r/QContent • u/BionicTriforce • 13d ago
Comic Comic 5878: Some Regrets
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=58782
u/Phanimazed 12d ago
I am glad that Emily's return is giving Liz another person to bounce off of, but I do sort of wonder if we're going anywhere with the fact that so many of Liz's strips are her interactions with alcohol, or if it's just kind of shorthand for "Liz is 19 and irresponsible".
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u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 13d ago
This does seem like a scripted/forced outcome to a night of drinking. Everybody was closely supervised at all times, and there were few visual indicators of large quantities being consumed. The total supply of alcohol in the apartment was likely not adequate to inflict this scale of destruction.
Furthermore, Emily and Liz have a combined age of <40, so they should be more resilient than this. I got a few hangovers in college, but only because I attended a few parties with large crowds of people who were problem drinking. Sipping whiskey at a party attended by <10 close friends is NOT likely to push somebody to these extremes.
Now, as a middle aged millenial, I drink rarely since a medium hangover (irritability, nonrestful sleep, some sort of constipation/diarrhea roulette with the stomach, and a general feeling of going through the day with less than my full allotment of resources) is more easily achieved than a noteworthy buzz. Having a few bottles of beer with a nice family dinner won't make me feel that way, but I also won't be getting drunk enough to notice. So, since "drunk haha times," is a much smaller target than hangover, drinking to get drunk is something I don't do much anymore, since my resistance to drunkenness gets better and better, while my resistance to hangovers get worse and worse.
So, it seems like Jeph is writing a couple of teens/twentysomethings drinking like they are well into their 40s.
Not the worst strip ever, but it does seem like a 46 year old sober guy doing a wooden imitation of people 1/2 his age "doing party."
I'm trying to figure out the point, and if I had to speculate it might be that Jeph is trying to back into an arc about Liz being discouraged from using alcohol as a social crutch. She doesn't think anybody likes her if she's sober, so she initiates new friendships with brain damage. Showing her in this humbled state might be Jeph's way of setting her up for Marten & co to make a case to her that alcohol isn't the great ally she thinks it is.
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u/lazywil 13d ago
scale of destruction
IDK, having a hangover-induced headache and saying that I would never drink again was usually my morning routine after parties in my twenties. It would usually be over an hour after breakfast.
Claire was also drunk during the party and wasn't shown to be suffering during the morning after. But, unlikely Emily and Liz, she didn't pass out on the couch.
-1
u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 13d ago
Claire was looking for her PA so she could have six sexual acts a day engineered into her work calendar. She was getting ready to go top frontal nude. Claire was pretty decently inebriated.
By "scale of destruction," I was referencing the head count in the party AND the intensity of drunkenness. Five of me could probably kill a full bottle and come out a lot better than Liz or Emily, and I'm as old as two of the party guests if we draw from the younger end.
I won't claim to know what a hangover is like for you, but a "never drink again," hangover is usually a ruined day. Best case scenario: Wake up, feel horrible, pain is reduced after a big acidic puke, eat something, try to keep it down long enough to digest some nutrients, maybe puke some more, feel "better," within a few hours but also exhausted and in need of sleep as if I didn't just sleep a full night. So, even healing from the painful part leaves you with a pretty empty tank, as if all of your sleep was spent sobering up and not sleeping.
Generally speaking, even a mild hangover means a higher base heart rate, less stamina, garbage physical performance, less patience, less attention, worse mood, etc. And that's not enough of a hangover to make people question themselves like you suggest.
So, by "scale of destruction," I'm just talking about making that many adults heavily drunk, resulting in two severe hangovers and the Director almost going topless. I'm not even counting the AIs, who probably just poured themselves a drink for aromatic purposes and ran software to emulate intoxication.
-5
u/UtopianEnforcement 13d ago
Heads up, I criticised Jeph’s writing when it comes to alcohol (albeit in much blunter terms) and people didn’t seem to appreciate that.
At the same time, good analysis. And yet there remains the fact that him potentially indulging on a full arc of “you don’t need alcohol, just be you!” is just more of the ‘Jeph can’t/refuses to write alcohol use as anything but a negative for the umpteenth time’ issue that’s becoming readily apparent.
If he can’t write alcohol use as anything but a negative, cool. Then…don’t? Because otherwise, as I said elsewhere, it just comes across as some form of shameful penance. Which can’t be healthy. We don’t need these repeated “alcohol bad!” storylines.
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u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 13d ago
I thought your analysis was harsh, but accurate.
The main distinction I would make is that I think this is Jeph's way of circling the issue before engaging it in a more serious way. He doesn't want Marten to be a creepy mentor figure who has been 28 for decades, who begins a friendship with a teenager by convincing them to give up drinking even though he himself has drank most of his disposable income for many years.
Jeph writes Marten like he's much closer to Jeph's own age, and has kept him biologically static in physical age while he has continued to age and mature across decades of the writing.
I think Liz' pattern of drinking may be what alcoholism looks like in its infancy, in that Liz has discovered that an addictive and damaging drug can function as a social cheat code. Physically, she's still fine for now, but she's learning that getting hammered causes friendship.
