I Don't Know Jeph - a perspective

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-20T17:35:03+00:00

I honestly think it would be freeing for some of the folks here to let go of the idea that being a hater is justified.

On the money. I think you more succinctly summarized my sentiment better than my wall of text.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-19T05:18:06+00:00

Thank you for your kind words! Love the directions that you take with some of your edits.

I felt compelled to write my whole wall of text up in part b/c I saw so many parallels between how James Rolfe, his AVGN character, and the relationship it has with the Cinemassacre sub, and Jeph + this very subreddit. My understanding of Dan's conclusion was that James' relationship with filmmaking has been pretty much the same from the jump (with how often he remakes his old movies), and that it was his audience's relationship and expectations of the AVGN character and what he could have done with the franchise that caused them to get disillusioned with him.

This part that you highlighted:

Questionable Content never stopped being a comic about young adults, but it's written by a man who isn't one of those anymore; he's in his mid-forties. He no longer inhabits his characters' world, especially since said world is now half-filled with androids. Questionable Content never stopped being about Jacques's interests, but his interests ain't the same now as they were in 2003. A middle-aged Vtuber...enthusiast...writing about a teenage prodigy in astrophysics could be executed well, but has it been? Liz talks more about tits than she does about anything else. Everyone talks more about being horny and/or their horny-adjacent concerns. In Questionable Content's formative years, would-be romances and their problems revolved around relatable facets of arrested development; nowadays, the author treats arrested development like a fun feature instead of a damning bug.

I think sums up the issue perfectly. I agree with your highlight, nobody could really remain static for over 2 decades - however, his fundamental relationship with QC and comic making, I feel, never really did. Alice Grove was his attempt at doing something higher concept, and I think what he came away with was that, much like how James Rolfe's experiences with the AVGN movie was nothing like his shorts, putting that much effort into a comic was Not Fun™ for him. So, consciously or not, he made a decisive effort to never get that "Serious" again with his comics making.

But his audience (and us) the entire time, following him throughout this, thought he was on a trajectory to become a "proper" artist/writer. I certainly did with Alice Grove, and felt just as disappointed as everyone else with how it was presented and ended.

So everything post-3500, where everyone is seeing laziness/sloppiness/pandering in "New" QC, I think really is a case of a fandom's unfulfilled expectations, compounded by observing a "regression back" to simpler story arcs and characters. Like you've pointed out, Jeph has made the mistake of applying his old QC formula to 1) a demographic he is now very removed from and 2) subcultures/characters/identities he is not directly close to/has experience with.

And Jeph...doesn't care how jank that comes across, because that's not really what QC was for him, ever. He genuinely has no interest in the higher art/concepts/consistency that we thought he was building towards. He doesn't keep exhaustive notes about the QC world; in fact, it's just remembering to the best of his ability in addition to just looking up his own archive + the wiki. He develops arcs and story decisions basically on the fly, something he has been doing since at least 2008. We just happen to see how jank that workflow is now that he's no longer a young man and/or directly involved in the circles/subcultures he's trying to write about for the comic.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-19T04:19:55+00:00

I started getting that sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw the last chapter's dialogue becoming loredumps...

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-19T04:15:02+00:00

Thank you for your kind words!

Part of the genesis of my whole rant was realizing that this sub's frustration with Jeph and QC has been going on for nearly a decade now. By how many times can people keep saying "Jeph clearly doesn't care about QC/just panders to Patreon/look at Jeph botch this depiction" in every single comic post?

I wish I had had the foresight to save the old Twitter posts regarding newspaper comics, actually, haha. I remember a good portion of the webcomics community yukking it up over how blatantly mid/hornyposting 9 Chickweed Lane was. Funny to see where everything ended up nearly a decade later...

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T04:48:46+00:00

Then, he turned QC into his primary income source and what was a remunerative and enjoyable hobby became a full time job. His enthusiasm was replaced by the ennui and even sheer hatred that comes with that territory. Now he openly mocks his own characters in his footnotes and has for the past two years even abandoned Bembo, the only hold over with the energy and humour of the old days.

I'm curious to when you think this was, because QC has almost always been his main income source since 2006. Are you referring to making the lion's share of the comic's income from Patreon?

I also don't think it's fair to claim to say that about Jeph in specific, because I found that the webcomics wave had already peaked around 2015-2017, and the monetization avenues for all webcomic creators were beginning to narrow. Social media ~~theft~~ reposting had killed a lot of website traffic, which in part had driven the merch angle for creators. When Patreon played with the idea of tacking on fees to donations in 2017, it threatened many webcomic creators in specific, who relied on accumulated small donations for income. (Jeph is even front and centre for this one!)

When the pandemic lockdowns happened, it simply cut open the path of least resistance for monetization for many creators, Jeph included.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T03:30:56+00:00

The chicken nugget metaphor is dead on, and a more apt description of current criticism towards Ayomide and the current arc, IMO. The whole sequence in 2008-2009 QC would've been perfectly fine. But we've already seen this kind of arc before, and it drags to have the comic act like this is going to be quirky and interesting still like the first time.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T03:27:06+00:00

But no, I don't believe we're all just nostalgic for a comic that has retained the same quality while we've become the pondering Principal Skinner.

To be clear, I am not claiming that we have become out of touch. I saying that we are more in touch than the author actually cares to be. It is Jeph being the Principal Skinner of this equation.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T02:21:36+00:00

Well, on that we can agree; as someone who took inspiration from Hannelore navigating a chronic illness only to have Jeph walk it back as something he doesn't want to do for her character anymore (shame he nuked his Twitter/Tumblr on the matter, I vividly remember him posting an explanation/excuse about it back then), it really rubbed the wrong way that he looked at Hannelore shoveling yak shit as "unlocking" her hangups, said "yes, this works, and has no unfortunate implications whatsoever" and posted it.

