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Artifice Page 23

Artifice Page 23 published on 98 Comments on Artifice Page 23

A little chat around the water cooler. Just another day at the office.

And the survivor gets a name! Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to formally introduce Jeff.

How do you think he’s handling this?

Special thanks to mari, Marina T., Jonathan D., Wilbert B. and Jessica N. for their generous donations this week—they are very much appreciated! 😀

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98 Comments

Oh man! I was so distracted by how creepy smiley-Deacon is that I saw this all week before the update, and I STILL didn’t even see Jeff’s expression in the first panel!! XD It’s a killer! That’s…. there’s a noise that teenage girls make that goes with that expression. I can’t put it into type very well but it sort of sounds like tCHuh! And it is the most obnoxious Valley-Girl sound ever.
I said I’d like to see the notes on what the characters are thinking, but here I don’t even need them. Jeff is thinking, “Is this guy for REAL?!”

Have read through this maybe four times and it’s still as awesome as ever, some sentences took a few times for me to read to understand but that is because English is not my native language, but compared to other sci-fi stories I find this more easy to understand and I love Winona’s style and composition of each square. 🙂 Also…Jeff’s HAIR<3

one thing i noticed about Jeff is how ragged and ill fitted his clothes are. I’ve looked at the corpses’ clothing and the are in much better condition(minus the blood). it makes me wonder if Jeff even supposed to be on Da Vinci IV. I keep thinking stowaway on a supply shipment or prisoner there. I would makes sense for why he wasn’t with them if he was hiding from the colonists or was stuck in a cell.

hmm… but why would he have access to the system if he was either of those… hacker maybe? I think jeff’s android issue would be solved by a big magnet.

“It’s Jeff.”
“So, Jeffery -”
“It’s JEFF.”

Oh god. My real name is ‘Jenna’, and people are ALWAYS doing that, assuming my name is ‘Jennifer’ and calling me that instead. It’s enough to drive a gal mad, especially since I don’t care for the name ‘Jennifer’ (familiarity breeds contempt. One year in Elementary school, we had FOUR Jennifers in my class).

Oh my lord.  My name’s Dawn, and people are always assuming that it’s actually Donna abbreviated, so I understand the frustration.

On another note. this is my first time reading this comic and i read it through 3 times.  I love the color work and all the subtle expression changes in the faces and body language.  I’m sad only 23 pages are out, but I can’t wait for more!

It’s getting better and better! I couldn’t come here for a few weeks and having several pages to read afterwards is bliss =)

Oh so it’s a flashback then? I can’t wait to see how Deacon went from using him to obviously truly caring about Jeff.I didn’t expect the good cop/bad cop bit, but it seems very plausible for Deacon to have that kind of behaviour programmed ;-PI love the 2nd frame, Jeff is just going crazy!
Thanks again, Yayu.

What I would say if i was Jeff, “how….you crazy machine! HOW DA HECK-FRIEND?!! oh god! Just kill me. You’re trying to manipulate me NOW?!”

LOL Jeff was the name of the guy who my babe’s ex dump him for. I thank the guy cause if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have gotten myself a husband, heh, suckers.

Jeff looks like he has an evil look in the second panel XD

Was Deacon programmed to act that way in this type of situation?

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Awwwwwwwwwwwwe they looks so cute together and drinking water

and jeff is such a sexy name, how ironic that my friend is curently in love with a boy name jeff. Whudda thunk it

Omfg this is getting interesting… And Ms. Nelson is a goddess drawing! How she keeps facial structures in expressions… just amazing!

Oh and I don’t want to sound a little odd, but… I’m anxious to see some Hot Smexy Tiems between Deacon and Jeff, cause I’m a pervert! Yeh!

It’s my boyfriend’s naaaame and they have the same haaaaair and it’s a little weirding me out. If this gets into the heavy stuff I don’t know if I’ll be able to read it anymore, watching my boyfriend have sex with somebody else XD

…no worries Alex I’ll still read it. Plenty of GIRLS have the same hair as my boyfriend, after all. I oughta get used to it.

Heh. You’ll have to let me know what your boyfriend thinks of the comic. 🙂

Haha oh man. He’s asexual, misanthropic and doesn’t really like fiction in general, so I don’t think it would do much for him, but don’t take that personally at all, it applies to everything XD

Alex, I’ve been meaning to ask you…does it make me a horrible person if I read yaoi and think “he’ll just have to get used to it if he doesn’t like it” (I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to him, though) but I think I might be less than thrilled if I were to learn that he read lesbian comics?
I think maybe it does make me a bad person, but happily I’m unlikely to run into that situation… hmm :/

I certainly don’t think it makes you a horrible person to have different interests from your partner. While it’s wonderful to share an interest with those we love, until we perfect cloning it’s impossible to share every love with them and at least in IMHO, having different interests can be one of the great benefits of being in an intimate relationship—it can broaden your understanding and appreciation of this cool, diverse world of ours. It’s one of the ways being coupled can enhance your life.

