THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => QUESTIONABLE CONTENT => Topic started by: Is it cold in here? on 16 Mar 2008, 01:19
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With no official word from Jeph on the subject, the field is wide open for uninformed but fun speculation.
My favorite idea so far is that it's a parallel universe in which the space program wasn't all but shut down after Apollo but was fully funded instead. The resulting progress in electronics made the AnthroPCs possible (along with NASA development of robotics for space exploration). This also resulted in space stations being so commonplace that a very rich private citizen can own one.
What contradictory but creative theories do others have?
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QC is actually a superhero comic.
Take Hannelore's parents: a Mad Scientist on a space station, and a female Lex Luthor. There's the military robots (Deathbot 9000 was an obsolete example.) There's even a minor superhero around. (We know it's not just Pizza Girl's work uniform, they ordered from the same pizza place and the delivery guy wasn't dressed like that.) This is also why space travel and robots and more advanced: people like Hannelore's father are pushing ahead, but they don't just use the technology for superhero battles. There might hypersonic flights to Australia in two hours, colonies on the Moon, solar power satellites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite). But the focus of the story means we don't see them. When was the last time you thought about where the power for your computer came from, let alone visited a power plant?
So, elsewhere, heroes are flying through the sky, supervillains are trying to take over the world. But we're not watching them, because even with extrordinary adventures, life goes on and people get together and break up and drink coffee and obsess over music. That's the "world" part of "save the world".
Neat, eh?
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It all comes down to the fiction writing skills of a certain writer....
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Another difference would be that either global warming has advanced to the point where it no longer ever snows or gets really cold in western Mass., or else technology has advanced to the point where control over the weather is possible (perhaps by means of a huge geodesic dome a la the one in The Truman Show?)
P.S. Re the "superhero comic" scenario: in addition, there's the Vespa Avenger with her phaser-equipped Vespabot, and possibly also the Tequila Monster.
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Another difference would be that either global warming has advanced to the point where it no longer ever snows or gets really cold in western Mass., or else technology has advanced to the point where control over the weather is possible (perhaps by means of a huge geodesic dome a la the one in The Truman Show?)
P.S. Re the "superhero comic" scenario: in addition, there's the Vespa Avenger with her phaser-equipped Vespabot, and possibly also the Tequila Monster.
According to one forum member, who broke down time lapse of the comic, it could theoretically have only been 46 days! It may just be summer!
http://forums.questionablecontent.net/index.php/topic,17911.0.html
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Another difference would be that either global warming has advanced to the point where it no longer ever snows or gets really cold in western Mass., or else technology has advanced to the point where control over the weather is possible (perhaps by means of a huge geodesic dome a la the one in The Truman Show?)
P.S. Re the "superhero comic" scenario: in addition, there's the Vespa Avenger with her phaser-equipped Vespabot, and possibly also the Tequila Monster.
The Vespavenger was taken away by G-men. She's now creating transforming warbots for the Department of Defence. So, was the Tequila Monster a vivid hallucination or a strange creature born of the collective semi-conscious? If he's another superhero, maybe he protects fools and drunks with his steed, a pink pygmy elephant (or purple.)
As for a dome over the city, this could maintain a pleasant enviroment while also enforcing the city's stringent entry laws that forbid anyone too old or not pretty enough to enter. Jimbo is the exception, a master smuggler who knows the secret ways into the city and runs an underground economy of restricted goods. Alas, this entertaining rubbish idea has been holed below the waterline by the naked old ladies in #1000 and the Biachi parents.
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...the city's stringent entry laws that forbid anyone too old or not pretty enough to enter. Jimbo is the exception ...
Of course, it's possible that people who were living in Pleasantville when the dome went up were allowed to stay. Perhaps Raven went to Jimbo to help her smuggle Benji in when he came to visit.
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is it not obvious? jeph has a tardis, and travelled 30 years into the future to see what life is life. QC is just a prophecy people, not a mere comic. look at the signs goddamit
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Except they also enjoy culture at the same rate as contempory life, adding weight to the alternate world idea. Except, QC time moves much slower than real time, but bands burst onto the scene, become cool, pick up fans and are left behind by hipsters as too popular at the same rate. Which must mean you could be an underground sensation on Monday and have a new recording contract, badges in HMV [insert major American music chain store] and "The Real Fans" moaning that you've sold out and lost it by Friday. "I saw them when they were cool, man." "I was sick that day."
...the city's stringent entry laws that forbid anyone too old or not pretty enough to enter. Jimbo is the exception ...
Of course, it's possible that people who were living in Pleasantville when the dome went up were allowed to stay. Perhaps Raven went to Jimbo to help her smuggle Benji in when he came to visit.
Possibly, but if you want a city of the young and beautiful, are you really going to dilute the vision like that? I thought they'd be chased out of town. And every night patrols sweep the streets for over-30's. You can only stay so long. Dora has a few years left before being cast out.
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I actually think I like the space program/robotics connection theory. It has merit.
A point about something else different in the QC universe: The only law enforcement I remember seeing so far were drunk and high (the cops after the Vespavenger incident) and an FBI agent so pathetic that he was scared of a girl he new from high school. Is this just coincidence or is the whole universe like this? (Perhaps Jeph’s personal feeling toward law enforcement?) If all the law enforcement in the QC universe are that pathetic does that tie into any of the other theories about why it is so different from our own?
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Agreed, but the superhero thing is fun, so that why I went with it. The ineffectual cops were just funny too, I think. Or it could be that they're superceded by the superheroes, and so their standards are falling.
As for the domed city, now we're just being silly. But isn't that (partly) the point of this thread?
Also, Faye was right (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=811). Hannelore is Penelope's time-travelling daughter from the future.
Deeper analysis when it occurs to me. Probably.
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is it not obvious? jeph has a tardis, and travelled 30 years into the future to see what life is life. QC is just a prophecy people, not a mere comic. look at the signs goddamit
If that's the case, why are they still listening to would-be old indie music, then?
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It is the domed city. They're all part of a large-scale experiment into human behaviour. New things are only introduced after the experimenters are happy with them. That's why they use old music.
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is it not obvious? jeph has a tardis, and travelled 30 years into the future to see what life is life. QC is just a prophecy people, not a mere comic. look at the signs goddamit
If that's the case, why are they still listening to would-be old indie music, then?
And why would people be wearing 70--I mean, 30-- -year-old glasses frames?
(Seriously, kids. The ugly glasses that people were wearing back in the 1960's should be mocked and derided, not emulated!)
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The "future prophecy" idea may not be too far off:
- There are small sentient robots just about anyone can afford running around.
- I don't think anyone's made a scooter that turns into a battle robot yet.
- Hardly anyone drives and there are few cars, possibly due to oil prices.
- Nice weather in Massachusetts? That doesn't happen nearly as much in reality as it does in the comic, so it's gotta be the global warming. I know; I live here.
- Hannelore lived on a privately owned and operated space station at some point in her life.
- "Crappy Bar Videogame" hasn't been made yet.
But since the majority of the time it feels like the present, it probably takes place in the near future (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture).
