As The Kids Say
that does it for QC comics in 2022! Next week: BEMBO
Comments (90)
Steve was at cubetown when it was being built https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3055
HOLY SHIT
Big mood.
See, Claire is totally fine once you get some answers in her!
Just sad Moray isn't a perm. She is a data-packet, a waldo,.... sigh.
Moray-44 is temporary but Moray-X-22 is persistent :) X for eXtended lifetime presumably...
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
Thanks for all the great comics. I open even one with anticipation, which is justified at an astonishingly high rate. May your days be merry and bright.
I love all the deep speculations about the origin and makeup of the Director, but all the while I've been thinking something like "Huzzah! Bembo! More barbarian-heroing silliness!"
Bembo is the way a Conan story would go if you did at at a D&D table :) One of my parties includes a barbarian who adopted a wolf in session 1. It's called Fluffy :)
Stephen Wells above mentioned the extruded Morays "returning to the pool" and I immediately thought of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Young. So now y'all have to think about that too.
That would be "Abhoth Source of Uncleanness" Courtesy of Clark Ashton Smith " ...[H]e described a sort of pool with a margin of mud that was marled with obscene offal; and in the pool a grayish, horrid mass that nearly choked it from rim to rim... Here, it seemed, was the ultimate source of all miscreation and abomination. For the gray mass quobbed and quivered, and swelled perpetually; and from it, in manifold fission, were spawned the anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. There were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with fishes' fins; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous, that grew in size as they departed from the neighborhood of Abhoth. And those that swam not swiftly ashore when they fell into the pool from Abhoth, were devoured by mouths that gaped in the parent bulk."
"Extruding a whole new person" is the new definition of "delegating."
Elon Musk is currently trying to extrude a new CEO…
I imagine The Director just hovering behind them in the background already watching and hearing. I mean, look at that glow. He already knows “Big mood” when Moray 44 gets reabsorbed.
The DIrector already got distracted and is thinking about five-dimensional squid. Again.
If I'm Claire and I still need a job, I want to change the subject and ask to tour the library or wherever I'll be working.
I had this first feeling time we learn about cube town but... could it be the place where Yay is originate from?
Given their reaction to Claire interviewing there, I think they came from someplace else. It could be that Yay and The Director are from the same lab, though. Or, perhaps competing labs.
Clinton is going to lose his mind when he hears Claire got to see this whole thing firsthand and he didn’t.
RIP, Clinton…
When spend your time thinking in nonlinear five dimensional mathematics, it’s easier to spawn off a child process when you need to communicate with a subject-predicate English user. And I’m a little iffy on the implications that Moray-44’s unique sentient experience will come to and end as soon as she’s reabsorbed. But somehow I just know she cheerfully consents to this end of her existence, for the greater good.
That was a very deep rabbit hole to fall down on Wikipedia, extremely interesting even though I don't know how well I understood it all. TIL about 5 dimensional mathematics, polytopes and was reminded that I briefly touched on the physics aspect in a college course many years ago. I love to learn 👍 FOR THE GREATER GOOD. always makes me think of Hot Fuzz
The director is made out of slime girls 🥰
"The Director is a Slime Harem' is filmed before a live studio audience."
This raises profound questions about identity
Hello laridia!
Does the Director strike anyone else as possibly a spinoff of whatever project created Yay (or vice versa)? It/they (??) has/have multiple instances that communicate, but asynchronously, where Yay's bodies communicate in realtime. It would explain why Yay was apparently contemptuous of Cubetown but also positive Claire going there--sibling rivalry?
Much of this feels Yay-adjacent, yes. I'm also strongly reminded of Alice Grove, the sci-fi comic Jeph did a few years ago
God damn it, this is a major plot point in the novel I'm currently writing. Curse you Jacques!
This has Rick and Morty butter passing robot vibes
Bet, no cap 👀 (One of the best parts of teaching high school is coming home and teaching my nerdy, late-30s, engineer husband new slang, then watching him use it all wrong)
Mood.
Oh great, I'm going to stare at the ceiling all the rest of the year every night with the brain weasels wondering "is there still a Moray after the Director reabsorbs them" to go with "does the transporter make a copy of you and kill you".
I don't know the answer to the first yet, but the answer to the second is definitely
BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO BEMBO!
Bembo?
As Nero Wolfe would often observe “ Good slang.”
I wish I had a Moray to find slang, argot, or lingo before it's turned uncool. Then again, a lot of people depend on me as the bellwether of passe-ness.
I frequently feel like I'm the least cool of all of my friends. And then I go to stuff like the company Christmas party and find I need to explain all the lingo I use. Sigh.
I love this comic so much. You rock Jeph! Have a great Holiday break
Have a wonderful holiday, Jeph. And thanks for another year of Questionable Content, my favorite web comic.
