Talk:Questionable Content

character counts

To help resolve the issues of major vs minor characters, I counted appearances of each character through #1425 #1495 #1505^Wdfarmer #1515 #1535, excluding guest strips. I didn't bother logging waitresses, bartenders, policemen and the like. I included characters shown in dreams and flashbacks, or speaking from out of view, but not the unheard side of phone calls.

Ought to mention, I did not count Pizza Girl's two appearances toward Penelope. —Tamfang (talk) 21:58, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Moved the table to User:Tamfang/QC cast – partly to avoid interfering with automatic archiving. —Tamfang (talk) 06:14, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I hope this Hanneloresque exercise is of some use. —Tamfang (talk) 07:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, Hannaloresque is correct! That's impressive work there. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 10:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

At this rate Marigold will earn her own entry in another month or two. No one else has moved in the rankings lately. —Tamfang (talk) 05:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I've added the following counts for strips #1496 through #1505 to the above table, and resorted it numerically:

Faye (3), Marten (3), Dora (3), Hannelore (2), Pintsize (3), Angus (4), Marigold (4), Momo-tan (2), Yelling Bird (1). — Wdfarmer (talk) 07:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

You know, the more I look at these numbers, the more I think the threshold for inclusion should be raised substantially, like to at least 100, if not 200. As the comic progresses, it is only natural that the number of appearances for each character will gradually increase. Or, we could get complicated and make it a percentage, such as 10% (which right now would equate to about 150 appearances). Something needs to be changed, else the article list is going to get too long. — Huntster (t @ c) 06:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

This does make sense to me; dropping those below 152 would not be a disaster. On another hand, it's also natural that as time goes on the canon gets more complex. I have in mind a formula that may be too math-nerdy for anyone else's taste: find the entropy (information theory) of the above table (extended to include one-shot characters), find N such that N characters appearing with equal frequency would have the same entropy, and display the top N characters. —Tamfang (talk) 06:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Another possible standard (harder to quantify): every continuing plot ought to involve at least one "major" character. Under such a standard I'd keep Steve and Penelope, because of the Steve & Ellen saga and the Penelope & Wil saga, each of which is independent of other characters. —Tamfang (talk) 06:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

If I had time on my hands, I'd add a column to the table: "number of appearances without Faye or Marten" – and see how much that changes the ranking. —Tamfang (talk) 06:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Heh, I'm not a mathematician, so I'd have to leave the entropy stuff to you. Regardless, I think some higher threshold for inclusion is needed. As for appearances without Faye or Marten, I suspect that the numbers might be larger than one would realise. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I found an easy way to do it! —Tamfang (talk) 20:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I have a distinct feeling that your definition of "easy way to do it" is dramatically different from mine! Fantastic list as always. I've added the ability to sort columns and fixed the display so that the null "without..." fields function properly. — Huntster (t @ c) 05:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's what I did. My database is a textfile that looks like this:

       Marten  0001 0002 0003 0004 0005 0006 0007 0008 0009 0011
       Pintsiz 0001 0002 0005 0007 0008 0011 0020 0021 0025 0033
       Faye    0003 0004 0005 0006 0007 0008 0010 0012 0013 0014
       Steve   0003 0004 0007 0008 0021 0031 0032 0063 0064 0066

So I extracted the Marten lines from the file, and used simple vi commands to convert them to a vi script file:

       %s/0001
       %s/0002
       %s/0003
       %s/0004
       %s/0005
       %s/0006
       %s/0007
       %s/0008
       %s/0009
       %s/0011

(which means "for each line, change the first '0011', if any, to nothing").

Running this script gave me a version of the database that excludes all Marten strips. Naturally I did the same for Faye.

But I'm not eager to maintain all four versions. Waiting for someone to say "Shoot, that would be child's play with emacs." —Tamfang (talk) 03:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Shoot, that would be child's play with emacs. Though I've no idea what that means, considering I'm a PC guy :P — Huntster (t @ c) 04:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I wrote a little program (yay Python) to convert my log from strips by character to characters by strip, which will make it much easier to update all the columns. – Here's a trivia question from heck: Which two strips have eight named characters? Hint: both are "out of continuity". —Tamfang (talk) 02:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I couldn't even begin to answer that one. You know, perhaps you should become Jeph's official continuity checker? ;P — Huntster (t @ c) 10:00, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Updated to 1554 (main column only). Steve passes Raven. —Tamfang (talk) 19:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

1560. The Roomba passes Sara (allosaur food), Mieville and Maurice. —Tamfang (talk) 09:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

1565; also updated "without" columns. —Tamfang (talk) 21:58, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

1570. —Tamfang (talk) 08:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

1575 (main column only). Momo-tan overtakes Lydia and Amanda. —Tamfang (talk) 14:11, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

