Webcomic / Something*Positive

...now I want pie. Damn it.

Jason: Do you wake up every morning and say, "Today, I'm going to find someone's dream that's come true and put an end to it"?
Davan: I look at it like this: the holiday season may have a phenomenally high suicide rate, but we can't hope to maintain that level of excellence if everyone doesn't do their part.

— November 21, 2006

Something*Positive is a Slice of Life webcomic by Randal Keith "R.K." Milholland based on the life and trials of Davan MacIntire, a put-upon, misanthropic author stand-in, and his best friends Aubrey Chorde, Pee-Jee Shou, and Jason Pratchett, who originated as caricatures of Milholland's real-life friends. The supporting cast includes Davan's acerbic but loving family, African-American Wiccan Kim Anansie, Pee-Jee's long-time gay man-crush Jhim Midgett, "pint-sized bisexual" T-Bob, reformed obsessive geek Mike Dowden, vain waste-of-space Kharisma Valetti, and Davan's hairless, amorphous cat Choo-Choo Bear. The cast is enormous, and various members pop in and out over the years.

Most of the comic's humor is incredibly dark and cynical, with glee for potential offense; few demographics have avoided skewering by the author's strawman constructs — it is remarkably fair and balanced in that approach. However, moments of sympathy sometimes rise to the surface, as the characters may be jerks (an admitted fact by Milholland himself), but they do love each other deeply, and go out of their way to help one another. Common elements include the stupidity of the common man, geek culture, tabletop gaming, and Davan's seemingly endless parade of psychotic girlfriends.

Expect a lot of Take That!. To fans of the comic (particularly stupid e-mails are almost always revealed to the fans on the comic's web page, or even in actual comics), to fans of certain shows or genres, and especially to Milholland himself, as well as his comic. It's equal-opportunity cruelty at its finest and most vulgar.

The title was created when the real Aubrey told Milholland to "shut up and do something positive for once."

Connects to the Walkyverse in a number of ways: Choo Choo Bear's offspring with Sprinkles have found their way into several strips, and Davan is also friends with GWS's Candy and Queen of Wands' Kestrel. Milholland has also done some guest strips for Questionable Content that may or may not be canon; Jeph Jacques isn't telling.

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Something*Positive contains examples of:

