#i think my main gripe with the whole thing is mainly how people still sorta push this idea that these WERE the original myths

[mayadoesfandomstuff]

I do see that the series takes some of the themes from Ovid's work and as much as I do have a mixed opinion on it since his work wasn't necessarily supposed to be an official roman version of things but political criticism of the government as well as a way to trash the greeks, it does work well with the overall theme and narrative that Percy Jackson has built up with how gods are fallible and in fact had done a lot of wrong and them ignoring their kids is an awful thing and they should be better parents.

Like, yeah, I do have my own gripes with the usage of Ovid's Medusa rather than the original Greek one in the story, but it does work with the larger narrative of the series so it's not that big of a deal for me.

#mayaposts #pjo #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson and the olympians #i think my main gripe with the whole thing is mainly how people still sorta push this idea that these WERE the original myths #but that's not really the show's fault or anything and most fans know a lot abt greek and roman mythology so it's not that either #but more like the general audience i think is the main thing? #other than that i dont mind it as much honestly since it's trying to tell a certain narrative akd it makes sense to keep them consistent #and like i typically don't like the trope of ''the god/s was/were the evil ones all along!'' bc i don't find them as engaging and think #they're lazy and unoriginal these days since ppl dont really dissect the trope #i do trust riordan bc i know he could handle complex familial situations well and that includes families with immortality #and as a result he's pretty good at telling a more compelling ''the god/s is/are fallible'' story than most people ive seen #im just rambling now lol

[liskantope]

Back during my early days on Tumblr, around the time I started here actually, I started reading Questionable Content comics from the beginning, 10 per day, to catch up to the current ones (at the time the comics numbered just over 3000). The day I finished the first 1000 I blogged about it, and then after the 2000th and 3000th I reblogged to update my review. The final reblog, from December 15th, 2015, is here.

The 4000th QC comic came out on Friday, and I’ve decided that in keeping with tradition it’s time to write a review of the past 1000 (although I’m doing it in a fresh post and not reblogging because apparently back in 2015 I hadn’t discovered readmore links yet and the post would look annoyingly long). So let’s get right to it... under the readmore link which I now know is a thing.

This past thousand comics, more than the previous runs of 1000, happens to converge upon a few prominent themes and one very prominent new character: Bubbles. As Bubbles is introduced soon after comic #3000 and is then heavily developed through the next thousand comics, with many of the story arcs (including the longest one ever seen in QC) centering on her, I might call the period of this past thousand comics The Year of Bubbles or something like that if in fact it were only a year instead of almost four (The 200-Week-Period of Bubbles doesn’t roll off the keyboard quite as nicely).

More generally, this webcomic has taken the AI theme to a whole new level in the past thousand comics with Bubbles’ introduction and development only the most major component of this -- whereas the presence of AI was a very minor and almost awkward side-issue in the early days of QC, the comic has now gone full-on robot-themed. I’d estimate that something in the ballpark of one third of the content in the #3000′s was focused on robots’ interactions and relationships with each other -- I think for the first time one could say it passed the AI-rights analog of the Bechdel test. Some 1000 comics ago I remember being mildly impatient at how robot-themed the content was getting, perhaps out of a vague feeling that the human characters were the ones I identified with the most (perhaps in the QC universe, and possibly the real world before the end of my lifetime, this would be considered a semi-subconscious form of bigotry which I can’t call “human-ism” but would deserve some term). I particularly remember not being enthralled with Bubbles when she was first introduced and was slightly irritated that she was immediately taking center stage.

But Bubbles, as well as the story arcs involving AIs in general, grew on me a lot, not just as an allegory of real-life social justice issues but as stories which provoke ideas and questions that I find interesting in their own right. In the case of the comics involving Bubbles, I think they mainly show just how masterful the cartoonist Jeph Jacques’ writing and approach to character development has become. Every bit of dialog taking place between Bubbles and other characters (particularly Faye of course) is gold, often without a single word that could be changed. The sequence of scenes during the #3700′s through which Faye and Bubbles finally get together is the epitome of this and in my opinion the very best writing we’ve seen in QC.

The actual outcome of Faye and Bubbles winding up in a relationship with each other, along with all the constant hints and speculation and build-up leading up to it, now that I have much more mixed feelings about. It precisely puts its finger on one of the main ever-present aspects of the ethos of QC which I’ve complained about before more than once and wound up calling “sex-causality”. Part of me wishes I hadn’t spent as many words ranting about this issue and I’m still uncertain on exactly how I categorize it, as purely a personal distaste or something more objective that does happen in certain subcultures and is bad when pushed on members who are uncomfortable with it, or what. But I do think the slow development of Faye/Bubbles over the course of most of the past thousand comics deserves a brief discussion as an example. There are two prongs to this thing: the fact that Faye and Bubbles getting together was the outcome, and the intermittent banter of all of the other characters about that outcome through hundreds of comics in approaching it.