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As for a dome over the city, this could maintain a pleasant enviroment while also enforcing the city's stringent entry laws that forbid anyone too old or not pretty enough to enter. Jimbo is the exception, a master smuggler who knows the secret ways into the city and runs an underground economy of restricted goods. Alas, this entertaining rubbish idea has been holed below the waterline by the naked old ladies in #1000 and the Biachi parents.
It would explain why Jimbo spends all his time in the bar.
I like to think that it's an alternate universe that Jeph catches glimpses of and that one day I’ll be lucky enough to slip through a crack in space time and find myself standing outside Coffee of Terror. Realizing that there's been a horrible mistake I will jump through the rapidly closing fissure only to be flung head first out of Marten and Faye's refrigerator, much to the delight of Pintsize and Winslow.
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Came through the fissure and saw..."Coffee of Mild Peril? Man, that's lame." On to the next world.
"Alternate universe" seems the most likely, but I though we were here for Wild Mass Guessing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/WildMassGuessing?from=Main.WildMassGuessing), not reasonable debate! Marten is Dora, from a parallel universe! Ugh, sqick.
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Interesting point about law enforcement. Maybe QC is a more libertarian world, where people expect to take care of their own problems with anti-robbery broadswords or alleyway beatings as happened to the Vespavenger (and come to think of it, what kind of world is it where someone like that can have a web site?).
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Actually, it's a lot like ours (http://www.vespavenger.com/).
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If Marten is Dora from a parallel universe, that explains why they look alike. Also why they want to make out: http://xkcd.com/105/
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Heh, I didn't know that someone (whether Jeph or a QC fan) actually had put up a VespaVenger site. Although obviously done in jest as a tie-in to the comic, it does remind me of a (thankfully short-lived) vigilante site I came across a few years back, called The Hand of God, which encouraging people to report alleged perpetrators of anti-Semitic hate crimes to the site (as opposed to the police or Jewish advocacy organizations which the site dismissed as useless), so that the individuals could be dealt with "quietly, discreetly and without prejudice." Brrr. I reported it to the Hate Crimes division of the Canadian Jewish Congress; the fellow there said they already knew about the site and whom it was registered to, but said I'd done the right thing regardless. As I said, it disappeared shortly afterwards.
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is it not obvious? jeph has a tardis, and travelled 30 years into the future to see what life is life. QC is just a prophecy people, not a mere comic. look at the signs goddamit
If that's the case, why are they still listening to would-be old indie music, then?
same reason people still listen to music from the 1960s. also, jeph doesnt want to interfere too much and reveal music from the future, would be pretty scary to find out your band makes it big in two years, as well as spoiling the surprise
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Two gifted scientists gave birth to a child prodigy who invented the AnthroPC, weather control, and the low-cost space launcher. As an adolescent she rebelled against the expectations placed on her, became a Goth, quit using her given first name, and deliberately chose a nontechnical major in college with a minor in psychology. After graduation she took a job in a coffee shop and continues her act, slipping up only occasionally and displaying her brilliance. She uses her psychological skills to control the world around her, to the point that she is sometimes known as The Chessmaster.
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the space program thing is *fantastic,* but i'd like to imagine that the QC world is possibly because of a 30 year run of democratic presidents and congresses.
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the space program thing is *fantastic,* but i'd like to imagine that the QC world is possibly because of a 30 year run of democratic presidents and congresses.
It was a Democratic Congress that killed the space program.
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the space program thing is *fantastic,* but i'd like to imagine that the QC world is possibly because of a 30 year run of democratic presidents and congresses.
It was a Democratic Congress that killed the space program.
Rocketman FTW!
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the space program thing is *fantastic,* but i'd like to imagine that the QC world is possibly because of a 30 year run of democratic presidents and congresses.
It was a Democratic Congress that killed the space program.
thanks, i can no longer in good conscious vote for ANYONE now :( .
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Clearly, they never left the Empire and an American subject of the Queen is now planting the Union Jack on Titan.
(Yes, that's far more likely.)
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the space program thing is *fantastic,* but i'd like to imagine that the QC world is possibly because of a 30 year run of democratic presidents and congresses.
It was a Democratic Congress that killed the space program.
thanks, i can no longer in good conscious vote for ANYONE now :( .
Welcome to the situation that every damned American who can legally vote should be in.
Seriously, you guys need to break your reliance on bipartisan elections and start paying more attention to the third-party candidates.
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Seriously, you guys need to break your reliance on bipartisan elections and start paying more attention to the third-party candidates.
I know, we shouldn't care if an idea comes from a Democrat or a Republican as long as it's effective.
The problem is, the mass media (CNN, Fox News, hell even the AP) only focuses on the two main parties, so they get all the attention and votes. Voting for a third party is basically throwing a vote away because for every one they get, the Democrats and Republicans get thousands. They also typically have less money to throw around, and even when they do they can't get the attention and votes the 'big two' get. (Ross Perot, for example.)
It's a screwed up system. :-(
On the original subject, I still think QC takes place '20 minutes in the future' mainly due to the constant nice weather and relatively few motor vehicles, which show global warming and rising fuel costs.
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From what I can see, the QC Universe is just our universe with more Implusive people.
Example:
1. Pizza girl was just a girl who was bored of being just working at a Pizza Place, so she put on some tights and went at it.
2. PC thought it would be cool to have walking, talking computers, so they did it.
3. Dora thought a coffee shop she could own and act how she wanted would be fun, so she opened one.
and many more
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I politely request that my thread not turn into a political one.
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"Alternate universe" seems the most likely, but I though we were here for Wild Mass Guessing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/WildMassGuessing?from=Main.WildMassGuessing), not reasonable debate! Marten is Dora, from a parallel universe! Ugh, sqick.
Well, that would explain http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=955
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Seriously, you guys need to break your reliance on bipartisan elections and start paying more attention to the third-party candidates.
We would... except everybody sane joins the two big parties. Only the people crazy enough to think they can beat the two-party system make a separate party. :-D
thanks, i can no longer in good conscious vote for ANYONE now :( .
Allow me to crush your idealism even further - they did it to fund Vietnam. :-D
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Anyways, QC clearly takes place in a world where the South won the Civil War. Sherman is halted outside of Atlanta for a moment too long, and the failure to capture that city results in Lincoln losing the 1864 election to McClellan. Despite the loss, Lincoln still has four months before he's out of office and attempts to leave McClellan no-one to negotiate with. Sherman's March to the Sea and Grant's campaigns in Northern Virginia result.
But, as in our time, the South holds out, here heartened by the deadline for the war, and on March 4, 1865, newly sworn-in President McClellan declares a cease-fire with the Confederacy. The negotiations are quick, the CS dropping all claims to states that did not secede, as well as on the western territories and West Virginia. The US gives up Indian Territory and pledges a non-aggression pact in return.
(http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k85/Rocketdude1987/result.gif)
Without the unchallenged rule of North America, the USA remained an isolationist nation that rarely, if ever, went on foreign adventures, turning a blind eye to the CSA's purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua in the 1880s, and taking advantage of the Confederate-Spanish War of 1898 to grab the Phillippines.