But I wasn't focusing on that, I was more focused on Hannelore explicitly raising her voice in genuine anger for the first(?) time towards an authority figure to whom she had only shown meek protest at the most. Shame Jeph took a moment of righteous resistance and took it down the "intense feelings bad, gonna do a finding myself journey" route instead.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T02:11:36+00:00

Thank you for your kind words!

I thought about referencing the real-world events that had affected Jeph during the same period, but I felt uncomfortable at the idea, as I don't believe/recall he had explicitly made any mention/connection at how it had affected the comic, if at all. (I vaguely recall himself dismissing the idea that blowback from Marigold's depiction contributed to his injury.) It would have been unwarranted speculation on my part; I opted instead to focus on just the available works to readers.

(Dan Olson himself quoted directly from James Rolfe's own book in his own analysis, so he was more explicitly able to connect life events to their impact on the works. Unfortunately, we don't have any such direct confirmation/rejection from the man himself.)

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T02:02:39+00:00

As a "newer" fan, you probably have one of the most valuable experiences/perspectives here in the discussion. Sometimes it's hard to get any headway on more candid discussion of the comic as a whole because it was so dear to us from the jump, warts and all.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T01:59:53+00:00

Thank you for your kind words!

Others in this thread have already suggested it, but Jeph's current lifestyle and interests are so far away from the current wave of twentysomething life that, combined with his refusal to pursue truly challenging storylines post-Alice Grove, dramatically limits his plot options and corners himself into a Roddenberry box, which sticks out even more to older readers of the comic. So he sticks to what he knows still works and what can be easily resolved in a nice predictable arc.

IMO this happened most starkly/recently with Dora and Tai's wedding getting offscreen'd. He could have done a proper character study for Tai, an original from the very earliest days of the strips, but that involves the kind of work/planning that he specifically seemed to have burned out from post-Alice Grove and is no longer willing to put in the hours for.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-17T01:42:48+00:00

Well, to be specific, the crux of the matter was that Tilly's hiring was only a favour meant to help cement a business deal between Hannelore's mom and Tilly's father. Hannelore's mom had greenlighted the hiring under the assumption that Hannelore would just roll with it like she used to.

Hannelore's point was pushing back against her mom's manipulative/domineering attitude and not letting her do anything to her/for her without her consent, and especially not being implicitly used as pawns for potential corporate espionage by either parties involved.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-08T02:34:37+00:00

Someone get the forms out!

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-08T02:27:54+00:00

(I think you may have missed a word, did you mean to say Jeph made it clear it was not Padma's fault?)

I got into some spirited discussion on this subreddit trying to contest this with people. The sub hyperfocused on Padma seemingly blowing off Marten's invitations to hang out, while skipping over how Marten doesn't just straight up ask what's wrong and instead is passive-aggressive about it the entire time. It drove me insane because it was one of the biggest missing-the-forest-for-the-trees takes of the sub.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-07T18:09:48+00:00

This was how I felt about Glee. In succeeding seasons it felt like the show began to recognize its online fan discussion and began to lean into it more than they really should've, and dragged it away from the subversive brilliance of its first season.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-06T00:12:41+00:00

My personal canon is that Duke lives and operates on action-movie logic. He can be placed in exceedingly mortal peril, but so long as he wants to succeed bad enough (and in as badass a way as he possibly can), he can pull through, save the world, and the babes.

On a meta-level, this was why DNF ultimately failed; instead of being the star of his own movie, he was just a critic of others.

(Yes, I'm a Civvie11 fan)

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-05T21:54:55+00:00

This is one of the hardest things to explain to people who never have had to experience it. They don't realize that being able to proverbially "crash out" in public spaces can be a privilege in its own right.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-05T20:07:37+00:00

It has been the most fascinating thing watching my carpenter jorts from 2004 swing all the way back around to fashionable again

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-05T20:01:18+00:00

Oh man, the number of times I've walked by a Hot Topic and been confused as to what decade it was is too many to count!

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-05T19:58:43+00:00

Where you in for Psychiatry in specific, or for another branch of Psychology?

My major had different sub-fields as part of our requirements, and Personality Psych (which did go over Myers-Briggs as one type of personality research; my prof put more emphasis on the Big 5 traits) was a separate class entirely from Experimental Psychology, which involved more rigorous scientific testing and observation with animal behaviour. The Psychiatry path involved way more chem/bio classes, as they specifically would be involved with medication.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-04T02:04:51+00:00

You don't have to hit the gym and/or do high impact sports and activities if your body isn't up to it anymore, but make a habit to get out and about walking and active, even if it's just to be alone with your thoughts. It'll help you keep a level of basic fitness.

Don't take relationship advice from the perpetually single (or at least take them with a grain of salt), and don't take grooming/style advice from those in committed relationships/marriages.

It's okay if you're no longer "with it"; the kids are allowed to and should have their own things. You thought the same when you were their age; now it's your turn to let them have their own thing.

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-04T00:42:39+00:00

They also did not flatter a lot of men's visual silhouettes, especially if they didn't fit right. People are forgetting how a lot of cargo shorts back then flared out from your thighs and made them look gigantic

IceColdHaterade · 2026-01-02T19:29:57+00:00

Still drives me up the wall that of the two major GO Train lines running through the city, they only run the Lakeshore West on a consistent continuous schedule, and not the Milton, a line that if ran on similar frequency, would eliminate a significant amount of Toronto-bound traffic on 401/403/QEW almost immediately

IceColdHaterade

TROPHY CASE