Tropes A to H

• Aborted Arc: Bian, a new character with no connection to the existing story, was introduced with hints from Milholland that she would eventually meet the main cast. She hasn't appeared since a bit panel in 2013.
• Absent Animal Companion: Planned but then averted. Word of God says that the original plan was that Davan would (reluctantly) adopt Choo-Choo Bear, who would then disappear for years until a dark Brick Joke where they discover his corpse behind the sofa or something. Perhaps due to his popularity, he's remained a part of the cast, even though he should be pushing forty by now.
• Abusive Parents: It would almost be easier to list the parents - especially fathers - who aren't somehow abusive.
  • Ollie's father apparently beat him when he was a boy. This is probably why Ollie does everything in his power to honor and protect the reputation of his otherwise Evil Uncle Avogadro, who put a stop to the abuse by raising Ollie himself.
  • Avogadro is just as abusive, just in a different way. Avogadro never beat Ollie physically, but he abused the boy emotionally and sexually. Davan theorizes that Ollie was so grateful to escape one abuse that he happily accepted another form instead.
  • On the emotionally abusive side is Jason's father. The man is described as using his psychology skills to get under his family's skin, and Jason's anecdotes about him are pretty disturbing.
  • Monette's biological father. Even when trying to be nice, the best he manages to achieve is trying to send her a "I never thought you would achieve anything" card.
  • Davan's father is shown to be loving, but has his moments; apparently when Davan was six, his father tried to "mathematically prove to him that the Vietnam War was his fault" and recalls with a friend how they both tied their boys to the car's bumper when they wouldn't settle down. "They were tough sons of guns too! It was four miles before they started screaming!"
  • Rory's biological father refused to have anything to do with his son. When Rory sent a letter to him in an attempt to reach out, the jerk responded with a letter full of profanity. Rory keeps it as a reminder of who he never wants to become when he grows up.
  • Kharisma's parents were largely neglectful, but her question about where babies come from was answered with "Sometimes mistakes just happen".
  • Vanessa's entire family tree is... troubled, but her father gave her birthday present to his new girlfriend's daughter as a means to impress her.
  • Gris's father constantly misgenders and deadnames them, and both parents are so negligent of their emotional needs that they send them away for the summer just so that they can get divorced without Gris's knowledge. Unsurprisingly, after Gris finds out, they stay with Rory because he and his parents actually respect them, and even before this they had planned to move out the moment they graduated high school.
• Accidental Murder: Davan's father, Fred, pulled this off when he was a kid. Then again with the family dog at 14.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Turns out Avogadro came by this after scores of actors had tried killing him. He grew to actually enjoy the taste of cyanide, using it to season his toast each morning.
• Action Survivor: Spoiled Brainless Beauty Kharisma, of all people, is becoming one, best exemplified here.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Davan tells a whiny little girl that he's going to buy the cake she wants her mother to buy, just to spite her. This earned him a glare from his dad... then the girl ran and told her mother about it.
• Adult Adoptee: Davan's parents adopt his acquaintance Monette after she moves in with them following a bad breakup.
• Advice Backfire: Fred's attempts to dissuade Scotty's parents from getting a divorce are well-intentioned, but hilariously misguided.
• Aerosol Flamethrower: "OH GOD! MY BEAUTY! MY HORRIBLY FLAMMABLE BEAUTY!"
• Age Cut: Davan digs out an old notebook where his friend Scotty would write up RPG stats for their toys. The last panel on this comic shows a page from the book, and the first page from the next one is the same page, over twenty years earlier.
• All Girls Like Ponies: "Customers being stupid?" "That's like asking me if ponies are still being awesome. Duh!"
• All Part of the Show: What Jason attempts to quell the Catgirl rampage - it works out surprisingly well for them.
• Alt Text: The below-comic comment started here after the first lengthy Fourth-Wall Mail Slot series.
• Always a Child to Parent: Donna's first attempt to give Rory The Talk... did not go well.
• Ambiguously Brown: Cora was called "too Hispanic" for a role by Ollie, and the same strip has her mention she's Hawaiian.
• Amicable Exes:
  • Davan and Branwen, much to Vanessa's awkwardness.
    Vanessa: I mean, you're the good ex. It's not like you cheated on him. In fact, he still speaks well of you. This would be easier if you were awful and maybe had cloven feet... no, I take that back. Cloven feet are kinda "freak show" hot.
  • Also, Scotty's parents divorced amicably after his death.
• And That's Terrible: Davan's reaction to the script for "Cancer - The Heartbreak That Is" has him complaining about how he'd never know cancer was bad if not for that play.
  Davan: Because, y'know, the first four plays we got that were about cancer didn't get that across.
• And Zoidberg: Kharisma's surprising Pet the Dog moment to Davan as she leaves Medicaid billing. "I wouldn't wish this job on the worst person in the world. Or you, either."
• Answer Cut: Jason has vague misgivings over adopting a child:
  Jason: For some reason there's something that bothers me when I think of parenting. I just can't put a face on it. [opens the door]
  Jason's father: Hello, son. Long time no see.
• Anti-Climax: It was only teased for a few months, but opening the time capsule from their childhood revealed that Scotty had swiped everything out of there to pawn off so he could pay his rent.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Choo-Choo discusses it in a Reader Q&A.
• Art Evolution:
  • After nine years, Randy started... shading.
  • After fourteen years, Randy started drawing everything digitally.
• Art Shift: He also has a penchant for watercolor, which he mostly uses on his comic Rhymes With Witch, and once had an entire D&D arc done in the style "because I'm an idiot."
• Ascended Extra:
  • Fluffmodeus started here. Now he's a part of Kharisma's life. (The Rant below the comic reads "I am seriously tempted to put the little blue thing into the main comic unless ransom demands are met." Presumably, they were not.)
  • Branwen was supposed to be a brief encounter before Davan drove her away, but someone close to Randy told him "You know, you could let Davan catch a break once in a while." She was with him for about a year, her influence lasted longer, and she's remembered as "the good one" among a string of crazy and faithless romantic mistakes. (Until Vanessa appeared.)
  • Kwispie, a penguin with bacon for arms that was part of a few gag strips in 2011 became the mascot at Mike's new Burger Fool position.
• Ashes to Crashes:
  • PeeJee accidentally spills Faye's ashes down her panties.
  • Vanessa and Davan replaced "'til death do you part" with "love each other forever", and she plans on keeping that promise.
• Asshole Victim: Some, but not all include...
  • Mike had a series of humiliations and painful encounters, which he generally brought upon himself through thoughtless, stupid and hostile behavior.
  • Pepito acted like a jerk to everyone after he inherited Avogadro's fortune, and when he returned to the spotlight at a convention he was torn apart by rampaging catgirls because he was dressed as their favorite character. He was later seen in Hell, once again Avogadro's sex toy.
  • Kyle repeatedly lied and cheated to one of the main cast, and when caught was beaten and hospitalised.
  • PeeJee had a coworker who threatened to charge her with sexual harassment when PeeJee rebuffed her advances. She was suddenly eaten by a trap-door alligator that struck from the air conditioning.
  • Kharisma was a Rich Bitch and Brainless Beauty who really pushed this with her treatment of others, then scarred her face, tried to get Avogardo's fortune and was convicted of murder, went to prison and risked being killed, was broken out (and was still at risk of death) and lives a semi-criminal life putting her through a lot of Character Development.
  • Kharisma's quasi-boyfriend, Gregory, inflicted an ironic punishment on a fellow inmate.
• Author Avatar: Davan was based on Randy five years before the comic started. His character moved away from being similar to Randy, but sometimes remains his mouthpiece. Rory is based on Randy's childhood (One of the tags on a Rory-centred comic reads "'This seems... familiar' — My father").
• Author Guest Spot
• Awesome McCoolname:
  • Subverted with Mike's son. He wanted to call him Shazam Joss Whedon Dowden, but instead his girlfriend, Tamara, names him Shazam Wil Wheaton Dowden.
  • Vanessa researches Davan's family history, and learns he had a great-great-grandmother named Dicey Justice Graves - Davan insists they make a baby right that second to name her that.
• Awful Truth: Rory has to have The Talk, which leads him to a horrible realization of why his mother thought Davan was his father.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Aubrey and Jason, exemplified here.
• Badass Adorable: Vanessa tries to perfectly combine cuteness and threat by cladding Choo-Choo Bear in armor - this effort later expands to the entire neighborhood.
  Vanessa: Behold! Complete adorabrutality!
• Badass Boast: Jason makes a henchmen beg in a tabletop RPG.
• Bad Boss: Davan's boss at Medicaid billing, to the point that he got depressed when he couldn't crush Davan's spirit.
• Bad News in a Good Way: Fred's cardiologist tries this method.
  Fred: Do you know anything about how to deliver bad news?!
  Doctor: I know you don't sing it...now.
• Bait-and-Switch: This is Fred's preferred method of humor, as evidenced when he pretends to be outraged over a joke PeeJee made - only to tell her that it was Actually Pretty Funny after she started crying in remorse.
• Beard of Sorrow: Davan, after Faye dies.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Sanderson appoints Davan to write a deliberately awful play for someone he hates to Direct - unaware that Davan had once written a play so awful it caused a riot.
  • Nick runs afoul of this when he encourages Sherri's character - a Fairy Dogmother - to be a Jerkass Genie.
    Fairy Dogmother: Just when I thought magic couldn't be cooler, I learn the true magic of technicalities.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • Sanderson, mostly after hiring Davan to manage his theatre interests. He's a bit selfish and stubborn about his whims, but he genuinely likes Davan.
  • Mike's boss, Eric, at the Kwispy Burger also counts — right away, he lets Mike know that nope, the customer's not always right, and minimum-wage employees still deserve at least some respect. When the restraunt is attacked by arsonists, forcing it to be closed down, Eric makes sure to give all the employees severance pay with their last paychecks (Even adding two months worth of pay to Mike's paycheck to thank him for a decade of work) and tells Mike that if he opens up another restaurant, he'll give Mike a job if he hasn't found another job by then.
• Berserk Button:
  • Never sass Mister Peppermint around Davan. Makes one think of a certain other child entertainer...
  • Also, believing in something without doing even the most cursory of research, as evidenced in his trip to Salem and this encounter with a Goth who idolizes Anarchy. Then again, he was already on-edge before that, and the comment was more The Last Straw.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Monette's koala incident.
  Davan: Before I post your bail, tell me: Was it at least a female koala you had sex with?
• Best Served Cold: Playfully, but PeeJee admits that Davan probably has a list for why she deserved getting tricked into going into a puppet theater.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Sherri, one of Rory's original gaming group, causes Davan to predict she'll be "a walking doom" when she gets older.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Even if he is probably just a hallucination, and a initially benevolent one at that, Fluffmodeus can be pretty scary.
    Fluffmodeus: YOU'RE GONNA DIIIIIIIIE!
  • The "benevolent" facade has been pretty much dropped as of this strip - and prior to that, this one.
• Be Yourself:
  • In an awkward moment, Davan tries to apply this advice. Unfortunately, his self is too blunt and tactless for the situation.
  • The next time he suggests it, Jason shoots down the idea as the last thing they want.
• Beyond the Impossible:
  • During a night of playing various tabletop games, Mike manages to die in Toon, which explicitly states that characters cannot die.
    Bat!Davan: I'm as impressed as you are.
  • Avogadro complains about the lack of tortures in the "travel brochure" in Hell - and the Devil is baffled as to how Pompey keeps finding Bibles in Hell.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Ollie has a very sugary demeanor, but he also has no compunctions with saying someone ELSE was saying mean things as a way to get what he wants. Then it turns out he'd never actually gotten the rights to the production, and kept deliberately ignoring the Cease & Desist orders until a lawyer finally approaches Davan in-person to deliver a lawsuit.
• Black Comedy: Just how dark the humour gets varies from story to story, but the comic has no qualms about "going there" and includes Dead Baby Comedy, Undignified Deaths, Black Comedy Rape, general crushing of people's spirits and bright spots of hope and love.
  • The first strip features an at-home abortion joke, setting the stage for things to come. Anyone who's read Something Positive has nothing to complain about: This strip is completely up-front with how offensive it is from the word go.
  • As another example, Jason once bought Davan a sex doll as a joke gift - except the "doll" turned out to be a modified corpse.
    Jason: (While reporting it to the police) Davan, I really didn't mean to give you a dead girl to unleash your seed at.
    Davan: I wish I could believe you this time, Jason.
  • Especially, perhaps, but certainly not exclusively, as can be seen in this 2010 strip:
    Nancy: Davan, wake up. I have a problem.
    Davan: You live on the fifth floor; you've got a long stairwell that'll fix it for you.
  • Then there's his Halloween tradition of The Last Of The Trick-or-Treaters comics, which feature various supernatural monsters murdering trick-or-treating kids.
• Black Comedy Rape:
  • Kim has a fetish for unconscious men (and yes, it is an actual thing). Which the others didn't know when they asked her to look after Davan while he was whacked out on medication, and she takes advantage of him
  • Mike and the Redneck Trees. Initially, nothing actually happens to Mike. Deep-Immersion Gaming is a visual device, not something that actually affects the characters. It's not shown how graphically it was described to him, although based on his reaction, probably "very".
    • Then, thanks to Davan's good memory, it was reenacted. And he was actually almost publicly sodomized by a man in a tree costume. But since he was an unsympathetic Jerkass, it was played for laughs, though PeeJee disagreed and intervened.
    • Years later, Mike's girlfriend had one in a cyberpunk game, triggered by a request for "Root access."
  • Then it happened again when Davan and Scotty thought Aubrey's boyfriend was cheating on her.
  • The rejection letter Davan sends to the writer of a bad play claims that "A better title for your play would be 'Rape-Rape: A Tale of Rapening'. Also, your next play should have a little less rape in it."
• Body Horror: Odds are that any scene that includes Choo-Choo Bear will also include some horrible, horrible cat-related Body Horror.
• Bouquet Toss: The whole catching part is pointedly defied at Davan and Vanessa's wedding.
• Brain Bleach:
  • Low-rent strippers. "Take me home so I can claw my eyes out in privacy, please."
  • "I'm not sure her psyche was prepared for the horror that is role-playing geeks"
  • "Leave us in our secret shame and sin!"◊''.
  • Jhim tries desperately in to invoke it: "Must fight visual! Must... fight... visual!"
  • More experiences in strip clubs, but it only gets bad at this point. (The next comic's tag reads "Reaction to yesterday's reveal — Men: "Meh?", Women: "I will fucking kill you, Randy!")
  • Kegel balls and Pokémon, "You're not allowed to talk any more. Like, ever.".
  • Lipstick, nipple rings and Popeye. Makes you scream "Milholland!"
  • Monette inflicts this on Gaspar by quipping that his daughter also came out of her.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: "What should we do first? Strip club? M.M.A.? The zoo? Stripper M.M.A. cage matches at the zoo?"
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Jason tries talking to a theater owner about needing fake blood for a show, but only gets so far as saying "we need to use a lot of blood for this show" before Hank steps in and asks "Do you prefer pig, hooker, or one month old orphan?"
• Brick Joke:
  • While most of the annual "Old Familiar Faces" strips have this in some manner (e.g. a teen that constantly used the word "gay" becoming a Gay-For-Pay pornstar), this one takes a joke that hadn't been used since the first strip and runs with it.
    Gia's Daughter He bought every box, mom. How did you know?
    Gia: Guilt has deep pockets.
  • Prior to that, this strip serves as one to this one.
  • The man Rory uppercut to the groin? He started wearing a cup, which came in VERY handy when an adult kicked him in the crotch with steel-toed boots.
• Bring My Brown Pants:
  • Rory's coworker at the haunted house managed to literally scare a kid shitless.
  • Grant is so petrified at the idea of a bar pet that his "cup runneth over" - into his pant leg.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • PamJee hits a schoolyard bully with this hard, to the point that she got in trouble for making him cry. To be fair, she learned from the best. And as Mike describes Aubrey's level of honesty - "Yeah, I want a lower caliber honesty. Something a little less anti-tank."
  • During the 2020 quarantine, PamJee tells her mother she's kind of sick of her face, only to be shocked that she said it back and goes to complain to Jason.
    Jason: You go and tell her it's my turn to not-like you!
    PamJee: ...this must be that "building character" crap Uncle Davan talks about 'cuz it's really pissing me off.
• B-Side Comics: S* P 1937, Life with Rippy and to a lesser extent, Super Stupor.
