Thursday 8 June 2006

Pic of the day: Sample frame.

"Questionable Content"

No, it is not about the content of my Chaos Node! It is the name of a webcomic. And a rather good one too, in my opinion. At least it is almost professionally done. There are so many comics on the web now that are just plain ugly, as if hastily drawn or perhaps made by a child. Often they are in black and white without benefiting from the established techniques to make this limitation into a strength. In contrast, Questionable Content is acceptable from the start, although not professional. After a few months, however, it is quite employable, and stays that way. Not stunning art, certainly, but good craftsmanship.

Actually, some of the days – seemingly at random and in the middle of a story – the comic is all about a genre of music called "indie". I am pretty sure it is a short form of "independent", but I know nothing more about it than what I have read in places such as this, and even then I tend to skip those days. It doesn't seem to hurt. It is just the characters discussing music, and in a highly realistic way. They belong to this subculture, after all, so of course they discuss it. And then they move on to something else. I assume those days have punchlines too, but I don't understand them.

***

And now, somewhat spoilerish about the overarching story. It is essential to the comic: If you hate the premise, you will have a hard time enjoying the rest of it. Me, I loved it. More about why soon.

A young man, Marten, is living alone with his anthro-PC, something in between a PC and a small robot. (It is not essential to the story, but acts as comic relief. The rest of the environment is realistic, it is just that in this reality, people tend to have anthro-PC instead of the desktop or laptop PC we have here.) He meets a young woman who is kinda aggressive. Not sexually aggressive, somewhat to his disappointment, as he is really shy. But she is really straightforward and slightly violent. Also, her apartment burns down and she moves in with him. Still no sex. But because he is just really, really nice, she gets to sleep on his couch for a while. She ends up doing this for months, and things don't really improve. They become good friends, but it is pretty clear that she has some serious issues about emotional closeness. This will eventually be revealed, but I'm not spoiling that for you.

In real life, girls don't move in with boys they don't want to have sex with, more's the pity. I think it would been pretty cool to live with a woman if I definitely was not expected to do the marital arts. Women are a lot of fun. I'm sure long-time readers will remember me writing about this topic in connection with anime too. The sudden familiarity that is thrust upon boys by fate is a recurring theme there, although for the most part slightly different from this. For the most part, but: This very spring there was an anime (REC) about a girl whose apartment burns down and she moves in with a guy she has just got to know, and they don't have sex. Well, except possibly once. Huh. It was less fun than this comic though. I stayed up all night and read this comic instead of sleeping, but I only watched the first few episodes of that anime.

So yeah, recommended.

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And now, of course, I itch to write semi-romantic fiction again. Just like each summer. I should have known it was too good to last.