Questionable Content

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Questionable Content (QC) is a webcomic written and illustrated by Randall Munroe under the pseudonym Jean-Jacques Munroeburger. It is critically acclaimed for the depth of its characterization, and the innovative use of interactive technology. Readers typically have a choice of continuations for any given storyline, and site traffic statistics are used by Munroe as an informal poll to determine the future direction of canon.

It began in October 1992 as a monthly comic, with viewer popularity prompting a move to weekly appearances in 1995. Since 2004 it has appeared on prime-numbered days. The author now lives full-time off the sale of QC-themed T-shirts, pencil cases, jotter pads, intimate goods, and killer robotic technology.

Setting[edit | edit source]

In the early comics the setting was unidentified, beyond being a small university town. In episode 65 ("The Cat and the Dean") the town was named as Boogerville, a transparent reference to the creator's real-life hometown of Boogerburg, New Brunswick. In episode 138 ("The Robots and the Cheerleaders") it was stated to be in Maine. The streets lined with Canadian flags were explained in a detailed sequence of retroactive continuity, starting in episode 258 ("The Tourists and the Whores"), as being related to the (fictional[1]) Maine celebration known as Let's All Pretend We're Canadian Day.

An apparent attempt starting in episode 1790 ("The Crack in Time and the Difference Engine that Wouldn't") to further explain Boogerville as a semi-sentient town that burrowed under state and provincial boundaries was eventually left to peter out as a dream sequence[2].

The original strip began as the story of a 13-year-old boy Pine and his pet mouse Marten. Pine was chosen as a typical Canadian name: the boy was intended as an idealistic Everyman figure. The characters visited imaginary worlds in Pine's garden. This idea proved limited in scope, and Munroe decided to abandon the strip if he couldn't think of a new direction[3].

At first the characters aged in real time, with Pine celebrating his fifteenth birthday by kissing the girl next door, Faye Whittaker. At around this time the author researched the lifespan of mice, and was shocked to discover that little Marten would soon be no more, if he was going to continue to be realistic. In what he later recalled as his "worst blunder ever"[4], he threw integrity to the four winds and had Pine and Marten fuse into a so-called multiplex cyborg, using a device stolen from the handbag of Hannelore, a girl Pine met and got punched out by when he was peering through a hole into the ladies' toilets. As an unintended consequence, Pine and Marten swapped names, with Marten becoming the boy and Pine the mouse. When Pine died (as a result of Faye sitting on him, at his request), Marten found he was able to regenerate a clone of him using his willpower alone[5], and so called the new mouse Pine-BSide. Faye took offence at this apparent reference to her own large backside[6], and the name was changed to Pineside2.

Characters[edit | edit source]

Human[edit | edit source]

Marten: The hero. An optimistic, likeable lad with a penchant for practical jokes, fine wine, Trollope novels[7], and matchbox label collecting. Lead guitar in the group MuteSwan. The only character whose head is ever drawn facing in different directions. Marten's surname has never been given[8].

Faye Whittaker: Marten's best friend and, from episode 22 ("The Lonely Girl and the Naughty Mouse"), girlfriend. They have remained together faithfully ever since[9], with the author rejecting angrily any suggestion that Marten should make the same kind of dumb mistakes he himself had made. He still has some idealism left, dammit. Backing vocals in MuteSwan. Anorexic, but hides it well. The comic spells her name variously with one or two T's, with several typically disastrous retcons trying to establish that the two-T spelling is illegal in many Southern states under the notorious 'Jim Crow' laws.

Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham-Naval-Dockyard: Cute, sassy, dimpled, crossword fanatic, loyal friend; secretly a ninja. Began as the archetypal dumb blonde but has matured. She is the daughter of evil scientist Professor Fritz von Ellicott, who was dismissed from the Submarine Guidance Laboratory of Chatham Naval Dockyard in Kent, for plotting to take over the world. His last words before being hurled into the street by two burly MPs were "Fuck Chatham Naval Dockyard!", a curse which proved prophetic. Thoughts of revenge festered in his brain until he devised a way of detaching the dockyard from the earth, launching it into space, and refitting the torpedo tubes as giant sex toys. Hannelore was conceived as a result. Her appearance is based on Yum-Yum from The Mikado[10]. Lead vocals and triangle[11] in MuteSwan. Munroe has said in interviews[12] that his original intention was to have Professor Ellicott kill his daughter in a bungled kidnap, but he thought better of it after a similar storyline appeared in Friends[13].

