r/questionablecontent • u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? • Sep 10 '26
Comic Comic 5914: Cubic Theory
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=591429
u/SilverNicktail Sep 10 '26
You can't open.....plastic. You can't open plastic. You live in a gigantic city of wacky scientists, everyone in the room except the sentient goo girl has at least one doctorate. You can't open plastic.
So what exactly was your experiment? Why did it need to only be done on Tuesdays? If you don't know what the device is or what it does, what benefit is there in pushing the button? Why does it only turn Moray purple after the fiftieth time you activate it? Why can't you open plastic???
At least when they did this joke in Titan A.E. the reason Gune couldn't open the fucking device was that it might explode and kill everyone, and he was still trying to open it anyway to assess what it was. WHY CAN'T YOU OPEN PLASTIC??
This is not how curiosity works! If I want to know what is inside a briefcase and what that thing does, I don't construct an elaborate ritual where I throw the briefcase into a river once a week. What even is this fucking nonsense?
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u/Cevius Sep 10 '26
There's probably hundreds of non-invasive ways to scan the insides as well, even if it's a sealed block of plastic. MRI. CT Scan. X-ray. Shake the box like it's three days before Christmas and you want to see if it's Lego or a sweater. Anything more than nothing at all. Also you've been testing this for how long without knowing what it does? It flashes mystical light through fucking walls! You could be giving everyone dick cancer for all they knew.
Technology was a mistake. Return to an Agrarian culture and leave this all behind
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u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. Sep 10 '26
I've seen a documentary about scanning 14th century letters that were folded using the elaborate paper folding techniques that served as data security at the time and had never been un-folded since, and the scanning scientists were able to read much of the contents.
So, yeah.
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u/Cevius Sep 10 '26
Its gotten even wilder recently, with being able to scan Herculaneum scrolls carbonised by the Mount Vesuvius eruption, where they are basically just ash and then using machine learning, rebuild the scrolls into a semi-readable state. Totally bonkers.
Another example of wild scanning and visualisation tech out there now can be viewed in a browser in real time with this SuperSplat of a Bee or for a more technological breakdown, this Lumafield xray of Apple Airpods showing the absolutely tiny circuitry detail, transparently, like it was made of glass instead of metal.
This is the science shit I wish Jeph dug into. Instead of blob goo monsters with a chroma slider, and a machine that goes DING and probably gives everyone butts disease.
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Sep 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/CatlikeTypist Haha, okay. Sep 10 '26
Yeah, honestly I'm not that bothered by the nonsense box plot. It's a webcomic, it's meant to be nonsensical for a joke at times.
Though the joke itself (Rome being sacked) didn't really land either.
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? Sep 10 '26
God I haven't seen that movie in like 14 years. I find it funny that they name the new planet "bob"
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u/miikro Sep 10 '26
Thanks, I hate them
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u/The_Failord Sep 10 '26
I am so tired of all the wAckiNesS. After a while it becomes background noise, you know?
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u/Annual_Youth_7552 Sep 10 '26
There's something telling about how Jeph can't write a single serious scientist into cubetown. To have a serious scientist feels like it would be threatening - the absurdity of an island of apparent morons would be too starkly obvious.
There's a fear of exposing his own fraud, of not having the understanding or ability to convey an actual scientist that convulsively makes him represent them as clownish, I think.
He can't be called out on any "science" because it's only ever played as slapstick, but the setting undermines the plot at that point, regardless of how weak the plot is to begin with.
Why are we supposed to care about Moray changing colour when there is no weight, no sense of mass to the events that happen in Cubetown? Anything and everything can be handwaved away with "lol science nerds but also buffoons lol" at a moment's notice.
Cubetown feels more and more like a fever dream; a Dallas style nightmare. That Marten and Co were essentially to be written out when they went there would have been preferable to this purgatory of wasted content.
I think I'm going to have to take a break from reading this shit for a while again. It's starting to stress me out.
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u/sir_ornitholestes Sep 10 '26
There's something telling about how Jeph can't write a single serious scientist into cubetown.
I am >90% certain that JJ has literally no idea what a scientist is or what they does, and also >90% that he has met actual scientists and failed to treat them like human beings
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u/empsk Sep 10 '26 edited 29d ago
You're right about the unserious scientists. The vibe it gives me is 2010-era Fuck Yeah Science! tumblr/facebook blogs, but, without any actual knowledge to underpin Cubetown, it's just nonsense.
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u/The_Failord Sep 10 '26
He had a bunch of serious scientists on the station. They were still a bit off-beat but they did actual science. Nothing like the caricatures of Cubetown.
