Questionable Content

I'm generally assuming she not dead, because tone of comic, and a half-sensible police bot design will have an armoured CPU casing or at least will allow regular backups, but (a) she just quit a job that presumably had the robotic equivalent of medical cover, and hasn't formally signed up for new employment yet, and (b) the comic just went to some trouble to tell us that she has particularly close hardware/software integration, so she can't just be loaded onto a cheap substitute shell for the time being.

So she perhaps got financial troubles. The comic taking the chance to rant-by-proxy about the unfairness of the US medical system would not be out of character.

Edited by Spindriver on Dec 21st 2018 at 7:16:22 PM

Welp, it's been a year since Hanners set out on her journey of self discovery with Winslow and Tilly. Reckon they'll make many appearances in 2019, if not a full-scale return to the comic?

I'm gunning for a mid-2020 Hanners return only because the longer wait will at least feel a bit more worth it. Jeph's committed to one year of no Hannelore, so I'm down to see if he'll go two years before he decides to bring her back.

Three+ years is too much though. If she's not back before like July of 2021, I am gonna be mighty peeved.

Edited by MrMallard on Dec 22nd 2018 at 7:30:47 AM

Upload her to Momo's old body. Or make her a toaster!

Put her in a fighter jet, just to spite May.

Roko is probably going to be dealing with a disability experience for at least a little while.

I'd say that this is a blessing for Faye and Bubbles' money situation, but I doubt Roko can afford bank rolling their rent through reasonable repair prices.

I've been watching Red Letter Media recently, only just dived into the channel after hearing about it for years, and this idea instantly brought the show Half In The Bag to mind - where the framing device involves two VCR repairmen fleecing a senile old man out of his money by pretending to fix his VCR, while drinking beer in his house and making excuses as to why his VCR isn't fixed after two and a half years on the job.

Obviously QC isn't that misanthropic and mean-spirited. I could see a much less... Misery, Munchausen Syndrome-style version of this idea being in earlier QC, but probably not today.

This is why it was just mentioned that Roko has a high integration with her body, of course.

Anatomy of Spookybot

I like her already.

Also, one we missed that has absolutely vital detail about Marten's daily life.

Spookybot will factor into this storyline somehow.

She'll either help fix her old body or help her get a new one.

Something happened and 3901 has been replaced with a copy of 3906.

It's got "3901:Family Citrus" at the top and everything.

i am confus

Was there an old 3901? I never saw it.

"Anatomy of Spookybot" was the original 3901.

Oh, okay yeah actually I did see that one.

Oh jeez, are there gonna be more Melon siblings in the future?

If so, then sign me up! Lemon is cute.

#3907

So, this is more of a parallel to car insurance than health insurance. Crushbot is at fault, so his coverage is on the hook for repairs. The question now is, is Roko’s body totaled, or are Faye and Bubbles about to collect a very big bill?

Well, that and any psychological trauma for Roko. It’s established that she identifies strongly with her body — and she has some hang-ups about mechanical damage in general, which come to think of it is probably related — so even if that insurance covers the full cost of building her a perfect replica body, with no practical hassles, she may be gibbering for a few strips yet.

Also, Crushbot is a public menace — he could have landed on someone far less fixable — and no, one really doesn’t want depressive AIs running nuclear plants.

Yeah, the nuclear plant A.I.s are a bit of a Fridge Logic, especially with mention of them having psych issues. Toaster was a one-off gag and positively giddy about his job.

So while sure you would want an hyper-fast and fully intelligent custodian over the plant (even right now we have them super heavily automated, so its just a next step), the very first moment psych issues with those would crop up, it would bring up a reevaluation of the entire system. Give the job to A.I.s that are fine with just surfing the web while sitting in one physical place. Rotate them out with vacations or even daily shifts. Have them with pilotable humanoid bodies. There is a lot more that can and should be done than getting a therapist talk.

The bad news.

I mean, hey, you're either going to have your nuclear power plants run by depressed AIs or depressed humans, and this way means you have to pay less people's therapy bills. Welcome to capitalism, folks!

We got all the good news in a previous strip, but this still has to hurt.

Melon.

Melon being Melon.

Melon's an idiot, but she's a good friend.

That’s a bit more than idiocy; there’s clearly something gone very wrong with her personality programming. And Lemon suggests that it’s not a systematic problem with the design.

"How ethical it is to rewrite a person's brain in order to make them behave in the way we want for what we define as their own good" is a very lively topic that could be covered with robots as an allegory for real-world psychiatry but I don't think Jeph is going for it now or will do it good if he does go for it at some point.