The Great War kicks off in 1914, with Britain, France and Russia versus Germany and Austria. The US and CS, nuzzled in their warm isolationist blankets, see no need to get involved in such a silly affair. Without their aid, Germany knocks Russia out of the war in 1917 and breaks through to Paris in 1918. Britain, safe from German arms by virtue of its powerful navy, yet unable to fight Germany on land alone, signs a white peace.
Russia falls to Communism, but with German satellite states sitting on the rich farmlands of the Ukraine, Communist Russia remains a backwards marginalized nation. France continues its cycle of collapsing Republics, and the Austrian and Ottoman Empires remain, propped up by their powerful German ally. A German-dominated economic and political sphere forms, called Mitteleuropa.
A Depression hits, but not as bad or as hard, since the boom of the '20s was checked from US neutrality in the Great War, the lack of the Southern economy contributing, and a war with an upstart Japan.
France and Italy fall to some form of Fascism, forming the Rome-Paris Axis, possibly courting the Russian Soviet Federated Socalist Republic (RSFSR). Appeasement has taken hold in Britain, but Germany, despite economic troubles, remains confident in its power. The final collapse of the Hapsburg Monarchy in the 1940s is the cue for the Franco-Italian declaration of war on Germany, the Axis hoping to take advantage of disorganization in Germany as it prepares to integrate the German-speaking lands of former Austro-Hungary.
Britain and the Americas stay out, Britain unwilling to aid either side and the Americas again not seeing the gain from messing around in Europe. The Second Great War continues (with or without the RSFSR entering) until Amiens and Venice are vaporized by nuclear bombs. With no Nazi Party in the Kaiserreich, Albert Einstein and his contemporaries never fled Germany, and the Kaiser now has a gridlock on the most powerful weapon on Earth.
If Fascism survives the failure of the Second Great War, it does so in a radically changed form, France and/or Italy becoming a noisy opposition to Germany rather than a true constant threat.
As the German monarchy stumbles in the '50s and 60s, a new democratic wave emerges, eventually restructuring Germany on the British model, retaining the Kaisers as nominal heads of the country, but with a powerful Reichstag. This creates a ripple effect in Mitteleuropa, changing it from a means of German-dominance to a "European Union". The small German-created states of central and eastern Europe quickly join, as does the Ottoman Empire.
Pure science, rather than war-focused research, explodes in the Americas and Britain after Wernher von Braun puts the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit.The "Space Race", as it is called, ends in the early 1970s as German, British, and joint US/CS missions land on the Moon. Small lunar colonies are eventually planted, followed in the 80s by an International Space Station (named such despite nearly all work being done by Germany, the British Empire, and the Americas).
There is no Vietnam war, as no major nation, least of all the US, has interest in helping the French hold on to Indochina. Segregation comes to an end in the Confederacy in 1986, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter.
The flood of space technologies and requirements kicks computer development in the ass, especially as the Space Race sets its new goal at Mars, though the Mars program is put on hold after the Germania and Invincible disasters in the 90s.
Home-use sentient robotics are unveiled on January 1, 2000, and the first private space station follows a few months later, though its widely regarded as a "mad scientist's wet dream" rather than a true scientific outpost.
The USA and CSA maintain warm relations, not least due to sharing a space agency, the North American Space Agency, NASA. Travel between the two is easy and fairly unrestricted. Talk of reunion has always been dismissed, however. Most believe the North and South make better friends and neighbors than spouses.
The British Empire remains the world's largest nation, moreso if all her dominions are counted. Economically strong, though outclassed by the pure industrial giants of the USA and Germany, she holds her own economic union with her dominions and is not art of teh so-called "European Union".
The German Reich is the most powerful nation on Earth, both economically and militarily. Though its solitary reign over the Bomb has ended, the Reich remains, quite clearly, number one.
8-)
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Wait, "remains" isolationist? When wast the US ever isolationist? We were practically always at war!
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Wait, "remains" isolationist? When wast the US ever isolationist? We were practically always at war!
Isolationist in the historical US sense (not Switzerland sense) - staying in the Western hemisphere, and not getting involved in Old World squabbles or alliances.
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Rocketman - how much Harry Turtledove have you been reading lately?
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Rocketman - how much Harry Turtledove have you been reading lately?
Guns of the South and How Few Remain are sitting right next to my mouse.
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One word: (Or is it two words? Does "the" count?) The Matrix.
The robots are merely hints to us...
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Rocketman - have you played Victoria: Empires under the Sun? Some of the event chains seem familiar.
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Rocketman - have you played Victoria: Empires under the Sun? Some of the event chains seem familiar.
Caught again, damn it all. Yup. 8-)
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Rocketman wins the thread.
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Wait, I'm confused: does Rocketman's timeline mean that there were slaves well into the 80's? What about the underlying current of anti-semitism in Germany? That wouldn't go away just because there was no Nazi party. And does this mean that Palestine was never formed? And isn't the main reason that Eugenics and racism as a whole began to decline in the latter part of the 20th century because the world was shocked and horrified at Hitler's atrocities?
Also, I'm sure one QC strip mentioned a Nazi horse.
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Wait, I'm confused: does Rocketman's timeline mean that there were slaves well into the 80's?
The 1880s, yes, in the South. Northern slaves were freed in 1866 with the 13th Amendment. Southern slaves were emancipated in the 1880s as the cotton-based economy crumbled and the South was forced to shift towards industry. Segregation would continue in both nations well into the 1970s in the North and 1986 in the South.
What about the underlying current of anti-semitism in Germany? That wouldn't go away just because there was no Nazi party.
Yes, but a victorious Germany has no need for scapegoats and deathcamps.
And does this mean that Palestine was never formed?
Palestine is an Arabic province under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, as are what we would call Iraq, Syria and the Arabian Peninsula. There is a Jewish nation on the former French island of Madagascar.
And isn't the main reason that Eugenics and racism as a whole began to decline in the latter part of the 20th century because the world was shocked and horrified at Hitler's atrocities?
I severely doubt that. In OTL, there were twenty years between the fall of Hitler and the end of segregation in the US. Besides...
Also, I'm sure one QC strip mentioned a Nazi horse.
Fascism arose in France. The Germans dubbed the parading Frenchmen "Nazi", a Bavarian slang word meaning "buffoon".
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OK... first off, this isn't anything personal, I just love debating. :wink:
I highly doubt that the South would have freed their slaves so quickly, purely because of the intense racism of the time. Integration practically happened during reconstruction, were it not for Southern democrats and "Ex"-Confederates who refused to accept the new order. If the Confederate government tried to free the slaves in the 1880's, the majority of the (white) people probably would have hauled them out and hung them from the nearest tree.
Crumbling cotton economy or not, slavery was the whole reason the South seceeded in the first place. To give ANY sort of concession to what many considered a "lesser race" probably would have seemed like an insult to most Confederates. It gets whitewashed a lot today, but The CSA was a nation FOUNDED on racism.
Second... how about the fact that Hitler and Nazism have been referenced in the same strip before in the QC-verse? :-P
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OK... first off, this isn't anything personal, I just love debating. :wink:
Same here. :wink:
I highly doubt that the South would have freed their slaves so quickly, purely because of the intense racism of the time. Integration practically happened during reconstruction, were it not for Southern democrats and "Ex"-Confederates who refused to accept the new order. If the Confederate government tried to free the slaves in the 1880's, the majority of the (white) people probably would have hauled them out and hung them from the nearest tree.
