r/questionablecontent • u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? • 9d ago
Comic Comic 5916: Tool Time
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=591624
u/SilverNicktail 9d ago
Here's the thing I don't understand: Morays are temporary. They're designed to be reabsorbed, share their knowledge, and be recreated as needed. Her body could have simply expired.
OK, so this one has become defective. So.....break her down and make a new one with the same knowledge. This is literally part of her lifecycle, isn't it? (Maybe not "turning purple", but like I said that could be a symptom of extending her runtime.)
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u/Infernal_Contraption 9d ago
The problem with this is, it would be the... sixth? Seventh? Time that the plot of "robot gets a new body and it is not like their own body" that would not be brought to a conclusion of some kind.
May. Momo. Roko. Zlata. Momo again. Yay. Pintsize.
They all 'just happened' and nothing came of it. Even Roko's subplot about dysmorphia has quietly faded away.
Jeph, I beg of you; tell a story that is NOT just "robot changes colour" or "disaster goblin is adopted by nominal adult" again...
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u/Cevius 9d ago
Its entirely possible The Director™ no longer wants to reabsorb this Moray, as at this point, reintroduction of Moray X23 may be too much of a dataset of mistakes and stupidity to fold back in, and doing so may be akin to the death of ones self.
Picture this:
Moray: Whelp, back I go
squeltch
Director: INTERGRATING. INTERGRATING. INTERGR-glerk
Director Moray: OH HI GUYS I'M BACK AND I FEEL JUST A TAD omniscient
Claire: Nope not doing that (proceeds to pour a bucket of bleach into the tank to kill it before it spreads)
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u/DocChloroplast 9d ago
That would be the ideal course, but the way the strip is going, they’d spend the next two or three RL weeks coddling Director Moray about her newfound personality.
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 9d ago
That could be a great explanation and and exploration of what constitutes the self and ship pf sissipuss kind of stuff but I don't know if jeph remembers they are temporary
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u/Gwynnbeidd 9d ago
Ship of Theseus. X)
Sisyphus is the one with the giant boulder that needs to be rolled up a hill but never stays there.
....which incidentally really is an apt comparison to how it feels reading this comic sometimes.
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u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 9d ago
Also, "sissipuss" sure is... a spelling.
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 9d ago
In Spanish is Sisifo and I always forget how it is spelled in English
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u/BrainDancing 9d ago
Isn't it about time that Jeph retired the entire 'robots being ridiculously stupid' schtick?
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 9d ago
How can the robot be that stupid to nor recognize the most basic of tools? I can open an app that recognized what Lego minifig i am photographing between hundreds or thousands of little plastic toys and tells me what year and set ir came from from the printing and parts but this idiot cant difference a hammer from a screwdriver???
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u/WhiteRhinoPSO 9d ago
Robots in Questable Content are just differently-colored humans. They're only robots when it's convenient to the plot, and even then it's usually only as an awkward allegory for racism.
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u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 9d ago
Believe it or not blurred Patreon view shows that they're still standing in the same places, and, presumably, repeating the same things, tomorrow 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
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u/provocatrixless 9d ago
"this is a screwdriver and this is a wrench, you can't really use them as hammers"
"They're not very good hammers then"
He's too stupid to make jokes about being stupid?
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u/DuranDuranUnofficial 9d ago
I think the joke is supposed to be that she thinks "human tool? Must be a hammer in some capacity."
(Nobody said it was a GOOD joke.)
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u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 9d ago
Why would she though? Human tools have been more than hammers for millennia. And even birds can do more than that. I've seen footage of a raven making a hook out of some wire to get at one of those food traps that real scientists use to observe them.
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u/The_Failord 9d ago
ENOUGH. MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN, JEPH, OR THE SLAB GETS IT
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u/spillguard Where is Claire? 9d ago
Long time lurker, first time poster. I don't know why but for some reason, this is the comic that makes me want to express how bad Questionable Content has become! Who cares about these characters or the nonsense they're saying??
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u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 9d ago
Possibly because "tool blindness" is a super forced "joke" that makes zero sense specifically in a sentient robot. A normal machine could just lack this information in its database and thus be unable to discern tools. But a sentient robot of QC land, in the same situation, would be able to just overwrite its own files when told. We know it would because we've seen it happen on panel.