• Butch Lesbian: Lisa developed into one after moving away with Monette.
• Call-Back:
  • This strip featuring the Easter Bunny... who is the same as the one from a conversation on "cuddling yourself".
  • The network running Monette's sitcom revises Monette's "Koala incident". Officially, It never happened — she slept with an aspiring screenwriter. It's not much better.
• The Cameo:
  • RPG creator Steve Jackson, playing Bunnies & Burrows at a convention with Aubrey and PeeJee.
  • The Devil's Panties Author Avatar and main character Jennie Breeden chats with Davan by IRC.
  • Wil Wheaton appears at the convention and flees the catgirl rampage with Davan and Jason.
• Canon Immigrant: Kestrel came from Queen of Wands, and Helen from Penny and Aggie .
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Action figures? Pedestrian. Try GURPS SODA. A 2019 strip featured a GURPS candy bar.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Alluded to in this strip about parenting, in which you know the teen will never listen to your advice, and you will thus gain a newfound appreciation for the Cassandra myth.
  • Rory reads the rulebook for Cyberpunk 2020, thinking it's way off on the tech. His mother asks him to look at the politics, police-state, and corporations section.
    Rory: Nevermind. This is some Nostradamus shit.
    Donna: When no one pays heed it's Cassandra shit.
• Catapult Nightmare:
  • The dream about Rose.
  • The dream about his family.
• The Cat Came Back: Davan and Fred try to release IRS so that he'll be at home in the wild when Fred passes away - the crow actually beat them back home. It turns out that Davan's tried this before several times but IRS always came back. Many years later, he tries again after Fred passes away, just for IRS to fly straight inside to keep waiting for Fred. IRS later flies away unprompted after the house is sold off and Davan and Vanessa move out.
• Cat Girl: The tween cosplayers who infest some conventions and are the audience for Jason and Davan's webcomic. From the cast page:
  Catgirls are a prime example of what happens when a severe need for attention mingles with the worst part of anime fandom and "tween" culture. Telltale signs your child is now a catgirl: cheap plush cat ears on head, possibly a tail pinned to their pants/skirt, communicates in broken Japanese and squeals, and might have killed four classmates for saying her Twilight fanfic where Edward turns into a glittering undead catboy needed some work.
• Cats Are Mean: Davan believes so, despite being a cat owner, and holds up a hockey-mask wearing Choo-Choo as evidence of feline evil.
  • The "Kitty Kwiz" two years prior has Woogie ask readers which action (rubbing your leg, bringing you a "gift", showing their belly, or sending notes) was a cat expressing its love for you. The answer - none of the above!
    Woogie: Cats are soulless monsters incapable of feelings. Forged in Hell's hate furnace... all cats exist to make humans accept abuse as a form of love. After years of hate and evil, when a human needs our abuse to be happy, we commit our greatest cruelty. We die! (Plays with a ball of yarn)
• Cerebus Syndrome: Davan's best friend Scotty kills himself at the tail end of the first year of the strip, setting off sadness, depression and nostalgic looks to the past being a major point of the comic thereafter. (Which makes this a rare case of Cerebus Syndrome in which the work... doesn't actually become any darker.)
• Character Development:
  • Mike's growth really stands out. Introduced as a misogynistic whiny Jerkass, he later acknowledges most of his flaws and works to become a better person, and goes on to be the first member of the cast to get into a committed relationship and become a father. When things got rough, his worst traits re-emerged, and he and Tamara even broke up for a while. However, he did manage to get his act together, and even decided to become a "real-life superhero" as the Pythagorean. No one expected much to come of it, but apparently he's become quite popular with the local community, and even got a Moment of Awesome out of it.
  • Kharisma. She shredded most of her Rich Bitch/Alpha Bitch attitude while in jail, and got one of the most exciting subplots in the comic.
• Chewbacca Defense: Aubrey reveals her philosophy of life at the end of this crossover strip.
• Chew Toy: Mike and Kharisma.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Happens to a fair amount of supporting characters, what with the huge cast. Some were dropped deliberately by the writer (Jennifer and Darrick, from early in the strip, when neither character panned out), while others just kind of faded away. This is dealt with fairly realistically, as people tend to just fall out of the others' lives. Milholland has written that the character of Jennifer is based on a real life person he knew. She agreed to appear as a character but she was unhappy with the way she was depicted and argued with Milholland over it. Milholland dropped Jennifer from the strip and also ended up losing contact with "Jennifer" in real life.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Aubrey at the end of "Dungeons & Dumbasses", due to Mike.
• Class Reunion: "Class of Eighty-Bore". Doubles as Nancy's introduction.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth: Rory is convinced that it's this trope - his mom and Vanessa disabuse him of that notion, leading to his Groin Attack on Davan.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Eva.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: A rare solo example
• Comedic Sociopathy: Mostly made of it — try to find one recurring character without a Jerkass streak or something.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • "Do you even know what gay bashing is?" "How can I? You bastards never invite me."
  • Later, Hugh's coworker brags about sending a dick pic, and the resulting reply is... a miniature guillotine. He's excited at the idea of trying bondage.
• Comically Small Bribe: Not "bribe", per se, but Sanderson thinks $10,000 for the stage-production rights to Batman is a fair offer.
  Davan: Can my Christmas bonus be getting to listen in on this phone call? I don't think money could buy me half as much joy.
• Composite Character: A few members of the cast are based off of more than one person Milholland has met, merged into one being. Lisa and Monette in particular, as well as Mike and Eva (both of whom were based off of one good person, and one bad one — with the characters branching into one or the other).
• Cone of Shame: Worn by the catgirl in the "Spay your catgirl" poster.
• Continuity Nod: "I lava you".
  Kim: You're doing something different this time. What is it?
  Davan: Consenting.
• Corrupt Cop: Though his bribes are only half of the old one's.
• Cosmic Plaything: The entire MacIntire clan can be described as such.
• Country Matters: Despite the Cluster F-Bomb he's rather notorious for, Randy is very antsy about this word, so far only using it twice, once when Mike (when he was still a full-blown Jerkass) is very annoyed with PeeJee, and even he stammers a bit, and once indirectly when Davan's Girl of the Week, trying to justify her cheating (by framing it as exploring an Open Relationship), asks if she's "being too blunt," and Davan replies she's "in the rhyming neighborhood." Apparently, a woman walked out of a panel discussion when he said it in Real Life.
• Covert Pervert: Vanessa, the most innocent and easily embarrassed member of the cast. She really likes "curvy girls" and she's always up for visiting strip clubs — "I wanna see tiiiitties!"
• Crapsack World
• Crazy Cat Lady: With dogs, but the effect with PeeJee is much the same. She also adopts dogs as a way to cope with quarantine.
• Creepy Child: PamJee is every bit her parents' daughter and then some.
• Creepy Stalker Van: Rory comes across one being sold while looking for his first car. It's cash-only, but it comes with duct tape and plastic bags!
• Criminal Mind Games: Played for Laughs. When asked how she and PeeJee never seem to get arrested for their frequent outbursts of Comedic Sociopathy, Aubrey explains that the trick is to commit crimes so confusing that the cops feel stupid writing reports about them.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • Given the Groin Attack he'd just suffered, Jason's willpower is admirable.
  • PamJee bites Davan:
    Davan: MOTHERFU—
    Aubrey: Guess how many segments I'll break you into into if she learns even one swear word from you.
    Davan: —untime puppy dreams and and cookies!
• Cute Kitten: Choo-Choo-Bear and friends. Sometimes bluntly deconstructed, which on one occasion has resulted in death threats against the author (see Internet Jerk entry below).
• Cuteness Proximity: Utilized as a means to keep PeeJee from finally snapping over her boss' girlfriend's racist "jokes".
• Cut Himself Shaving: After a Bait-and-Switch strip on Valentine's day in which Randy asked his girlfriend if she... would do the dishes, he reappears with a black eye acquired from a doorknob.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon. Used for gags quite often.
• The Cutie: Kestrel, by virtue of coming from a less cynical webcomic, and Vanessa is described on the cast page as "probably the cast's last true innocent".
• Daddy DNA Test: The introduction of Donna and Rory. In a subversion, Rory's not Davan's son, but Davan bonds with him anyway. And when asked if he could go back in time and be Rory's actual father, he says yes.
• Darker and Edgier: My Little Pony made awesome.
• Dawn of an Era:
  • Aubrey had always had some Zany Scheme or another every now and then, but establishing Nerdrotica in 2004 kept her busy for nearly twenty years as the owner/manager of the company.
  • Not long after, Davan meets Mr. Sanderson, a wealthy producer who takes a liking to him and eventually offers him a job.
• Dead Baby Comedy: Quite literally, as the first strip and this one show.
• Dead Fic: Midnight Macabre and New Gold Dream. At first, Randy said he would be updating them a few times a week but between life being busy and personal circumstances that left him less inclined to work on them, both went on "indefinite hiatus". Super Stupor has not been updated since 2012.
• Dead Person Conversation: Davan occasionally has lucid dreams where he speaks to dead people, from those who were important to him (Faye, Rose), to relatives that have long passed (grandparents and great-grandparents), to people he disliked when they were alive (Pepito), and even to people he's never actually met (his cousin-twice-removed Davan). Seeing dead people usually tips him off right away that it's just a dream, but it doesn't lessen the emotional impact, especially when they start talking about unresolved feelings or someone hints to Davan that something bad is about to happen to him (such as the dreams he has in 2019 and 2020 that seem to foreshadow Fred's death).
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the main cast.
• Death of the Author:
  • invoked Referenced in the catgirls arc. This trope appears to be something of a sore spot with the author.
  • Discussed and deconstructed In-Universe when Shazam sees that Mike is getting rid of his books written by Orson Scott Card and J. K. Rowling, as well as all related memorabilia, because he doesn't want to support those authors anymore after their homophobic and transphobic comments, despite still loving the stories they wrote.
    Shazam: Can't you just separate the work from the author?
    Mike: Some people probably can, and I’ve sure tried.
    Shazam: What changed?
    Mike: I realized “separate the work from the author” is easy for me to say when I’m not one of the people they dehumanize.
  • And it wasn't even the first time, though he tried striking a delicate balance.
    Mike: I thought about asking him about the gay marriage thing, and then I realized something. I don't give a damn what he thinks about it. The only thing I care about is him finishing the series he started. As long as he doesn't start weaving his opinions on gays into the plot of the books, his feelings have no effect on me.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Whenever the comic depicts a gaming campaign in its imaginary setting, the Player Characters typically bear a resemblance to their players (usually the core gang).
• Deliberately Monochrome: S* P 1937 and some flashbacks.
• Demonic Possession: Twitchy-hug seemingly making a return of sorts, the AxCrazy tendancies and color-shifting have been passed from his ashtray-slash-remnants to the son of Davan's former landlord. Maybe not Demonic, but Possession nonetheless.
• Depraved Bisexual: Monette, by her own admission, but in the midst of rejecting a role that centers on this trope.
• Description Cut:
  • PeeJee tries to talk Davan's family into playing an role-playing game, choosing a setting of The Golden Age of Comic Books to appeal to Fred:
    Dahlia: Right. I don't know what lies my brother's spread about this family, but there's no way you're gonna rope us in playing one of those stupid games! Right, Dad?
    [Cut to Fred imagining himself as a superhero]
    Dahlia: Dad?
  • The following:
    Mike: And that's the great thing about PeeJee. She's got this soothing voice and calm demeanor that just makes you want to open up.
    PeeJee: ...or a sock full of wood screws. So, yes, it is in fact quite plausible for me to beat a pregnant woman nearly to death and not be arrested.
  • Nancy with her boyfriend:
    Nancy: [thinking] ...I can't imagine anything ruining this moment.
    Lon: I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. You aren't allergic to cat hair, are you?
  • Mike declares "I must be the only person who's haunted day and night by his own nagging stupidity." Next panel: Kharisma in her prison cell with her scarred face, being bothered by Fluffmodeus.
  • Mike is fleeing an an armed blogger but still wants to help the cat that was abducted for the trap, thinking it's scared to death.
    Cat's Thought-bubble: (As the cat is pulling on the blogger's eyelids) I am your God and your pain is my altar. Now, worship!
• Dirty Old Man:
  • Female version: "Y'know Davan, some of us Grandmas are good at more than baking cookies."
  • And not long after, Non-Ironic Clown "Frolickin' Frank" tries to sexually harass Claire - Davan immediately gropes him in retaliation. This doesn't stop him from harassing other women and later masturbating while sitting in plain view.
• Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery: As a young boy, Fred was admitted to a hospital for an ear infection, where he was antagonized at every turn by a boy in a wheel-chair, who used his disability as an excuse to rage at the world, and every other child at the hospital hates him. Eventually, Fred and his friends team up to scare him and teach him a lesson... whereupon it is revealed that the boy is in the hospital for a heart condition, and the shock of the scare ends up killing him.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Nancy's first appearance in the strip is as arm candy for Davan thanks to a plan cooked up by Aubrey and Jason to make his high-school classmates feel... inadequate. And boy does she ever.
• The Ditz: Monette, especially at first.
  Kharisma: I don't know! I don't know anything! I swear! It's a life choice!
• Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!: Discovering PeeJee has a fear of puppets, Aubrey sneaks up behind her with a handpuppet and gets her hand broken with a hammer when PeeJee reacts instinctively.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male:
  • Most of the cast engages in slapstick violence regardless of sex, but the women are generally more likely to threaten violence, and more likely to commit it.
  • Aubrey and PeeJee are both rather hot-headed and prone to impulsive violence when people anger them (especially boyfriends), or upset their friends, or when it sounds like fun. Davan makes a good punching bag when no other is available, although this alluded to in the past (Aubrey has been beating on him since their childhood). An early strip involves the two of them inviting several unsuspecting guys out to a remote location on a date, and then jumping out of hiding and beating them with baseball bats. They intended to sell the videotape of doing so as a comedy ("When Rabid Asian Girls Attack"), and the strip treats it as just some of their "wacky hijinks". To some degree, they mostly grow out of it, or at least become more controlled about it.
  • This strip wouldn't be half as funny if the genders were reversed. (Though in a large part, because the jokes wouldn't work.)
• Do Wrong, Right: The punchline of many strips, in the form of "that way isn't nearly as efficient/malicious/profitable/entertaining as the way I would do it".
• Do You Want to Copulate?: Vanessa bluntly asks "Who wants coitus?" and immediately admits it sounded better in her head than out loud.
• Dressed to Plunder: As seen on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Davan calls another cat "just the cutest kitty I've ever seen" - in front of Choo-Choo Bear.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Or rather "Gal, He's Like Drugged Unconscious" — Kim while left caring for a medicated Davan.
• Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend:
  • Invoked by Don here after Davan killed off Vanessa's character. "Girlfriends are wookiees who'll show you their boobs!"
  • Defied by Tamara here, however.
• Dying Alone: Davan's old boss at the insurance company seems likely to meet this fate.
• Dynamic Entry: Aubrey demonstrates the technique.
• Dysfunction Junction: And acknowledges it.
• Eat the Rich: Name-dropped when Kharisma shares her fire with a Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense couple who think "roughing it" is having to eat at a Waffle House.
• The Eeyore: Davan.
• Embarrassing Browser History:
  • Davan convinces Sanderson to invest in someone designing an implant that automatically deletes your text messages, browser history, and emails when your heart stops.
    Sanderson: ...the check's amount should have five zeros. Seven if I get the first working model.
  • Vanessa finds a bunch of Pudding Cat tabs open on the computer, and Davan claims he was looking into donating to a rescue - only to scold Choo-Choo Bear to be more careful with his porn.
• Enfant Terrible:
  • The catgirls, especially in the grip of Fan Disillusionment.
    "The laws of catgirldom are swift and merciless. Dishonor and the uncute must not be suffered to live — for all our sakes."
    "The kawaii...is life."
  • Jason and Aubrey's adopted daughter, PamJee, is also this now and then. Before she could speak complete sentences, she figured out that she could cover her teeth in hot sauce so that when she bit someone (namely, Davan) it would add to the pain. They've also determined the types of mischievous giggles she emits when she's still a toddler.