The massive influence of the KKK and other groups also relies on the South losing. Unable to fight the USA, they took their frustrations out on an 'enemy' they could fight.
But, in a victorious South, the enemy is not going to be the slaves, but other nations. Britain will have shifted to getting cotton from Egypt by 1865, and more and more nations simply won't want to trade with a slaveholding country as the years roll by. And the South will need to trade with other nations, as all the cotton means it's not self-sufficient. Look how badly it suffered under the Union blockade.
The South had already made a concession to the international scene by banning the slave trade, and once Brazil ends slavery in the 1880s, the South is going to find itself alone in the world. And for a nation dependant on international trade, that's not a good position.
Crumbling cotton economy or not, slavery was the whole reason the South seceeded in the first place. To give ANY sort of concession to what many considered a "lesser race" probably would have seemed like an insult to most Confederates. It gets whitewashed a lot today, but The CSA was a nation FOUNDED on racism.
I agree on the whitewashing, to a point. Reading the CSA constitution reveals they were also heavily concerned with the power of the national government, and many things the Confederates implemented would still be good ideas today (all bills must have one subject, expressed in the title; when Congress gives money to something, an exact dollar amount must be specified, and not a penny more can be given, etc).
Second... how about the fact that Hitler and Nazism have been referenced in the same strip before in the QC-verse? :-P
Nazism is a common term, as the nickname for the French Fascists.
Hitler, after serving in the Kaiser's army in the Great War, went home to Austria, finding his views on nationalism and race unwelcome in victorious Germany (no "stabbed in the back" mythos to incite people to join those kind of militaristic parties).
However, in Austria, he does find people who listen. Austria gained little from the War and lost many young men and her Great Power status - even if it's not official, everyone understands that Austria-Hungary exists at Germany's whim.
So, when France and Italy attack and the Second Great War begins, Hitler's Austrian Worker's Party rises up in Austria and Bohemia, capturing Vienna and some other cities, proclaiming Hitler as "Fuhrer of Austria-Bohemia", and murdering those the party hates in the streets of those cities.
The outright attempts at genocide and the brutal nature of life in the lands his Party controlled as made Hitler's name even more of a household term than the Fascist leaders of France and Italy, who preferred to exile their undesirables to places like Madagascar.
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The only problem with your Austro-Hungarian Workers Party theory Rocketman is that Austro-Hungary was a very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic place. Post WWI Germany (real world), especially after the loss of the areas to Poland, and France after the Treaty of Versailles was much less so.
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The only problem with your Austro-Hungarian Workers Party theory Rocketman is that Austro-Hungary was a very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic place.
True enough, but that didn't prevent the rise of powerful anti-Semitic parties (the Liberals and the Christian-Socials) there as early as the 1880s.
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As a bonus, we wouldn't be subjected to "The Sound of Music" as Karl von Trapp would have continued his successful career as an Austro-Hungarian submariner, and there would have been no need for him to move to Austria....
As a minus though, we wouldn't have the GREAT novel "All Quiet on the Western Front"
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The only problem with your Austro-Hungarian Workers Party theory Rocketman is that Austro-Hungary was a very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic place. Post WWI Germany (real world), especially after the loss of the areas to Poland, and France after the Treaty of Versailles was much less so.
It was becoming more multi-ethnic. I see Austria-Hungary as following OTL's Italy after the War - they don't gain much in land, they lost a whole lot in people, and despite being on the winning side, they come out much worse for the wear, And unlike Italy, A-H loses its Great Power status.
With the Hapsburg monarchy on shaky ground, the various ethnicities in the Empire clamor for independence, hoping that Germany will allow them separate satellite states like it had for Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland and the like. This would also allow Germany to absorb the German-speaking lands of the former empire, completing the Grossdeutschland idea of the 1800s.
Hitler's nationalistic and militaristic ideas would gain credence in a nation wishing to regain its pride. Then, when the Hapsburgs collapse in the 1940s, it looks like the fulfillment of what he's been speaking about - Hungarians and the like tearing the Emprie apart, while the North Germans stab their cousins in the back to take their land.
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I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with you on the whole CSA thing. My understanding for the reason the KKK wasn't around (at least in any great power) prior to the Civil War was because the people who would later form the KKK they were in charge.
And any other claim besides slavery the CSA made about seceeding was, at best, secondary by far. At least, that's my understanding.
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I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with you on the whole CSA thing. My understanding for the reason the KKK wasn't around (at least in any great power) prior to the Civil War was because the people who would later form the KKK they were in charge.
You have to remember, the KKK was originally formed to resist the military occupation of the Southern states. They intimidated any collaborators with the Federal Government. And, the first KKK declined because the Southern elites turned against it, believing that the Klan's tactics were just giving the Northerners an excuse to continue their military occupation. It disbanded in 1871 after declining for about three years.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying the Confederacy would be racial harmony, gumdrops and rainbows. I do feel, however, that a free South that comes to its own decision to free the slaves would be less inclined to violence against them than a frustrated, angry South that does so under the guns of the North.
And any other claim besides slavery the CSA made about seceeding was, at best, secondary by far. At least, that's my understanding.
Lincoln offered a Constitutional Amendment in 1861 once he was in office - slavery would be forever protected in the South. No states returned to the Union.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had a loophole. Any state that rejoined the Union before Jan 1, 1863 would be exempt from it, just like Maryland and the like where. No states took him up on it.
Then, late in the war, a plan came up to give slaves their freedom in exchange for military service. It wasn't completed due to certain events in April of 1865, but the mere fact the South even began discussing it (and the other examples) says to me that independence and state/personal liberty (for white men, of course, not that "personal liberty" applied to anyone else in the mid-1800s, no matter what nation) was worth more than retaining slavery.
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...Point well made, sir. Point well made.
I honestly can't think of anything else to say on the matter, so here's that fantastic dinosaur icon: :-D
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I'm going to search for talks about the south and Civil war in QC, seeing as Jeph's a huge fan on it and I remember seeing a comic about it.
Here we go:
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=327
This is a start, but it can work both ways.
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Personally, when it comes to QC, I like to think of it as the same in terms of history: some guy just made little robots and inhabitable space stations.
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How did the QC universe get so different from ours? The magic wands and pixie dust of Jeph's imagination!
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Here we go:
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=327
"The South shall rise again" originally referred to the desire to reverse the loss of relative economic strength since the birth of the Confederacy. When the CSA was born, it was the fourth-richest country in the world, after the North, Britain, and France. The four years of war and blockade, loss of its major international cotton buyers (and general Confederate resentment to the Europeans would stood by and watched as their country burned), the collapse of the plantation economy, and a much smaller base to build upon compared to the Union, the European Empires and the united Germany resulted in a relatively small Southern economic power.
The slogan got picked up by the more right-wing elements of Confederate society, including those who want to take Kentucky and the other 'border states' from the North. Largely ignored, even in the South, they still make enough noise to be a common joke in both Americas.
NASCAR, well, Marten just doesn't know much about NASCAR.
