Questionable Content XIX: Give Jeph Just A *Little* Credit, Here

[Ionathus]

I should note that when I said Claire is 'teh bestest' I meant current Claire, as in the Claire who seems to have undergone a massively transformative personal experience by having Dora write 'prioritize your needs' on the Coffee of Doom blackboard. The speech Claire makes in panel 3 of comic #4996 is not a speech the Claire of a thousand comics ago would have ever made.

Perhaps Dora's CoD blackboard has magical self-actualization powers? Is that what's been slowly eradicating all sources of interesting drama from the plots?

@Ionathus is completely correct that the most recent comic, by any sort of objective evaluation, is of a person headed for a massive disaster of the personal, the professional, or both. However, would anyone here actually be willing to bet that Claire's going to fail?

Not in a million years. Claire has gone full creator's pet and will succeed at this instantly (after precisely two strips of "oh wow this is really hard but I'm gonna do it because I Believe In Liz For Whatever Reason"). I just don't think Jeph has the guts or the chops to write a failure arc. He did, once upon a time with Faye, but I think he's out of practice and he truly doesn't have any interest in doing it anymore - why risk the status quo when it's a lot easier, more gratifying, and seemingly popular with the target audience on Patreon to shoot for "cozy low-stakes" plots instead?

QC has always been some level of slice-of-life wish-fulfillment, but the small believable ways the characters struggled (Faye with her substance dependence and fraught romance life for instance) made it feel very relatable. Nowadays, I just can't relate to any part of the comic. The characters all succeed instantly at whatever job or personal struggles they have. The AI elements are suddenly way more prominent but Fear Not! They don't change society in any truly meaningful way! They're just pastel people walking around who we occasionally invoke for tonally-iffy real world social commentary.

I've been hoping that things would at least go off the rails in an interesting way. But even Cubetown is shaping up to be just more bland wacky AI hijinks. It's hard to feel much of anything about any of it.