Webcomic / Vulgar Vulgar

So many awkward silences...

Boole.exe: The way we think stems ultimately from either the first Nought or One. Please select "Continue Lesson".
Dromie: Uh...
Boole.exe: Q: What principle best describes what you have just heard?
Dromie: Uh...
Boole.exe: You have three seconds.
Dromie: UH!!

— Chapter 1: We’re So Connected It Kills Me

Vulgar Vulgar is a weekly science-fiction webcomic by Irish non-binary artist Coireall Carroll Kent. It began on 10th June 2020, and so far follows the life of Dromie Lorenz from birth to adolescence, as one of a civilization of pyramid-headed bionic human beings. The comic’s backdrop is a low-key technological dystopia with evidence of a totalitarian ultra-capitalist regime.

Vulgar Vulgar is prime Speculative Fiction and Science Fantasy, even though it heavily relies on the concept of humanity’s submission to invasive, corporation-built technology (with tech-jargon to boot).

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Vulgar Vulgar provides examples of:

• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Gendered-language is used pretty sparingly around the main characters.
• Bio-Augmentation: Sex-Ed reveals the weird puberty that everyone has to go through. Most likely a side-effect of tampering with the human body to assimilate with technology, but who knows.
• Body Horror: Everyone’s head has been replaced with a square-based pyramid (and judging from Dromie’s birth by C-section, they’re born like that now). Also, depending on a person’s sex, they’re covered either with Charles Burns-style mouths or tentacles on their abdomens.
• Brain/Computer Interface: Students at St.Isidore’s plug themselves into a mother-computer to access their classes.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The cybernetic head invention was invented in the name of progress, but seems to be more of a hindrance than anything. They seem to work like desktop computers with VR elements, yet they were installed at the cost of anybody having a face (supposedly undesirable).
• Eating Optional: Or else, not possible. Sustenance is gained by charging.
  • Dromie receives a birthday cake, but only as a token gesture to blow out the candles with a handheld fan. Looks like the symbolism of the birthday cake remains, but they don’t eat it.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: Reckoning with a [[Squick monstrous version]] of puberty and the general existential horror of never having your own face are prominent issues. But just as much are Dromie’s bad grades and violent tendencies, as well as Touman’s struggle with demotion.
• Fetish-Fuel Future: Potentially. Sorry.
• Future Imperfect: An alternate, made-up history based on Christian motifs and ideas is taught in Dromie’s class.
  • The mathematician George Boole is both a teaching software and a God Guise.
  • The Singularity: A teacher at St.Isidore’s claims that The Singularity “happened in the distant past”, using a pseudo-Christian theory resembling Adam and Eve, suggesting that this version of humanity evolved from pure numbers.
• Future Slang: Tavine gives Dromie the derogatory nickname “Dromie Decimal”. The purity of the “fundamental” numbers, 0 and 1, is a nod to binary code. So calling Dromie a decimal number is math-based slang intended to be insulting.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Again, the inventions of Verticality had weird side-effects and implications: loss of head and face, and the growth of mouths or tentacles.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every page is named from a quote from said page, resulting in some unfortunate examples such as (Pop, pop, whoom, whoom, whum).
• Ignored Expert: Touman.
• LGBT Awakening: The author has mentioned in a comment-section discussion that the binary code analogy is directly related to the gender binary in this coming-of-age.
• Parents as People: Touman and Marinee have (or, at least, had) lives outside of their parenting.
• Speculative Fiction LGBT: Particularly referencing a world where the gender binary is imposed on individuals when they begin puberty rather than from birth.
• Suit with Vested Interests: Verticality demotes Touman after he pitches his solution to a problem with their invention, claiming that taking his ideas on board would end their chain of production.
• Technobabble: Occurs in dialogue and in strings of jargon-laden processes that can cover entire pages.
• The Bully: Tavine is very openly a jerk.
• The Metaverse: The students at St.Isidore’s are educated by accessing a Metaverse-like space where they’re taught by the program Boole.exe.
• The Talk: Awkward moments ensue at question time.
• Transhuman: Everybody depicted in Vulgar Vulgar has the same pyramid-head augmentation.
• Trans Nature: Dromie is distressed by the grotesque visual in Sex-Ed class, adding that the strange mutations that everybody must undergo“[are] some kind of joke”.
• Unusual User Interface: Yes, the citizens in Vulgar Vulgar do browse the internet and software by plugging themselves in.
• Where Did We Go Wrong?: Touman and Marinee have a conversation after finding out that Dromie punched the school’s learning software in the face.
• Wetware Body: But also kind of Wetware CPU. It’s difficult to tell.
• Wetware CPU: But also kind of Wetware Body. It’s difficult to tell.

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