Now, it might be nice if you didn’t have to keep your interests a secret from your partner—in my own experience, secrets and intimacy don’t go great together. And it would be my hope that if your guy really did enjoy reading yuri or something like that, that you would have empathy for him, based on your own understanding of why yaoi is cool, if for no other reason. People are interested in all kinds of fantasy—murder mysteries, sappy romances, cartoons with cute animals. None of those interests give you any real information about the fan’s character or what they would do in “real life”. Personally, I love to read about bad-ass, funny villains with no morals—in real life, the last thing I’d ever want to do is cause pain to any other person.

I get that you might keep reading yaoi even if your boyfriend disapproved. But you a “bad person”? I just don’t see it. I think you’re awesome. 🙂

Aww, thanks Alex, that makes me feel better. Thinking about that situation, I realized it just makes me feel uncomfortable because it would be so unexpected. If he actually did, I wouldn’t care, I would just be surprised.

In fact, I don’t think I have any secrets from him really, there are just some things I don’t usually talk about to him…but what you said made me think, so I messaged him.
“Jeff, did you know I read yaoi?”
“Nope.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Nope.”

Problem solved 😀 life is good.
<3

LOL. Oh Deacon, Deacon. You are so incredibly BAD at this that it’s funny… in a “painful and awkward” sort of way. XD I fully expect him to threaten Jeff again in the near future. “We’re going to be friends and you’re going to LIKE IT damn you!”
And Jeff’s reaction is this sort of ‘is this guy for real!?’ Also: Deacon doesn’t get sarcasm does he? Or he just chooses to ignore it.

~twitch~ Deacon is…FREAKISHLY SMILEY! Wowza!~

But ahaha Jeff. Aren’t you so silly. Bite him indeed! Much nipping, tugging pulling and BITING might definitely occur in the future ;D ~eyebrow wiggle~
But aside from that, do i sense…
Deacon trying to be friendly for his own intent and then in the future as Jeff warms up to him, developing. DUN DUN DUN Feelings?
I do foresee! Then again it might just be an Artiface tingle.

Also out of curiosity! How long does one page on average take Winona? :O

p.s. I also appreciate the splash of green in each panel!

bwahahaa.

p.s.s. Suddenly imagines Jeff as an atomaton. !!!!

~A.S

Ok, well here’s an error I got for Liking this.

There was an error liking the page. If you are the page owner, please
try running your page through the linter on the Facebook devsite
(https://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/) and fixing any errors.

Great story so far. Wish it’d update a little more often, but with this quality, it’s worth the wait. c:

Hi Mikal!

Thank you for the heads up around that error. I was wondering why I was getting so few Likes on this page compared to previous ones. But I just tested it now and it seems to be working. Maybe FB was just acting weird?

Glad you’re enjoying the story! Please keep letting me know what you think! 🙂

“So, why weren’t you with the others?”
“Well…I had a casserole for lunch, and it did not agree with me!”
“You were in the bathroom?”
“Maybe…”
Also, Jeff should watch what he says, Deacon might take him up on that ‘bite me’ offer

I’m really enjoying this comic. The whole conversation is surreal and creepy considering there is still a bloody body to Deacon’s left. Friends? Jeff can’t match Deacon in physical strength, yet I hope Jeff is sharp enough to turn this obvious manipulation to his advantage.

“Better your friend than your enemy” … Truer words were never spoken, Deacon, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy… or you any less threatening.

Poor Jeff is going to get whiplash from this emotional roller-coaster. It’s going to be such a *fun* ride to see how the two of them get from here to the place where Deacon has the ability to look lighter when realizing that Jeff is still alive.

And yeah. Once again, I’m starting to suspect that the bigger story inside this tale is the mis-representation of the artificial humans…

If you don’t give me anything soon to base theories on my CDO (that’s OCD alphabetized)  will be forced to come up with truly weird ones.  Like, the reason the survivor gave two names with two very disparate expressions was that Bite Me is indeed the name of the alternate personality whose actions triggered the androids being sent to cleanse the colony…

My theory as to why Bite Me, I mean, “Jeff” was not with the others: He heard the blood curtleing death screams, explosions and gun fire and thought, “F**K that!”, decided he would check on it later, and climbed back into bed.
Also, I am surprised that watercooler remained intact through all of that, thats some sturdy plastic. That and the conviently placed Robo-Recharge station they inexplicably have on Da Vinci Four. I guess Homocidal Kill Bots come through there alot, and that was installed in case they needed a pick-me-up. “Low battery putting a dampener on your blood thirsty murderous rampage? Not anymore!”

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Deacon force smiling is creepy. xD

Love the picture of when Jeff finally gives his name. An awesome close-up, perfect angle, great expression……….makes me wanna huggle him. No wonder Deacon ends up molesting him at some point. 

Sitting like that in that chair, Deacon…….I really wouldn’t expect a machine to sit like that. More like sitting perfectly, back straight, legs close together at attention…not sitting backwards in a relaxed manner. =P

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