Thank you for making my 2022 lighter and more joyous! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
I'm waiting for Jeph to drop the "that's a Moray" pun. I can tell he's got it all planned out
I'm not sure he needs to - the readers have been doing a bang-up job of it during this whole storyline. :)
Nailed it. They get re-absorbed when their job is done.
Moray x-21 seems to have been persistent for long enough that I don't think that is the only way, or reason, for the knowledge from a "facilitator" to be uploaded. That's assuming the designation for each Moray is not reused though. Or perhaps Moray-44 is the first of the type that transmits/uploads experiences back upon job completion and reabsorption? That could explain the difference in appearance and naming convention.
I wish I could make a Moray when I need to meet with people and my brain is galaxies away.
I'd like to make a Moray when I need to meet with people and my brain is right there in the room.
Kinda want to see a series of Moray’s decreasing in size and Jellyfish-like-ness that then have to translate back and forth with inevitable mistakes. “Big mood” becomes “large cow noise” etc.
Perhaps something like the little cats from ‘The Cat in the Hat Comes Back’?
And now back to the real star of QC ... Bembo!
The Director is Jamie Madrox!
When she said far down at the other end of the spectrum my brain went to "Oh a jellyfish, then"
Happy holidays!
This Moray reminds me of a book, Kiln People by David Brin. The principal (you) can make copies of yourself to deal with other things you either don't want or have time to do. At the end of their usefulness they get re-absorbed and then the original get the memories of what they experienced that day. Great book.
I loved the premise of "Kiln People", and really enjoyed exploring the world of it. I think it falls apart a little when he figured out he had to *end* it somehow, but it's still a fun read.
Yay *could* have warned her...
I think Yay thought they did warn her. It's just, Yay isn't *that* much better at communicating than Morays are. To be fair, they're significantly better at communicating than the Director is.
Is Moray named by a mistake? I could see Moray 1 not successfully communicating with a poor local Canadian Engineer, and then when a second one is extruded, the engineer says “More, eh?”
Two AIs passing by, cast a pattern in your eye, that's a Moiré
Conversation is dry, like hot sand in your eye, make a Moray
\o/
BEMBO!
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
I'm so excited for Bembo
same
Swerve: Bembo lives in Cubetown and is Alice's brother
Hmmm... the Director can extrude a new entity with human verbal and gestural skills, but can barely express itself directly? That has some fascinating implications... (here's looking at you, Yay)
I am now imagining the giant octopus AI saying mood at random things because they still don't quite understand how the slang works but want to feel included.
And now -I- can't unimagine that. :P
Note to self: Don't use "hey, baby, want me to reabsorb you?" as a pickup line. It'll fail miserably. Note to self (additional): ...or will it?
I never reabsorb on the first date!
BEMBO the wonder chimp?
Kind of.
Y'all are acting like disassociating so you can deal with bulshit is weird, but if you work in retail it's how you spend 90% of your time.
Dissociating to deal with bullshit is probably the only reason I'm alive now. For some values of bullshit.
And this is why the Director brings about Morays. She's already calmed down a bit, lol. Hope you have a great holidays, Jeph! Looking forward to more QC next year!
I never realized how much I've wanted to be able to just extrude part of my consciousness into another being in order to communicate with people and reabsorb it afterwards so I can concentrate on other stuff until now.
Big mood.
So is this like a sister to the AI we’ve been following?
I like that Moray-44 seems distinct from Moray x-21. I assumed that they would be a duplicate, but the personalities seem distinct and separate, at least from the limited dialogue thus far.
It's also very reassuring to see Claire acknowledging the emotions and everything that has happened "big mood" sums it up nicely. I believe I was more mistaken than I realized when saying that Claire came across as a bit immature. Happy to be proven quite wrong. I still love Claire more and more, and can't wait to see where this goes in the new year. Edit* I think my own conditioning and experiences and even my biases made it harder for me to relate with Claire on certain aspects as well. Things that absolutely anyone should be bothered by that I've over time learned to accept even if I should not have. I appreciate the numerous people who have pointed out the flaws, hypocrisy, or unfairness in how I was treating this situation. I have enjoyed most of the discorse over the past several days, and it's given me some valuable things to think on further. **I have also really liked the art, and specifically Claire's look for this whole arc. She is somehow becoming even more adorable. Someone mentioned her channeling the doctor... specifically Matt Smith...and how cute she would look with a bowtie, and I could not agree more!
Okay, so it’s not being run by an idiot as much as a being that doesn’t understand humanity. Or common sense.
That... explains why they need Claire.
Well, Claire just re-adjuster her world view fast. Turns out that if you witness a new being created out of a tentacle, it provides a brain reset.
I think it's like how you can be mad about something with a company, but you don't want to yell at the customer service person because you know it's not their fault. Moray-44 literally didn't exist until moments ago, so she can't be held responsible for historical problems.
Excited to see where this goes in the new year!
Ah, she's calmed down a bit then. Huh.
Maybe she couldn't bring herself to be mad at someone who, technically, hasn't done anything yet xD