Questionable Content - Television Tropes & Idioms

It doesn't really bug me that much, but to echo the point made below: why are all the female characters variations on the theme of total nutcase? Hanners: severe OCD. Faye: Relationship Issues. Dora: has recurring allusions and hints of deep-deated Boy Issues. Faye's Mum: plain strange. Marten's Mum: fetish model. Hanners' Mum: Corporate Bitch. Penelope: also OCD, plus possible superhero syndrome. Sarah: Eaten by an Allosaurus because she was too boring! Methinks Jeph likes his wacko females. (postscript: not that I'm bagging out wacko females: Normal is boring.)

Wait, is Faye's mom really that strange? Down-to-Earth (and a little earthy overall) but otherwise she seems very much the deep southern 50-something mother. Of course, she is on meds, but they seem to be working quite well for her.
How many girls DON'T go through some pretty serious Boy Issues? Dora's may go deeper / have lasted longer (at 26) than most, but her biggest problem seems to be an oversensitive jealousy reflex - which is quite common in the real world.
- 10%?
I'd like to take issue with saying Marten's mum is crazy because she's a fetish model. She actually seems quite sane and well-balanced. If you want to criticise any point of her sanity, I'd say threatening to harm her son's roommate and female best friend if she ever hurts him is a much stronger case.
- This troper's family and friends consider that threat an obligatory part of the first meeting of any boyfriend/girlfriend.
OK, EVERYONE in Questionable Content is weird. Just call it the ultimate Quirky Town and be done with it.
- That pretty much sums up Northampton. The town is literally a Weirdness Magnet, I live across the river from it.
- That sums up all of New England (except Connecticut and Rhode Island). King and Lovecraft just exaggerate a bit.
Penelope, OCD? Pizza Girl aside (which isn't even confirmed), she seems fairly normal to me. In fact, a lot of humor has been derived from her being much more normal than the rest of the cast.
This Troper actually thought every member of the cast having varying levels of mental health was pretty realistic. I wonder what they says about his social circle...