• Erotic Asphyxiation: It comes up surprisingly often, including this one featuring "Breath play Jabba".
• Establishing Series Moment: The first strip has Davan send a coat-hanger as a gift for a baby shower, establishing the tone right out of the gate.
• Ethical Slut: Sanderson and his wife are quite open about their cheating on each other, to the point that Sanderson will actually set her up on dates.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • After Cab gets a girlfriend that is indirectly racist around PeeJee, she hatches a plan to not only quit her job, but do so in a way that, in her mind, will spectacularly show Cab just how racist his girlfriend is being by turning the tables. This plan apparently involves some obscenely racist stuff that Pee Jee ropes Kim into buying; and after Kim buys the stuff she (and everyone else made aware of the plan) realises that there is, unbelievably, a limit to how horrible they can be.
  • A supervillain talked a blogger out of harming a cat beyond tying it up, saying "I'm evil but not a dick" as rationale.
• Even Nerds Have Standards: Rather often with different sub-fandoms, but an In-Universe example here when Davan wins a Geek-off by explaining how he and his friends would play Gamma World and Wasteland simultaneously on weekends.
• Everyone Has Standards
  • As much of a miserable Jerkass as Mike was in the early strips, PeeJee felt compelled to intervene after seeing his disastrous "date" with Kharisma. Naturally, he called her an "interloping bitch" and ran after Kharisma.
  • After the infamous Hell House Arc, Randy points out he actually had to censor most of what he researched about actual Hell Houses because they were too disgustingly horrible even for him.
  • Davan runs afoul of this when his bugbear character is revealed to engage in Self-Harm as a means of stress relief.
    Davan: Well, see, he does have the whole "Afterschool Special" flaw set on his character sheet and — Don't you judge me!
  • Chirag defends a guy with an awful sense of humor - until Yamile mentions how he's made fun of her prosthetic leg. And then the ass makes such a comment in front of Chirag.
  • After the below incident, the mayor declares that "party lines be damned", and that every one of them should endorse the car-fucker to get Taylor out of office.
• Evil Is Petty: After winning reelection, the Councilman that had tried to leverage the Pythagorean's fame for his own benefit tried outlawing "masked vigilantes" - thankfully, his colleagues call him out on his bullshit.
  Taylor: Oh, I see how it goes. I want to use the system to get a little revenge and I'm being petty. But back in March you used the system for the same reason and it was all okay, right?
  Ward: My son was shot. My wife and I pressed charges. That's different.
  Taylor: Agreed. See, I know society is better off without ugly kids around.
• Exact Words:
  • When Davan's boss makes a request, Davan makes it happen.
  • Prior to this, Davan takes advantage of Aubrey's Clingy Jealous Guy's Freak Out to casually inform him that he'd seen Aubrey naked many times, and even offers to show him pictures, prompting the guy to run out of the bar cursing her and her friends.
    Aubrey: I noticed you neglected to tell him we were both toddlers when that happened.
    Davan: I didn't want to make the situation awkward.
  • Vanessa's father pulls this when saying that his marriages ended because someone cheats.
    Vanessa: His marriages end because he's always the one who cheats.
    Vanessa's Dad: "Always" is different from "usually"! Being technically right means I'm still right!
  • Vanessa is told "I'm not saying you should dress up like you would for a wedding, but it wouldn't hurt" - the poor fool didn't realize how she'd dressed for her own wedding.
    Vanessa: So, ignore the syllabus. Today we're going over the philosophy of following instructions in the most petty way possible.
• Eye Scream:
  • PamJee's first meeting with a mall santa resulted in this. Thankfully, his insurance covers retinal scratching.
  • A wrestling heel plans on making a kid cry to increase their heel appeal. The kid spits a mix of hot sauce and jalapeno juice into her eyes.
• Fag Hag: Pee-Jee and her crushes on gay men, or men that came out later.
• Family of Choice: The MacIntires are often at the center of this, with all the siblings and children they've gathered over the years. This includes Davan being Like Brother and Sister to Aubrey and thus an uncle to PamJee, Fred considering PeeJee a daughter to the point where he names her in his will as one of his children, and Davan becoming a father to Rory in place of his absent, abusive biological father. Fred and Faye also saw Monette as a daughter, though unlike the other cases they made it legally binding and adopted her.
• Fan Art: There is a fan movie encompassing some of the earlier strips.
• Fan Disservice: If you're a Superman fan, don't read this.
  • Also, naked Avogadro.
  • A one-off strip of Mary Worth... as a prostitute.
  • Davan's neighbor is offended at Rory not accepting a hug from him, so Davan and his father show just how uncomfortable it could be - with the Alt Text saying "Panel Four is for the people who wish I did more Fanservice."
  • And to plug upcoming convention appearances, Randy decided to publish a pin-up calendar... featuring himself.
    Rippy: I hate how comfortable you are with your body.
    Randy: I'm also comfortable with how uncomfortable you are, so that's really nice.
• Fan Dumb: In-universe examples. Mike acts like this on a regular basis, while other...creatures encountered at conventions and gaming shops represent the unpleasant side of geekery. There are also the catgirl cosplayers, who embody the worst aspects of annoying pre-teen otaku.
• Fandom Heresy: Mike defends Joel Schumacher over The Lost Boys, and has a crisis of conscience over it.
• Fanservice:
  • Aubrey and PeeJee get sexy to mess with Jason's head.
  • This filler art which depicts PeeJee as a bunny girl, Aubrey as a French maid ("...someone dies for this"), and Claire as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Apparently, Davan's and Vanessa's opinions of Hard Lemonade fall into this trope.
• Foreshadowing: Jason and Davan's webcomic Neko-Neko Holy-Chan was teased for years, with Jason frequently begging Davan to start up a webcomic with him. Monette also teased cast members about her "Big Secret" for months before revealing she was starring in a TV Show.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: "Reader Q&A" comics hosted by Choo-Choo Bear in a smoking jacket, or sometimes by Randy himself.
• Framing the Guilty Party
• Freudian Slippery Slope: Poor Vanessa.
• From the Mouths of Babes:
  • When Jason plays Santa.
  • And again, after Davan receives "The Talk"... as a kindergartner, due to his finding a copy of Our Bodies Our Selves.
    Kid!Davan: I still say it isn't fair. Teacher asked if we'd learned anything over the weekend. Why'd she get so mad that I knew where the clit'ris is?
    Young!Fred: Son, I love you, but there's no way I can explain this without ending up divorced and maybe arrested.
  • Rory often says things like this, such as...
    • Thinking "Get lucky" means a girl will let you touch her pot of gold.
    • Asking what a climax is... because he'd heard about a guy hanging himself to achieve his. Fred even treats Davan to a glass of "Your Old Man's Been Waiting Thirty Years For This Revenge".
    • Talking about learning the "hyman" maneuver - thankfully he'd meant to say Heimlich. But the punchline veers back into this.
    • Promising Davan that he'd "act like an adult" if Davan takes him to a Haunted House.
      Davan: You realize acting like an adult doesn't mean "It's okay if I tell someone what I want to hear even if I know it's a lie," right?
      Rory: Davan, tell me again how Santa Claus is real.
      Davan: Well, he — oh. Oh.
    • Sanderson fails to heed Davan's advice about swearing in front of Rory, earning him and Rory a time-out.
    • Rory wants his mom, Davan, Vanessa, and PeeJee to all be a family - and since he considers PeeJee the best of the bunch, he'd like his mom to "be lesbians" with her and get married. Donna is overjoyed at having such a humiliating story to add to the scrapbook.
    • We get a very literal version when a girl wants Rory to take her on a date, and since neither of them have money, she asks how much the Tooth Fairy leaves him.
    • Rory is ecstatic at hearing Vanessa and Davan are getting married, because he wants a little sister - and is also convinced that "all the girl juice is in the left ball". Vanessa agrees if Rory is present for each birth, which he's convinced is Clean, Pretty Childbirth.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Used in the Alt Text of this strip, in which Randy's mother is trying to get him to draw a nice picture of Jesus for his grandmother.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral":
  • Two examples in short succession, as Davan starts berating his best friend, Scotty over committing suicide after a bad breakup - or rather, not talking to Davan about how he was feeling. This leads Davan to consider how he wants his own funeral to be, deciding on a martini party where his body would be posed for pictures and then thrown into a bonfire, with Aubrey getting his skull so he can always be with her.
  • Another comes after Avogadro's death, in which Kharisma is wearing a fanservice outfit, and Mr. Sanderson pooped in Avogadro's casket to pay his Last Disrespects.
• Gargle Blaster: A whiskey flask that Davan doesn't realize has been mixed with Everclear, moonshine and absinthe.
• Gaydar:
  • Referenced by Jhim here when informing Davan that he's a "Jammer" - someone with enough Camp Gay qualities (love of theater, Hello Kitty, Pet Shop Boys, etc.) that it's hard to determine if they're gay, straight, or in-between.
    Davan: It's so nice to see the fine art of stereotyping is alive and well in the gay community.
    Jhim: See? Cattiness! You're just a few eyelashes away from being a Judy Garland impersonator.
  • It continues with a different gay friend who also notes that Davan sets his Gaydar off something fierce, and who'd assumed that Davan's bitchiness was just due to being closeted.
• Geeky Turn-On: Tamara's method of reassuring Mike after she gets a birth control implant is to point out that she's technically a cyborg now.
  Mike: You couldn't be more sexy to me if your uterus passed twenty-sided dice once a month.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Pee-Jee is. She knows that happy people proclaiming their joy are just asking for it.
  • Similarly, during the Catgirl rampage, the group Jason and Davan find themselves in realize they wouldn't survive an actual horror movie, but it needs one more element to be complete... and then Roger pulls a (possible) Dying Declaration of Love, so the entire group gets mad at him for effectively dooming them.
• Gilligan Cut: Randy decides to get ahead with a buffer of premade comics:
  Randy: I'm gonna start off year eleven right. I'm set to work and nothing's gonna distract me.
  Six goddamn minutes later...
  Randy: [looking in the mirror] I thought I'd look scarier in clown make-up.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Jason has drawn Aubrey/PeeJee yuri.
  • And just when you think his dreams have come true... And later, he learns that Aubrey had woken up next to PeeJee after a night of drinking. Naked.
  • Also mentioned here
  • God Himself thinks so, too. In fact, He came up with the "being gay is a sin" thing as part of a Batman Gambit to get lesbians to have sex in order to spite Him, which He gets to watch and is even notified about when it happens due to them invoking His name.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Aubrey and PeeJee find a use for old theatre costumes.
• Grammar Nazi: Roundly mocked in this strip, as well as deconstructing the idea of anyone wanting to be a Nazi by introducing "The Komma-Klansman".
• Gratuitous Japanese: The catgirls pepper their speech with it trying to be as anime as they can.
• Gratuitous Rape: Davan rejects a proposed play because of this trope, and gives us this gem in his rejection letter:
  "A better title for your play would be 'Rape-Rape: A Tale of Rapening.' Also, your next play should have a little less rape in it."
• Gratuitous Spanish: Pepito before Davan discovered that he spoke perfect English. Not only his Spanish was gratuitous, it was grammatically disastrous; Word of God says that Milholland hated Pepito as a character, so he never bothered with good Spanish for Pepito even when his readers offered to do so for him. Predictably, Milholland killed him as gruesomely as he could fathom.
• Grief-Induced Split: Scotty's parents divorced amicably after his death, remaining friends even after starting new relationships.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Considered as a fetish but done accidentally.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Let's play space marine! Who's daddy's favourite weapon, huh? Is it Choo Choo? Is it Choo Choo? Yes it is! Such a good hand to hand weapon you are!
• Groin Attack:
  • Jason suffers one whilst being a mall Santa, at the hands (or tap shoe-clad feet) of a little girl.
  • Jason mentions that Aubrey had a habit of stamping in the crotch of mall Easter Bunnies as a kid.
  • Rory gives one to a haunted house worker (dressed as a chainsaw murderer a la Leatherface) trying to stop him running away. Said worker didn't change out of his costume before the pursuit and had recently had a vasectomy. Blood ensued.
  • After deciding that he really doesn't want any siblings after all, Rory inflicts a brutal one upon Davan. To Davan's credit, he doesn't say a word, but does turn a worrying shade of lilac. Rory wasn't the only one.
  • PamJee wants a sibling, so being mindful of what her parents told her about making babies, she attempts to reverse Jason's vasectomy... with a stapler. The ensuing pain isn't explicitly seen, but she's quick to get him lap ice.
• The Grotesque: Mike and Tamara's son, at least when he was a baby. 2020 showed that he didn't turn out that way as a teen.
• Grotesque Cute:
  • Fluffmodeus, a.k.a. the Little Blue Thing, who appears to Kharisma from her time in prison onward.
  • Choo-Choo Bear as well, to some extent.
  • The pre-pubescent catgirl fans of Jason and Davan's webcomic, even before they turn a Fan Convention into a bloodthirsty rampage.
• Half-Witted Hillbilly: One strip set in the 1930s has a redneck dump her grandson on the (black) midwife on the grounds that it's the midwife's fault the baby came out black.
  Hettie: That's stupid even for you! You know exactly how this baby happened!
  Hillbilly: No I don't! I wasn't there.
  Hettie: Yeah, that's half the problem, you inbred swamp urchin!
• Happily Married: Davan's parents. Later, Aubrey and Jason. And Davan and Vanessa.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • An in-universe example. When Davan expresses mixed feelings about not being Rory's father, because the other guy wants nothing to do with him, Tamara (who had a deadbeat father) sarcastically mentions that her father was amazing as a role model for what not to be when you grow up. A few years down the road, Peejee discovers that Rory is keeping a horrible, profanity-laden letter from his biological father to remind him who he doesn't want to be when he grows up.
  • Another one in "The Future Predicted" has Rory reading the gamebook for Cyberpunk and at first not believing that the game's version of the year 2020 having cyberjacks and running in cyberspace lined up with the real year until his mother pointed out the part about "politics, police states and corporations."
• The Heckler:
  • One makes a nuisance of himself at a burlesque show, demanding the dancer take something off - so she flings her prosthetic leg at his head. He actually paid off her bar tab in response - partially as an apology, and partially because it gave him an amazing story to tell.
  • A wrestling fan uses his own fanfic as material.
• Heel–Face Turn: A number of characters have gone up (and down) the scale from annoying to sympathetic, Mike being perhaps the most notable.
• Heel Realization: Nancy calls Davan to gripe about how much of a self-centered bitch Kharisma is, and Davan inadvertently inflicts this on Nancy as she wasn't concerned about him whatsoever during the call.
• A Hell of a Time: Fire, demons poking the damned and a "ferret rave".
• Helpless Kicking: When Pee Jee's female HR manager gets yanked into a hole in the ceiling by a trapdoor alligator, the last we ever see of her are her legs weakly kicking as she's Eaten Alive.
• Heroic BSoD: After Fred suddenly dies on Halloween Night 2020 of old age, Davan silently watches the ambulance that's transporting his father's body to the morgue drive away.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Monette in particular.
• Holier Than Thou: Given a pagan spin when one of Kim's Wiccan associates sports a "Brighter Blessed Than Thee" shirt.
  Wiccan: I know about persecution, Kim. I'm like tenth-generation Wiccan.
  Kim: Wow. Ten generations of your family were a religion that's fifty years old. I guess you're one of those time-travel pagans I've heard so much about.
• Hollywood Jehovah's Witness: Davan greets one on his doorstep naked, and proceeds to try to continue his masturbation schedule while they talk.
• Hollywood New England: Set in Boston with frequent sidetrips to Texas since two of the three main protagonists hail from there. The stereotype itself pops up here, and Rory encounters it thirteen years later..
• Hypocritical Heartwarming:
  • Fred provides a decent example.
  • And Davan has one later on, basing a villain in a musical on Fred... because Fred is the most interesting person he knows, and the villain has to be the most interesting character in the show.
  • And Davan gets Fred again later on as payback for Fred telling him "You're the dumbest thing that ever came out of me" due to Davan's momentary Sarcasm Blindness.
    Alt Text: Family trees are watered with spite.
  • And Fred gets his own payback later on.
  • Davan and Rory also have this dynamic.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • When in a Hell House, the "Devil" gets fed up with people being stubborn and yells "Goddammit! I am trying to show you assholes Christly love here!" Both in-character and out-of-character it's hypocritical.
  • Davan gets one when shouting at Rory for dumping water on a witch while scared, and PeeJee points out he'd done the same to a witch in Kim's coven.
    Davan: It's not hypocrisy if I'm right!

