Seth in the City is a series of short stories and an integral part of the "Kalloverse", created by StewieGriffin34, centering around the titular sarcastic everyman and the various crazy hijinks he gets roped into.
The main five includes:
- Seth Anderson, a Deadpan Snarker who unwittingly finds himself involved with the general craziness around the city of Los Diablos. He is intelligent and well-read, but he's also rude, apathetic, and prone to annoyance. He is Proud to Be a Geek, loves to eat, and despite his various character flaws, he's not so much of a jerk that he will refuse to help people.
- Sly Stoner, a Mad Scientist with a mostly friendly and approachable personality, but has similar sarcastic tendencies to Seth and is a Nervous Wreck.
- Tim Tim Wilson, a Fiery Redhead who, despite occasionally having a temper (which, to be fair, is mostly sparked by his friends' antics), is a Nice Guy and is likely the most normal out of his friends. He is more open regarding his emotions. He also has some Chivalrous Pervert tendencies.
- Lance Killigan, a Mellow Fellow who, while friendly, tends to go with the flow and is quite easily convinced to do whatever his friends want him to do. He is also lazy, unemotional, and can be distant.
- Jack James, a Dumb Blonde with boundless energy and No Indoor Voice. He is wildly unpredictable, spontaneous, and childish, being prone to Jerkass behavior.
Tropes
- Adorably Precocious Child: Vinny is only nine years old, and he's quite mature and intelligent (if a little meek).
- Aerith and Bob: Team Starfall consists of Flosshead, Cheepy, and... Vinny.
- All Beer Is Ale: Subverted. King's Ale is a lager that is simply marketed as an ale. The CEO of the company reveals why this is in an interview:CEO: There's a difference?
- Alliterative Name: Jack James and Sly Stoner.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: Chief Shaun Plymouth is mostly just an idiot, but he also has his moments of extreme brutality.
- Big Eater: Seth spends about 50% of his screentime eating something.
- Brainy Brunette: Seth is an intelligent young man with brown hair.
- Burger Fool:
- A variant pops up in an arc where Lance is fired from his old job as a roofer. At one point, he works at a soft pretzel joint at the mall and dreads just about every minute of it. He isn't very amused when Seth and Sly show up and find it funny.
- The local burger joint, Dirty Beaver's Burgers, is the typical McDonald's parody with subpar food that mostly makes business because it's dirt-cheap. Seth and Tim Tim seem to actually really like it, though.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Jack takes the brunt of the physical punishment in this series. He's been singed, shocked, smacked around, thrown into a brick wall, beaten by a mob, hanged by electrical wires, trampled by a bull, smashed face-first into a fire hydrant, etc.
- Seth doesn't get off easy either. He is regularly beaten up, sometimes by children half his size.
- Lance is frequently roped into Zany Schemes against his will, thrown into humiliating situations, and given hell by his boss(es).
- Cheepy, the Big Bad Wannabe Asshole Victim who gets zero respect from anyone, even his own right-hand man. He's thrown around, beaten up, and mauled incessantly on a constant basis.
- Can Always Spot a Cop: Subverted at one point when Jack opens a bar that serves illegally-imported beer as a measure to avoid taxes. Two patrons who look exactly like Lance walk in. One of them is wearing a moustache and a fedora. Jack immediately assumes that one is a cop trying to do him in and kicks him out, only for it to be the real Lance in disguise. For bonus points, the one who Jack allows into the bar turns out to be a cop, and arrests him for smuggling.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: The series loves to ping-pong between a lighthearted gag comedy and a drama that deconstructs just how miserable the setting is and how the cast barely copes, and back again. Its generally humourous episodic stories tend to contrast with the longer, more serious Story Arcs they are a part of. And then there are the self-contained stories...
- Chirping Crickets: Parodied at one point during a spectacularly bad play Jack directs. At one point, a cricket is talking to his friend on his cell phone about how he doesn't get paid enough for doing this trope.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Harold J. Buck, a corrupt and greedy old man who owns the company Hexcorp.
- Cranky Neighbor: Mr. Bagpipe, a Grumpy Old Man who in fact actively antagonises Seth. While Seth can be every bit as cranky, a flashback shows that Mr. Bagpipe was responsible for starting the entire feud.