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what's to know about NASCAR? Cars drive around an oval track - people get drunk and go "Damn that's fast!" sometimes there are crashes, but generally it looks pretty boring.
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So does football. So does baseball. And basketball, for that matter.
Once you know what's actually going on, though, things get interesting.
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mmmm... golf.
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Ah, yes, the sport of the overweight and middle-aged.
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The Second Great War continues (with or without the RSFSR entering) until Amiens and Venice are vaporized by nuclear bombs.
Where would the Germans have developed the bomb? You'd need somewhere well away from the battlefield for the scientists to do their work, like the Australian Outback or New Mexico. Also somewhere to test it that isn't near any population (I can't think of anywhere in Europe you could test a nuclear bomb) and not needed for some other purpose for quite a while.
(http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=327)
Man, I don't even remember that one. So, thanks.
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Actually, if the neutron had been discovered just a few years earlier than it was, then the Germans might have developed the atomic bomb first (remember that a significant chunk of the talent at Los Alamos had been forced to flee Germany). As for where they'd test it? They'd test it in the ocean, just as we often did.
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Where would the Germans have developed the bomb? You'd need somewhere well away from the battlefield for the scientists to do their work, like the Australian Outback or New Mexico. Also somewhere to test it that isn't near any population (I can't think of anywhere in Europe you could test a nuclear bomb) and not needed for some other purpose for quite a while.
Germany didn't lose its colonial empire in the Great War. They built and tested their bombs the same way OTL France did - out in the boondocks of their colonies.
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That's why I mentioned the Australian outback: that's where Britain tested its bomb.
I couldn't remember what colonies Germany had (and it was far to late to start research) They had colonies in Africa, didn't they?
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Yes, they had what is now Namibia (then German Southwest Africa), Tanzania (German Southeast Africa) and another whose name escapes me. The Germans came really late to the overseas colonies game and didn't get anything really choice.
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I think the Dutch had a greater empire than Germany. Odd to think Holland was a world power now.
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Yes, they had what is now Namibia (then German Southwest Africa), Tanzania (German Southeast Africa) and another whose name escapes me. The Germans came really late to the overseas colonies game and didn't get anything really choice.
Also some scattered islands in the Pacific and the former Belgian Congo, as well as the colonies taken from France.
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Holland, up until the middle of the 17th Century was one of the premier naval powers of the world, it was around this time that this previously insignifigant island off the northern coast of France started to get all uppity.
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Apparently we've had a very close relationship with the Dutch. I just read that they invaded Britain with a fleet five times larger than the Spanish Armada to depose hated King ...James? (Damn useless memory, I only read that the day before yesterday. But I could recount an old review for a game I'm never going to buy. My brain will only retain something if it's sure it's of no use.) Oddly, it was written out of history as a "glorious revolution".
I suppose pleasant obscurity is the way of the future. Should we just stop fighting it and make life more comfortable for ourselves?
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Agreed, but the superhero thing is fun, so that why I went with it. The ineffectual cops were just funny too, I think. Or it could be that they're superceded by the superheroes, and so their standards are falling.
As for the domed city, now we're just being silly. But isn't that (partly) the point of this thread?
Also, Faye was right (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=811). Hannelore is Penelope's time-travelling daughter from the future.
Deeper analysis when it occurs to me. Probably.
Only... we've met Hannelore's mother. So is Penelope also time travelling from the past? :P
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Apparently we've had a very close relationship with the Dutch. I just read that they invaded Britain with a fleet five times larger than the Spanish Armada to depose hated King ...James? ...
James VII and II Stuart (of Scotland and England) fled England without a struggle in 1688 (the fact that most of his army went over to the invader helped persuade him to flee) when William of Orange [what is now the Netherlands] invaded. William then became king of England, Scotland and Ireland because his wife Mary was James's eldest daughter.
A few battles took place later in Ireland between James (with French backing) and William of Orange. William won, hence the Orange parades, marching seasons, and Orange Orders in northern Ireland and Canada.
Perhaps Hannelore's psychic clone baby is the most recent attempt of the Stuart dynasty to take over Britain. Let the Windsors watch out!
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You know, I think I pinpointed what exactly about this whole alternate history thing bugs me.
It removes the characters too much from our world. I think it begins to affect their relatibility (sp).
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You know, I think I pinpointed what exactly about this whole alternate history thing bugs me.
It removes the characters too much from our world. I think it begins to affect their relatibility (sp).
Hanners grew up in Low Earth Orbit.
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True, but then, I hate Hannelore. :wink:
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Actually, if the neutron had been discovered just a few years earlier than it was, then the Germans might have developed the atomic bomb first (remember that a significant chunk of the talent at Los Alamos had been forced to flee Germany). As for where they'd test it? They'd test it in the ocean, just as we often did.
My chemistryTA claims that actually, the problem (good thing really) was that they went for a fusion bomb. An 50s nuclear bomb is a fission bomb, which is considerably easier to create/control. Fusion bombs (i.e.hydrogen bombs) were too difficult to make with the chemical knowledge of the time. Apparently, all the smart guys were there, they were just working on the wrong project...so...yeah. Yay Chemistry!!
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True, but then, I hate Hannelore. :wink:
Fine then, the main character (lower middle-class) can afford a sentient robot. :-P
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I'm sticking with "It's nearly identicle with slight tweaks in technology". You can assume from some of the references made that the world is largely similar (Pintsize's Lincoln and Castro beards, for instance), so I like to think that an Einsteinian (Amazing word) person was born that helped humans make the leap in technology that we have not.
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I agree with turtle, though not necessarily his spelling of identical :wink:.
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Now I feel silly. I'm usually a spelling nazi to myself.
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I'm sticking with "It's nearly identicle with slight tweaks in technology". You can assume from some of the references made that the world is largely similar (Pintsize's Lincoln and Castro beards, for instance), so I like to think that an Einsteinian (Amazing word) person was born that helped humans make the leap in technology that we have not.
so chances are, QC is either in the present day, without the weakening of NASA in the past, or set about 10-15 years in the future
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Just a couple of history notes:
1. The majority of Britons in the late C19th supported the CSA, if a CSA victory appeared likely interventionist Britain would probably have joined the war on its side.
2. Britain had no problems trading with slave nations as long as it suited its goals, it considered anti-slave rhetoric as protection enough from censure.
3. Britain got most of its cotton from India until the mid-C20th, running a major scam in which it brought Indian cotton at miniscule prices then sold the finished clothes back at astronomical prices (thus the spinning wheel on India's flag as a sign of Independence)
4. The Glorious Revolution was an attempt to get rid of James II because he was a Catholic, and the English Civil war had been fought because...the king was a Catholic. Most Britons supported William III just to avoid another Civil War.
PS. Rocketman, I salute you. Lots of good ideas, I'm not slagging anyone off, I just really love history.
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1. The majority of Britons in the late C19th supported the CSA, if a CSA victory appeared likely interventionist Britain would probably have joined the war on its side.