Tropes I to P

• Idealized Sex: Davan's life involves plenty of nasty aversion to cement the Chew Toy / Butt-Monkey aspect of his character. Most frequently mentioned is a girl biting down the first time he received oral sex.
• Identical Stranger: In the 'Strip Club of the Damned' storyline, all the patrons there are somehow horrified by an aspect of the club. While it's not entirely clear what they see, all the strippers who Davan's introduced to are incredibly similar to his exes, so much that he even calls Ivy 'Rose' by mistake.
• I Love the Dead: One D&D strip has the group enter the neighbor of the necromancer, the necro-romancer.
• Impossible Insurance: Davan spent over seven years trying to get his insurance payout from his apartment burning down, to the point that the company became predictable in its stalling. When Davan finally lets Mr. Sanderson help him out, the file is even marked "Stall"
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: When Aubrey hires a woman over the phone without so much as a background check, Davan points out she might be "hiring some sex offender, looking for innocents to prey on." Kim then quips that she prefers her prey prone.
• Incompatible Orientation: Peejee to Jhim, best highlighted here.
  Peejee: And besides, you know how you sometimes get strange cravings for stuff you usually hate? Who's to say Jhim won't suddenly crave a slice of Peejee cobbler?
  Davan: It's a frail, sad line between optimism and delusion, my little Canadian.
• Incompetence, Inc.: The medical insurance company Davan used to work for was horribly abusive, and would address issues such as asbestos and sexual harassment by holding workshops "encouraging" employees to sit down and shut up if they know what's good for them.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • Fred after a full day of scrapbooking with Monette.
  • Davan is volunteered to run a game for Rory and his friends, and the usual Parent DM tells Davan he's going to need Patience, a specialty drink he'd created to cope with the stress.
• Informed Deformity:
  • Shazam Wil-Wheaton Dowden. Not seen 'on camera,' for a long time, but everyone except his parents are aghast at the sight of him. Eventually, it turns out he isn't so bad.
  • Also Davan, a fairly ordinary-looking guy who is initially considered unutterably hideous by a remarkable number of people.
• Instant Turn-Off: Davan and his bisexual girlfriend Vanessa visit a strip club. Vanessa gets a private dance... and it turns out the owner thought a gynecologist's chair went well with stripping. Vanessa emerges horrified.
• Insult Backfire:
  • For example, this one.
  • Mike gets one after his Character Development when one of his former friends berates him and tells him they no longer think he's cool.
  • Mike gets another one when telling the new leader of ConGoblin that he reminds Mike of how he used to be like, which he perceives as a compliment. Mike takes it as an indication that they'd never met before.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Both Davan and PeeJee talk to Choo-Choo Bear as if they know what he's saying. Of course, all cat owners do this, but they do seem to talk as if he's giving them intelligible replies to what they say.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Many. Something Positive seems to be a sort of hub-world for webcomics.
  • The first was with Queen of Wands, to the point where Kestrel entered S* P after Queen of Wands ended. A more in-depth explanation can be found here.
  • There was also a crossover with Scandal Sheet. And cameo appearances by Jay from FLEM Comics, Jennie from The Devil's Panties and The Pet Professional. One comic also mentioned that Aubrey used to own a mini-lop with a fondness for sharp objects, but her mother gave it to a pet shop.
  • Davan and Nancy also had a cameo in Questionable Content.
  • The Teddy Bear Liberation Front also showed up in some Milholland-written Punch an' Pie guest strips.
  • There was a crossover with Girls with Slingshots, as Davan attends the wedding of two minor characters from that strip. Choo-Choo Bear is the father of kittens with Sprinkles from GWS, one of whom has been adopted by Leslie from Shortpacked!.
  • Don, the protagonist of Deranged, is frequently seen as a player in Davan's RPG sessions.
  • Helen, a supporting character from Penny and Aggie, has appeared for a storyline in which she's interviewing for a job (meaning she might stay).
  • PeeJee and Aubrey visit a shop named What's New, with Phil Foglio visible behind the desk, here.
  • Choo-Choo Bear also met up with Eben and Snooch from Two Lumps back in the day.
  • And two crossovers into the parallel universe of the Unshelved book club.
  • After Pintsize gets a humanoid chassis in Questionable Content, a SP strip shows us what happened to the old one.
• Internet Jerk:
  • A set of Kitty Kwizzes, comics which humorously explained how cats control their human puppets...er...masters, apparently made some readers so angry that Randy received death threats over them.
  • And In-Universe, Davan shows Rory precisely why he's not allowed online unsupervised despite being 12. People were flinging rape and death threats at each other in the comments section of a picture for a cupcake.
    Rory: People online ruin everything.
    Davan: No, son. People online improve upon ruining everything.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: Randy made stats for an Infernal Tax Collector.
• I Promised Myself I Wouldn't Cry: But it's hard not to cry "nerd tears" at your baby daughter's first time pwning noobs on World of Warcraft.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Rory is desperate to prove that he's mature enough to watch wrestling and not imitate what he sees - his arm's in a sling by the next day.
• Ironic Echo:
  • "Bitchy comment, bitchy comment, dick joke."
  • "I'd rather ram my hand into a swarm of wolf spiders!"
• Irony: The woman teaching PeeJee's sexual harassment course blatantly hits on PeeJee afterward, and continues to pester her weeks after.
• It Runs in the Family: A consistent source of humor anytime something strange happens in Davan's family, but a resounding trait is that every member has some level of being a Deadpan Snarker, including Davan's father - a devout Christian - accompanying his tithe with "Here's my milk money for the week, Lord!"
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Davan, with Branwen.
• I Was Quite a Looker: When volunteering at a nursing home in 2002, the cast learn one of the residents was a porn star and stripper in the 1940s and '50s, and she likes proving to new people that she can still open soda bottles with her vaginal muscles.
• Jerkass: The entire cast, in one form or another. In fact, you can usually tell when someone's supposed to be considered a positively-viewed member of the cast when they change from Straw Loser Jerkass to Deadpan Snarker Jerkass. Word of God confirms that most characters are deliberately jerks, and that Davan is "an asshole, and a lot of the misery he's gone through, he brought on himself)."
  • Kestrel is one who mostly stays out of Jerkass territory, mostly because she was "adopted into" the comic.
  • Mike started out as a pure Jerkass, quickly became the Butt-Monkey of the comic, and has recently become one of the nicest characters in the comic, comparatively speaking at least. Something somewhat similar has happened to Kharisma, maybe.
  • Nick seems to be from the Mike school of role-playing, holding up the game with his whining, Rules Lawyering, and killing another person's PC twice in a row (the first was on purpose to make sure his character wouldn't be overshadowed, the second accidental but still mean-spirited).
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Many cast members, but particularly Davan. He might be a Jerkass, but he is always there for his friends and family, even when it's hard.
• Jumping the Shark: An in-universe example. When Davan loses interest in his online comic, instead of just ending it he deliberately shark-jumps it to try and make everyone hate it. Considering that Davan is an Author Avatar for Randy Milholland, one has to wonder...
• Kaleidoscope Hair: For a long time, PeeJee would change her hair colour a lot, until Randy got tired of drawing it.
• Karma Houdini: Pretty much every major, and some of the minor, characters in the strip. They have all done and said some really nasty things and suffered few consequences for them. About the only one really suffering for her actions is Kharisma, except she's in jail for a murder she didn't commit, but was trying to commit... and with the intended victim's blessing, at that.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Coppertop, boss of the billing company that Davan and Kharisma used to work at, took pleasure in the misery of both his employees that he openly abused and the customers they wrung money from at the lowest moments of their lives. Even after facing a dose of Laser-Guided Karma^note He fired all his employees during the holiday season with no severance pay, just to be fired by his own boss who then masturbated while Coppertop cried., Coppertop bounced back and started ruining students' lives as a guidance counselor. The warranty finally runs out for good in 2017 when Coppertop is diagnosed with a terminal disease and even his own doctor believes no one would miss him. This proves true in 2020 when he's in hospice with no one ever visiting him, with Randy noting this is probably his final appearance.
• Karmic Rape: Not everyone can pull off the above - Pepito, for example, was pulled apart by rampaging Catgirls before finding himself in Hell... with Avogadro overjoyed to see him again.
• Kavorka Man: Jason. Davan also has aspects of this, on the occasions that he actually cares enough to try. For example, the first words he spoke to Branwen (whom he would later go on to date for over a year) were something along the lines of "Hey, want to go have sex?" to which she answered in the affirmative. Despite supposedly being hideous, Davan has slept with about five or six attractive women in nine years, two of them very regularly — not a bad run.
• Keet: T-Bob.
• Killed Off for Real: Faye, who dies of natural causes after one last happy day off spent with Fred.
  • Fred ends up passing away from old age on Halloween 2020, with Davan finding his body the next morning.
  • Anyone seen in Hell — Pepito, Avogadro, Silas (though he reincarnated as a child), except for "Santa Claus", seen in Hell but alive (if not "well") later.
• Kill It with Fire: PeeJee's reaction to her own puppet.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: After one too many of these ads showed up on the site, Randy did an entire strip mocking it and the kinds of men it would actually appeal to.
• Lamarck Was Right: Half of Choo-Choo's kitties are gooey and boneless like him, despite his condition being a result of chemotherapy. There's a later retcon on this, suggesting "pudding cats" are a recognised, but very rare, breed.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Davan's Speech Bubble is covered up for a second time when he tells PeeJee who he called at the con (see Painting the Medium below), this time by Choo-Choo Bear bursting out of his ice cream. PeeJee reasonably says that this makes no sense:
    Davan: He's a 30+ year old pudding cat who can travel through drains but this is where your ability to believe is gonna be taxed?
    PeeJee: Even so, there's a point where reality dictates—
    Davan: How'd that woman in your job die again? ^note A Canadian Trapdoor Alligator burst out of the air-conditioning vent and ate her.
    PeeJee: This ice cream could use sprinkles.
  • After years of teasing, we finally get to see the horrors of Shazam Wil-Wheaton Dowden's face. As Silas points out, it's not that horrible.
  • The cast list say that Kestrel "never seems to remember to fill in her last name on forms". She's the only one non-nicknamed character without a full name, because she was inherited from another author who didn't give a surname.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Kharisma, who builds up a lot of bad feeling and worse behaviour, before it all comes back on her.
  • The Warden, who had it out for Kharisma as Avogadro was a former lover of his, finally got fired after her abduction.
• Last Het Romance:
  • Some time after breaking up with him, PeeJee discovers that Kyle has turned gay. Her friends don't fail to connect this to her habit of crushing on gay men.
  • Monette seeks advice on becoming a lesbian:
    PeeJee: You could always have sex with Davan.
    Aubrey: Plenty of his lovers switched teams afterwards.
    Davan: Hey! Fuck you! That's only happened twice!
• Law of Inverse Paternity: Played with; Davan didn't want to be Rory's father, but was at least willing to step up if he was, unlike the other candidate. Davan wound up becoming his Parental Substitute even after finding out he wasn't the dad, and admits that in retrospect he wishes he had been the father after all.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  Aubrey: "Woogie, where's all your stuff? It's like we're in a comic strip but the cartoonist is too goddamn lazy to draw our background like he normally does."
  • Panels 2 and 3 of this strip, where a drunk guy complains about webcomic authors, reserving his greatest vitriol for "that Milholland hack" and the predictable nature of his current storyline. (It doesn't quite turn out that way.)
  • Pee-Jee once asked the question, "Why does everything that happens around here revolve around sex?" Davan mumbles, "Bad writing." But, like the first example, he was reading a book and muttering to himself to justify the fourth wall breakage.
  • Multiple examples in this strip. When Jason wonders where comic characters go after their strip ends, Aubrey suggests "the background of another crappier comic", before they discuss Helen (inherited from Penny and Aggie which had just concluded) and mention Kestrel (inherited from Queen of Wands when it ended). Regarding Helen, Kim tells Aubrey that "She's well-meaning, but whenever she's around, people get really pissed for some reason." Any time she appeared in S*P, Milholland would get angry emails from P&A fans upset about how he wrote her (more than for every other crossover combined, apparently.) Aubrey says she doesn't want her business to be a "dumping ground for other people's damaged goods." This refers to the reason P&A writer T. Campbell gave Helen's character to Milholland: he felt her problems now ran too deep for his own comic's setting and characters to help her out of them.
  • Nancy quite possibly makes one of the most subtle variations of this trope after commenting that thousands of people would be looking up Pythagoras after Mike's superhero reveal.
• Lies to Children: Abused to hell and back by the main cast, even with their own. And Jason's explanation for why eggs and rabbits are associated with Easter get his daughter's compliments.
  PamJee: It's okay, daddy. Sometimes I want the fun answers, not the right ones.
• Life Embellished
• Life Imitates Art: Randy was astounded when he got news that an actual Spear Counterpart to Hooters (named "Tallywackers") was opening in Oak Lawn, Texas, which was where his fictional restaurant with similar theme was based, and it opened just two weeks after his comic.
• Lifetime Movie of the Week:
  • Roundly mocked with the eponymous network's portrayal of Kharisma.
    Aubrey: Oh god. We're not even a minute in and already Kharisma's character is a victim of domestic violence who's just trying to be strong.
    Jason: "Lifetime": We just fell into the doorknob of quality. Really.
  • A later strip has PeeJee find games on the channel's website that fall in the same vein.
• Lighter and Softer: After hearing about a Darker and Edgier remake of The Tick, Jason says he'd prefer this trope, with "Dream Dad", "My Yellow Bastard", and "Spawn's Funtime Adventures".
• Like Brother and Sister: Davan and Aubrey.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Subverted, over time, with Davan and Fred. Davan recently has been acting towards Rory like Fred did to him. All he has to do is call Rory "Cat" for the circle to be complete.
• Likes Older Women: The doctor treating Hettie has a thing for the elderly.
• Limited Wardrobe: Averted, as all the characters have relatively consistent but still rather varied clothing.)
• Long-Runners: The webcomic started in 2001 and as of this writing (2020) is still regularly updated - making the comic old enough to vote in the US.
• Look Both Ways: Kestrel and Silas.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Davan.
• Loony Fan: The catgirls, full stop. With one possible exception.
• Loving a Shadow: When Bran was a teenager, she had the persona of "Strahd" in a Goth chat room, with women still holding out hope for "his" return years later, which Davan rightfully calls out.
• Luminescent Blush: Vanessa sports these often since she tends to be rather bashful.
• Made Myself Sad:
  • The entire D&D group when playing as students in a Monster high school - they did everything right and became social pariahs, which is just depressing as real high school.
  • After Halloween 2020, during which Fred passed away, Monette and Dahlia joke about the situation, subsequently making themselves sad.
• Manchild: Randy declares himself a bearded twelve-year-old.
• Marshmallow Hell: "It's a lot easier to listen to someone when your face is rammed in their rack."
• Mathematician's Answer:
  • "First time to be rectally violated or first time to feel good about yourself?" "Yes."
  • Also from Mike: "Because I did that to your character or because I thought to put it in a game before you?" "Yes".
  • And in this strip's comment: "If you're wondering whether the argument or the lolcat was stupid, the answer is: yes."
• Mattress-Tag Gag: Slipleg the Pirate (aka Choo-Choo Bear) gets an evil witch's attention by breaking into her house, smashing her things, setting her furnishings on fire... and tearing the tag off a mattress.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • Kharisma has a magical friend only she can see called Fluffmodeus. Either it's a hallucination who also voices all the survival instincts she's repressed in order to be the Brainless Beauty she feels she should be, or it's a real creature that can and does give her company, advice, warnings of danger, and sometimes bracelets made from the teeth of her enemies
  • Davan often meets his deceased mother and other ancestors in his dreams. It's left very unclear whether or not these are really just dreams.
  • The Catgirls from the convention seemed to develop superhuman strength and madness as they went on their rampage. They also have the ability to smell new Catgirl media.
• Memetic Badass: invoked Davan's (and, it seems, Randy's) view of Alan Moore (or perhaps that what he's really like in the comic's world). Even Death will fear him.
  Alt Text: Little known Alan Moore fact: he got his amazing writing skills from the Devil - not by selling his soul but by beating Satan up daily for his lunch money until the Devil bribed Moore with genius just to leave him alone.
  Davan: I just know Alan Moore will come after me if he finds out I liked a movie based off his work — shit!
  
  Randy: And don't forget! Today is AlanMooremas! Go see The Watchmen. Then put your ticket stub under your pillow. If you've been a good boy or girl, Alan Moore will leave copies of Top 10 under your pillow. If you've been bad, he'll pull a coin out of your ear — then fucking choke you with it. Actually, even if you've been good, he'll probably kill you because you went to see The Watchmen movie. Seriously, I'm scared of Alan Moore. -R.
• Memory Wipe Exploitation: While watching over a conked-out Davan, Kim's fetish for completely passive partners takes over and she rapes him, figuring he won't remember. When Davan finds out from Aubrey (who caught Kim in the act), he doesn't hold a grudge, and it even leads to a Call-Back during a later Sexy Discretion Shot:
  Kim: Davan, you're doing something different than you did last time. What's it called?
  Davan: Consenting.
  Kim: Intriguing.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Choo-Choo Bear to a cat suffering the dress-up indignities foist upon it by its owner. "Don't worry. Just one sharp twist of your neck, and all the suffering ends.".
  • Choo-Choo was going to be on the receiving end of one from a well-meaning vet, but he quickly corrects the vet's assumption.
• Meta Guy: Silas, an old cowpoke and omniscient narrator for some recap strips. However, he actually exists in the comic's world, where everyone just thinks he's a rambling lunatic. He even gets reincarnated and keeps the Meta Guy status.
• Milholland Relationship Moment: The partial Trope Namer — see Questionable Content, Websnark.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Vanessa's sister, Stormy, got pregnant so that there'd finally be one person she wouldn't hate.
• Misery Poker: Davan trumps Kestrel from Queen of Wands at this during a crossover - and most others, too, when he still worked in Medicaid billing.
• Mistaken for Gay: Davan and PeeJee, frequently, especially in the first few years. This does nothing to help with the Peejee/Vanessa shippers.
• Monster Clown:
  • What Pamjee wants to grow up to become. Her preschool teacher is similarly unnerved, until she's led to believe she's a Non-Ironic Clown - Aubrey has no such delusions.
  • During the clown scares of 2016, Pamjee went to school dressed as one, and she promptly got teased over it - though one Implied Death Threat resolved it quickly.
• Mood Whiplash: Heartwarming moments tarnished by thoughtlessness or brutal honesty, the funny antics that lead to a awful consequence, terrible misfortune capped with a punchline and the odd Milholland Relationship Moment. It happens fairly often.
  • The biggest example is likely the strip after Faye's death, in which Fred quietly states that if life was unfair, it was unfair in his favor due to being Happily Married for nearly 40 years with her. Then we get the Alt Text.
    My mother left me the most annoyed-sounding voicemail ever... I wonder why?
  • Chirag mourns the death of an online friend - by masturbating to every shirtless pic he'd received from him.
    Alt Text: This started as a tribute to lost friends and took a turn.
• Morality Pet: Rory for Davan.
• Most Common Superpower: Discussed in this strip.
• Ms. Fanservice: Claire's roles in the cast's theatre productions usually involve wearing very little or her outfit being damaged and "spent most of her time as either the focus of pranks, stalking, or unbridled lechery." There is a reason for this:
  Randy'' Josh, T-Bob, Claire, and another cast member named Duane volunteered to be in the strip as supporting cast — the idea was apparently too good. So, as I'd asked my friend Jhim just two days before, I inquired about limits — i.e. what can I not do to them in the strip.
  
  "Whatever you want," Claire said.
  
  Okay, here's a hint, ladies. If you're a sexy redhead, don't say this to a guy who draws a lot.
  
  "No, seriously," I said. "What are my limits?"
  
  "Do whatever you want," Claire replied. "I'm a whore for infamy."
  
