Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! in Webcomics.
- Fighter from 8-Bit Theater, so very much so. Invoked nearly word-for-word in this
strip. - Larxene from Ansem Retort fits this trope, big time. The fact that she's also addicted to crack, PCP, crystal meth, and nearly every other illegal drug in existence makes it worse.
- Archipelago's Blitz is practically the poster child for this trope, exclaiming "Look Credenza, I found a shiny!" in various forms throughout the entire comic. For example, a man lost in the woods asks him for help. Blitz instead focuses on a shiny bauble he is wearing and asks to show it to his friend. Given permission, he grabs the shiny and gleefully runs back home, unaware that he is dragging the man with it.
- The man being dragged is also an example.
Paolo: My friends and I had just arrived on the island and I was stretching my legs when I got...um...distracted. ("Oooh! Butterfly!") It happens a lot to me. - In one Arthur, King of Time and Space strip Fasha asks Guenevere what the documentary about ADHD she was watching was like. Guenevere replies that she doesn't know, she switched channels to watch cartoons.
- The Bird Feeder has Tina, a hyperactive hummingbird. Clearly set forth in her very first appearance in #6, "Short Attention Span," when a conversation is cut short when she is distracted by something off-panel.
- Blade Bunny is either this or pretending to be.
- Elliot from Blood Stain suffers from a lack of focus, lapsing every so often into Imagine Spots whenever she is talked to. In a deconstruction of this trope, this makes her unable to hold a job for very long and causes her to not communicate at all, in fear of her superiors admonishing her for her lack of focus.
- Pixies in the webcomic Chasing the Sunset have the attention span of a moth, probably as a counter for their omnipotence. A pixie can do anything she believes she can, but it vanishes as soon as her attention goes elsewhere. Naturally, all pixies love "shinies".
- Fluffy from Commander Kitty is a small pink female cat. She likes to push shiny red buttons, and rarely if ever knows what's happening around her. She has a 50% chance of either causing complete catastrophe or miraculously saving the day.
- In the world of Crystal Heart people can implant crystals as their hearts to gain special powers. The crystal Muna starts the adventure with, Good Fellow, has this as a side effect — it allows her to sense emotions and even read minds, but makes her easily distractable.
- In Dragon Sanctuary, Dean's fae blood makes him incredibly restless, and evidently the trait is common amongst most human-fae-hybrids — Merno comments that he's never known one to sit still. Unfortunately for Dean this manifests in him abandoning his duties and wandering into places he shouldn't.
- Rolan of Ears for Elves has this problem when Tanna's showing him around the Taurecuiva Festival. Well, surely he has a right to be distracted when it's all so new to him, what with being a different culture and such...
- Nina Delacroix of Eerie Cuties is easily distracted by butterflies and her unfortunate werewolf classmate Ace, calling out "Puppy!" whenever she spots him and chasing after him.
- Eddie from Emergency Exit.Bob: (pointing) LOOK! A DISTRACTION!
Eddie: OOH, where? I collect those! - Footloose: Jin the half-werewolf has the doggish tendency to be distracted by anything she sees.
- Freefall: Dvorak, the robot inventor. Or should that be Mad Scientist?Dvorak: I'll keep an eye on things here.
Qwerty: Unless you get distracted by a new idea, or something shiny.
Dvorak: New ideas ARE shiny. That's why they're so hard to resist! - Galaxion has Zan Wilder. He simply is more interested in building improbable gadgets than anything else (like, say, holding a job).
- Minmax the Invincible Warrior, from Goblins. "...OOO! A shiny rock!" He probably traded this for a combat bonus.
- Both Halo and Dabbler of Grrl Power have versions of ADD. Dabbler is an alien/demon/something so her version may be a little different. Halo is just different, and has an Adderall prescription that doesn't seem strong enough, at one point her meds wear off in the middle of dinner and she spaces out so badly she burns her hand on a fajita skillet (based on one of the ADHD author's experiences). The bottom three panels are probably the most obvious case yet. Even the villains know about it:Vekter: And [someone] distract Halo with something shiny!
- Homestuck:
- The Salamanders from the Land of Wind and Shade.
"Look at this! Another Cherished Idol profaned! Such sacrilege has become commonplace with the recent glut of the Underlings. It would bring a tear to my eye if I were not so clearly fit to be tied with these hyperactive mannerisms and severe attention deficit oh my god look a bug."- Clubs Deuce from the Midnight Crew cannot possibly hope to remember more than one thing at a time and gets easily distracted by clocks.
- "You were very foolish to believe you could be a leader of men. Look at what bearing that flag has wrought. Perhaps one day you will find something new to bear. A burden befitting of the peasant you truly are. Oh my what's that shiny thing in the water?"
- Jade can be a bit like this while asleep.