Why are all the male characters creeps? (except, obviously, for Marten. And maybe Faye's dad, but um. And Steve isn't too much of one, particularly due to character development. But still. Dora's dad, Angus, Hannelore's dad...erm, Amir isn't...Sven...Sven's buddy...Pintsize^10...Winslow's sliding this way...)
- So roughly half of the characters are creeps? Sounds like a good proportion...
- So all the men in the strip, except for those who are the focus character, someone's foil, or someone's boyfriend are creeps? Specifically, the two men whose primary role in the strip is to come onto a traumatized woman repeatedly and the subversion of the Robot Buddy are creeps? Aside from Dora's dad...
- Hannelore's dad isn't a creep, just... weird. Sven's getting better. And Pintsize and Winslow aren't really "guys", although Pintsize is a major creep. So that leaves the male creep count at three or four. Considering that the comic's quickly approaching Loads And Loads Of Characters, it's not that high.
  - Hannelore's dad isn't even weird, per se. He's a superscientist. He has a daughter whose life he's been forcibly absent from, whom he knows to have crippling social interaction issues and an aversion to germs. So, he sends her a nice, sterile, easily-cleaned, totally understanding, completely loyal Robo-Boyfriend. Weird? Hell, that sounds like unconditional fatherly love to me. Granted, I give superscience a special pass, but, in this case, it just seems like he's a really caring dad who happens to be a little distant.
- Wait, Amir strikes me as one of the creepier ones. What was the age difference between him and Nat again?
  - Whatever the age difference, Nat is a college-aged young woman and therefore presumably legally able to consent. It's not like Amir is hanging around high school parking lots trying to pick up jailbait - or for that matter even deliberately going for someone younger than he is. He and Nat met at a rock show that they were both interested in, hit it off and started dating. Age differences in relationships alone do not creepy make.
- Will (Sven's friend) doesn't strike me as particularly creepy. Sure, he writes sexy poetry about some girl he met, but she wasn't meant to see it.
  - Strangely, this has been argued about in the comic itself, which may mean that the author, much like every other denizen of the internet, reads this site. In order to test this theory: what's the deal with Pintsize not having nipples?
  - He does have USB ports, and presumably blanking panels where more USB ports could go. The fact that the latter aren't where nipples would be on a human is neither here nor there...
- I don't seen how Angus is supposed to be creepy. A bit weird, sure, but creepy? Not seeing it.
It bugs me that every single character in the strip seems to have the same sense of humor. This has gotten better in recent strips, but I facepalmed when Steve met a random girl on the street that was not only able to sass back and forth with him, but was able to do so with jokes about corpses and working at the morgue. Admittedly, that was the low point of this feeling, and Meena's turned out relatively interesting, but still.
- This troper actually finds that QC has pretty impressive characterisation for a strip with such a large cast, each character possessing their own voice and personality quirks (entry above about all the women being nuts: they're all nuts in different ways). Your Mileage May Vary, of course. However, I don't find it too unreasonable to think that a bunch of people who are all meant to get along as friends would share a sense of humour.
  - And not a single one of them has been raped.
- Hanners and Raven often don't (really) get jokes. (Well, in Raven's case, that just might be a degree of Obfuscating Stupidity). Penelope isn't always amused by the same things the other characters are.
- Original poster here: given several months to think about it and noting examples such as the above, I again note that Steve's meeting with Meena was the event that stretched my suspension of disbelief the most; after that, I am starting to come around to the characters being more individual than they were, especially nowadays. My original problem was that there was a point where the cast seemed entirely...I don't know what the word is. Swappable? Basically, it seemed like if you hid the art, you wouldn't be able to tell who was speaking, especially in the "sassing back and forth-witty banter" strips. Again, this is something Jeph has worked on via much Character Development, so it doesn't bug me much anymore.
It amuses me how nobody's mentioned the little talking sentient AI robots yet, in comparison to the above.
- That's because there's an explanation for that provided by Jeph. The world of QC isn't the same as our world. As he said, "You think that'd be obvious with the little robot computers running around, but..."
  - It kinda bugs me just how friggin' similar it is for being an alternate universe, though...
  - Given the little 'bots seem to be the only regular use of super science it sort of seems like Reed Richards Is Useless.
Who put those condoms in their apartment couch?!?
- Almost certainly Pintsize.
- Definitely Pintsize. Confirmed here.
- Not Pintsize, they're lambskin (and he must not be lying. That wouldn't be weird enough).
Why did he post this comic◊ only after the snow was over? That would have been so awesome, and now I'll spend all summer waiting for it to snow so I can go do that. Damn you, Jacques!
The characters all have twitters. This comic is an egregious case of Web Comic Time. How does that work? Must be an Alternate Continuity.
This bugs me a lot. Why does everyone, including Hanners, drink at the drop of a hat? Almost all characters I can understand this for, but Hannelore? Drinking? wouldn't the fact that many people who drink end up throwing up be more than enough to keep her lips from ever touching alcohol? What about the bacteria thing? Really, for the character, it makes absolutely no sense that she'd go out to the one place where there is the highest likelihood of human vomit and public urination: Bars and alcohol-heavy parties.
- This Troper doesn't drink anything worse than cola, but it isn't exactly an unreasonable version of life in Massachusetts, or much of the United States. Drinking alcohol socially is the norm; it's an unusual outlier to not do so regularly, especially among the 18-30 age group. I say that as someone who's high school graduating class had half of the class nearly miss graduation thanks to an underage drinking bust at a large party, and it would have been more than two thirds if someone of the drunk people had run any slower. Even in Hannelore's case, it's not as unusual as you'd think; drug and alcohol addiction are common comorbid conditions in those with OCD, especially in individuals who attempt to self-medicate.
  - She says it herself, hard liquor is a disinfectant.
- Plus it's Northampton. Trust me, that's the norm in this part of the state. I was the weird one in high school because I was a teetotaler, and there are no less than 5 colleges in the immediate Northampton area, and the author clearly knows the area pretty well, since a good half of everything reported to the police has to do with alcohol.
- A related note: In a recent comic (the latest one as of this edit), the only person who does not go out and get drunk constantly is shown to be sad, pathetic and lonely. Now this really, REALLY bugs this troper.
  - This troper would argue that the sad, pathetic, and lonely comes more from her spending so much time on World of Warcraft that she neglects basic hygiene. Besides, she's Character Developing out of it.
  - The only person who does not go out and get drunk constantly is a dirty, pimply, World Of Warcraft-addicted, Gonk (compared to the rest of the cast, even the old ladies), Otaku of an all-around nerd stereotype. Character Development or not, you have to think about what he's saying here.
  - Penelope doesn't go out and get drunk constantly, and she's none of those things. And of those that do, Faye is an alcoholic basket case, Hannelore is insane, and Steve and Marten both regularly drink until they hallucinate.
- No offense, but the level of drinking shown in the comic isn't really abnormal among twenty-somethings.
  - This twenty-something college student troper could drink the whole cast under the table. Except Pintsize. But yeah, Faye aside they're not exactly alcoholics.
- More importantly, why is no one telling Faye to drop the sauce entirely? Most of the advice is along the lines of "you need to cut back a bit" or "you need to stop using it as a crutch." No one has a problem with her continuing to drink. I'll grant the AA method isn't necessarily best, but why is no one even suggesting it?
  - Arguments about what makes someone an alcoholic run all over the place, but most likely the better part of the cast don't think alcoholism is her real problem. She's already seeing a therapist and while she may drink more than is really healthy as a coping mechanism, it so far hasn't interfered with her ability to lead a normal life - the trauma of her father's death is much more significant in that respect.
Why they NEVER connected that Sven got "attacked by a girl on a Vespa" with the attack on Marten and Steve?
- I didn't make the connection until two or three archive binges
- Because the former was an FLCL reference, and the latter was a plot thread.
Maybe I'm easily bugged, but: compare any description of the effect of birth order on personality with the Bianchis' stated birth order and observable personalities.
- Trends have counterexamples. This bugs you?
Why didn't Faye get in trouble for burning down her building?
- Presumably, she didn't own it, and she wasn't the only one living there (since it's referred to as an "apartment"), but once she moves it with Marten...it's completely forgotten. Really? No consequences whatsoever?
- Could be he action, but the building owner's liability. Like she started the fire, but it went out of control because the owner insulated the building with flammable material- which is illegal, and the owner would take the blame.
- It's also possible that "burned down" is something of a hyperbole. Faye has been known to exaggerate. Marten didn't question it, but then, he didn't know Faye very well at that point. I think it's possible that she just did quite a bit of damage to her kitchen and was evicted/had to move out and lost her security deposit.
- Do we know enough of the situation to really know that she's entirely at fault for 'burning down' her apartment? Oops, I left the toaster on, and the electric socket fritzed...

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