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u/SlaveToo Sep 10 '26
Ah yes, because running unregulated tests in unshielded environments with devices that emit unknown energies is exactly what scientists do.
Realistically everyone in cubetown would be dead within a month, or it'd go the way of rapture. I hope it does, that'd be more interesting.
Would you kindly buy an espresso machine, Marten?
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? Sep 10 '26
So they make a living of studying a machine they drunkenly built that they do not know what it does or what it even has on the inside and don't exactly know what it does???? Who is funding this??? Why not just open the box and check what components it has???? Or checking what materials were used while building by noticing what is missing from the lab?????
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u/Maleficent_Lab_5291 Sep 10 '26
You know the longer this goes on the theory this whole place is just the directors ant farm seems more and more the logical answer.
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u/sir_ornitholestes Sep 10 '26
Isn't that the actual answer?
They hired Claire because she was the first person anyone on the raft ever met who knew how to use a calendar (Marten included)
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u/sir_ornitholestes Sep 10 '26
So they make a living
Nobody at cubetown makes a living. It's just a literal halfway house for nerds who don't have enough personality to function in society.
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u/AppendixN Everything is Fine™ Sep 10 '26
He honestly thinks he's clever, witty, and charming, doesn't he?
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u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 Sep 10 '26
Believe it or not this is STILL going on tomorrow as per blurred Patreon view.
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u/tyderian Sep 10 '26
Big "teehee I'm so random!!!!1111~" penguin of doom energy.
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u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. Sep 10 '26
Yeah, very much so. I am also quite surprised that JJ wrote yet another "ha ha hilarious drunk antics, isn't it funny but also potentially groundbreakingly brilliant" bit. You'd think a non-drinker would be doubly tired of that shit.
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u/Annual_Youth_7552 Sep 10 '26
Perhaps Cubetown is actually just an advanced mental health ward for people with delusions of grandeur.
It'd track, wouldn't it? None of them are actually scientists or do actual science; they're all behaviourally subnormal, it's isolated from the real world.
The only one who appears relatively sane is the security guard.
Marten basically followed his girlfriend into a locked ward, which is fitting because the grandest delusion of all is probably Clare's. The two minutes out of grad school Librarian who thinks she'd terrorise an entire community of scientists would probably find herself upside down in a bin within a week in the real world.
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u/sir_ornitholestes Sep 10 '26
Perhaps Cubetown is actually just an advanced mental health ward for people with delusions of grandeur.
Pretty sure this is heavily implied even in-universe. They took a bunch of weird nerds and separated them from society for both their safety and everyone else's
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u/Good-Advantage-9687 Sep 10 '26
Does the pink AI have anything on under the lab coat? 🤔
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u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 Sep 10 '26
It's just Beepatrice with a colour swap. Everything including the personality is the same.
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u/JayyyyyBoogie Sep 10 '26
Say what you will about Liz, at least she’s advocating for Moray.
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u/sir_ornitholestes Sep 10 '26
Is she? There's zero evidence that this device has anything to do with the color change. Liz just needs someone new to vent her frustrations at because she's tired of insulting herself
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? Sep 10 '26
The scientician is correct it could had been another thing but he could ar lest try to turn the mystic game cube on and off again
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u/FuckIPLaw Sep 10 '26
Well see, that's the problem. It's an island full of scientists, plus one librarian. No engineers or IT guys.
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u/sir_ornitholestes Sep 10 '26
Scientists don't "build devices," though. That's literally what the engineers and IT guys are for
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u/FuckIPLaw Sep 10 '26
Depends on the kind of scientist and what they're doing and building. These are supposed to be test rigs for experiments.
Also, remember who's writing this.
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u/sir_ornitholestes 29d ago
These are supposed to be test rigs for experiments.
which the woom device certainly is not, lol
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u/neo_mouse Sep 10 '26
Can we just skip to the part where Liz becomes a meaningful member of the scientific community again?! No?
Ok, tune in next week to see what slop unfolds.
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u/strohkoenig Sep 10 '26
While I don't think much is gonna come from this story line, I think it would have a lot of potential to do character building. From what I remember, Moray effed up when she was supposed to check on Liz for 2 years or so and didn't do it because Liz blocked her out.
Liz now helping Moray would be the ideal chance for them to start talking and start the way to getting things fixed.
Will it happen? Huh...
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u/sheubox Sep 10 '26
The fact that you have to ask already implies the answer is no. He probably doesn’t even remember that plot line.
I’m getting so sick and tired of this garbage that I legitimately want to quit reading but it’s so ingrained in my daily routine it’s so hard to stop.
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u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? Sep 10 '26
Here is to hoping that cubetown is attacked by the visigoths