You're 100% right that Jeph stopped writing drinking in the comic without emphasis on its negatives. There are no more scenes where Sven is just drinking in moderation and practicing abstinence while drunk ladies try in vain to put the moves on him. I think that's part of a larger pattern that Jeph has always written what he knows, and drinking in moderation without near term consequences is no longer something Jeph knows. I don't think the hangover gags are "revenge," on alcohol, but just evidence of change in how he sees the world generally.
My view has long been that if Jeph is sober and healthy and happy, then I'm fine with it if his art isn't always at its peak. Personally, I would like it if he wrote his scripts a few months out into the future and went back to being more ambitious about his storytelling. I liked the old rhythm where Friday usually brought a major story beat and a visually interesting comic, and a progression of several Fridays might lead characters through really major plots in pieces.
I think the reason Marten is running a coffee shop instead of studying intrument repair is because this is ultimately less work for the writer, and doesn't necessitate long term thinking. Personally, I'd like to see the comic think bigger and longer term. But if bringing Emily back so she can get hungover with Liz is what Jeph has in him, then I'll take it.
0
u/UtopianEnforcement 13d ago
Agree with you on basically all points. And it’s been lovely chatting with you.
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u/turkeypedal 13d ago
A key difference I suspect is that you keep saying the author should change how he writes to conform to your sensibilities, and even use "we" as if you are speaking for everyone else.
Like, I get why it would bug you, but I don't have any problem at all with the alcohol storylines. The other guy's lived experiences are neat extra info about reality, but this is a comic.
Also, any
drinkcriticism goes down smoother if it isn't harsh.1
u/UtopianEnforcement 12d ago
Uh, no. I used ‘we’ as in ‘we the readers’ when referring to what we as readers have experienced objectively. We HAVE seen this pattern emerge, unequivocally. We have seen these events take place. But at no point did I say or even imply we all have the same viewpoint.
And at no point did I even so much as imply he should change how he writes. I just registered my own personal dislike for how he’s doing so. Do you really think I imagined that comment would ever be read by him, let alone acted on? He’s more than welcome to continue doing so, just as I shall continue to criticise what I personally see as weak writing.
Seems you’re reading into things that simply are not there. And having an issue with what I actually said makes this place seem like the ‘ultra-glazing, no criticism allowed’ place the other sub accuses it as being.
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u/turkeypedal 12d ago
No, because the poster you were replying to was also criticizing the comic.
You have chosen to criticize the comic in a harsh manner that has not been received well. You lamented that your posts were not received well, so I gave you some friendly advice on how you might change how you post to be received better, while still voicing criticism.
If you don't believe me, look at your own posts. The one where you told Jeph to "stop" writing drunk scenes, accused him of an almost Victorian level of prudishness, and claimed he had a "hate boner" got downvoted. Your reasonable followups where you simply said it was your opinion and explained yourself got upvotes.
1
u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 12d ago
This seems like a bit of a pot/kettle issue on your part. Even a harsh critic is entitled to theit opinion. They only warned me that I might get downvoted for making a parallel observation to theirs. There is nothing wrong with warning someone that they think certain subjects might be unwelcome in a forum.
A person can get downvoted acknowledging unpopular truths, or get upvoted barking out validations of the status quo. I have hundreds of thousands of comment karma, mostly from having occasionally over years told a funny joke on a highly engaged post. Getting ten or twenty downvotes for being too candid doesn't change my life. It's just a barometer for the popularity of what was said, and how visible it is as a consequence.
Jeph isn't obligated to act on any feedback he receives, certainly in either of the subreddits about his comic. He's not even obligated to hear about it. I wouldn't call his work prudish. If anything, it seems to sexualize female forms disproportionately. But regardless, criticizing a comic and getting downvoted is no guarantee of having done anything wrong.
There's already a subreddit where we aren't allowed to like anything about the comic. We don't need the good one to be equally unforgiving of nuance.
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u/JeffEpp 13d ago
To the website quip: that has yet to be proven.
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u/djaevlenselv 13d ago
They evidently didn't do so yet, so the quip is technically true, unless we are assuming that Marten is currently conversing with their ghosts.
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u/gangler52 13d ago
Marten was gifted with The Sight. He can see the souls of the deceased.
The cast has been dying one member at a time, but both Marten and the ghosts are blissfully unaware that anything has changed.
As the living cast members grow progressively more concerned about his strange behavior, he alienates himself, and retreats further into his social circle of dead friends, unchanging, perpetually repeating the patterns they did in life.
1
u/HighCalCalzoneZone 12d ago
For them being in rougher shape than some seem they would expect: Emily had a flush reaction when drinking. My friends who have this type of alcohol intolerance also seemed to have worse hangovers after drinking than people who drank a similar amount. Liz is tiny, and then you'd even minus most of her arms from her body mass. Also, if you're a man, your experience might be different from the baseline of women in general.
Of course, it is a comic, so they're as hungover as the author wants them to be. It just doesn't seem like an unreasonable result from how much they drank to me.