With regard to their getting together in a both romantic and sexual relationship, it would go against my principles to oppose something like this. That said, it’s a departure from what we knew about Faye (which, to QC’s credit, is openly acknowledged), I would imagine that in a universe with human-like still-made-of-metal AI such a thing would still be somewhat more unusual than it’s given credit for being in the comic. Then again, it’s almost impossible not to underestimate the variety and frequency of still-under-discussed sexualities that are out there (e.g. romantic love and sexual attraction towards metal objects is definitely a thing), and certainly it makes the story more interesting, which after all is part of the writer’s job. No, what I think bothers me here is what feels like an under-representation or under-recognition of profoundly intimate friendships that don’t at any point contain an element of one party wanting to sleep with the other -- does there have to be a sexual element to every relationship that’s deep? It was mainly for this reason, I guess, that once I saw a meaningful (platonic) relationship blossoming between Faye and Bubbles, and noticed how well it was written and how much good it was doing each of them, that I feel it was a really beautiful thing as it was and began actively rooting against the ship that most of the other characters were rooting for.

As for the speculation between the other characters, well, if you’ve been following QC and my posts on this issue like the one I linked to above (those of you who have even made it up to this point in this post!), then you might guess rightly that my main reaction was profound annoyance. I don’t like getting on my high horse about other mostly-inoffensive adults acting kind of immature because I’m trying to stay open to it possibly being a personal-taste thing and maybe mostly on my end, but, well, I thought a lot of the banter irritating in a way that perceived immaturity irritates me. These two comics epitomize what I find annoying, and the “You just... seem to care about her a lot, that’s all” line at the start of this one points to precisely my complaint about the existence of deep platonic friendships not being recognized. Anyway, by the time we got past the dinner conversation in the comics I just linked to, I was throwing up my hands and fully onboard with the Faye/Bubbles ship just to finally be done with all the excited speculative giggling. And as I said, when it finally did happen, the writing (including of the reactions of other characters) was fantastic.

To (finally) change the topic away from Bubbles, some of my emotional reaction to QC has shifted subtly while the last thousand comics were coming out. The period of publication from #3001 to #4000 happens to have spanned a segment of my life (which will hopefully be ending soon) in which I’ve felt quite lonely and isolated. And watching all the interactions going on in the QC world makes me feel... not nostalgic exactly because I was never really part of a social circle quite like Marten’s... but rather bittersweet because of how much I’d like to be in so many ways. QC presents a fictional environment that in the confines of my brain I often call a “social utopia” or, perhaps slightly less ridiculously, something like a “social circle / subcultural utopia”. It’s poor terminology because the QC universe on the whole isn’t a utopia in any sense of the word -- in fact there are plenty of social ills that form the backdrop of many storylines -- and even when confined to looking at how the particular social circle operates “utopia” doesn’t seem like an appropriate term. But the variety of people in the social group, the places, they meet, and the way they interact with each other all seems to click together and operate in what I would consider -- and I believe the artist Jeph Jacques would consider -- to be pretty close to idyllic. I like especially how much diversity there is among the characters, both in their backgrounds and interests as well as their quirks, and how completely at ease and accepting they are of each other in spite of or almost because of them. There’s this vibe of “We’re all a little weird but we share the same values about how to be decent human beings, so let’s all revel in our weirdness together and be there for each other through thick and thin!” (Of course there are some bad characters lying on the periphery and kinda-sorta-dicks like Sven who are mostly excluded from the group, but that’s not the core of the world.) With few exceptions, conflicts are resolved in a very systematic way and almost immediately (with only a couple of exceptions that did eventually end happily).

And as a matter of fact, even during times when I was fairly socially happy, I was never part of any group that was so exemplary in this particular way. But reading QC, which is hopefully at least somewhat drawn from the cartoonist’s own experiences, sort of gives me hope or at least a very concrete means of imagining such a crowd. And even if I did feel the need to gripe from time to time about what I call the “sex-casual” norms that permeate the group interactions, honestly in the grand scheme of things that’s just something I could live with or even enjoy if comes through in a non-pushy, non-conformist way, in order to be part of such a welcoming and healthy family.

#qc #bechdel test #artificial intelligence #sex casuality #social life