Dora Bianchi: Owner-manager of the coffee shop Poop Your Pants. Drop-dead gorgeous, kooky, speaks eleven languages, opera buff, loyal friend. Sexual omnivore who has had, by last count, at least 60% of all other characters, often without their knowledge[14]. The right hemisphere of her brain is a vampire that is released at the full moon. Owner of Mieville the cat and QBN-4 the battle droid.

Emily Azuma-chan: A manga character originally introduced as part of an April Fool parody, but she proved so popular[15] that she returned as a full-time character. Originally a transformed beetle from the planet Gallifrey, she was trapped on Earth when her spaceship ran out of illudium-20, and she now pretends to be Marten's aunt from Poughkeepsie[16]. A calculating genius, though she has to sit still and make loud 'clacking' noises to do it, she is also the ice-cream eating champion of Boogerville[17]. Loyal friend[18]. Disguises her ovipositor as a ponytail, much to Dora's surprise and dismay.

Steve: Marten's best friend before Marten discovered girls. Last seen in a slow dissolve in episode 44 ("The Whoopee Cushion and the Piece of Bread"). Now homeless, with hand-lettered cardboard sign.

Helena Bonham-Carter: Has not recognizably featured, but paid me £15 to appear here. She has a new film coming out in autumn 2017, The Gay Chainsaw Axe Murders of the Taj Mahal[19].

Marigold Rasputin-Cowdrey: Geek, nerd, autist, virgin, mouth breather. A tragic figure, perpetually coughing up blood and expressing a wish to go to Disneyland. Vultures perpetually circled her and other characters perpetually expressed wonderment at how good and innocent she was. Hannelore invariably cries if left in the same room with her. Mieville resolves to live a better life. A protracted sequence of 67 prefiguring mentions of her worsening condition led to a 48-panel death scene (starting with episode 2208, "The Lipid Bilayer and the Batting Average"), with angels and unicorns circling her. In what Munroe admitted later[20] was a surprisingly disappointing panning out, only one reader out of thousands surveyed noticed that she had died. This was later successfully[21] retconned as a dream sequence[22]. Had sex once in her life, and it turned out he was a pinball hologram.[23]

Robots[edit | edit source]

Pineside2: Originally a mouse, and still capable of being plugged into computers for data exchange, but he complains that he gets giddy for hours afterwards. In the course of several storylines, has experimented with having his consciousness transferred into various other vehicles, including a Barbie doll, a 1926 Bugatti, and a cuckoo clock. Puritan; usually protests at Marten's practical jokes, and tries to warn the victims. This invariably makes things worse and he gets the blame. Drummer and lead nose flute in MuteSwan.

Bubbles: A remarkable instance of the character development the comic is famous for. Introduced in episode 703 ("The Gargoyle and the Sea-Horse") as a nanobot for navigating Faye's AIDS-ravaged bloodstream, she reappeared in episode 1259 ("The Caliph and the Basking Shark") as a nanobot for relieving Marten's calamari-induced impotence, and rapidly progressed to a microbot for curing blackheads, a millibot for palliating heat rash, and, in episode 1408 ("The Definite Article and the Noun Phrase Coordination"), a plain ordinary regular bot for fetching drinks or things you'd left in your other trousers. At this point she was small, cute, giggly, and did not eat more than once a month. An accidental fall into a bowl of buckwheat ramen Faye had left out for Santa Claus led to prolonged binge eating, and she grew to the size of a house. A bite from a giant chicken she was fighting[24] sapped her strength and she shrank to her present formidable size, only about three times as tall as the people around her. She keeps stepping on Pineside2 by accident[25]. Only character so far who has appeared full-frontal naked.[26]

Winslow: Hannelore's cigar-shaped personal computer. Sometimes accompanies Pineside2 out in expeditions. Doesn't like to play chicken because is chicken, and freely admits it. Frequently covers up for Pineside2 by pretending to have been drunk.