  I'm betting she regrets that right about now.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: When the Teddy Bear Liberation Front returns, Meggie shows unrequited love for her partner in crime, Gregory. He seems oblivious and falls for Kharisma through writing to her and visiting her in jail. When they break her out while being transported, Gregory nurses her back to health. Then Meggie tries to remove her.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Kyle gets sidetracked while meeting PeeJee for a date. To his credit, he's got a fairly original response when she calls him on it.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When Aubrey and Jason get together, the next panel cuts to PeeJee and Davan eating cake:
  PeeJee: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
  Davan: Fuck you! If you think you can bake a better chocolate cake, do it yourself and stop bitching!
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Monette celebrates Boobquake by wearing an outfit with a plunging neckline that goes down to her navel.
• Nerds Are Pervs: In an early strip, PeeJee innocently wander into a game store where the resident nerds immediately start picturing her naked. Cut to her washing and washing, unable to get the feeling of creepiness off her skin.
• Nerds Speak Klingon: Kim tries to cheer Davan up about being at the gaming con, saying that the attendees are his "people". Just then, two very stereotypical nerds walk by and one insults the other in Klingon. Davan is offended.
• Never Mess with Granny:
  • When Lisa worked security at a male strip club, she told Monette about an elderly woman who threatened her with a knife, saying "Nana needs cuddles, whore!"
  • Kharisma's landlord while she's on the run is also a drug kingpin.
• Never My Fault:
  • Mike had an awful case of this early on, but has since experienced Character Development.
  • Nancy had to deal with a Nerdrotic customer with an even worse mindset, of the Entitled to Have You variety - as soon as she rejected his offer to meet in person, he shifted to this by blaming her for "seducing" him.
• New First Comics: Averted. If you think the first strip is funny, nothing in the rest of the comic will throw you.
• New Parent Nomenclature Problem: Rory decides to start calling Davan "Dad" in this strip. Davan isn't anything "official" in regard to Rory, but he's been a Parental Substitute for the kid's entire life.
• The New Rock & Roll: The actual reason Mike was arrested during his brief Pædo Hunt - the FBI wanted the public outraged by something and New Media Are Evil was losing its edge, so they wanted to bring back the perils of D&D.
• Nice Guy: Subverted heavily — a major point of Milholland's (and Davan's) is that a lot of supposed "Nice Guys" are actually self-involved, self-pitying jerks like Mike, who are actually quite selfish, and only after most girls because of their looks (something they hypocritically accuse the girls of doing with the "jerks" they go out with).
  • Davan himself was once susceptible to this mindset, but his sister quickly set him straight.
  • On the more sincere end of the trope, Gregory is this to Kharisma, as he's genuinely supportive and loving, to the point of breaking her out of prison and nursing her back to help. He's also a violent psychopath, but the key phrase is more sincere.
• Nice to the Waiter:
  • One strip underscores why you shouldn't be an ass to those giving you food.
  • Vanessa calls a student out for a vague threat by pointing out that the waiter likely spits in her food with that kind of attitude.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Aubrey, as seen here.
  Jason:Lemme back track to where you were s'posed to be freaked out.
  Aubrey:We'll need a big pot, but I'm sure we can get one on the way to the animal shelter.
• No Bisexuals:
  • Vanessa had to put up with this mindset from an ex-girlfriend.
  • Rory went online to research pansexuality, running into this type of mindset coupled with Depraved Bisexual.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Davan, so very much. Nearly every instance of him trying to behave altruistically comes back to bite him in the worst possible way.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: In an end-of-year strip involving storylines suggested by convention-goers, Randy refused to even draw a reaction to "Davan learns Fred beat Faye."
• Non-Ironic Clown:
  • "Frolickin' Frank" is a Depraved Kids' Show Host who genuinely tries to be this - but only around kids.
  • In a one-off, hospital clown "Get-Well Gary" realizes how he can restore the good name of clowns everywhere... as he stands at the bedside of Charles Manson with a Vorpal Pillow.
• Noodle Implements: Averted most times, as we get to see the resulting carnage from the characters' schemes.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Whatever Mike did to get Tamara to leave him at that Nerdrotica Christmas Party, an unusual departure from Show, Don't Tell.
  • And whatever happened to Davan's namesake involved a "very confused vampire hunter" and a flaming wheat thresher.
  • Vanessa apparently has multiple incidents involving TTRPGs, including one "intentional grease fire".
  • The reason Grant is so scared of animals is related to chinchillas and servals, but we're never told why.
• Not Disabled in VR: Davan introduces his family to role-playing games (specifically a superheroic one). His sister, who's a wheelchair user, spends the session describing her character dancing around.
• "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: After trying to have sex with Davan when he was incoherent from pain medication, Kim drops the grandpappy of them.
  Kim: Seriously, what's the big deal? So we had a little sex! He's wanted to fuck me since he met me a year ago. I mean, it's obvious he totally wants it. And look how he dressed, all... er I mean... uh. I can't believe those just came out of my mouth.
  Aubrey: Better those words than those teeth.
• The Not-Love Interest: Davan and PeeJee.
• Not Quite Dead: Kestrel, who is knocked down by a car and not seen again for months, before joining Nerdrotica.
• Not So Stoic: The death of Martin Nodell, creator of the Green Lantern upsets Davan more than he admits.
• Not the Intended Use: Rory's gaming group finds another purpose for the cursed "Bag of Devouring".
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Ollie, who spent an entire year destroying evidence of his uncle's sexual misconduct. Spoilered because it came out of nowhere. Monette — of all people — even plays it for laughs.
• Obligatory Joke:
  • When PeeJee is missing her dad, Jason steps up and gets her the same flowers he does, and gets bonus friend points for not making a "Who's your daddy?" joke.
    Jason: It took every muscle in my body.
  • Happens again later when Aubrey volunteers to be a nutcracker for their RPG.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: Davan tells PeeJee he used to have a crush on a girl, but she didn't return the sentiment. They became really good friends and it ended up being for the best. PeeJee insults the girl for not realizing Davan's great, he replies that, no, she's one of his favorite people. He says goodbye and hangs up. PeeJee catches on and blushes.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Mike, as the Pythagorean, gets a phone number and a teasing smile about "needing help" around the house. He suggests calling a handyman. Tamara knows he's gotten around fifty of said numbers (women and men), not one of which he ever picked up on the connotation for. It gets even worse: Tamara herself gave Mike her own number four times before he got the hint she wanted to date him.
  • Davan proves himself as such here when Cora invites him on a coffee date - he figures she just really likes coffee. His namesake wasn't much better.
  • Gregory is completely oblivious to his co-"Liberator"'s obvious crush on him.
• Offended by an Enemy's Indifference: Ollie is furious that his attempts to antagonize Davan (like sleeping with Davan's ex) don't actually piss Davan off since Davan got over her long ago.
• Official Couple: Jason/Aubrey.
• Offing the Offspring: Something of a Running Gag, as Davan made the Wikipedia article about filial cannibalism his homepage months ago.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Monette sleeping with a koala and Kim raping a nigh-comatose Davan.
• One of the Boys: Monette's girlfriend Lisa attended Jason's bachelor party at a strip club.
• One-Person Birthday Party: Not quite, but Vanessa's mother had a habit of grabbing the first balloon she found, sticking a candle into leftovers, then spending the entire time blaming her ex-husband for her miserable life whenever her children had a birthday.
• Out of Focus: With the numerous characters, this happens a lot. The occasional minor character will only appear a total of five times in six years [Davan's Furry friend Andy], and often a year goes by between Jhim or Anna's appearances, and both were once major characters (Jhim especially, once a part of the core cast). Clair, a previously major cast member, disappeared for years, and then showed up engaged and about to move away. Kim and Kestrel, major co-workers of Aubrey's and former major cast-members, also fall out of focus for six months at a time. Most of this is done to reflect on Real Life: It's (sort of) based on Milholland's experiences. People do vanish from your life only to reappear out of nowhere.
• Pædo Hunt:
  • Mike shared a video of a school play Aubrey was in on the internet, and ends up being pursued by the police and an angry mob. The play was The Hobbit, and Aubrey wore a nude, glittering bodystocking. Oh, and she was 13 at the time.
  • Later, Kharisma's life is endangered after the warden at her prison started claiming she was in for child molestation, a claim Nancy Grace happily ran with for ratings.
  • Aubrey once wrote a 'zine article entitled "Boners At Half Mast: A List of the Creepy Men at Anime Cons Who Stopped Hitting On Me Because I Turned Eighteen."
• Painting the Medium:
  • Aubrey enters Davan's apartment and asks "Where's your furniture? It's like we're in a comic strip, but the artist is too goddamn lazy to draw in the background like he usually does." Of course, there's a perfectly good explanation: it's in storage.
  • In this strip, fearing he's about to killed by rampaging catgirls, Davan phones one of his friends and admits he loves them, but will deny saying it if he lives, while in the foreground:
    Wil Wheaton: I was on Star Trek. I'm familiar with crazy fans. This is a fan revolt. The result of years of being jacked about by those they adored.
    Jason: Like when a webcomic intentionally dangles a plot but refuses to ever resolve it?
    Davan [on phone]: You mean the world to me—
    Wil [covering Davan's Speech Bubble]: YES! Seriously, it doesn't get dickier than that shit!
• Parallel Porn Titles: PeeJee laments the decline of the artform in favor of "<Original>: The XXX Parody!"
• Parody:
  • Occasional parodies of long-established cartoons like Garfield.
  • This one is kind of a cross between Garfield and Conan the Barbarian. "By Crom's beard, I HATE MONDAYS!"
  • Disney buying Marvel (at the time this was posted, they was just planning it) leads to one of Spider-Man's big storylines recast with Disney characters: The Squeaktackular Spider-Mouse in The Night Goof Stacy Died!
  • Google Chrome? Try Google Crom — "After installation, he broods from his throne, sitting in judgement on your every action."
• Parody Product Placement: Featured in a roleplaying game, of the Delicious Fruit Pies variety - Davan's players hate him for it.
• Passed in Their Sleep: Faye.
• Paste Eater:
  • Monette ate crayons until she was in her early twenties, and Davan made reference to turning the habit into a fetish by finding a girl willing to "make herself an off shade of green and tattoo 'Crayola' on her ass."
  • Rory, according to this comic.
• Pedophile Priest: Roundly mocked here, when Aubrey's Halfling character distracts the evil Priest by offering to show him her panties for a penny. Since an adult Halfling is the same size as a human child, Peejee can't argue with the logic.
• Percussive Maintenance: Davan's father practices it regularly — Choo-Choo's attempt to imitate this was not well-received.
• Perp Sweating: After Monette inadvertently cuts up some of Fred's antique comics, everyone in the family lets her know that he will be beyond angry. It instead leads to a Milholland Relationship Moment.
• Pet Dress-Up: Davan brings Choo-Choo Bear into a pet store for a toy, only for both to be horrified at the clerk having dressed her own cat up as a dog. It culminates in the cats being left alone, with Choo-Choo about to Mercy Kill Shiba.
  Choo-Choo Bear: Meh meh murfle meh.^TranslationDon't worry. Just one sharp twist of your neck and all the suffering ends.
  Shiba: Meow.^TranslationIn Heaven, I will sing your praises, my sweet Angel of Mercy.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Kharisma for one, prior to Character Development when she worked with Davan in Medicaid billing. Most of the time on screen she spent being entirely self-absorbed, unfeeling, but when she left she had a moment where she was actually, intentionally, nice to Davan telling him to quit the job for his own good.
    Kharisma: I wouldn't wish this job on the worst person in the world. Or you, either. Take care. I'll be keeping good thoughts for you.
  • Interestingly, for a group of self-centered cynics, Davan and company seem surprisingly prone to charitable behavior (usually towards people who either haven't done them any actual wrong, or who are too outright pathetic to justify kicking around, but still).
• The Pigpen: Jeremiah Kinsley, apparently.
  Rory: And he's always so dirty he's kinda shiny.
  PeeJee: You can get that dirty?!
  Rory: Well, I can't. I have self-respect.
  PeeJee: You eat glue.
  Rory: Yeah... yeah I do. Think about that.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Davan and Pee-Jee. Pee-Jee even refers to herself as Davan's "Platonic Life Mate" and once tried to convince him to make it official.
• Precious Puppies: Invoked in the midst of a depressing arc due to reader complaint - which is followed by the punchline of all the puppies being taxidermied.
• Pregnancy Makes You Crazy: Mike's attempts to cheer up Tamara while she's pregnant are... not very well-received. PeeJee eventually gets called in to help, and she sets Tamara straight on it.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Sherri gets an excellent one against Nick's racist prince character. Even Nick admitted it was pretty awesome.
  Fairy Dogmother: You said you hated the comic relief. I think I know why. It's hard to like comedy... (stomps on Prince Loving's hand to drop him into the pit) when you're always the joke.
• Prima Donna Director: Avogadro. Such is his flamboyance that even being bedridden does nothing to his hamminess.
• Prison Rape: Mike is offered the option between this and owing Aubrey a life-debt - since his ass is "owned either way", he opts for Aubrey.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: From an objective point of view, the protagonists are not just as bad as many of the people the comic considers antagonists... they're worse. The majority of behaviors that are often decried in the more serious moments... emotional abuse, dishonesty, disrespect, hurling insults, assault... are things that the main characters do for fun the rest of the time. Because being rude to people in your gaming group is terrible, but convincing random children that their parents don't love them is hilarious.
• Psycho Lesbian: One of Vanessa's exes shows shades.
• Puddle-Covering Chivalry: Davan distracts himself from his job by drawing a picture of a mouse putting his cape across a puddle for an elephant. It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context.
• Pun:
  • Rory's friend makes "The Obstetrician" in a superhero game - naturally, she delivers justice.
  • Aubrey comes up with maracas you can put the the cremated remains of loved ones into - obviously, they'd be called Death Rattles.
• Punny Name: In Super Stupor, the teenage superheroine Sola's name functions as a Bilingual Bonus Gratuitous Spanish double pun. First there's "Sol-a" (Sun-a), related to her sun-fueled powers, and second, there's "Sola" (alone) due to the fact that she's an orphan living in a facility.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes:
  • "So, what's the going rate on buying back promises from Kindergartners these days?" Rory also spent some time practicing his "I don't know my dad" face.
  • Choo-Choo Bear, despite being a cat, has Puppy-Dog Eyes at all times.
  • The time Jhim was involved with a closeted man with girlfriend and son, and the son answers the door sporting these and with some Oblivious Guilt Slinging mixed in for good measure.
    Jhim: (Thinking) Which is worse? That I'm dating a guy who won't come out of the closet, or that I'm his five year old's bitch?
• Put on a Bus: Played for Laughs with the first strip featuring a Fourth-Wall Mail Slot.