A CS victory doesn't appear likely in my timeline until Lincoln loses the 1864 election. Up to that point, the war runs as in our timeline (Lee's invasions of the North fail, Vicksburg falls, the Emancipation Proclamation is issued)
I could maybe see Britain getting involved navally, to break the Union blockade, sail up the Potomac or something and force Lincoln to realize he's lost (after the election, of course), but there was a "March to the Sea" reference in the comic. Plus, I don't think the Brits would want to risk Canada with the possibility of the South collapsing before Lincoln's out of office.
2. Britain had no problems trading with slave nations as long as it suited its goals, it considered anti-slave rhetoric as protection enough from censure.
Hm, true. I doubt the independent-minded Confederates will want to become basically a British dominion once other nations stop trading, especially with leftover resentment from their non-interference in the War of Secession.
3. Britain got most of its cotton from India until the mid-C20th, running a major scam in which it brought Indian cotton at miniscule prices then sold the finished clothes back at astronomical prices (thus the spinning wheel on India's flag as a sign of Independence)
A lot of the shift to India and Egypt for cotton, though, happened because the Southern cotton plantations were shut off with the Union blockade.
PS. Rocketman, I salute you. Lots of good ideas, I'm not slagging anyone off, I just really love history.
Me too, it's all good. 8-)
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Apparently we've had a very close relationship with the Dutch. I just read that they invaded Britain with a fleet five times larger than the Spanish Armada to depose hated King ...James? (Damn useless memory, I only read that the day before yesterday. But I could recount an old review for a game I'm never going to buy. My brain will only retain something if it's sure it's of no use.) Oddly, it was written out of history as a "glorious revolution".
I suppose pleasant obscurity is the way of the future. Should we just stop fighting it and make life more comfortable for ourselves?
William III, the stadhouder (steward) of the Netherlands married Mary II, the daughter of the indeed hated king James. James was removed from the throne and William and Mary ruled the Netherlands, England, Scotland and Ireland. Suppose they got a kid, what would've happened? But they didn't, so England and Holland split up again. I don't know exactly why James was so hated though, I believe it was because he was catholic while the rest of the country was protestant or something.
It would be interesting to know what would've happened if William and Mary did get a kid. It was the British who demised the Dutch trading monopoly, so what would've happened if they were joined? An Anglo-Dutch World Empire? The US never born? 1984? o_O
Oh yeah..
...of Orange [what is now the Netherlands]...
Orange is a family name. My country has never been named after a citrus fruit. xD
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My country has never been named after a citrus fruit. xD
Jesper, I apologize to you and all inhabitants of the Netherlands.
A child of William III and Mary II would have made a difference. Instead of Hanover and Britain dynastically joined, it would have been the Netherlands and Britain.
What was the Dutch position on female succession? Hanover & Britain's dynastic joining of 1714-1837 ended with the accession of Queen Victoria-- the Hanoverians didn't allow females to be monarchs, so a the succession went to the fifth-eldest son of George III (as opposed to Victoria, who was the daughter of the Duke of Kent, George III's fourth-oldest son). I suspect that the British-Dutch union would have ended at some similar way-- either by an amicable dissolution or a Dutch rebellion.
Perhaps if Jeph has one of his characters make a trip to New York, and it is called Nieuw Amsterdam we'll know for sure that this is what happened!
(yeah, right!)
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James II wasn't really hated for himself or even his Catholicism per se, the main problem was that the last openly (Charles II was a secret Catholic) Catholic monarch was Charles I who had started the English Civil War by (amongst other things) claiming he ruled by Divine Right, which was an essentially Catholic belief. To most people in England a new Catholic monarch represented the possibility of another Civil War and launching a relatively bloodless coup to install William III seemed the preferable option. These days monarchs in England are still barred from being practicing Catholics, but they can belong to other religions. I am waiting impatiently for the first Buddhist king, although like many British people I just consider them a bunch of troublemakers who should be forced to give up their positions en masse.
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I'm sticking with "It's nearly identicle with slight tweaks in technology". You can assume from some of the references made that the world is largely similar (Pintsize's Lincoln and Castro beards, for instance), so I like to think that an Einsteinian (Amazing word) person was born that helped humans make the leap in technology that we have not.
so chances are, QC is either in the present day, without the weakening of NASA in the past, or set about 10-15 years in the future
Im going with this. first thought was slightly future- because the technology wouldnt be far off with the right funding, and would correspond with why theres almost no cars- nobody can afford gas :roll:. but then, with NASA staying strong, it could mean that cars are outdated...
and yeah, i know jeph just hates drawing cars
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My country has never been named after a citrus fruit. xD
Jesper, I apologize to you and all inhabitants of the Netherlands.
A child of William III and Mary II would have made a difference. Instead of Hanover and Britain dynastically joined, it would have been the Netherlands and Britain.
What was the Dutch position on female succession? Hanover & Britain's dynastic joining of 1714-1837 ended with the accession of Queen Victoria-- the Hanoverians didn't allow females to be monarchs, so a the succession went to the fifth-eldest son of George III (as opposed to Victoria, who was the daughter of the Duke of Kent, George III's fourth-oldest son). I suspect that the British-Dutch union would have ended at some similar way-- either by an amicable dissolution or a Dutch rebellion.
Perhaps if Jeph has one of his characters make a trip to New York, and it is called Nieuw Amsterdam we'll know for sure that this is what happened!
(yeah, right!)
Don't worry, it's not that big of a deal. ;)
But female succession only became an item in the late 19th century, when king William III died with a young daughter and a widow as only heirs. (first we had steward William I - V, then king William I - III. They weren't very creative with the names. xD) His widow, queen Emma, took care of all the official duties, while her daughter Wilhelmina was the actual Queen of the Netherlands. At that point Luxemburg (a country about the size of Rhode Island I guess, between Belgium and Germany) split off from the kingdom. They didn't accept a queen, whereas the Netherlands did.
I think the problem with the Netherlands would've been the problems with the regents and the patriots that took place around the same time as the French revolution. The regents were representatives of the different provinces in the States-General, an early form of parliament. The patriots were the Dutch equivalent of the French ones in that time.
Both parties weren't very friendly towards the steward, and he actually had to flee the country ultimately. (It must be said that the steward of that time, William V, was a very weak ruler.) William V's son returned to the Netherlands in 1815, and was crowned King William I.
(Btw, I'm not entirely sure what this all has to do with the QC universe, but history is fun so ah well. xD)
Oh yeah, something on-topic, I don't believe QC is meant to be set in the future, 'cause Marten and Faye regularly discuss albums that just came out in our world. I think it's set in our time, but some genius (Hanners' father?) invented AnthroPC's. NASA going stronger than in our world sounds like a nice theory, but I don't think the car-thing should be taken that serious. Raven has a VW Beetle, doesn't she? And Amanda hired a car once, just to get from the air port to Faye's place.
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I seem to remember the rest of the crowd finding it really odd that Hanners grew up on a space station. I think someone said something to the effect of, "You're tell me you grew up IN SPACE?!"
I don't think technology is that different, either, because aside from AnthroPCs, everything is almost exactly the same. I mean, the Roomba is still just as primitive as real-world Roombas.
QC still has to take place in an alternate universe, though, because if I crawled up and down every street in Massachusetts I wouldn't run into any of the characters.