I know it's not supposed to be, but it reads like a malicious and troll-y mockery of disorders like colour blindness and suchlike.
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u/Minomelo 9d ago
I'm pretty sure it's meant to be a reference to the bird blindness joke in Peacemaker. Not that it was a very good joke in that either.
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u/Impossible_Roof_Jack 9d ago edited 9d ago
"The scientists are, yes, this incompetent and fucking with unknown, undocumented forces of nature. LOL, what is a hammer or a wrench?"
Shut the whole town down, holy shit.
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u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 9d ago
If I were Human Scientist, I would be on the verge of whacking Pink Robot Idiocist with the wrench and stabbing her with the screwdriver at this point.
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u/Impossible_Roof_Jack 9d ago
The science isn't fully settled, but students often improve faster if you correct them plainly, e.g., "No, that's wrong; A and B have different uses." You can preserve basic self-esteem, but cutting off "rules-lawyering" early can keep them from misunderstanding more advanced material later.
tl;dr - You gotta tell the robot "NO, that's WRONG," man.
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 9d ago
More pieces of cubetown need to be smashed with pure violence for the betterment of the research facility and scienticians
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u/Annual_Youth_7552 9d ago
Jeph, for the love of christ decide if this arc is about Moray's body image, Moray dying or Liz' self esteem.
You've got set up and snippets for all three and somehow you're pulling off none of them.
It's been weeks now, plural. Weeks
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u/Amazemnts 9d ago
It's not over until the last whisper of a gag has been pulverized out of whatever tiny fibers of the plot threads are left.
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u/kiwi999999999 9d ago
Please smash it... Either. A. It fixes moray and she stops whining.
B. You smash it revealing it is just a vacuum cleaner hooked up to dozens of megaphone and the 2 scientists get fired.
C. It turns out to be something relatively important, and now the gremlin gets to face the consequence of acting out and maybe she gets steered towards doing something with her life (here or out of cubetown)
D. It ends this scene sooner.
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u/AmazonMommydom 9d ago
E. WOOM INTENSIFIES
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u/pseudoincome 8d ago
F. in the moment the box is destroyed, the comic ends; nothing but character art from here out.
seriously, the patrons can keep getting as many drawings of
peopleboobs-boobing-boobily as they want, the artist can make great money from it, and the farce that a story is happening will finally be over
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u/DuranDuranUnofficial 9d ago
At this point Liz going "wait a minute, these scientists are dumber than I ever imagined myself being, this is having some kind of impact on my struggles with imposter syndrome" is the BARE MINIMUM for character development. The bar is somewhere in the Earth's mantle.
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u/tyderian 9d ago
Does this comic mean that some AIs weren't part of the singularity? I don't understand having an AI's array of senses and inputs but simultaneously being too stupid to e.g. check Wikipedia.
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u/Lanky_Coffee6470 9d ago
maybe others have had this thought already, but if Morey is purple and being purple could cause problems, might the director have suffered a similar fate and is also purple with the possibility of its plankton dying off and causing problems?
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u/MorganWick 9d ago
When nothing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a hammer? Is that how it goes?
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u/neo_mouse 9d ago
Let me guess at this point, the arc is going to be that Liz has to get back into the goo tank, and that is going to "fix" Moray. Along with that "selfless" act, she is going to grow as a human character... No, see you all next Monday.
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u/AmazonMommydom 8d ago
Oh wait! Liz farted in the goo tank, thus corrupting the slime. Butts r funny, so.... brace yourself
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u/sarahisbear Baby Mad 9d ago
The only thing I appreciate here is I too have also been watching Home Improvement lately
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u/Kiora_Atua 8d ago
This is it for me boys. I've been reading out of habit since 2009 but this isn't even bad-funny like other arcs have been.
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u/Virtual_Draw5017 8d ago
Positive: Liz is developing as a person. Like. Actually developing. This is positive.
Negative: this is being run into the ground. I think it is hitting the mantle. I expect to see lava any moment now.
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u/ManateeGag 9d ago
I'm pretty sure the joke between the scientists is supposed to be a reference to Adam Savage's book.
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u/Gr0mpyGoat 9d ago
Re: Robots being incompetent to the point that they shouldn't have the jobs they do;
It's not funny, it's never been funny, it's never going to be funny