Tropes Q to Z

• A Rare Sentence:
  • Don expresses this sentiment when Vanessa calls ghostly serial killers "childish".
  • Davan says this about Vanessa's "I can't wait to get back to Bedford" comment.
  • After Fred's funeral, Davan says that he's shipped a third of the remains to Monette, and immediately comments that "...that was a weird fucking sentence to say."
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Milholland has confirmed that at least one character has left the strip for a while for 're-tooling', as the real-life friend the character was based off of had 'betrayed' him, and he felt he couldn't write the character the same way. Spin-off strip "Midnight Macabre" was put on hold for the same reason — implying that Lisa was the character in question.
  • The strip for March 20 2013 ends with a flashforward panel of a teenaged Rory and Nick talking at school. Unfortunately, the date given is "April 23 2020". When that date rolled around, in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic, Randy had to establish that yes, Rory and his friends really are breaking lockdown and meeting up at the school.
• Really 17 Years Old: Helen tries to get a job at Nerdrotica, though she's underage. Nancy catches her out because of her crappy fake ID.
• Red Shirt: Referenced here.
• Relationship Reboot: Halloween 2004.
  "Hello, I'm Pee-Jee."
  "Hi, I'm Mike. Sometimes I'm an asshole."
  "That's fine by me. The interesting people always are."
• Relationship Upgrade: Aubrey and Jason.
• Reverse Psychology: When they were teens, Rose pulled the old "'Leave' means 'stay'!" bit with Davan - thus Aubrey concluded that her saying she wanted a nail sterilized before doing a home piercing meant she did NOT want the nail sterilized.
• Rich Bitch: Kharisma eventually lost the money but kept the uselessness. She got some Character Development when she's in jail.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: The wealthy couple Kharisma meets during the pandemic, who are convinced that Holy Water that costs $250 per crystal bottle will "repulse poverty goblins".
  Kharisma: ...okay, I'm only giving you this 'cuz "repulse" has multiple meanings.
• Ridiculous Counter-Request: In a D&D game, Rory's character orders NPC goblin henchman named Grundle to pick up a potentially trapped item. The DM gives Grundle a sarcastic attitude due to being overworked and underpaid:
  Rory's elf: Grundle, I want you to grab the ruby eye for me.
  Grundle: And I want you to choke on my goblin balls. We all got wants.
• Right Through the Wall:
  • Davan knocks on his neighbor's door to complain about this - but he's more offended by the fact that the guy's wife is obviously faking the orgasm.
  • Davan and Vanessa are audible through the vent system - apparently Fred and PeeJee narrate them like wildlife specials.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • As an actor/writer of a sitcom, Monette joins the 2007 Writer's Strike.
  • In a more comedic vein, their D&D group isn't great with social issues involved in the game.
    Davan: Hey! If a woman is sexually assaulted from a god's golden rain storm she has the right to make whatever choice that's best for her.
    Donna: Life begins at rainfall!
  • And during the quarantine, we get a list of "2020 Specific D&D classes", including: "Zoommancer", "The Recorded Bigot", "The Self-Martyr", and "The Plague Rat".
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Trope Namer, though by no means the actual origin.
• Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...: Or as Fred puts it when offering a poem for Lisa to apologize to Monette - "Roses are red, Green is the grass, Sorry I hurt you, I'm a horse's ass."
• Rule of Funny: A player in an RPG Davan ran made a Minotaur princess simply because Randy wanted to draw one.
• Sadist Show: Virtually every single recurring character enjoys causing duress or pain to others- often physical. A few settle for mere humiliation.
• Sand In My Eyes:
  • Choo-Choo Bear gets "a bit of forgotten childhood" stuck in his eye during a Q&A session.
  • Davan proves to Jason that a song can make him cry.
    PeeJee: Holy shit! Are you crying too?
    Davan: [weeping] N-no! I've just got a little bit of backfired plan in my eyes.
• Sarcasm Failure: Davan hearing about "Charlie, Charlie" - or rather, the Moral Guardians' reaction to it - caused his brain to lock up briefly.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Played for Drama, as Davan's father Fred was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2005, and in 2007 he started to show the symptoms. In late 2014, Fred's bouts of confusion start to become more serious, which scares both him and his family.
  "Son... I got lost."
• Seduction as One-Upmanship: Ollie sleeps with several of Davan's ex-girlfriends to get back at him, but Davan genuinely doesn't care which only pisses Ollie off further.
• Self-Deprecation: A major source of humour, and something that keeps Davan from being a Canon Sue at times. He's as critical of himself as anybody, probably even more so. When Davan stops being Milholland's avatar, he also stops being the ugliest thing in Boston.
  • There are plenty of filler strips, comments below the comic and even comments within the comic where Randy mocks his appearance, his temper and his artistic, organisational and social skills.
  • Occasional Fourth-Wall Mail Slot strips never miss an opportunity to have Choo-Choo Bear describe his creator as a lazy hack.
    Off-stage Choo-Choo Bear: Wait a second. I was born because of a rush judgement and a lack of preparation and I exist only to take up space...Maybe I really am meant to embody Randy.
  • Aubrey: "From what few cartoonists I've met, lazy seems to be a job requirement."
  • The off-stage Choo-Choo Bear explains why the comic promotes conventions so much:
    "Webcartoonists are feral beasts, and cons act as temporary zoos for them. Without them, they roam the land seeking food and shelter. You could find Randy, Danielle Corsetto and Jeph Jacques going through your garbage. If you're lucky."
  • A comic that's a screenshot of the previous day's comic, because "We were worried a worried a week of almost regular updates was scaring you."
  • "Comic artists live awful lives of malnutrition in dark rooms."
  • Before visiting a casino, Randy's sister Rhonda explains to him "Mom will give you a small amount of money. Very small — since you're a cartoonist, we don't want you getting used to large bills."
  • Filler art summing up a lecture on webcomics at MIT: "OH MY GOD! Randy Milholland's uglier than I ever dreamed!"
    There were a lot of really, really... really cute women there. And they all seemed to have the same "He's not nearly as hot as Davan" expression on their faces when they met me.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: After PeeJee innocently wanders into a game store where the resident nerds immediately start picturing her naked, the comic hard cuts to her in a bath, washing and washing trying to get the feeling of creepiness off her skin.
• Series Continuity Error: Although Randy is exceptionally good about maintaining continuity (to the point where he will point out he did include a mention of an offscreen character three years previous when introducing them in person for the first time), he does slip up from time to time. For example, while Aubrey states they used to hide in Davan's parent's attic when they were kids later Davan claims to never have been up there.
• Settled for Gay: Branwen's parents. Her father was gay and needed a wife and family to "keep up appearances" in his professional life. Her mom just didn't like sex, but wanted a family. This had some ramifications for Bran.
• Sex Sells: "Cluck Me Harder Family Restaurant." Family. Restaurant.
• Sexy Whatever Outfit:
  • PeeJee expresses a desire to mess with people by wearing a sexy Gargamel costume.
  • Yamile tracks these as a hobby.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • PeeJee ships Davan/Vanessa.
  • Helen ships Davan/Nancy. Vanessa was not amused.
  • Jhim ships Davan/PeeJee. Davan was not amused.
• Ship Tease: Word of God is that the sweet moments between Davan and PeeJee are just the author deciding to taunt fans who were hoping for a relationship between them. Lampshaded splendidly here.
• Shoo Out the New Guy: A mild example. Linzie, a tattooed goth-girl character, shows up as a female partner for Davan (they have sex periodically), and appears to be added to the cast in a semi-major manner. But then she suddenly gets an actual boyfriend and vanishes completely from the strip. Very rare, in that almost all the other characters at least have "Old Familiar Faces" comics about where they've been.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Daria in this strip, where Aubrey is dressed as Daria and PeeJee is wearing a red jacket like Jane's while they talk in a graveyard.
  • To Penny Arcade:
    • In this strip, Davan and his father wear some possibly familiar-looking shirts and discuss Grand Theft Auto IV. The tagline on the comic reads: "This comic couldn't be a crappier rip-off of Penny Arcade if you dressed them in the same clothes!" "Oh, a challenge!"
    • In the background is a store named "Gabe's Toys and more" with the Fruit Fucker in the window.
  • To Phil Foglio:
    • In this comic Aubrey and PeeJee shop in a store named "What's New," run by Phil Foglio. All of the shirts in the last panel are references either to What's New? with Phil and Dixie or Girl Genius.
    • The eyewear PeeJee is trying on here is labelled "Goggles by Phil & Kaja — Look like a Girl Genius".
    • Another strip had a park named after them.
  • Reader question: what would the cast look if they were furries? Probably like the cast of VG Cats. And they would kill themselves.
  • This strip features Nancy Grace's new book... the cover of which is a mock-up of "Saturn Devouring His Son"
  • Hilariously inappropriate shout-out to Nineteen Eighty-Four (scroll down for comic, the new site layout is still having issues).
  • The S*P cast depicted as the cast of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
  • The Devil's Panties (by Jennie Breeden): There's a "Breeden Sisters Comix" shop in the background of one panel.
  • There was one to Press Your Luck, of all things, where a girl that Davan slept with talked about "being happy with [him] for a long time" - and Davan promptly says, "No BABY No BABY No BABY, STOP!", whacking her stomach at the end.
  • After a strip aimed at congratulating Penny and Aggie's authors for their full run, we get this one with a slew of other online comic characters.
  • When Rory and his friends want to play a Dungeons And Dragons game where they're evil monsters, Davan makes them all into Hanna-Barbera versions of D&D monsters: Fred Flintstone as a cyclops, Huckleberry Hellhound, Yogi Owlbear and Boo-Boo Goblin, and Magilla Ogre.
• Shrug of God: Even Randy isn't sure if Fluffmodeus is real or a figment of Kharisma's imagination.
• Shutting Up Now: When Vanessa brings a blank character sheet to her first game with Davan, requesting he fill it out for her, he says "I love you."
  Vanessa: I know, honey!
  Davan: I wasn't reminding yooooooouWho wants cookies?
• Sickeningly Sweet: The tag to the "Lizard Happy" strip (A reaction from someone who knows the author) says "Stop trying to give your readers diabetes".
• Single-Target Law: A city official gets humiliated when his attempt to hijack Mike's Real Life Superhero persona for PR purposes backfires in public. When next seen he's trying to pass a law to ban those activities (and making no effort to disguise that it's solely to get back at Mike, calling it the "Who's laughing now, jerk" ordinance).
• Single Tear: Silas sheds one when Jason hits his Rage Breaking Point.
  Alt Text: Ha ha! It's funny because his soul is crushed.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Naturally, this is Aubrey's approach to parenting - "The Brothers Grimm School of Parenting", as Davan put it.
• Skyward Scream: Coupled with a Big "NO!" — given that Jason had just turned down a threesome and accidentally woken their infant while doing so, it's fully understandable.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: Monette's coworker is convinced this was Monette's method.
  Darlene: Come on, Monette. I know how you really got that promotion. But, hey, being on your back so much did wonders for your posture.
  Monette: Well, since your attempts have given you little more than bad knees and rancid breath, I figured I'd go a different route.
• The Something Song:
  "Meth Song, Meth Song,
  This is the song I sing when I'm about to get meth."
• Sophisticated as Hell: How Zach Weiner views Randy.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Nothing more soul-crushing than Medicaid Billing.
  Kharisma: Um, yeah. I have a question. What do we do to remove any overwhelming pangs of grinding financial salt into the emotional wounds of the unfortunate?
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace:
  • The reason Kim didn't attend Jason and Aubrey's wedding - she had enough reasons to object that she made an entire PowerPoint presentation.
  • At the wedding itself, the officiate insists on waiting for someone to speak up, and the absence of this has her quip that God is dead before making their marriage official.
• Squick: invoked
  Aubrey: "I could MENSTRUATE a better cup of coffee than that!"
  Jhim: Must fight visual! Must... fight... visual!
  • PeeJee's reaction to learning about furries.
  • And her first encounter with socially and hygienically inept roleplaying geeks.
  PeeJee: I wash and I wash but I can still feel their stares on my skin...
  • Assorted characters reactions to a number of sex-tinged fandoms.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • Claire had a habit of turning guys she'd had sex with into this, and boy howdy do they become obsessed.
  • Davan manages to terrify PeeJee with his crush on Soleil Moon Frye.
• Stealth Insult: Fred delivers a good one here, by reassuring Monette that the boogeyman already told the cannibal rodeo clowns she'd had a nightmare about that she had no brains to eat.
• Stealth Pun: This strip has Jason begging Aubrey to take part in the Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG, to which she'll be doing something to Jason's rear-end. The pun? Aubrey's a Butt Pirate. More than that — she'd also be plundering his booty.
• Stepford Smiler: Ollie appears to be justifiably miserable behind his cheerful front, but turns out to be unstable and hateful.
• Straight Gay: Jhim, or as he puts it...
  Jhim: Freda, did you know that liking dick isn't synonymous with being a pussy?
• Straw Fan: The catgirls.
• Straw Character: Arguably the most frequent criticism of the strip. Many a random passerby or lesser castmember has touted some weakly-held opinion that Milholland or the cast views as idiotic, and is then berated for it.
• Strictly Formula: Monette's writing team hits every overused cliche in the book during brainstorming, including A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted, a Two-Timer Date plot, and Monette sarcastically quips about Cousin Oliver and Jumping the Shark on the date. A later strip had them suggest a complete retooling of the show.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: Quite often when it comes to gaming geeks, as evidenced here.
• Straw Feminist:
  • The Womyn's Front group on Anna's college campus lied to men willing to have their picture taken for a sexual safety campaign and instead used their images for a scare campaign about how any man could be a sexual predator. Agnes, though, takes the cake.
    Agnes: My only responsibility is to keep people informed and safe.
    Anna: Last I heard, men count as people.
    Agnes: Don't worry, sweetie. It's a common mistake.
  • Davan has to watch a play that runs with this trope as part of his job under Mr. Sanderson.
• "Success Through Sex" Accusation: An ugly old coworker of Monette's spitefully tells her "all that lying on your back must be great for your posture", Monette jabs right back explaining that since said coworker's approach gave her bad breath and gangly knees she'd try a different one.
• Suicide Dare: Played for Laughs. Davan tells a group of diehard Rocky Horror fans that by protesting his Shock Treatment stage adaptation, they're only helping to create more publicity for the production. When one of the protesters says it hurts to hear that, Davan offers him "a little something to ease the pain." It's a poster of the Rippy the Razor mascot, showing how to slit one's wrists properly.
• Suicide is Shameful: Davan tries to insult his friend Scotty out of his overdose-induced coma. Scotty flatlined. At the open casket funeral, Davan is so furious that Scotty committed suicide instead of coming to his friends and family with his problems that he throttles Scotty's corpse.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: With a side helping of Change the Uncomfortable Subject when Davan tries prompting Aubrey and PeeJee that they'd give up a fling in favor of their friendship.
• Sustained Misunderstanding:
  • Teenage PeeJee has an argument with her father, and a bystander gets the wrong idea:
    Some Guy: Man I hope you've got a hell of a way to apologize to your girlfriend, or she going to dump your ass.
    Mr. Shou: She's my daughter, idiot!
    Some Guy: Then maybe it's best you two break up, anyway.
  • And again when Mike is raving about a possible Dragonlance movie - Davan informs him that he's never read the novels, but Mike is convinced that he means he hasn't reread them, then that he hasn't read any that day.
• Syfy Channel Original Movie: Monette is overjoyed at being asked for by name to star in a movie - until she learns it's one of these.
• Take Our Word for It: Mike's kid's appearance and the terrible shows the cast get involved in, especially the one Aubrey made that was so bad that the State of Massachusetts gave her a restraining order to keep her away from TV and film production gear.
• Take That!:
  • Used a lot, for very many groups and fandoms — Catholics, Warhammer, old-school D&D dorks and the comic's own fans.
  • Not to mention TV Tropes itself at least once (on Super Stupor, rather than S* P). "I was busy quoting from TV Tropes instead of forming my own opinions", in response to being accused of Black Comedy Rape by a Livejournal responder)
  • Davan makes care packages for various comic creators - Rob Liefeld's is a razor blade with instructions, only because Davan used all the cat shit and rat poison on Joe Quesada's "Retcon Yourself" gift.
