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[BenRG]

This is a story, not a tediously accurate account of real life.  It depicts what's needed to tell the story, and sufficient background to provide an environment for it.  Quibbling beyond that is just missing the point.

Precisely. Oilman, I really get the impression that you are desperately casting around for reasons to denigrate the characters and hate the strip. Why bother? Why did you even come to the forums when you should have guessed that your opinions would bring you into conflict with other users?

I've got to conclude that you're one of those people who likes annoying people and starting arguments. That's not a good or healthy place to be, IMO.

[Carl-E]

No, I think you're misreading him.  I think he actually likes the strip, but (like me) it's pretty far from his personal experience, so he's questioning it. 

With luck, he's finding out just how limited personal experience can be! 

[Oilman]

.....up to a point, Lord Copper.

QC is, basically, an American comic with an American background. Some aspects of it are familiar or self-evident to US readers, but less so or not at all to non-US readers.

If Dora simply dismissed Faye verbally without notice in most European countries, she would be liable to legal action, because the concept of "employment at will" is specifically American. CoD's employee benefits would be a non-issue in Europe, because the concept is completely different.

It's like another issue I saw somewhere recently, about a character visiting another in their apartment and having a conversation about "parking in the next street, so the Superintendent won't charge you for me". That is pretty much meaningless to a British or European reader, because the tenancy lease practices differ - you might need to notify your landlord for insurance reasons if someone moves in, but you can have all the house guests you like and it's no-one's business but yours

[Oilman]

No, I think you're misreading him.  I think he actually likes the strip, but (like me) it's pretty far from his personal experience, so he's questioning it. 

With luck, he's finding out just how limited personal experience can be!

suffice it say that yes, life is infinitely nuanced.

QC is a mildly amusing daily strip with "no f*cking elves" (google The Inklings if you don't recognise the reference) and a bit more substance than a simple gag-a-day format.

[pwhodges]

you might need to notify your landlord for insurance reasons if someone moves in, but you can have all the house guests you like and it's no-one's business but yours

Neither of those points is strictly accurate, though it may depend on the details of the contract (says a landlord).  Many tenants fail to appreciate that the words in the contract they signed actually have meaning and force.

[Oilman]

Well, that's true. I've rented accommodation over the years. You may need the landlord's approval; the landlord can  prohibit certain individuals from so much as entering the property. The landlord has to comply with legal restrictions on overcrowding and insurance.

Perhaps it's more true to say that the contractual restrictions are much more restrictive, and more closely enforced in the US thsn in UK.

[pwhodges]

Yes, it definitely comes across so in many circumstances.

But it may be more that the law allows the landlord more freedom to be unsympathetic, just as we've been seeing in the discussion of employment law in the WCDT.

[Oilman]

I'm told that US restrictions on persons in accomodation are partly derived from legislation designed to suppress electoral fraud - "vote early and vote often" etc. I don't know if this is so, but I could believe it.

[explicit]

I know the terms of my lease were very strict and we could be kicked out for any violation, which of course included adding an extra person to the house. Of course, where I lived you were only allowed to have 5 people on a lease for renting (unless you were family). A noise violation was grounds for immediate removal... this was a strict town in general...

[Oilman]

I've long since come to the conclusion that the U.S. is good fun in small doses but I've never felt the urge to live there.

Americans live in a communal style, it seems, despite their almost infinite space. Shared dormitory accomodation is pretty much extinct in UK higher education; you get communal apartments with en-suite but not the sort of thing you see in DoA. I worked on an American pipelay barge a year or two ago which had 2-man and 4-man cabins, which is VERY old school by European standards; the British and Dutch blokes moaned like crazy and the Yanks couldn't understand it. But, we went to the pub every night in port, which you DO NOT do on a British vessel....

Try to get the police out to a noisy, disorderly party over here, and see how you get on.

I had a visit from family based in the U.S, a couple of years ago. They were astounded at the extent and scale of under-age drinking, by which I mean under-18s. They seemed to think the police would come and kick the doors in, because we had beer and wine on the table at meals and allowed a 14-year-old cousin to have some.