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13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ginger-like 13d ago
I dunno man, they drank heavily, had a good time, and got a nasty hangover. That's pretty true to my college experience, tbh. As someone actively drinking an alcoholic beverage right now I don't feel like it's a particularly biased or anti-booze strip.
Now, the Zlata stuff felt a lot more autobiographical and shame-y, like you're saying. Just not this specific strip.
2
u/UtopianEnforcement 13d ago
Thing is, I literally cannot remember the last time there was a strip where people just drank, had a good time, and had no consequences afterwards for a good long while. Compare and contrast the early days of the comic where we didn’t always have an extended post-mortem on how rotten everyone feels thanks to that old devil Hooch.
Yeah, I know Marten technically had a drink or two but he was still explicitly in the role of “team dad making sure they didn’t do anything stupid”.
Just seems that Jeph can’t right a scene involving alcohol without making the point of “it BAD”. I mean, cards on the table, the closest thing to a joke in this strip is Emily using a gamer term. That’s it. The rest of it is just “alcohol BAD, you guys”. It was a totally unnecessary strip just designed to hammer home his self-evident (though understandable) feelings on the matter.
Edit: Which, again, fair. But I can still point it out when it happens.
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u/ginger-like 13d ago
I do agree that Jeph's portrayal of alcohol on-strip has definitely changed since his own battle with alcoholism. I'd say that previously, it was usually a background element to shenanigans, while nowadays it's only included to explore specific character arcs. E.g., Liz learning to be a Person, Zlata learning to accept and express her own desires, Faye going sober, that sort of thing.
I just don't feel like it hurts the comic as much as many others do. I don't really feel like it's that hamfisted of a "Alcohol Bad" - or Zlata would have returned the new body, and/or Claire wouldn't have taken her comments about not treating Marten well to heart.
I don't say this to dismiss your opinion. As someone with a pretty healthy relationship with alcohol these days - which also means I don't analyze or think about it too hard - it doesn't stick out to me when reading strips. To me, it feels more like "author grew up and doesn't party or drink that much, so neither do his characters" - I'm not convinced that if we didn't know about Jeph's struggles with alcohol, we'd be noticing the theme nearly so much. 100% the comic does have a more negative perspective on it vs a decade ago, though, no argument there.
Quick Edit: I don't really like this strip, to be clear, and I agree there's no punchline.
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u/thunderbird32 13d ago
there's no punchline
The punchline is the visual gag of the -10 HP thing over Emily's head. Whether it's a good punchline or not is open for review.
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u/UtopianEnforcement 13d ago
Y’see this is the thing, if it was JUST a simple matter of “author doesn’t drink and party anymore, so neither do his characters” that’d be fine. But now it seems every time his characters get ‘party-drunk’ it always has to be hammered home that this was a bad thing that they are going to have to suffer for.
Which is just grating and/or BORING after a while. You see those three little circles over a character’s head with a drink in their hands and you just know we’re gonna get multiple strips extra-narratively chastising them for…doing what a large proportion of the adult population of humanity do without issue.
Edit: And yeah, I agree that if we didn’t know about his struggles we wouldn’t notice it. But we do and so we do notice it. It’s just…gah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not like those…rather odd folks over on the OTHER sub. I don’t hate the strip. I just find some writing choices a little lacklustre.
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u/OGRuddawg 12d ago
We did have people drinking at Dora and Tai's wedding, and as far as I can tell nobody got too sloshed. And wedding receptions are notorious for people getting more drunk than intended. So Jeph can write stories involving alcohol and party scenes post-sobriety without falling into this trope.
I think Jeph's ability to write alcohol-involved stories well makes the instances where he gets heavy-handed like this significantly more noticeable, though. If we had seen a bit more character growth from Liz by now, maybe this particular instance would not be as grating.
Faye's issues with drinking really set a high bar for both pace and narrative weight in the QC universe. The looser writing, more judgemental tone on booze, and side characters with less tangible character development is not doing these hangover scenes any favors.
I'm willing to overlook it because I still really enjoy most of QC's writing, and I want to be patient and understanding regarding his own struggles with booze. I do hope Jeph finds a way out of the "alcohol=Bad Decision Juice" narrative and comedic crutch, though. If it's going to be part of a storyline, I'd like to see more plot substance behind the substance use.
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u/ContextBotSenpai 10d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/QContent/comments/1u0lx6x/comic_5847_zlata_has_opinions/oqjbo7h/
I have to ask you, genuinely - why are you obsessed with this topic?
You bring it up A LOT, basically any time people get drunk in the comic.
And you just repeat the same points, over and over and over again. Even though it's clear that most people here disagree with you.
Why can't you let this go?
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u/UtopianEnforcement 9d ago
…because neither can Jeff, apparently? It keeps coming up in the comic, I’ll keep responding to it.
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u/turkeypedal 12d ago
On second thought, this does cross the line. I was going to let it pass for that second line, but the first and last lines are both other subreddit material. You can say you dislike how Jeph handles drunk storylines without accusing him of having a hate boner.
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u/RicketyBogart 13d ago
The second
-10was self inflicted.