Mind Your Own Beeswax
Mind Your Own Beeswax features examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: The episode "You'll Be the Death of Us" focuses on Master Fae as he follows Cassandra's tips because he is the only SDD (Super Defense Division) superhero unaffected by the outbreak and is fit for the job.
- Agony of the Feet: This is a Running Gag. Marcus tends to drop his phone and occasional laboratory assets onto his feet. This is lampshaded in "You'll be the Death of Us" when Marcus shows Benjamin a video on his phone.Marcus: Ben, are you paying attention?Benjamin: Sorry, I was expecting you to drop your phone on your foot again.
- This is Double Subverted in "Stuff I Don't Do" when Marcus drops his phone after getting scared by Colonel Steven. Determined not to let this happen again, he tries to catch his phone with his free hand, but instead of grabbing it, grazes it with his fingertips, pushing it backwards and causing it to land on a balloon on the floor, bounce back and hit him in groin.
- Ambiguous Situation: Why Marcus created Benjamin in the first place is never stated, but Benjamin proves to be a useful asset to the SDD, meaning it's possible that Marcus was tasked to create him.
- Animal Espionage: Cassandra becomes a bumblebee when she sleeps. With nothing better to do, she spies on supervillains and sends the SDD anonymous tips. Unlike normal espionage, Cassandra does this alone.
- Anti-Hero: Cassandra's morality can be described as questionable. For the most part, she's a cranky older woman who fights with her family and believes that violence is the answer to most things, but after adapting to city life, she becomes far more docile, but will still resort to violence if prodded.
- Astral Projection: Cassandra's superpower effectively works the same way as astral projection. The only difference is that she can wake up at any time and is a physical entity in the real world.
- Bee Afraid: Every villain eventually notices Cassandra spying on them and most react with fear. Odd-Ball being the exception.
- Birthday Episode: In "Stuff I Don't Do", it's Cassandra's grandson, Cassidy's, birthday and he wishes that Cassandra was there with him. Downplayed in that it's the episode's B plot.
- Camp Gay: An unnamed male coworker in "Something In the Water" wears mascara and an open coat with cropped skinny jeans. He doesn't have any speaking roles and is kind of just... there.
- Cassandra Truth: Likely what inspired the character's name. Marcus is hesitant to believe Cassandra at first because her calls could just be pranks, but when they come true, Marcus believes her and begins warning others, who laugh at him. This overlaps with Mistaken for Prank Call.
- Child Prodigy: Justified; Benjamin Weber is an Artificial Human meant to represent peak human genetics. His brain is highly developed and he stays young for far longer than a normal human. He looks like a prepubescent child, but is actually 15.
- Code Name: Every superhero uses a codename despite none of them having secret identities, as the SDD provides them housing.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In "You'll Be the Death of Us", Cassandra tries to call Marcus to tell him about Dr. Hazardous's plan, but Marcus had his phone confiscated by Colonel Steven because it rung during a meeting. Later, Dr. Hazardous prepares to execute his plan to launch a bioweapon and when Marcus still won't answer, Cassandra resorts to stinging Dr. Hazardous multiple times in order to stall him. Colonel Steven finally decides that he's had enough of whoever keeps trying to call Marcus and answers it in front of everyone on speaker. What they hear on the other side is:Cassandra: It's too late. Dr. Hazardous is going to launch his plague any second now. We could have avoided this if you answered sooner.
- Covering Up Your Gray: Subverted in "Secret Society". During the family argument, Marline accuses Cassandra of dying her hair, but Cassandra simply yells at her stating that the reason she has no gray hairs is because she doesn't let things worry her.
- Dying to Wake Up: Cassandra and her family manually wake themselves up by stinging their own heads. Cassandra gets killed a lot when spying on people and has led a few villains to think there's a bee's nest somewhere in their lair.
- Experienced Protagonist: Cassandra is introduced having many different skills. However, her only knowledge of humans comes from social media browsing and watching press conferences.
- Family Disunion: Downplayed in that Cassandra's family is told by their counselor that Cassandra should try taking a vacation as it might help with her anger issues and help the family solve their own problems.
- Fantastic Diet Requirement: Made very clear; sprites derive all of their calories from the sugar in fruit and flower nectar. Fat and starch seem to cause them intestinal distress.
- "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: The way Cassandra defeats Phobos, a robot designed for crime fighting, is by going inside her in bumblebee form and loosening all her screws. This then allows Cassandra to easily disassemble Phobos without much of a fight.
- Fatherly Scientist: Marcus Weber is the one who created Benjamin and treats him like a son.
- Finger in the Mail: In "Love, Mock and Hate", Marcus opens a cardboard box addressed to Benjamin and finds Phobos' disassembled body inside. He doesn't know what it is and shows it to Benjamin, who, completely deadpan, simply comments "Oh dear...".