[Scarblac]

I distinctly remember being at a party in an apartment in Wolverhampton (UK) once, where ~30 of us had to quickly leave through a back window because the landlord was at the door and the girl who lived there wasn't supposed to have greater than X number of people present. But I don't know the value of X. We did all sleep over the night before.

[Thrillho]

I had a visit from family based in the U.S, a couple of years ago. They were astounded at the extent and scale of under-age drinking, by which I mean under-18s. They seemed to think the police would come and kick the doors in, because we had beer and wine on the table at meals and allowed a 14-year-old cousin to have some.

This is something that I've found quite hilariously influencing the current generation of young people (including mine) simply due to pop culture, or at least that's my best guess.

People are so used to seeing television shows in which people get busted by the police for underage drinking that they think underage drinking is illegal in the UK. But it more or less doesn't exist as a crime in the UK, it's about purchase, ditto with smoking to my knowledge. I think there's something about if you're a toddler or whatever but aside from that it's pretty much down to parental responsibility.

[Oilman]

Correct, the crime is purchasing alcohol or tobacco under-age (18 in UK) or on behalf of a minor. There are no actual laws about consumption at all, apart from on licenced premises or in certain towns which have local by-laws restricting consumption in public places. So it is technically a criminal offence, but IRL no-one cares about it, least of all Mr Plod for the most part - unless they want to put the frighteners on a landlord or shop by threatening the renewal of their licence, or break up a particularly disorderly group in a public place.

I let my kids have alcohol under supervision as soon as they wanted it. Now one son is pretty much dry, but smokes; one plays rugby and one went to medical school and drinks things even I won't touch. Draw any conclusion you like from that.

[bhtooefr]

It's worth noting that the shared accommodations that you've seen in the US aren't actually typical of most situations (although it's possible that university dorm accommodations are part of why Americans are allergic to living in close quarters), and a lot of Americans have an excess of space that isn't shared with anyone except their spouse and children. And, the US is one of the least urbanized developed nations in the world, IIRC.

[Oilman]

I have family in Fort Worth who have a very large house by UK standards, but the thing whuch always strikes me about US housing is the general open-ness and lack of privacy of the surrounds.

I visited family in Fort Worth a couple of years ago and that was my introduction to Pop Warner football. Again, it all seemed very regimented, a lot of time committed and if you didn't, the child was simply dropped. Junior club sports here are much more relaxed, and the longer seasons mean most children play often enough.

[Zebediah]

Football in Texas is not a sport, it's a religion. Even at the Pop Warner and high school levels.

[Oilman]

Trending back towards comics, if there's an American version of the old style British "sports comic" - Alf Tupper, or Roy of the Rovers - I don't know about it

[explicit]

Yeah, that's because Texas. New England gives barely any shits about sports in general. Of course, there is a commitment and we are competitive, but no one gets kicked off a team unless they're 1.) a huge bastard or 2.) there's too many people on the team so someone has to get cut.

And the openness part depends on where you go. Texas is much different from Florida, which is much different from New England, which is much different from California. I also lived in Row Houses for a few years, so there's not exactly much openness in that.

[DSL]

Trending back towards comics, if there's an American version of the old style British "sports comic" - Alf Tupper, or Roy of the Rovers - I don't know about it

Closest I can think of that's still clinging to life is "Gil Thorp," ostensibly about the all-sports coach of the Milford Mudlarks, but it spends more time on teen drama and Social Issues (TM) than it does on sports. There were a couple in the 1940s I remember seeing on old microfilms but I can't remember the names.

[jwhouk]

There is, of course, Tank McNamara. Bill Hinds (who is now the sole artist/cartoonist, since his cohort Jeff Millar passed away from cancer) takes topical sports issues from the US and tries to play on the absurdity of it all.

Example: Latest edition, regarding the Manning brothers, sitting in a duck blind somewhere in their home state Louisiana:

[Akima]

I've long since come to the conclusion that the U.S. is good fun in small doses but I've never felt the urge to live there.

I feel much the same way. I have worked in the USA for periods up to a month, and enjoyed it, but always been glad to come home to Australia. Although I know that I'm highly critical of some aspects of American government policy and society, I have generally positive feelings about America, and as an Australian, I recognise the USA as my country's most important ally. As a "convert" to liberal democracy, there is also still a part of me that thinks of America as something of a "shining city on a hill" too, laughable as that might seem to Americans.