- Daisy, on the cover of the third Housepets! book, looking at King's swinging collar instead of King himself. Although to be fair, it's about all you'd expect from a pup who's only words (so far) have been "Hi! I'm Daisy!".
- Jenny from Jenny and the Multiverse is first introduced staring out the window at a butterfly when she should be listening to Laura.
- The MS Paint Adventures series Problem Sleuth treats this as a useful skill for one character: Pickle Inspector dodges attacks by getting distracted by something else and randomly stepping out of harm's way.
- The Order of the Stick:
- V's familiar, Blackwing, seems to be easily distracted by shiny objects, whether it's a bauble or a giant swirly rip in space and time (although to be fair to Blackwing, a giant swirly rip in space and time with what would seem to have a planet on the other side isn't something you exactly need ADHD or ADD to be distracted by).
- To Elan, at least, dinosaurs are more important than any sort of ethical concerns.
- Roy pretty much spells it out on their first trip to the Oracle.Roy: Proof once again that we are the only adventurers for whom the letters "AD&D" stand for "Attention Deficit Disorder".
- When Elan is trying to mend the airship, he wonders why Bard Camp never explained how to concentrate on a spell in difficult conditions. Cue Flash Back to the bardic instructor explaining exactly that, while Young Elan is wondering what flavour clouds are. Then return to the present, where Elan has forgotten what he's doing because he's still wondering what flavour clouds are.
- Precocious:
- Chrispy states in his sketch blog that Vincent has an undiagnosed case of ADHD.
- Chrispy states in his sketch blog
- This◊ PvP strip. Scratch, being a cat, naturally.
- Sabrina "Ultragirl" Mancini in Rival Angels isn't usually prone to this, but it happens to her once at a very inconvenient time. Her best friend, Sun Wong, almost falls off the edge of the stage (twenty-foot drop), but Sabrina saves her by grabbing the waistband of her shorts at the last second. Sabrina then uses her other hand to grab the comic's Big Bad (who pushed Sun toward the edge in the first place) to prevent herself from being dragged over the edge along with Sun. And just when it looks like all three of them are going to fall, one of the Big Bad's two Dragons grabs her and pulls. Which is when this exchange happens:Sun: Don't let go, Sabrina!
Sabrina: [looking down] OH MY GOD, SUN! When did you start wearing a thong? - In Rusty and Co., a summary is blamed on the readers' need for it.
- Schlock Mercenary gives us Nick, the Dumb Muscle of Tagon's Toughs;Narrator: Meet Corporal Burt "Nick" Nicholson, special forces. Metallic metaphors work best on Nick: Iron sinews...heart of gold...
Nick: Dere's lotsa words on these shelves. Are dey important?
Narrator: Mind like a steel anvil...
Schlock: Just books, Nick. Stay focused.
Nick: Ooh! Pictures!
Schlock: Focus, Nick.
Narrator: ...Attention span of lawrencium 258.- Schlock himself has been described as "an overstimulated child", but he does have an excuse, based on both his 'birth' and biology."I find my perspective refreshing."
- Schlock himself has been described as "an overstimulated child
- Scarlet, the squirrel from the webcomic Sequential Art is an example of this◊. Part of what affects her is that she used to be hooked up to a giant supercomputer (along with three others) where their savant-like intelligence was used to crunch numbers. Coming from a world where things really are instantaneous, the real world would come off as a big distraction to her. Also might have something to do with the accident that ended up getting her out of the corporation where she was being kept involved lots of really intense heat. Which damages computer chips.
- In Shifters Werebeasts are often subject to the drawbacks of their animal forms as well as the advantages.
- Unity of Skin Horse, which is sort of a large drawback for someone who was intended to be a Super-Soldier.
- Kiki from Sluggy Freelance embodies this trope. But as she's a ferret experimented on by a Mad Scientist (nobody knows whether the mad scientist part has anything to do with it, but being a ferret sure does) who can literally go ballistic after a pixie stick, it's probably not surprising. In one of the most extreme cases ever, Bun-bun once told all his recent personal secrets he wouldn't want anyone to know to her (while wearing earplugs to avoid hear her chattering in response), because he needed someone to talk to and he knew he could instantly erase all that from her memory by showing her some shiny car keys.
- One webcomic artist did a comic on how her 5th grade teacher discovered she had "crazy bad ADD". She also frequently makes comics that highlight her attention problems even as an adult.
- Uh-Oh, It’s a Dinosaur: Kyra has a bad case of this.
- Walky from Walkyverse.
- Illustrated in xkcd strip #1106 "ADD".
- Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic:
- Cap'n Fang, who would give Tomo and Osaka tag-teaming together a run for their money. Ironically it's his specific mental disability which makes him the greatest kobold pirate ever. Though, everyone eventually gets at least one of these moments.
- Also from this comic: "Satyrs have a rather short attention span."
- Mayy Storm of Zelfia isn't the task-oriented type.
