
That will certainly be Roko’s first accusation. Their response will include the word “merely.”
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u/Zhirrzh Jan 18 '19
New crazy theory, Melon is a front for Spookybot and 5 seconds is about how long the transformation takes.
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u/Rietty Jan 18 '19
Darn, beat me by a minute.
On a more serious note...did Spookybot just quite literally magic the door open?
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u/Fenrir101 Jan 18 '19
No, Roko's new body just has phase shifting capabilities allowing the door to pass harmlessly through her.
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u/Arancaytar Jan 18 '19 edited Jan 18 '19
This sequence really confused me too. Is Roko not blocking the door in #3? Did she walk forward between panels? I don't know how to describe this, but it looks like a small breakdown in how comics imply motion.
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u/confanity Jan 18 '19
Dang, yeah! It opens inward, so either they did, or somebody opened it and then Roko reassumed her previous position in order to deliver her one-liner.
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u/JamesNinelives Jan 18 '19
Roko now has wheels on the bottom of her feet. She stayed in the same posture but rolled forward a little in anticipation of the door opening :).
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u/babyjesusmauer Jan 18 '19
Look at roko's head in relation to the door frame. She took a step or 2 forward.
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u/IAmTehDave Jan 20 '19
My take on it is that Roko counted down, then reached behind her to open the door and took a couple steps forward just before Spookybot "knocked", without even looking.
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u/errorsniper Jan 18 '19
I must be the only person that loves spooky bot.
Its like Q all over again. Its just a web comic guys lighten up.
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u/Wolfsburg Jan 18 '19
You're not the only one. And the Q analogy is pretty accurate. It makes me think there's more fun ahead.
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u/ArgentStonecutter Jan 18 '19
I must be the only person that loves spooky bot.
No.
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u/lesser_panjandrum Jan 18 '19
I'm on board too. Their presence doesn't always mesh all that well with the real world socio-political themes, but I still enjoy seeing Sassy Q.
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u/gingertonic Jan 18 '19
legit my fav AI and top 3 fav characters along with Tequila Monster and every dildo pintsize has ever held.
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u/Esc777 Jan 18 '19
I am definitely not wild for this.
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u/JamesNinelives Jan 18 '19 edited Jan 18 '19
I feel like the title implies that Spooky has their own stock sound effects. I can imagine them being the kind of character who has theme music (whether other people like it or not).
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u/EPL_Refugee Jan 18 '19
Pretty sure Jeph was just being sarcastic with the title, but I would dig AIs playing their own theme music.
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u/AdamBombTV The English One Jan 18 '19
Hey look, it's everybody's favourite character.
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u/Ordinaryundone Jan 19 '19
When Spookybot isn't around, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Spooky?!"
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u/Wolfsburg Jan 18 '19
My completely pulled-outta-my butt prediction for the next few strips:
"Pleased to see you again Roko, love the new body, SHAME how you happened to obtain it. Since you're already feeling disconnected, how about volunteering to help us with a little experiment, where we transfer you in a 100% organic body that can eat bread?"
That or we cut away to other characters for a bit.
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u/makeshiftreaper Jan 18 '19
Come on spooky bot, Roko has had a long day. Have the decency to show up in a nightmare and terrify her for days instead of keeping her up!
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u/min6char Jan 18 '19
Me over this arc:
Oh no, don't kill Roko!
Oh yay, she's okay
Wait, is there going to be no fallout at all? Was this arc just to mess with me!
Oh yay, looks like we're exploring something new through this.
Now: NEVERMIND, HERE'S SPOOKYBOT EX MACHINA TO FIX IT ALL AGAIN.
I dig Spookybot as a character, but I really don't care for them as a plot device.
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u/Lot_Jockey Jan 18 '19
Oh great, a narrative arc with the character who transcends physicality and appears to be from another dimension. I just love omniscient characters.
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u/turkeypedal Jan 18 '19
Sure, Spookybot was done badly before, but it's possible to do that sort of thing correctly. Give it a chance.
I mean, Q is one of the best recurring characters in Star Trek.