Experiencing America is oddly strange, I find. To an Australian, many aspects of America are instantly familiar as a result of the ubiquity of its cultural products in our media*, and I work in the computer industry where a large proportion of the products and standards that shape it originated in America. I speak English fluently, so there is no language barrier, despite my different dialect and accent. I could almost imagine myself at home, but then something will come along to remind me of how intensely foreign America is, in a manner that is almost jarring in contrast.

*To some extent this is true of British cultural products too, but I have never visited the UK, so I don't know if it would strike me the same way. I googled "Roy of the Rovers", and that certainly struck me as weird and foreign!

[Is it cold in here?]

Does QC seem like something from another planet to non-US readers, or are most of the themes universal?

[BenRG]

Does QC seem like something from another planet to non-US readers, or are most of the themes universal?

The themes are universal, but the setting is very, very US East Coast as are a lot of the setting and characterisation assumptions.

[Zebediah]

Yes - What Ben said. There are a few things that wouldn't make sense to me if I hadn't moved to Massachusetts a few months before I started reading QC.

[Emperor Norton]

Honestly, I find just travelling out of my bubble of the US can make the US seem weird. And I live here. (The Atlanta Metropolitan area is a nice bubble of sanity in the Deep South. Travelling outside of it is like going to another world.)

[Neko_Ali]

I would argue that it's 'relative sanity'. We're still heavily influenced and affected by being smack dab in the middle of Georgia.

[Zebediah]

Hey, I know the feeling - I grew up in Charlotte and have lived in Raleigh and Durham, three islands of sanity in the mess that is North Carolina.

[Orkboy]

Experiencing America is oddly strange, I find. To an Australian, many aspects of America are instantly familiar as a result of the ubiquity of its cultural products in our media*, and I work in the computer industry where a large proportion of the products and standards that shape it originated in America. I speak English fluently, so there is no language barrier, despite my different dialect and accent. I could almost imagine myself at home, but then something will come along to remind me of how intensely foreign America is, in a manner that is almost jarring in contrast.

If it makes you feel any better, most Americans feel the same way about other parts of America.  Being stationed in Florida, I felt like it was just different enough to be unsettling, and it's not even that far from Texas to Florida.  I was only 700 miles from home. 

[Emperor Norton]

I always say Atlanta, just because internationally people know where that is, at least vaguely. I'm actually about an hour out in Athens. Just the college town vibe, and the number of transplants from other places changes it so much from the normal South, once you get outside and into rural areas its just frightening.

I always get offended by Southern stereotypes, because I'm like "its not like that at all" and then I have to correct myself and think "Oh, yeah, I live in Athens. Athens is bizarro-South".

But yeah, really, even to me, there are times where characters do things that don't make since to me. Like the number of characters with no cars. The fact that taxis and other public transit is actually a thing people use. Or the whole distance stuff (small state people are weird).

[eschaton]

I spent a year studying at the University of Warwick back in 1999-2000, and the dormitory was set up almost exactly like a U.S. dorm, with only one bathroom for the ladies and gents respectively per floor.

Well, almost.  We did, for some odd reason, have a sink in our rooms.   I have to admit, I would piss in it rather than go down the hall to the bathroom.     I was only 20 and all. 

[jwhouk]

The one thing that most people who are not from the USA do not get about the country is its sheer size. I think our Aussie friends are about the only ones who can comprehend the size - though not necessarily the landscape.

Everyone who's been reading the comic since The Breakup Arc knows that Dora no longer lives in Northampton, having moved to a place in Amherst. Pen and Hanners complain that "that's 20 minutes away!" In reality, that's about an 8 to 9 mile drive - but it's all "surface street" (no freeway/highways).

Now, compare my little situation. To go from my apartment to the nearest Starbucks is also about 25 minutes - but it's more than 8-9 miles, because most of it is freeway driving (about 20 miles).

Another comparison: a friend of mine lives in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains in the greater Phoenix area. She occasionally teaches glass-blowing classes at Mesa Community College, which is right off the US 60 Freeway. To get there, it's about a 33 minute drive to go the 28.5 miles - mostly freeway when she gets onto the 60.