- Crapsack World: Los Diablos is a town filled with Jerkasses, idiots, greedy executives, is said to be the villain capital of America, and is topped off with a corrupt, grossly incompetent mayor.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Seth is very sarcastic and frequently makes remarks about the general chaos going on around him.
- To a lesser extent, Tim Tim, who sees his Only Sane Man status as more of a curse than a blessing.
- Dope Slap: Seth frequently does this to Jack whenever he says/does something stupid or dickish.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Flosshead, Cheepy's right-hand man, who tends to be the only reason he sees any success at all. Nevertheless, anything Flosshead does tends to be ruined by Cheepy's incompetence. For bonus points, he's a literal dragon as well.
- Elseworld: A number of the non-canon episodes throw Seth and co. into different time periods or locations.
- "Etched Into Stone" puts the cast into the Pleistocene epoch.
- "I'm Just Wild About Prairie," which is set during The Great Depression and particularly the Dust Bowl.
- "Sweet and Dino-Sour" takes place in a more generic Hollywood Prehistory with a liberal dose of Anachronism Stew, all Played for Laughs.
- Everytown, America: Los Diablos, Ohio is a Weirdness Magnet, but is otherwise a regular suburban city.
- Extreme Doormat:
- Vinny has little will of his own and is too terrified of his captors to disobey them.
- Lance is very inoffensive and mellow, and as such he is easy to rope into things. Seth and Tim Tim want to teach him to assert himself, but Sly and Jack take advantage of his passive and forgiving nature on a regular basis.
- Feathered Fiend: Cheepy the canary is very aggressive and downright cruel.
- Fiery Redhead: Tim Tim is a redhead known for getting very worked up at times.
- Forced into Evil: Vinny is not evil, but he was roped into Starfall against his will.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Seth's friends fit this.
- Jack (sanguine) is energetic, scatterbrained, and childish.
- Tim Tim (choleric) is strong-willed, rational, and confident.
- Sly (melancholic) is sarcastic, focused, and prone to neuroses.
- Lance (phlegmatic) is laid-back, easygoing, and stoic.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Jack. While Lance and Tim Tim attempt to tolerate him (although the latter often fails to keep his composure), Seth and Sly have no idea why they keep him around. Lance keeps him around because he knows that Jack is Too Dumb to Live and would have gotten himself killed several times over if they didn't keep an eye on him.
- Gamer Chick: Janey, Seth's half-sister, is very good at video games and has a bad habit of being too immersed to do things that she needs to do.
- Halfhearted Henchman: Flosshead. While he is scarily competent when properly motivated and does a lot of damage with his solo efforts, he rarely gives a damn about his job and is content with simply lazing around instead of assisting his hopelessly egotistical boss Cheepy.
- Hanlon's Razor: While Jack is indeed a Jerkass, a majority of his worst actions are a result of stupidity rather than malice. However, he skirts the line between this and Grey's Lawnote .
- Hated by All:
- With the sole exception of Blade, Jack is loathed by just about everyone who knows him, his own friends included, due to being a Lethally Stupid Manchild who causes destruction wherever he goes. Even genuinely nice people like Tim Tim and Makiko generally want nothing to do with him, although they're unfortunately stuck with him.
- Cheepy the canary, a Big Bad Wannabe. The main cast naturally treat him as an obnoxious pest, the other villains consider him to be pathetic, and even his own (literal and figurative) Dragon, Flosshead, takes great pleasure in making fun of him.
- Jerkass:
- On his worst days, Seth himself can veer into this trope, although he's usually more along the lines of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Drew is an egotistical, obnoxious douchebag who rubs his success in everyone's faces. Seth predicted that he would become a failure in life due to this, but he was wrong.
- Jack frequently takes advantage of his friends, puts them in danger without a second thought, and doesn't seem to care much about the chaos that ensues from his actions. To compensate, he's also a huge Butt-Monkey.
- Flosshead is a smug jackass who gets his kicks from acts ranging from simple Trolling to psychologically damaging his victims.
- Mr. Buck is, by all metrics, an asshole. He puts financial gain above everyone's needs, including his own, and the way he treats his employees (particularly Seth) is inexcusable.
- Jerkass to One:
- Seth is rather cold and distant in general, but he has a heart of gold. However, he treats Jack with absolutely nothing but contempt.
