Snotgirl is a 2016 comic book published by Image Comics, written by Bryan Lee O'Malley with art by Leslie Hung.
Lottie Person is an image-obsessed fashion blogger and social media star with green hair and chronic allergies, whose aloof online presence contrasts with her deeply insecure personality.
Lottie's neuroses about herself are exacerbated when she meets Caroline (nicknamed "Coolgirl"), with whom she desperately wishes to be friends.
Snotgirl is notable for being O'Malley's first written work not also drawn by himself, as well as being his first monthly series.
Snotgirl contains examples of the following tropes:
- All Men Are Perverts: Averted. Sunny and John find Ashley's obsession with sex unusual.
- Ambiguously Bi: Lottie's interest in Caroline can be interpreted as more than just platonic, and she even calls her "Hot Person!" through internal dialogue upon meeting her. She later has a dream where she kisses Caroline on the mouth in issue #6.
- Upgraded in issue #10 where Lottie and Caroline kiss for real. It gets even closer in the next issue, when the two of them go on a date and almost make out in Lottie's apartment.
- Averted for Charlene, who tells Sunny she is gay rather than bisexual once she realizes she is in love with Lottie.
- Berserk Button: Lottie really doesn't respond well to the thought of Caroline calling her "Snottie."
- Brand X: Lottie's allergy medication is called Congestex.
- Celebrity Resemblance: When a stranger thinks they recognize Lottie in issue #1:Bystander: Excuse me, are you...?
Lottie: Yes, I'm Lottie. I am she!
Bystander: Sorry, never mind... thought you were that girl from Game of Thrones. - Clingy Jealous Girl: Lottie is this toward Sunny Day, her (maybe?) boyfriend.
- Closet Key: Lottie is this for Charlene.
- Giallo: The series has a subdued similarity to this genre, with the possible and definite murders, stalkers, possible supernatural events, play with identities, and questions about the protagonist's sanity and the real or hallucinatory nature of certain events.
- Girl's Night Out Episode: Gender-Flipped. Issue 8 follows Sunny as he plays tennis with Ashley, hangs out with him and John Cho, and crosses Virgil.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Lottie is very lonely.
- Jock Dad, Nerd Son:
- Police officer John Cho's partner Abraham has a son who enjoys Quidditch. He is not pleased.
- John Cho himself was a Nerd Son to a Jock Dad. John was studying fashion but switched to police work to appease his father (the first Asian-American captain for the LAPD).
- Kill and Replace: Lottie jokingly suggests that Dr. Dick may have killed her previous physician, Dr. Yang, in order to take her place. Given the tone of the series, it's entirely possible she's not too far off the mark.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Perhaps magic is a bit of a stretch. Maybe it's really conspiracy, or a hint of the supernatural. Either Lottie hallucinates a ghost who just so happens to look exactly like an actual real dead girl she had never seen before, or the ghost is real. Lottie also experiences very strange and violent dreams with Caroline, one where she even sees Caroline's brother finish off an injured Yolanda - but there is no proof of this being something that actually happened. On the other hand, the drunk fangirl, who the ghost Yolanda said was her stalker, shouts at Caroline and says "It's your fault she's gone, you hag!"
- Mood Whiplash: The end of issue #1. Lottie discovers Caroline's dead body, bleeding from her head.
- Not to worry, because we learn Caroline is alive and well in the next issue.
- The end of issue #6 pulls this again, after a strangely normal and everyday drama filled issue, including Lottie meeting one of her friend's family for the first time. The last page is Sunny sitting by Charlene's hospital bed. Turns out she's in a coma.
- Issue #9 shows that after a night spent working with Meg on her presentation, Lottie wakes up to a series of texts from Sunny because it appears that the girl who was bothering her the other day was found dead in a pool of blood.
- Not to worry, because we learn Caroline is alive and well in the next issue.
- Mukokuseki: O'Malley has gone on the record as saying Lottie is half-Asian, much like himself. You can't totally tell this much about her just from reading, since it's never stated in the comic itself, nor is Lottie drawn with prominent Asian features.
- No Social Skills: For someone with a substantial online following, Lottie seems to be extremely socially awkward, and even outright rude to others. This aspect to her is emphasized when she meets Caroline, who's endlessly charismatic and cool.
- Caroline after Lottie severs their friendship. When Lottie goes to see her again, she is very rude and dismissive of things she knows Lottie likes (like fashion) and she herself had previously engaged in. She's also aloof and unfriendly towards Lottie's friends right up until they all nearly have a breakdown/fight in the middle of a cramped, uncomfortable car trip, where she abruptly declares them 'funny'. From that point on she begins socializing as she previously did, but only with Meg and Misty.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: How Lottie refers to all of her acquaintances, rather than using their actual names. Ironically, Lottie doesn't actually refer to herself as "Snotgirl" in the comic, nor does anybody call her that; the closest we get is 'Snottie'.
- Opaque Nerd Glasses: Charlene wears a pair.
- Red Herring: Caroline pushes Charlene off a rooftop at the end of #5, and #6 subsequently opens with a scene of Lottie and her friends at a funeral. The reader is initially led to believe the funeral is for Charlene, only for it to turn out to be for Misty's dog. Charlene actually survived the fall, but is in a coma.
- Red String of Fate: In issue #10, Charlene realizes she's in love with Lottie after grasping a red string connected to a photo of Lottie on her investigation board.
- Sanity Slippage: Did Lottie or did Lottie not kill Caroline at the end of the first issue? Wouldn't she like to know for herself.
- In issue #9 she meets a ghost of a girl who died very recently. Only she can see her. Ghostgirl says she was killed and that she saw her murderer at the convention, but doesn't elaborate further. It's possible that some of Lottie's issues with perception, including hallucinations, happen because of her new medication; mixing it with alcohol like she did in the first issue and going through withdrawal in issue #9 when she forgets to take them with her. She recalls withdrawal side-effects including hallucinations just as she sees the ghost.
- Something Person: Lottie's nicknames for other characters derive from what she perceives to be their defining characteristic; there's "Cutegirl" (Misty Sutton), "Normgirl" (Megan Foster), and "Coolgirl" (Caroline), while other unnamed figures include "Trashboy", "Gothgirl", "Scandigirl", "Shoegirl", "Grocerygirl", "Latteboy", and "Custodialdude".
- Stalker with a Crush: Charlene obsessively patterns herself after Lottie and even dates one of her ex-boyfriends, and is later revealed to be in love with her. Played with in that Charlene did not realize she was gay, and once she realizes it immediately tells Sunny.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Deconstructed. Lottie is obviously a sympathetic figure in some respects, but she's also very self-centered and vapid.
- Writing Around Trademarks: Lottie's sister Rosie shot to fame after starring in a Japanese reality show that airs on a popular streaming platform. The show and platform are obviously supposed to be Terrace House and Netflix, respectively, but both logos are deliberately obscured to avoid outright saying what they are.