[Neko_Ali]

I always say Atlanta, just because internationally people know where that is, at least vaguely. I'm actually about an hour out in Athens. Just the college town vibe, and the number of transplants from other places changes it so much from the normal South, once you get outside and into rural areas its just frightening.

I always get offended by Southern stereotypes, because I'm like "its not like that at all" and then I have to correct myself and think "Oh, yeah, I live in Athens. Athens is bizarro-South".

But yeah, really, even to me, there are times where characters do things that don't make since to me. Like the number of characters with no cars. The fact that taxis and other public transit is actually a thing people use. Or the whole distance stuff (small state people are weird).

It's easier for people not from the state, yeah. I lived in Athens for 10 years. I miss the place. But I couldn't afford rent on my house when my hours were slashed, so I've kinda been moving around, rooming with people for a few years now. I still wish I could afford to move back to Athens on my own.

[Aziraphale]

I always say Atlanta, just because internationally people know where that is, at least vaguely. I'm actually about an hour out in Athens. Just the college town vibe, and the number of transplants from other places changes it so much from the normal South, once you get outside and into rural areas its just frightening.

I always get offended by Southern stereotypes, because I'm like "its not like that at all" and then I have to correct myself and think "Oh, yeah, I live in Athens. Athens is bizarro-South".

But yeah, really, even to me, there are times where characters do things that don't make since to me. Like the number of characters with no cars. The fact that taxis and other public transit is actually a thing people use. Or the whole distance stuff (small state people are weird).

The number of cars thing is weird if you've never lived in a place that's got good public transportation, or if you live in a place that's not pedestrian-friendly. I've never held a driver's license, but I'm also lucky to live in a place that has generally decent public transportation. If you lived in an area that doesn't even have sidewalks, much less mass transit, then yeah, not having a car is impractical and might be looked at a bit strange.

[Emperor Norton]

It's easier for people not from the state, yeah. I lived in Athens for 10 years. I miss the place. But I couldn't afford rent on my house when my hours were slashed, so I've kinda been moving around, rooming with people for a few years now. I still wish I could afford to move back to Athens on my own.

I've lived here my entire life pretty much. (at least, I've never been more than 30 minutes away from Athens. I grew up technically in one of the county's next to it, but since there was nothing much there, I live in Athens ). I'm lucky in that with being married, and both my wife and I working (and also with me having fallen backwards into an amazing job) I can afford a decent 3 bedroom house not far from the hospital (ARMC, which was where my wife has been working the last few years, though she just got a new job and is working out her notice at the hospital now yay).

Its just such a different place, culturally than the area around it. Also, I'm being all happy and rambly just because I never run across anyone who even knows anything about Athens, much less had lived there before .

[Penquin47]

Sense of scale does tend to get a little wonky.  Reading through this thread, I was thinking about how Austin (where I lived for two years) is a bubble of good-weird inside the redneck that is Texas, and Lubbock (where I live now) is like redneck concentrate - and they're only a few hundred miles apart.  I've gotten to where I think nothing of driving the hundred miles to Amarillo for a weekend, and the few hundred further to Dallas or Oklahoma just means "make sure to bring lots of paper or enough good books to deal with the car trip".

Then I remembered that for most of the country, a few hundred miles apart means "in a completely different state, often with a buffer state in between".

Then I remembered living in Europe, where a few hundred miles could mean "three countries over" (except, of course, that you'd express it as a few hundred kilometers apart).

There are times where QC seems like it's set in a completely different world to me.  The thing about Dora's 20-minute drive being end-of-the-world-and-all-her-friendships was easily the most jarring.  20 minute drive is a trip into town for dinner.

[Zebediah]

There's an old British (I think) joke that goes "America is a place where a hundred miles is a short distance and a hundred years is a long time." However, New England in general and Massachusetts in particular is closer to the European than American view of distance - a hundred miles in New England IS a long distance. Eastern Massachusetts is densely populated enough that public transit become not only efficient, but essential; we simply don't have enough roads to hold all of our cars if everybody drove everywhere the way they do in much of the rest of the US.

