Hey y'all! I've been taking a group of friends, some completely new/blind readers, others LONGTIME readers through the comic for the rerelease! and as we've been going through these upd8s I've been giving everyone some pointed questions to kind of help facilitate discussion! I'll share the questions I've asked so far, organized by upd8/page number
Upd8 1 (9/11/2025, pgs 1-43)
-So far this story has been formatted like a text adventure, with tons of video gaming abstractions and systems baked into the presentation. Why do you think that is?
-We're introduced to our (presumable) protagonist john, and one of his mysterious internet friends by the username "turntechGodhead" or [TG}. What are your impressions of this TG fellow?
-We saw a few other users (and even saw one get mentioned!) in John's chumlist, one "tentacleTherapist" [TT} and another "gardenGnostic" [GG]. Do those usernames give you any ideas as to what kind of people they are?
-John's got an interesting desktop goin on, and is a bit of an amateru programmer! Any insights onto what's up with the files on his desktop?
2x upd8 combo (9/11/2025, pgs 44-82)
-And with that, the aforementioned TT makes their first appearance! They speak in pink text. First impressions of this TT character?
-This captchalogue stuff sure is a headache! Fetch modii and sylladexes and strife decks, oh my! How do you think it all works? More importantly: what kind of fetch modus would YOU have?
-[S] pages make their debut! These are pages with sound to them. Any expectations for what future [S] pages could entail?
-Anything about John's home at large stick out to you? anything in the decor you find striking or charming?
-we leave off on a fairly haunting cliffhanger! Is this kind of prose what you expected going into this webcomic? How does it set the stage for you, any current predictions?
upde8 3 (09/12/2025, pgs 83-213)
-A fair bit of character interaction going on here! looks like we have pronouns on all of John's internet friends now! Seeing as we've heard from each of them at this point, how are impressions of these characters going?
-and so we see Dad egbert, and had our first Strife! What do you think is *up* with this relationship, it seems pretty wholesome so why so adverserial?
-we're now playing the game proper! So far it seems HEAVILY inspired by the sims and seems to affect the real world. Does this weird interplay between Sburb's gaming abstractions and the comic's own narrative abstractions draw you in more? or maybe it's a little hard to keep track of? How do you feel about it!
-What even IS this game's goal. We've got alchemy and sprites and... an ominous countdown? What are we DOIN here, folks?
-that deep impact poster really clued us in on present predicaments, huh! Any other details you've seen so far that feel like they might be allusions to something else?
And as of me writing, that's all I've got! I'll try to tack on any other questions that I ask our group as we go upd8 by upd8 here in this thread!
And now, I turn the floor over to y'all! You got any fun discussion questions to toss into the mix? would love to hear what's gotten your own reading groups talking!