- Sly is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but he normally gets on with most people. Much like Seth, though, he has a special loathing toward Jack.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Seth is a Snark Knight Anti-Hero who barely tolerates the general insanity going on around him. However, he is good at heart- he often goes out of his way to help people, even if he knows he'll get nothing in return.
- Sly can be a bit of an unbearable, paranoid egotist and a Deadpan Snarker, but he is much more approachable and friendly than Seth.
- Mayor Pain: Mayor Holland is an incompetent buffoon who openly takes bribes, embezzles money to buy himself trivial junk, and is implied to be stuffing the ballot boxes.
- Mister Muffykins: Pepi the chihuahua is a violent brute who, despite his diminutive size, is capable of brutalising people and other animals multiple times his size.
- Muscles Are Meaningless:
- Despite being a small canary, Cheepy is quite powerful for his size and routinely takes down prey much larger than he is. He's too incompetent to effectively use it for his evil plans, though.
- Pepi is a violent, highly aggressive chihuahua able to break down fences, despite being no larger than you'd expect a chihuahua to be.
- Tim Tim and Lance are more built than their friends, but only marginally so. However, they've been known to perform unbelievable feats of Super-Strength dictated by the Rule of Funny, especially the former. It then reaches the other side of the trope by having Lance just as often be Pathetically Weak despite being the most muscular of the group (again, only by a little bit).
- Nice Guy:
- Tim Tim is usually a very pleasant person, although he does have an irritable side. He treats even Jack and Drew with civility most of the time, despite them being Jerkasses.
- Lance is easygoing, generous, and doesn't hold a grudge.
- Janey, Seth's half-sister. She is much more affable and polite than her half-brother.
- Blade is an incredibly forgiving, pleasant, and mellow person who wants nothing more than to keep the peace. It's easy to see why he's Jack's Morality Pet.
- Only Friend: Lance and Blade are the only people who don't flat-out hate Jack.
- Only Sane Man: Of the five, Tim Tim is consistently shown to be the most normal. This is in contrast to a stubborn, Deadpan Snarking Jerkass, a Mad Scientist, an Extreme Doormat who goes along with almost anything, and an Insufferable Imbecile.
- Psychopathic Manchild:
- Jack is so wild, crazy, and childish that his friends are forced to keep him under control.
- Mr. Buck is an insane old man, a power-tripping jerk, and a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- Reluctant Fanservice Guy: Of the main five, Lance is by far the most likely to somehow get roped into dressing in revealing outfits (or go entirely nude) as part of some insane scheme by Jack or Sly. He doesn't enjoy it.
- Smarter Than You Look: One of Cheepy's assistants is a turkey with a Simpleton Voice. Said turkey is actually the smartest member of the team, and open laments the fact that a combination of Animal Stereotypes and his Patrick Star-esque voice make him impossible to take seriously.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Lance varies from being easily beaten around by people half his size and unable to push a door open, or strong enough to effortlessly lift a refrigerator.
- A Tankard of Moose Urine: King's Ale, the most popular beer in Los Diablos, is depicted as a very subpar beer. Despite its name, it's actually a lager, and it's about on the same quality level as the likes of Coors or Miller. Seth and co. drink it not because it tastes good, but because it's cheap.
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- Seth and Tim Tim love to hang out at Dirty Beaver's Burgers.
- In general, Seth loves chocolate.
- Tim Tim is very fond of donuts, especially when they have sprinkles.
- Lance can never pass up a slice of pizza, no matter how many times he burns his palate.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The main five, sans Jack. They love to mock each other within an inch of their lives, but they are there for each other through thick and thin. This is best exemplified with the relationship Seth and Sly share.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Downplayed. Los Diablos is in Ohio, on the coast of Lake Erie. However, it is not revealed whether it is closer to Toledo or Cleveland.
- World of Jerkass: Most of the residents of Los Diablos are petty, self-serving assholes with chronic Bystander Syndrome, and the city has a laundry list of outright villains. It's a testament to something when Seth (a well-established Jerkass) is actually one of the nicer characters.
- X Meets Y: Family Guy meets Rocko's Modern Life meets Daria meets El Goonish Shive with the Mood Whiplash of Steven Universe.
