While eonjoyin Hanners discomfort something struck me: The complete lack of ambition amongst people in the QC-verse. Outside of Dora, a succesful Businesswoman, the only one who seemed to accomplish anything, Angus, was shipped of to Mandyville. While in my 20s I wasn't surrounded by the most dynamic of people, they mostly had worthwhile goals and were striving towards them. Allowing those still in college a pass, the rest are absolutley pathetic. Fun, adorablem, enetertaining, but pathetic. they will end up in their 40s, still working minimum wage, sharing shitty flats/apartments and not having a clue what happened.
The thing that I realised reading this webcomic for (oh my god) 12 years is that not only does Jeph's stance change, but also that of his demographic. At first, sure, the point was to look at some hipsters having a good time after work, with some quirky sense of humour and hijings on top. But then Faye started getting called a bitch, and not in a good way (I used to look up to Faye so much when I was 14; looking back, it was not my smartest social move... but I needed about 5-6 years for that epitome). Marten started getting called out for his passive nature. Faye and Angus had the career talk, etc. Momo came along and replaced the 'casually running around' robots with issues related to cyberrights. The fact that they are kind of at a pathetic place is totally a theme of this comic. And a bit of social commentary
Think about it, when the characters were made, jeph was working a shitty job and drawing the comics as stress-relief. Then he actually started working like crazy on his (then) hobby and turned it into a job where he gets to display his work to millions of global readers. That's pretty damned badass, but time passes faster IRL than in the QCverse. To boot, the people reading this comic are also growing up, so the way that people read it also changes how their actions are perceived.
Basically, yeah, they are kind of pathetic. But that is one of the underlying themes in the comic. And, as other posters have stated, the small narrative of the character's personal fulfillment is also important; it's why Sven is miserable but Dale is feeling great.
(as for Penelope, remember that she used to work in a library and thus was on course for her dream, but she had problems with her manager. She would like to work in publishing but it's a field that's pretty hard to get into, and involves spending your first 5-10 years in a pretty poor position... the need for the realisation that some dreams are maybe not worth pursuing is, I think, pretty important for us millenials)