originally posted at https://comicalmomentum.tumblr.com/po...
That’s a well cool title and I’m excited to see what it’s a quote from from.
Sulla breakfast sequence!
The idea of having a trans girl robot is pretty interesting, and it’s a comparison that many trans women have made (my fave being Porp’s take). A lot of the stuff that trans women experience - being considered ‘fake’ women, not human, disposable tools for mens’ gratification at best and dangerous abominations at worse - closely reflects fictional tropes around robots so you can see why we go there so often.
Anyway Sulla is a robot synth who’s cute and trans and can fly so I’m already pretty gay for her.
Speaking of gay like I’ve read this comic before so I already know but I think it’s already pretty obvious that Al and Brendan were a couple.
Capitalism is still a thing. Al and Brendan founded a company called Sterling Corporation who make robots; Brendan is the CEO.
Anyway the comic changes from blue to red tint, which I’m pretty sure indicates the start of a flashback sequence, a conclusion also strongly suggested by the fact the drawing depicts a younger Brendan in a less futuristic place.
Indeed, this is the first time Brendan met Al. We’re going to establish their relationship pretty hard I think!
Brendan passed the Turing test at university. That’s pretty hardcore! Al was still a big grump.
Pretty astute comment from someone called Markus that I’ll just quote in full:
Hmm…apparently, they seem to have had this conversation before…
Something tells me that Al “wanting to be alone” was a major point of contention in their relationship, for both him and Brendan. Brendan definitely seems pissed off about something greater than Al ignoring his advice insisting Al stay in the house.
Actually the comments are remarkably nice on this website! They’re probably moderated I guess.
Back in the flashback – oh my god they’re flirting so much.
I think there is something of a character-focussed dudeslash/yaoi webcomics scene written by mostly cis women - The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal is the most prominent example I can think of, but there’s also Starfighter, and various others - if you look at the Smut Peddler contributors list then you can probably get a pretty clear picture. But most of them don’t have trans girls so I probably won’t cover them here.
Brendan is 23 years old but with huge plans. Al is… older, not sure how old. I hope Brendan’s grandiose vision goes better for him than mine did, lol.
Honestly there is no higher praise I can give than ‘gay’.
OK so I think this take on AI is rather naive - every single synapse is ridiculously complicated in how it functions compared to say, a transistor, and even for animals with mere hundreds of neurons whose interconnections and genome are known (the only one so far being the 1mm long nematode worm C. elegans) it’s a huge challenge to try to simulate the worm’s basic behaviour. (There is an open source project to do just that if you’re interested!)
Nevertheless, it works for dramatic purposes. The robot stuff is relevant insofar as it affects the characters, it doesn’t have to be a “realistic” depiction of the actual state of AI research. And the point is that they get very excited and gay.
But Al is pretty uncomfortable with the idea and keeps pushing Brendan away and oh gosh it’s a very believable dynamic but I worry about them.
Despite being significantly younger I think Brendan understands relationships and stuff a lot better than Al anyway they’re finally going to kiss thank goodness
Honestly it’s short but I think this is a really well-done little romance.
Also, they fuck.
Oh wow it’s Al’s first time, I forgot that part. No wonder he was so awkward.
Also Brendan is Jewish, that’s a nice detail!
Like this is just really good storytelling and ironically I don’t actually have much to say about good storytelling. I just complain about stuff.
Al is celebrating his 40th birthday on Hannukah so I guess he must have been 39 when he met Brendan.
The title is apparently to a song by The Flaming Lips. The song title itself refers to an early and influential occult book from the 60s.
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