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Well, no. They'd be avoiding the weird guy crawling up the street. :lol:
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I personally think the QC Universe is set in the same time as our own. Becuase, other than the AnthroPCs and other robots, everything is normal. Music references are current (well, they'd have to be, because, well, Jeph isn't, AFAIK, Doctor Who), and when you do see cars (like Raven's Beetle (http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=423)), they are current as well. New York culture is pretty current, too; the characters' main vices are coffee, alcohol, sex, the occasional cigarette and the Internet, sounds about right!
In other words, IMO Jeph has just taken an artistic license with the technology aspect, because a world without talking robots is much less cool.
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Well, no. They'd be avoiding the weird guy crawling up the street. :lol:
Or dating him.
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Rocketman is right, but he failed to mention that Cory Doctorow also blogs from high-altitude ballons in this alternate history.
And Hannelore is awesome.
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Being as the differences between the QC Universe and our own are largely technological with no change to the music scene or the cultural forces that affected the progression of musical trends, the split must have happened relatively recently. The limiting factor would have to be that the split happened early enough to produce a space station suitable for families in time for Hannelore to be raised on one. As Hannelore is in her early to mid-20s, this would have had to have occurred some time in the 1980s. Based on that, I think I've got a chain of events that would work. Witness:
In the mid 1980s, Steve Jobs saw that while the Mac had a good grip on colleges the PC was seizing the workplace. Jobs retooled the Mac OS with a unix base and a mandate to make the Mac compatible with a DOS office. Compatibility was the new paradigm. By doing so, Apple never stopped being a major player in the PC market. This kept the heat on Microsoft and Sun, forcing them to keep innovating. In order to get an edge, Apple formed an early partnership with AOL. By introducing the internet to Mac users (and specifically college-age Mac users), the left embraced online political organizing early enough to make a difference in the 1988 Presidential campaign. The result was that Michael Dukakis was elected President instead of George H. W. Bush.
In 1990, Senator Al Gore was in Saudi Arabia on an official visit to meet with Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. While there, he met with Salem bin Laden, eldest of the bin Laden brothers and CEO of the Saudi Bin Laden group and was introduced to Salem's half-brother, Osama bin Laden. Osama, a considerably more religious man than Salem, made some comments to Gore which were considered less than polite and were not translated. This led to an argument between the brothers and they adjourned to another room. Once in private, Osama slapped Salem across the face and told him he had disgraced the family and all their late father had built by consorting with an infidel. This led to a full-fledged screaming then wrestling match between the cousins. In a repeat of the 1963 Battle of Ramadan, the match ended with Salem sitting on Osama's chest with his arms pinned. Rather than playing another round of "stop hitting yourself", Salem explained to his brother that the relationship between the bin Laden family and the Bush family was what had brought them wealth and power and that building business relationships with Westerners was their father's greatest accomplishment. Salem then explained that these relationships played a major factor in spreading Islam to the West and that segregating themselves from the West would only keep the word of the Prophet from western ears.
Humbled at the strength of the argument and the rebuke from his eldest brother, Osama apologized to Salem, returned to school, earned a broadcasting degree and went to work for Al-Jazeera. His program, "Osama", soon became the most popular daytime talk show in the Arab world, blending religious discourse with interviews, entertainment news, sports coverage, politics and health issues. In 1989, bin Laden began a campaign against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein sparked by reports of Hussein's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war. Bin Laden offered a pan-Islamic vision, stating that while there were Kurds, Shiites and Sunis, the people of the Middle East were first and foremost Muslims and that the genocide was a crime against not only humanity, but against Allah. In a 1991 ceremony at the UN, Osama bin Laden was honored for his contribution to Iraq's "Velvet Revolution" that removed Saddam Hussein from power.
With a US economy booming from cheap gas, the Peace Dividend brought on by a radical reduction in military spending at the end of the Cold War and a more stable Middle East was directed to technological research in an effort to keep former defense workers employed. in 1992 a young hardware engineer at Apple, William Ellicott, developed a new method of cooling chips. Excited by his accomplishment, he told his wife, Inga Chatham who was working on battery technology for Apple. Dr. Chatham had worked out a new system that increased the amount of power that could be stored on a battery of a given size by a factor of 10,000. Her problem was that the battery generated so much heat that the extra power was given over to cooling for a net gain of 0. Armed with the two complementary technologies, Drs. Ellicott and Chatham poured themselves into their own private skunkworks and in a 30-day work-binge created a prototype of the first AnthroPC out of seven Newtons and 10,000 Legos.
The initial demonstration of the AnthroPC was a rocky affair. "Baldrick" demonstrated a certain degree of mobility and his voice recognition was passable, but he required a significant amount of prodding to complete the demonstration tasks. Furthermore, Baldrick's hacked-together appearance did nothing to impress Steve Jobs' hypercritical design sense. He was unimpressed and launched on a tirade about half-baked design, its inability to accomplish basic tasks and the inherent ugliness of the prototype. As Steve ranted, Baldrick walked over to a box of Legos and began to re-assemble himself. He removed some of the bricks from his legs and used them to lengthen his arms, added a second elbow joint and a tail he could use as a stabilizer while walking up ramps and started the demonstration course again.
At this, Jobs was agog. He stared at Baldrick, now zooming through the course at record speed, with an expression somewhere between wonder and rage. He turned on Ellicott and Chatham who were equally stunned and demanded an explanation. "Are you fucking with me?!", Jobs screamed. Ellicott and Chatham, now wondering the same thing, were speechless and began looking around for someone with a remote control. Baldrick, seeming to sense the situation, returned to the Lego bin and pulled out more some parts. He walked over to Jobs, stopped, and looked the CEO in the eye. Then Baldrick changed the world: he reached into his storage pouch, pulled out a small Apple sticker and placed it proudly on his chest.
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Winslow's the Apple product, though. Pintsize is a PC.
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That was an excellent alternate history.
One quibble: How is it that Al Gore caused an argument amongst the bin Ladins in 1990 that led to Osama spending several years getting a degree and a talk show that culminated in an anti-Saddam campaign iin 1989?
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That was an excellent alternate history.
One quibble: How is it that Al Gore caused an argument amongst the bin Ladins in 1990 that led to Osama spending several years getting a degree and a talk show that culminated in an anti-Saddam campaign iin 1989?
That brings us to stage two. As we know, Al Gore is responsible for protecting the time-space continuum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthology_of_Interest_I#The_Un-Freeze_of_a_Lifetime). Traditionally this has been responsibility of the Vice President. Due to abuse of power during the Eisenhower administration, the Supreme Court ruled in Lifeson vs Lee (1962) that Senator Al Gore would hold the power in trust until 2112. As such, Gore was empowered to make repairs to the timeline as he saw fit.
A side effect of the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in 1936 was the temporal displacement of a section of desert connected by a ley line to the island where the Ark was opened. In this section time moved several times slower than normal, making it the ideal place for research. A project that would normally take ten years could be completed in less than one, allowing the 126-year recording session for Chinese Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_democracy) to be completed in a mere 13 years. Gore, knowing Osama's nuclear ambitions and his hatred of the west, realized that should Osama become aware of the time oasis he would inevitably locate his nuclear program there. By causing the argument in 1990, Gore was able to arrange to dissuade bin Laden from his original plans, then offer the oasis as an effective shortcut.