[Oilman]

"A few hundred miles" in UK means "fall into the sea" in most cases.

I know some parts of the US and Australia, and I find them both recognisable in some ways, for obvious historical reasons. US Constitution was written by men who were essentially British, after all; the U.S. is 18th century England writ large, in some ways.

It's why the EU is such a toxic issue in Britush politics; I can't understand most of what goes on in France, and I speak French quite fluently. Most European legal and political systems are pretty much incompatible with ours, and so forth. I work in a genuinely international environment and I very rarely go to Europe, except to change flights at Schiphol, and I find it very difficult wirking with Europeans for a range of reasons; it's easier to be in somewhere where I am a foreigner, full stop.

[Is it cold in here?]

The US is large enough that Marten couldn't afford to visit his mother. (Or at least that was a convenient excuse).

One way to get a feel for how big it really is is to ride a train. Amtrak through Montana, 79 mph with no restaurant stops, takes almost 12 hours.

QC-land is an anomaly in US terms, in that everybody's home, work, and hangouts are all inside walking distance.

[tragic_pizza]

I live in Birmingham, Alabama.

Pity me.

[Thrillho]

It doesn't feel like it's from another planet, but then I'm whatever the American equivalent of an Anglophile would be and there are some minor parts that go flying over my head. American pop culture has been ingrained into my very DNA at this point so I get more than most.

[Oilman]

The US is large enough that Marten couldn't afford to visit his mother. (Or at least that was a convenient excuse).

One way to get a feel for how big it really is is to ride a train. Amtrak through Montana, 79 mph with no restaurant stops, takes almost 12 hours.

QC-land is an anomaly in US terms, in that everybody's home, work, and hangouts are all inside walking distance.

What, American trains don't have dining cars?

[bhtooefr]

Amtrak does have dining cars: http://www.amtrak.com/onboard-the-train-meals-dining

[hedgie]

That it is, but unless I'm *really* hungry, at least on the Capital Corridor in CA, I'd rather bring my own food, and just hit the dining car for beer.

[explicit]

It technically takes place in MA... I wouldn't eat on those trains. Also, many of us (50%ish) live in Suburbs. Trains don't go there because it's not cost effective.

[Oilman]

Catering on British trains used to be a national joke. Now it's just expensive and unmemorable, as opposed to the ticketing system which is almost as incomprehensible as the tax system.

[bhtooefr]

It's not cost-effectiveness (well, it is when you ignore that the roads are subsidized), it's actually racial tensions.

In the US, the suburbs exist because white people were afraid of black people. Much opposition to effective mass transit is actually along "but the scary black people can come here if there's mass transit!" lines.

[Oilman]

I really don't have an opinion on that, I'm sure others will so I'll leave it to them...

What I will remark, is the prevalence of railway tracks as a metaphor for, or symbol of division of various kinds in American towns. Friday Night Lights (the book, that is) contains quite a good example

[hedgie]

Even in cities, there are certain lines that tend to get nicknamed the "ghetto express".  It's rather insulting and racist.

[Zebediah]

It's not cost-effectiveness (well, it is when you ignore that the roads are subsidized), it's actually racial tensions.

In the US, the suburbs exist because white people were afraid of black people. Much opposition to effective mass transit is actually along "but the scary black people can come here if there's mass transit!" lines.

True, but in many places they've learned to disguise the racism that causes opposition to mass transit. Sometimes the alternate excuses they come up with are hilarious. When I was a teenager in Charlotte NC, there was a guy running for city council who opposed public transit on the grounds that it was "unbiblical". Though he could never point out exactly which verse in Leviticus forbade it.

[jwhouk]

The nearest Amtrak railroad depot from my apartment is 125 miles/over 2 hours away.

Only one route stops there: the Empire Builder. It stops at 6:27 PM on the outbound trip to Spokane/Seattle (arriving in Seattle 40 hours later). Inbound, it stops at 11:26 AM and arrives in Chicago at 3:55 PM. The train doesn't leave from Chicago until 2:15 PM the next day.

The railroad depot is essentially a whistle stop - no real parking to speak of, just a platform without any ticketing or baggage.

Thanks, Scottie W.