Claire: A simple robot built by Emily as part of her credit for Intermediate Robotics 201[27]. After graduation she was faced with the prospect of throwing it away, cutting it up for scrap, or leaving it outside on her front lawn to rust. It was here that Marten (dear sweet boy but not that bright when it comes to things that superficially resemble girls) came upon it[28]. At his request, she equipped it with some basic speech recognition ("What's the capital of Togo, Claire?" - "Ooh, you naughty man, I'm not that kind of AI interface."), a basic kind of latex epidermis, a basic functional wet tube that dispensed eels, and a not very basic implanted gender imbalance preconception to account for the minor programming bugs that were inevitable in a hasty project like this. This inanimate object malfunctioned almost immediately and latched onto Faye, but was persuaded she would like a threesome with Marten as well. The results were described[29] as "interesting, innovative, mostly predictable, but surprisingly painful at crucial moments". Claire was then thrown into Mount Doom. We are waiting for the inevitable retcon.

Animals[edit | edit source]

Mieville: Dora's sinister black cat. It sits on Dora's lap and suggests[30] horrible things to do to the customers. Sometimes it admits having done them in the coffee while Dora wasn't looking.

Sven: Dora's brother.

Animals with robot attachments or subsystems[edit | edit source]

QBN-4: Remainder US Army nuclear-armed battle droid, discovered rummaging through the dumpster outside Poop Your Pants by Dora one evening, and coaxed in with a bowl of warm USB sticks. Mieville the cat ate it, hacked several times, and sicked it up. DNA fusion resulted. Sleeps on Dora's bed. Dora now has to sleep on the sofa, or on someone else's sofa, or on someone else. Moves diagonally.

Coffee shops[edit | edit source]

Poop Your Pants: Run by Dora Bianchi. Advertised as "a grown-up adventure in coffee", and "not to be passed up lightly". It is based on a real bar in New Haven called the Crossed Legs. Faye works here. Hannelore used to work here until she was caught not peeing in the coffee. Rudimentary swarm intelligence. Warns Dora when alien fleets are approaching our galaxy. Is sometimes right.

Dismembered Corpse: Rival to Poop Your Pants, run by rogue AIs as a cover for illegal AI hissy fit contests. Run by Corpse Fetishist, a former member of the Election Misinformation Unit who decided to use her secret powers for naughtiness rather than niceness. Hannelore used to work here until she was caught being happy. Based on a real bar in Paris, the Corps Désmembré, frequented by the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Beckett, and Zorgrith the Relentless in the 1920s and 1930s, and health inspectors in the 1970s and 1980s.

Space stations[edit | edit source]

Chatham Naval Dockyard: Formerly a British naval establishment, now orbiting the Earth at Lagrangian point L5 and targeting pizza-based railguns at ne'er-do-wells, street mimes, noisy eaters, people who whistle off-key, that guy who shouts "Bravo!" the instant the music ends, the tourists walking slowly in front of you, and the guy parked in your space. Biological mother of Hannelore. Enjoys crosswords but always loses to Emily.

MuteSwan[edit | edit source]

Munroe has stated that he knows very little about music, and cares even less, rarely able to stomach anything more recent than Palestrina, so he is as surprised as anyone at the success of MuteSwan. He hates carrying out research on subjects that don't interest him, and defended his use of Colt .404 as the name of the popular, cheap electric guitar Marten uses by claiming that this was an accepted slang term when he was growing up.

The fictional group was enabled to release real records, two of them reaching number 1 in the US charts[31], by the author's sophisticated sampling algorithms. Over two million music clips were downloaded from the Internet and analysed, the results being combined as a Markov sequence. This was then slowed down by a factor of 1.618 and played backwards. A genetic algorithm then compares the forward and backward sequences and iterates a mail merge with a sampling of Great Political Speeches of Our Time to provide the vocals. DARPA and Elon Musk are bidding for the right to modify the algorithm to provide eerie background music on long voyages.

The sound has been described as "Clannad meets The Carpenters"[32][33]. Others have suggested it is like castrated Tibetan monks burping during anal sex on a roller coaster[34].