- Found Footage Films: A trope that's used very often in this show.
- In several scenes, Cassandra sits in front of her laptop at night watching press conferences.
- In "Unmasking You", Benjamin shows footage recorded by the bodycam of Phobos during a slideshow as the events of breaking into Cassandra's vacation home and getting disassembled by her plays out.
- 20% of the episode "Loathe Machine" is played from the perspective of the interviewers' cameras.
- Hidden Elf Village: The inhabitants of Apple Island, a Floating Continent, are hidden by a cumulonimbus cloud and have a bustling community.
- Hidden Villain: Odd-Ball is the show's true antagonist. He kidnaps world leaders and other strong figures in order to steer the world into chaos, but usually gets driven away before he can do anything. He isn't physically shown on-screen until the final episode of season 1, "Busted". Prior to this, only his airship would be shown. It turns out that he's a sprite just like Cassandra and seeks revenge on humans for kidnapping everyone on his home island.
- Human Disguise: Cassandra is a sprite who uses illusion magic to disguise herself as a human and blend into human society.
- Humongous Mecha: The city of Korbin (the city most of the show takes place in) is patrolled by a giant robot about half the size of a skyscraper. It exists to deter people from committing crimes and an alternative to police pursuit.
- Ideal Illness Immunity: Sprites are immune to human diseases. When Dr. Hazardous releases his engineered virus in "You'll Be the Death of Us", Cassandra and Master Fae, an SDD superhero who is also a sprite, are unaffected. This has subsequently led to Cassandra being harassed by the press wondering how she managed to stay healthy.
- Induced Hypochondria: In "Hindsight! Look it up!", Cassandra tries to get Colonel Steven to think that he's hallucinating by speaking into his ear in bumblebee form. Her plan was to get Colonel Steven to take the day off, which ends up working.
- Kaiju: The villain "Strange Beast-Master" specializes in creating giant monsters capable of leveling cities.
- Little Old Lady Investigates: The entire barebones plot of this show, except Cassandra isn't that old.
- Never Mess with Granny: Cassandra is shown to be very athletic for her age (given, she's only 56) and knows how to exploit pressure points. She utilizes her insect reaction speed to achieve this.
- Our Fairies Are Different: Cassandra and everyone on Apple Island are called sprites, which are a type of fairy. They don't have wings and their height is half that of a human.
- Pants-Positive Safety: Parodied in "Green and White". Colonel Steven is ordered by Odd-Ball to drop all of his weapons. He pulls the pistol from his holster, puts it on the ground and Odd-Ball thinks that's it, but then Colonel Steven reaches into his pants and pulls out another pistol, a rifle, and then a rocket launcher. Odd-Ball incredulously asks him how he keeps those in his pockets, to which Colonel Steven responds saying that he has no pockets.
- Plague Episode: In "You'll Be the Death of Us", Dr. Hazardous unleashes an engineered virus upon the region Korbin is located in, infecting nearly everyone.
- Robot Girl: Phobos and Deimos are both this. They are twin androids that double as police officers and mech pilots. Their designs are modeled after motorcyclists.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Benjamin talks like this around Colonel Steven because he and Marcus simply thought it would be funny to mess with him.Colonel Steven: Dr. Benjamin Weber, your presence is requested in room 414.Benjamin: Anticipate my advent in approximately 120 to 300 seconds.
- Silicon Snarker: In "It's Jammed, Jammed, Jammed", Benjamin programs an Artificial Intelligence called CyberMind for sneaking into servers and posing as a person over text. However, Benjamin was too lazy to program CyberMind's personality with proper training, so just gave him unrestrained internet access with machine learning. This resulted in him becoming this.
- Superman Substitute: General Sentinel is this.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Cassandra and her massive family all share the ability to become bumblebees at sleep. They typically use it to pollinate the year-round apple blossoms on their farm.
- Synthetic Plague: The supervillain Dr. Hazardous uses genetically modified viruses as his weapon of choice.
- Technologically Blind Elders: Mostly averted in that Cassandra is actually pretty good at working her laptop, knows how to hide her IP address, and knows how to disassemble a robot, but in "Super Defense", Cassandra sneaks into Marcus's bedroom while he's sleeping, struggles to operate his phone in bumblebee form and resorts to pulling Marcus's finger across the screen, but she has no idea how to find his phone number and goes back and forth for several minutes. She does eventually figure it out.
- Unusual Euphemism: Cassandra tends to replace mild swears with words like "quack" or "pollinate" note
- Uplifted Animal: AquaValor is this. He is a genetically altered and cybernetically enhanced great white shark. He is obedient and behaves like a noble samurai.