  • And a rather long-running one against Nancy Grace.
  • 2019 brought us PamJee's presentation of: "My bullies all make fun of me for being adopted and 'unwanted' but my parents get me vaccinated and theirs don't. Who's really unwanted? A report."
    Todd: Uh, Miss Campbell?
    Ms. Campbell: No, no, Todd. I think she's on to something.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • The mailbag spots and occasional author appearances are usually to say how stupid some of the comic's fans are, amid comments about the author being a talentless hack.
  • Assorted logic failures and other dumbness said to Randy at conventions.
• Take That Me: Here.
• The Talk: Sanderson gives it to Rory while staying over as a guest. Hilarity Ensues when Rory realizes why his mom thought at one point that Davan might be his dad. And it only gets better from there.
  Rory: Mr. Sanderson explained it all to me! You put your penis in her vulva and then she... ejaculated uterine linin' after you... you shed your X chromosomes. Then her placenta was born and you both thought it was a baby and you both thought that baby was me but it wasn't! Didn't you?!
  Davan: [to Sanderson] I don't know if I should punch you for telling him I had sex with his mom or for how bad a job you did explaining what that means.
  • Davan had to give another one when Rory asks about his Raging Stiffie, which goes well... and then Rory asks about masturbation.
  • Davan, years later, starts to give Rory an "official" one, to their mutual discomfort. Subverted in the next strip, which explains that this version is about the responsibilities sexual activity comes with, rather than the actual mechanics of it, enlisting Vanessa's aid to ease the awkwardness. It culminates in a four hour talk.
  • Rory gets one more from Davan's friend Jhim, this time specifically for questions related to dating other guys. He proceeds to spend two hours trolling Jhim with deliberately awful questions before getting into his real concerns.
• Talking to the Dead: Davan occasionally visits Scotty's grave, talking to him about events going on in life and trying to come to terms with his feelings about his death and everything preceding it. He's also done the same with Rose a few times. On some occasions, he's accompanied by a friend or sends one in his stead while he's out of state. Similarly, he visits Branwen's father and Monette's son in their stead, though visits with the latter aren't shown.
• Tear Jerker: In-universe example. Davan pulled out this video to make Jason cry when he said he didn't cry over songs, because that was stupid and over-emotional. It worked maybe a bit too well.
• Teeny Weenie: After one customer gets belligerent and mean-spirited, and then sends in a dick pic, Aubrey figures out a solution in this vein. The picture of Kharisma in the background and hairstyle on the customer suggests it's Ollie.
• Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: Happens in this strip.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Kharisma... Right here. And it ties in with a Genre Savvy moment, to boot.
  • Randy lampshades it with this comic, saying "I love that I can just have Davan and Vanessa being nice and readers begin to panic."
  • Mike hopes that he'll be done working a fast-food job soon. When he gets to the Kwispy Burger, he discovers it's being shut down thanks to an arsonist attack.
    Mike: Somewhere there's a genie with his middle fingers permanently up at me.
  • One of PeeJee's employees attempts to freak her out with a Shock Site. She doesn't react because "You've gotta work to find something to freak me out." Cue Davan accepting her challenge, giving her nightmares in the process.
    Davan: Don't issue a challenge if you don't want it answered.
  • Not long after, Chirag encounters a customer who was dissatisfied with "Have a nice day", instead wanting to hear "Have a blessed day" - Chirag obliges in a way that makes the customer regret not accepting "nice".
  • Jason, during the 2020 quarantine, complains about how oddly boring the real-life Sci-Fi has become.
    Aubrey: I'm pretty sure daring 2020 to be more exciting is grounds for divorce.
• That Came Out Wrong: Vanessa is rather prone to this, as shown on her first date with Davan.
• Thermometer Gag: Davan demands his doctor take his temperature orally during a checkup, to which the doctor responds "Fine, but you're the first person to ask me to stick a rectal thermometer in his mouth."
• This Explains So Much:
  • Aubrey finds Rose's character sheet, and Davan points out that it likely explains his dim views on romance and relationships.
  • A later strip shows Eva's conversation with Davan's parents, who were full of Hypocritical Heartwarming at the time.
  • And another explain's Ollie's behavior when Davan is told that Avogadro was his uncle.
• This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!: Davan doesn't want to leave Choo-Choo Bear behind when he goes with Kim to Salem, so he dresses him up appropriately as "Droog-Droog Bear, A Clockwork Pussy." Apparently, Choo-Choo's a big fan of the movie.
  Kim: Oh... Davan, that is so not good on so many not-good levels.
• Time Capsule: Back in elementary school, Davan, Aubrey, and their childhood friends buried one in their old hangout in the woods. The original plan was to open it once they all hit retirement age. In 2011 the woods are cleared out to make room for new housing, so Davan digs up the capsule and, with permission from what remains of their old group, opens it. The box is empty except for an I.O.U. — Scotty dug it up back in 1997 and sold everything for rent money.
• Title Drop:
  • In this early comic.
    "Davan, this has to stop, okay? You're always so negative and angry, and it really worries me. You're not nearly the bad person you think you are, and things WILL get better. You've got to go do something positive with your life. I say this as a friend who cares about you."
  • According to the commentary, a conversation like this is the actual source of the comic's title.
• Too Dumb to Live: Several, but special mention to Kharisma, who openly bragged about a murder bet she made with Avagadro...which bites her right square in the ass when she's convicted of his murder, even though he died of natural causes.
• Too Much Information: Vanessa's mouth sometimes runs away with her, and ends up in terrible places.
  PeeJee: Stop...talking.
  Vanessa: I DON'T KNOW HOW.
• Took the Wife's Name: Jason takes Aubrey's last name, Chorde, when they marry, at least in part as a slight against his father.
• To the Pain: See Jason's Badass Boast.
• Tranquil Fury: Kim enters one when Jason tells her about Davan's new girlfriend - unfortunately, Jason doesn't notice.
  PeeJee: Jason, lemme share a secret with you, okay? When a woman talks perfectly through clenched teeth like that, think of it as a rattlesnake's rattle sound.
• Transparent Closet: A couple of cases:
  • Lisa was never fooling her family for a second, though she thought she was and was deathly embarrassed of her orientation. Even from the time she was a kid, it was pretty blatant - as her father put it, "The nicest closets have glass doors."
  • The minor character Chirag is both very obviously gay and very determined that it doesn't get out. He's not operating off the usual reasons, though — he thinks his parents would be a bit TOO supportive, and isn't prepared to settle down with just the one guy yet. When the truth comes out, he's proven right.
  • Rory's attempts to ask PeeJee about her new boyfriend tip her off easily.
• Treants: During a D&D game, Peejee conjures up some hillbilly rapist treemen. This gets their Asshole Victim to quit the roleplaying group, for which the other members send the GM thank-you notes. Randy later made a stat-block for them
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: By Aubrey's own admission, practically everything PamJee does runs on this trope.
  Neighbor: Is all of her affection that threatening?
  Aubrey: Hearing your kid say "I can hear your heart beat" during a hug should be sweet, but there's always that little ring of disappointment.
  • Her kitten fits her personality rather well.
  • Prior to this was a one-off strip where Davan was playing an abusive father, but the kid creeped him out - mainly by being way too interested in the choking.
    PeeJee: Congrats. You introduced that kid to his first fetish. In a few years, when he tries his first autoerotic asphyxiation experiment, his lungs will cry out for air but his heart will cry only for you.
    Davan: Shut that hate hole, you harpy
• True Companions: Davan, PeeJee, Aubrey and Jason compose the core of the circle, with something like a dozen other characters forming the periphery. Lots and lots of snarking and bitching, but they've demonstrated a willingness — nay, an eagerness — to commit felonies on behalf of one another, though they aren't above more traditional means of showing affection.
• Undignified Death: Aside from Davan's namesake (as mentioned under Noodle Incident), Vanessa's family has a habit of these, including two cousins that had died since their wedding - one in a "feral pig incident" and another who got drunk and punched a moose.
  Vanessa: Maybe it's a good thing Stormy's having a kid. We're runnin' out of Cubbinses.
  Dee: I know, right? Without us, who will give coroners fun stories to tell?
• Unfortunate Names: Mike's kid Shazam Wil-Wheaton Dowden and the Santa actor Shirley Koklik. To some extent, Davan himself, as nobody knows how to pronounce it (it's Dah-van, not Dave-N).
  PeeJee: Why would you call me "Penny-Jenny" and then act shocked that I'm prone to violent outbursts?
• The Unfair Sex: As Aubrey puts it, "It's how women are, and even when we're wrong, you're the one who's wrong." One woman blamed Davan for her husband of 10 years cheating on her because he "should have pursued me harder" when they went on dates before she'd even married.
  Sanderson: So the one in the giant lizard costume is the most normal woman you've been with?
• Unknown Rival: Ollie for Davan, as highlighted here.
  Ollie: What do I have to do to make you feel hate for me?!
  Davan: Stop making me feel sad for you.
  Alt Text: Is there anything more enraging than pity?
• The Un-Reveal: While Davan confessing his love for an as yet unrevealed person does not fully qualify for this trope, later Choo-choo Bear sets up the perfect UnReveal when the name of the person Davan called was about to be shown. Considering the time period and his then relationship status with the rest of the cast, it was most likely Branwen, though almost ten years later and Randy still hasn't named who exactly.
• The Unsmile:
  • Davan sports a manic one upon hearing about "Otakukin", Otherkin who believe themselves reincarnations of fictional characters.
  • Monette tries putting on a smile to hide her depression over unemployment.
• Unsound Effect: When PeeJee is offered a job at Cab's bar with as much free alcohol as she wants, we get a Beat panel with "(Insert sound of liver having orgasm)" as Cab realizes his mistake too late.
• Unstoppable Rage: Jason telling the catgirl fans of their webcomic it isn't that important was not a clever move.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Monette describes the trope rather well - "Everyone loves a pretend jerk who's not being mean to them."
• Unusual Euphemism: Rory is disgusted at the idea of Davan and Vanessa having sex, and asks Davan to call it "hugging" instead. Davan quickly proves how badly that idea would backfire.
• Video Game Caring Potential & Video Game Cruelty Potential: Ironically, given Davan's personality, he hates taking the Evil option in games, which Vanessa chalks up to games being about Escapism. Even randomly insulting an NPC causes some emotional distress.
  Davan: What's the cheat code to make my character apologize?
  Vanessa: There isn't one.
  Davan: (Suddenly Shouting) What's the cheat code for you to lie and say there is one?!
• Vitriolic Best Buds: The whole cast.
• Wall of Text: Sometimes quite dialogue-heavy, though it's part of the comic's charm, and the producer of some of the better strips. Let's just say that Milholland really likes his characters with Backstory and assumes the readers are smart enough to handle a few big speech bubbles. Here is a example, headed by the warning for those "frightened or intimidated by reading."
• Wangst: Made fun of with "Outcast Teen: The Moping" RPG.
• Wardens Are Evil: The one overseeing Kharisma certainly was, as he wanted to avenge Avogadro's death by letting other inmates kill her. When it takes longer than he likes, he starts spreading rumors that she's in there for child molestation to paint a bigger target on her back.
• Webcomic Time: Which bounces back and forth: events generally keep up with the dates on which they take place, albeit a few days before and after. And addressed with a Take That, Audience! when Choo-Choo Bear throttles the plot even slower out of spite for someone saying they "can't wait" for a plot point's resolution.
• Webcomics Long-Runners: Started in December 2001, Milholland planned to wrap up the comic if it was still running in 2011. Having changed his mind on that, S*P is over ten years old and shows no sign of ending.
• Welcome to the Big City: Helen (from Penny and Aggie) moves to the city and is helped by a kindly old lady, only to realize said sweet old lady had swiped her money.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Just Today."
  • A meta-example with Randy mentioning he was married. Most reader reactions were along the lines of "What?" / "Congratulations", others included no longer reading the comic or harassing his wife or announcing their intent to get Randy back together with his ex.
• Wham Line: "Time Machine" ends with Farco calling Kharisma by her actual name, not her assumed identity.
• Whatevermancy: Aubrey, in the January 9, 2002 strip, refers to using sex appeal to get into a club without paying a cover charge as "Vaginamancy".
• What Happened to the Mouse?: A few subplots have been dropped over the years, as different parts of character's lives get ignored (or just not focused on). Davan and Jason were initially supposed to be producing Titus Andronicus (even auditioning for it), but it got dropped when he moved to Texas. Later strips involve a play Davan re-wrote instead. Certain subplots seem to have been dropped, only to reappear later on (such as Monette's "Big Secret" — which turned out to be her TV show, and Davan and Jason's work on Neko-Neko Holy-Chan). New character Bian was introduced, but then went several months before actually meeting any of the recurring cast. The most epic (and possibly deliberate) use was Monette's baby — she had a big pregnancy storyline, and then one strip showed her sad while somebody mentioned that she "lost her baby". It was done either really clumsily, or very Magnificent Bastardly by Randy, to the point where fans re-scoured recent Archival updates to find out when the baby really died. Turns out, that was the first time it was mentioned.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mike gets in a subdued one after Captain Failsafe attacks him in an alley, jealous of the adoration the public had for the "upstart".
• Wheelchair Antics: Dahlia attaches a cowcatcher to her wheelchair for shopping during the holiday rush.
• A World Half Full: of Snarkiness, but still half-full.
• World of Snark: Virtually everyone has some sort of sarcastic jab they can pull at someone else.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Aubrey and PeeJee take it to a whole new level, and is the only In-Universe reason they get away with stuff that should put them in jail - or Refuge in Audacity in some cases.
• Write Who You Know: Most of the main characters, and some of the secondary cast, are based on Milholland's friends and family. Davan is based on Milholland himself as he was several years earlier, and Aubrey is based on Clarine Harp, now a fairly well-known anime voice actress. Milholland has explained that various other characters are based off of "combinations" of people he knew. Specifically, Eva was based off of two separate people (one nice girl, one a basket case), as was Mike (one got better from his misogynistic whiny geek phase, the other got worse).
  • In-universe, Davan based the villain of a play he re-wrote off of his dad, justifying it as needing the villain to be the most interesting person in the play.
  • Also in-universe, Monette's sitcom character is a Gender Flipped Davan. PeeJee asks Davan how it feels to know that someone else has achieved success by being him.
• Yandere: The catgirls.
• Yaoi Fangirl:
  • Aubrey encourages PeeJee to become one to get over her crush on Jhim. Also, this, and Branwen is confused but pleased when Jason angrily describes Davan as a "master cocksucker".
  • Tamara, her fingers, and two well-known comic characters. Here.
• You Are Fat: Mike desperately tries to change the subject and just digs himself in deeper:
  Mike: Uh, hey! You're looking great! Did you lose weight or something?
  PeeJee: Oh, Michael, you loaded the "Are you saying I'm fat" gun and handed it to me. There are less painful ways to die, y'know.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Often used on Davan by friends and people who don't know him very well. It very seldom works due to Davan's extreme realism and cynicism, but he tends to appreciate the effort regardless.
• You Have Failed Me: Utilized here when a cashier utterly fails at math.
• You Know I'm Black, Right?: Kim gets to inflict one when another Wiccan tries telling her she'll never know what it's like to have ancestors oppressed for who they were or fear being lynched - he at least realizes it halfway through his rant.
• Your Costume Needs Work: Davan is told that "you just seem to friendly to play an angry, snarky geek" - cue PeeJee getting the feeling she and Choo-Choo should hide in the cellar until the storm blows over.
• Your Makeup Is Running: Weeping isn't a great look for Monette.
• You Will Be Spared: PamJee reassures her mother that she and Jason will be the last to be enslaved under her tyranny.
• Zany Scheme: Aubrey. Her friends realise they can only ride the wave until she loses interest or it all falls apart — until one of them works. Later on, when said zany scheme is self-sustaining enough, she gets tired of it and goes back to her old notebooks to see if she can try again on some of her old ideas...only to discover that they all suck.
• Zombie Apocalypse: But with catgirls!

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