Trivia[edit | edit source]

  1. Asteroids 68611 Questionablecontent, 68616 Hanneloreellicottchathamnavaldockyard and 68617 Pineside2 are named in honour of the comic. A cat-shaped rock on Jupiter's moon Callisto is called Saxum Mieville.
  2. The popular (if lowbrow) wiki Explain QC was the original inspiration for Uncyclopedia, and indeed much of the original material has been incorporated in its entirety here, including this article and this trivia fact[35].
  3. Jean-Jacques Munroeburger is an anagram of Queen James June Gabor-Curr. Munroe says[36] this is deliberate.
  4. Of the 8845 characters who have appeared in Questionable Content (as of writing, January 2017), 161 have not been called Michael. Over 200 have appeared in more than one episode. All but four (Bubbles, Maisie Mouse, and two unnamed security bots in Poop Your Pants) have worn Harry Potter T-shirts at some point.
  5. Emily's favourite root vegetable is the taro[37].
  6. Jeff Koons and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan first met at a retrospective of Questionable Content cels at the Getty Cartoon Gallery in January 2014. As it was snowy outside they retired to a café to discuss their experiences, and found they had much in common including a lifelong love of suppressing political dissidents using porcelain figurines up the soft parts. This, not the famous body-painted meeting at the new Holocaust Museum in Berlin, was the real start of their passionate romance.
  7. Aardvarks always have quadruplets.
  8. Mieville is named after a plush boa constrictor Munroe's sister owned as a baby.
  9. Comic genius Randall Munroe is now worth over $120 million, according to Forbes magazine. He is very busy, naturellement, and has never managed to answer even one of my pleading e-mails.
  1. ↑ fictional in Maine, anyway
  2. ↑ It was never quite sure whose. Do cats dream?
  3. ↑ Fifty-eight consecutive episodes showed minor characters unobtrusively stacking flammable materials under the family home.
  4. ↑ p.c. Dec. 2016
  5. ↑ with two AA batteries and a pat of butter in reserve
  6. ↑ Munroe thought the name was hilarious but his real-life girlfriend at the time put him in traction for two months.
  7. ↑ except The Eustace Diamonds, which he never managed to finish
  8. ↑ Munroe said, "Does Everyman have a surname, guys?"
  9. ↑ Episode 884 was a dream sequence.
  10. ↑ Specifically, as played by Vera Lynn in the 1952 Covent Garden production, with Jussi Björling as Buttercup.
  11. ↑ and occasionally pentangle
  12. ↑ New York Review of Books, December 2010
  13. ↑ The Episode where the Mad Nazi Professor Tortures, Ravishes, and Fricassees his Three Angelic Daughters
  14. ↑ Pineside2 was pretending.
  15. ↑ huge, pointed, gold-tipped bazoomas
  16. ↑ They really do look like that there. Inbreeding? Heaven forbid.
  17. ↑ "The Villagers here are complete Idiots, perpetually scoffing a kind of crushed Ice flavoured with Fruits, and generally so obese that it is difficult to make one's way upon the very Streets." – George Washington, letter to Alexander Hamilton, 11 July 1778
  18. ↑ Figures.
  19. ↑ with Edward Everett Horton as Dr Cagliostro and Boris Spassky as the Easter Bunny
  20. ↑ in conversation with the editors
  21. ↑ compared to previous attempts
  22. ↑ Sven fantasizing. What a dick.
  23. ↑ Lots of us are, it's nothing to be ashamed of.
  24. ↑ Family Guy stole this from us.
  25. ↑ sometimes
  26. ↑ Yes, yes, loyal friend, so fucking what.
  27. ↑ The only one that wasn't commandeered by the NSA and burnt at the stake.
  28. ↑ not like that, pervert
  29. ↑ Journal of Evolutionary Robotics, vol. xxxiv, April 2015, pp. 379-401
  30. ↑ Think Paul Lynde doing the octopus from American Dad.
  31. ↑ Nocturne for Enchanted Ballerina, 1999, and Non-Euclidean Prime Sequences from the Necronomicon, 2005
  32. ↑ Sir John Culshaw OBE writing in Gramophone magazine, 7 April 2012
  33. ↑ In real life Enya met Karen only once, and the passionate affair was cut tragically short by Enya's accidental ingestion of a fishbone during climax.
  34. ↑ How do they know?
  35. ↑ but not, mysteriously, this footnote
  36. ↑ Skandinaviska Filologiska Tidskrift för Anagrammaten, February 2016, p.312
  37. ↑ Not the parsnip, as is commonly stated (including on Trivial Pursuit cards)
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