1590 (main column only). Mieville surpasses Roomba (again), Peter and Henry. —Tamfang (talk) 07:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

1600 (all columns). Angus surpasses Ellen. Marigold ties with Winslow. —Tamfang (talk) 06:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

1620 (main column only); not counting #1601, which is filler (#3 redrawn). Marigold passes Winslow; Mieville passes Corinne and VespAvenger; Yelling Bird passes Meena. —Tamfang (talk) 08:40, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

1625, all columns. —Tamfang (talk) 03:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

1701, all columns. Angus ties Tai, Marigold overtakes both. —Tamfang (talk) 08:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps add a column for "strips since first appearence" so that we can see stuff like Marigold appearing in 59 out of the 213 strips since she was introduced. (Counting up to 1625) 96.239.54.90 (talk) 14:27, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Faye appears in the most strips. Excluding Faye strips, Marten appears most often. Excluding Faye/Marten strips, Hannelore appears most often. Excluding Faye/Marten/Hannelore, Dora. Carrying on in this pattern, we get: Marigold, Steve, Sven, Yelling Bird, Pintsize, Penelope, turkeys. —Tamfang (talk) 08:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I've recently come across QC, and I was just about instantly addicted. I came into it in a later comic, and went back and am reading it from the beginning, and discovered Faye has a sister, Amanda (presumably Whitaker)--introduced in comic #164, she asks Faye for a place to crash after the fallout of their mother discovering she's switched her majors, is failing all her classes, and is a lesbian. ...I haven't read much farther into the comic yet, but should Amanda be included in the list of characters? erm.. "no" is a viable answer, since I see we're excluding cameos by waitresses and such, but since she's a named character and Faye's sister, I figured it's worth asking about. —ChromWolf(talk) 19:01, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

She evidently did not turn into a recurring character, so I'd say 'no'. DP76764 (Talk) 18:55, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Strictly speaking she did "recur", in that she appears in two unrelated episodes (164–175, 584–617); but that's only 18 appearances in all and the last was more than a thousand strips ago, so no. (User:Tamfang/QC cast) —Tamfang (talk) 01:49, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Marigold's Last Name

Is Marigold's last name really supposed to be "Farmer"? Her last name is never mentioned in the series, and while her twitter name is "marigoldfarmer", that is blatantly a pun on "gold farmer", a person (like Marigold) who spends long amounts of time acquiring money in MMORPGS like WOW ("farming" for gold). None of the comic's other characters have ridiculous puns for names, and assuming that her name follows from that of her twitter account is just silly. Tai's twitter account is "tai_fighter" (a pun on TIE fighters from Star Wars) and her name isn't listed as "Tai Fighter" for the same obvious reasons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MASLEGOMan (talk • contribs) 17:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it was established in the strip, before the cast joined Twitter, that "Tai Fighter" is her stage name as a DJ. —Tamfang (talk) 09:18, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah... In comic 1022, to be specific... Well regardless, it's still a bit of a stretch to state Marigold's last name as "Farmer" without the comic or artist ever actually SAYING it is. --MASLEGOMan (talk) 18:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, so Jeph did, in comic 1922. End of Discussion, I think. Rikthoff (talk) 09:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I thought for sure that Marigold's last name was established in the comic, but I guess I'm mis-remembering. The twitter feeds aren't canon, so if the comic doesn't say her name is Farmer, then we should get rid of it from the article. — Huntster (t @ c) 06:35, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Now another editor insists that the twittage is canon. Is there a source either way? —Tamfang (talk) 01:56, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I shouldn't have mentioned the canon issue, even though "QC tweets occur independently of any particular comic or story arc" says to me that they aren't canon (unless the individual post is intended to be). It still doesn't change the fact that there is zero evidence that "Marigold Farmer" is anything other than pun. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:06, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Huntster is correct, unless it is "canon" that Tai's last name is "rannosaurus". [1] Feezo (Talk) 03:15, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't say non-canon to me. —Tamfang (talk) 01:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

character ranking

One way to rank characters is by how often they appear in strips without any higher-ranking character. Thus:

• Faye appears in more strips than anyone else.
• Whether or not we count Faye strips, Marten is runner-up (by a wide margin).
• Dora is third overall, but Hannelore has most appearances without Faye or Marten. (User:Tamfang/QC cast)
• Next we discard Hannelore strips, and — drumroll! — as of #1789, Marigold takes over fourth place from Dora!

So perhaps Marigold ought to be moved up from the bottom of the cast list? —Tamfang (talk) 05:22, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Cosette's surname

Cosette's surname Hurlbut was recently added and removed. It's documented in #1541. —Tamfang (talk) 20:34, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

coffee revisionism

In Sven's first appearance, Dora says, "What are you doing here? You hate coffee." But later he comes to CoD at least twice for coffee ! Clearly the Sirian mind control rays got to him. —Tamfang (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)