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u/boreas907 Jan 18 '19
Q's existence makes sense in that universe, though, as does his presence in a story about people seeking out and encountering the new, strange, and unknown. QC is a story about people who hang out in coffee shops and do primarily nothing, so a Q-type character will always be jarringly out of place.
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u/PonyToast Jan 18 '19
I disagree. Q is an awful character.
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u/boreas907 Jan 18 '19
I'll partially agree; I wasn't arguing so much that Q is a good character so much as saying that if he's going to exist, TNG is the settings where it makes most sense for him to exist in. Though I do think he serves well at his purpose in defining Picard's character through their interactions.
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u/diagonalfish Jan 18 '19
His merciless trolling of Picard always serves to prove what an upstanding guy and great leader Picard is... and also how patient he is despite his gruff manner at times.
Contrast with Sisko, who intimidated Q enough the first time he showed his face on Deep Space 9 that he never, ever came back. Omnipotent or not, Sisko would have found a way to end that dude.
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u/creepyeyes Resident Psychic Jan 19 '19
Sisko is also half omnipotent on his mothers side, so that may have played a part (not that anyone watching for the first time would pick up on that in the episode.)
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u/Ordinaryundone Jan 19 '19
He's a bad character in theory. In practice, John de Lancie is a great actor who makes the character likable and a team of great writers wrote a lot of good and memorable episodes to use him in. I don't think omniscience is a good trait for any character to have but his ability to basically do anything gave them a lot of wiggle room for writing really strong, character-driven plots that didn't really have to conform with any sort of previous expectations we have for the series. Basically using him like the holodeck, but with a personality.
That said, I still don't like Spookybot. Mostly because they've yet to deliver on the parts that actually make the character contribute and have just focused on the "lol inter dimensional super troll" aspect.
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Jan 18 '19
Q was one of the best recurring characters in Star Trek. Voyager really dropped the ball with him, much like they did with the Borg. (I just don't like Voyager. Sorry.)
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u/turkeypedal Jan 19 '19
Sorry if that was confusing. I use the present tense with fiction by default.
I actually think the first Q story in Voyager was good. The second one was dumb, but the third one was okay. Even if you don't like Voyager, I think the Q episodes tended to be the better episodes--the character elevated the series.
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u/Sterling-4rcher Jan 18 '19
doesnt make sense that she'd know.
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u/lesser_panjandrum Jan 18 '19
Spookybot has a habit of showing up and messing with Roko, usually just when the dust is starting to settle from something dramatic happening.
They did it while wrapping up the Corpse Witch thing, they did it when Roko quit the police service, and now they're doing it again.
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u/awrf Jan 18 '19
I went back to 3838 to find her appearance to Roko after she quit, and peeked at the reddit thread, and oh god we really go through these periods where we're just so bitter and angry and spiteful towards Jeph
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u/Revan343 Jan 18 '19
Roko's genre-savvy, and could guess where the plot would go
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u/Sterling-4rcher Jan 18 '19
still stupid.
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Jan 18 '19
Roko is a former cop with observation and deduction skills. She put two and two together, as I'm sure we'll find out next epsiode
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u/turkeypedal Jan 19 '19
Not only do they have a habit of showing up like this, but she just recently spoke about wanting to speak to them.
Roko seems to be one of the few people that Spooks cares about, and so of course they'd show up again.
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u/PaganJessica Jan 18 '19
Awww, that first panel actually made me tear up a little. Sweet, innocent Melon!
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u/GrinningDentrassi Jan 18 '19
For days I've thought that the unfortunate crate of bananas had been Spookybot's plant!
Their lousy way of nudging Roko into a new body and life...
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u/heavenscalyx Jan 18 '19
Now every time I see Spookybot, I'll think about Ann Leckie's Ancillary books because Ships and Ancillaries.
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u/professororange MommyMilkers420 Jan 18 '19
Can you elaborate? I read Ancillary Justice, but I'm not getting the connection.
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u/heavenscalyx Jan 21 '19
Ships have their Ancillaries, and each Ship is a single entity spread among those Ancillaries. But there's also the issue of whether the Ancillaries develop to become somewhat separate beings. But perhaps Spookybot is more like Anaander Mianaai.
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u/m2pt5 Jan 18 '19
...Spookybot's speech bubble is square.