Gore offered bin Laden a chance to earn the degree in a few months of realtime by using the Oasis. Then, to cement the lesson Salem bin Laden had given his brother, Gore arranged to have a few grams of plutonium and several tons of TNT smuggled into the Oasis. Gore exploded the bomb in the middle afternoon prayers and immediately ran to Osama's study "to make sure he was OK". Gore then explained that another party had been doing surreptitious nuclear research and failed to account for the time/space changes. This, he explained, was why the US was so secretive about nuclear technology: it was far less straightforward than people were led to believe and caused massive disruptions in time and space. Gore went on to tell Osama that the relatively small explosion had flung them backwards in time to 1982. This, he went on to say, was one of the reasons for the media culture of the "decadent west"; they needed to distract the population at large in such a way that people's sense of time was unreliable in order to mask the ongoing corrections to the flow of time made necessary by the Trinity, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima bombs. Osama, caught off guard by the explosion, the kindness of the seemingly-robotic Al Gore, and a small dose of X slipped into his morning tea fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Al was then able to bring bin Laden back to 1982 and enroll him in journalism school.
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Wow. I'm impressed.
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Wizards, sorcerers, and magicians. None of you know how to tinker with super-science. *shakes head*
A side effect of the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in 1936 was the temporal displacement of a section of desert connected by a ley line to the island where the Ark was opened. In this section time moved several times slower than normal, making it the ideal place for research. A project that would normally take ten years could be completed in less than one,
If the time stream on the island moves slower than normal, then experiments on the island also move slower than normal. An experiment requiring ten years to perform, if performed on the island, would consume 100 years of time from the P.O.V. of an observer in the normal time flow. Which is good if you're a bored man of power looking to time travel into the future where your troubles can't follow you, like, say, Ted "It's Made of Tubes" Stevens, but crappy for any idea of time compression a la a DBZ training pod.
Which is actually an even better explanation for Chinese Democracy. A recording session that should have taken about 16 months ended up taking 13 years.
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If the time stream on the island moves slower than normal, then experiments on the island also move slower than normal. An experiment requiring ten years to perform, if performed on the island, would consume 100 years of time from the P.O.V. of an observer in the normal time flow.
Exactly! But if you're in the oasis that's linked to the island, the reverse is true. Why? Stage three. The ley line that connects the island to the oasis passes directly through the subterranean chamber where the Holy Grail lies, having fallen through a crevasse that formed in the floor of the Grail chamber when Elsa Schneider attempted to move the Grail past the Great Seal. This chamber, located in the Canyon of the Crescent Moon in Hatay (now part of Turkey) has qualities that focus the Grail's properties. The same forces that aged Walter Donovan hundreds of years in a matter of seconds by drinking from a false grail that had been stored near the true Grail affect the ley lines. The Grail's presence acts as a highly-localized source of temporal energy that affects the ley line in much the same way that a large mass can bend light. In this case the Grail warps the forces running along the ley line enough to reverse their effects, thus creating the ideal research environment for pretty much everything except physics. Unless you wear a dashing hat. Then you can get away with pretty much anything.
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I beleve it is the same world but with Anthro PC's and Space Stations you can permently live in have been made.
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I've always thought that QC exists in the future.
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Any explanation has to account for the bands the characters talk about being contemporary in our time, and for sentient computers to be running around in the same era.
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That's easy: it's fiction.
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what
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But you could explain anything that way!
One way to enjoy fiction is to play the game of fleshing it out. If it weren't just a game, the question would have been in the Ask Jeph thread, where I'm sure he would have blown off the question.
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Well, obviously, we're not looking for that one. I mean, why even have this thread then?
Maybe the U.S. simply skipped 'Nam and stuck with the Space program. More likely, though, the difference is relatively teeny-tiny, since whatever makes Anthro-PCs go hasn't shown up in much other technology, Roombas notwithstanding. In fact, the Roomba, Vespabot, and Deathbot 9000 are the only real evidence I can recall there is any different tech at work bedsides the Antho PCs themselves.
I still think Hanners is lying about the Space station. Or confused—call it what you will. After all, wouldn't growing up in a Space station play hell with bone formation?
I also want to know why I keep capitalizing Space.
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Maybe her dad's space station spins to substitute for gravity. The alternative is that doctors in the QC universe have developed treatments that promote bone development even without gravitational pressure.
In fact, this is quite a promising line of bull. Our world has just discovered the role of somatic serotonin in bone maintenance. Mice genetically engineered to have trouble with serotonin synthesis grow unusually dense bones. What if Hanners had just such a treatment in childhood, but it was still experimental and they didn't know that serotonin inhibition would cause psychiatric problems? The serotonin booster drugs are already used in our world to treat OCD, and serotonin abnormalities have been proposed as a cause.
Serotonin and bone density (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38919/title/Bone_density_may_be_determined_in_the_gut)
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c'mon, just because there's robots, anthroPCs and space stations doesn't mean it's THE FUTURE!! the music is current, the iPod is current (remember when Marten couldn't resist getting one?), Hilary Clinton is alive (she has an anthroPC, as almost everybody in QC World), the cellphones are current, the eye-glasses, clothes, furniture... all current. They're not the fucking Jetsons just because they have robots! Not all science fiction is set in the future... When you watch a Ninja movie (sorry, I just saw one :roll: ) you don't go "Holly shit, the dude just flew up that building! he's breaking gravity laws!! that must be the FUTURE!!
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Seriously, you guys need to break your reliance on bipartisan elections and start paying more attention to the third-party candidates.
We would... except everybody sane joins the two big parties. Only the people crazy enough to think they can beat the two-party system make a separate party. :-D
thanks, i can no longer in good conscious vote for ANYONE now :( .
Allow me to crush your idealism even further - they did it to fund Vietnam. :-D
...and just one last nail in the coffin- the space program was developed by Nazi scientists (von Braun, who became a US citizen in the 50s) to fuck the Russians (Sputnik 1 had just been launched)... So much for pathos...
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When you watch a Ninja movie (sorry, I just saw one :roll: ) you don't go "Holly shit, the dude just flew up that building! he's breaking gravity laws!! that must be the FUTURE!!
Actually, if you're over ten or so, you say, "Haha, no-one can really do that. See, he just hovered in the air for thirty-five seconds and kicked the good guy nine times in the left nostril. Can you see the wire?" Therefore chronological identification is immediately made irrelevant.
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What kind of answer are you looking for?
There are some great examples earlier in the thread of stories that "explain" how a world could end up like the one Jeph made up for fun.
Evidently the goal here wasn't as clear as intended. It's like one of those creative writing exercises where you're supposed to make up a story to go with a picture. Instead of a picture, there's a fictional universe that was designed to be funny instead of internally consistent. The challenge comes from the difficulty of making up an explanation that's consistent with the fiction, and the fun comes from making it interesting, funny, and ideally wacky in a QC'ish form of wackiness. It's a form of active, creative enjoyment of the strip, analogous to fan fiction except that this game leaves the characters in Jeph's hands.
Sitting back and enjoying the comic passively is fine, but it's not the only way to have fun with Questionable Content.
Clearer?