Webcomic / Addictive Science

Celia, the main protagonist, as a fennec fox.

Addictive Science is an ongoing adventure, comedy, drama and science fiction webcomic written and drawn by Cervelet since 2009. It is hosted by Kemono Cafe and can be found here.

The comic features the adventures and misadventures of Celia, a mad scientist, and her roommate Lukas, a notable deadpan snarker who is also a ninja in his spare time. The cast is composed of quite a bunch of people, some humans, some not, and all subject to rampant experiments. It's mostly made for fun.

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Addictive Science contains the following tropes:

• Arbitrary Skepticism: Downplayed when Schmitt insists that magic and demons are just "natural phenomenons that science hasn't explained yet." Exaggerated when he flat out refuses to believe in the existence of centaurs and werewolves even after using DNA samples of both to transform Lukas.
  Lukas: And you STILL don't believe in werewolves? Right.
  Schmitt: For some reason I shall study, I appear to be unable to hear you.
• Arboreal Abode: Common in the magic world, explained by using magic to make the tree grow rooms and doors.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Celia has this happen all the time when she's excited over something.
• Big, Fat Future: During the events of a two-part story line the cast experiences a what-if scenario where Celia invents machines that automate everything and they all quickly become fat blobs that literally burst their homes due to their size.
  Geenie: Oh I overfilled my house.
  Celia: Robots! Rebuild my house.
• Calling Your Attacks: "Lolfox Kick!"
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mark and Celia are this. They do a lot of weird things, and it works. Don't ask how. It doesn't make any sense.
• Crossover: With the cast of At Arm's Length.
• Cute Little Fangs: Practically all the female characters when they have those mischievous grins.
• Deadpan Snarker: Lukas. He's one of the few practical people in the comic.
• Embarrassing Last Name: Celia Pichon prefers not to use her surname.
• Functional Magic: It's how they use portals to other worlds. So many portals.
• Gender Bender: A regular effect of transformations, usually accompanied by a species TF, in most cases it gets reversed but there's been some exceptions.
  • Mark turns into a foxgirl whenever he's doused in cold water, ala Ranma ½.
  • For a sizable stretch of the comic Lukas would temporarily change into a catgirl when exposed to magic, he hated it.
  • At least one MIB agent decided to remain a foxgirl after being transformed one too many times.
  • After Lukas and Moritz ("demondude") learn that they're distant cousins they do some family research and Lukas discovers that his great-grandfather's brother seemingly vanished into thin air while Moritz's great-grandmother popped out of a random portal. After figuring out the implications they resolve not to tell either of their families.
• Goofy Feathered Dinosaur: After turning into a velociraptor Celia is embarrassed to see that she has feathers.
• Herr Doktor: Schmitt. And also one of the more benign mad scientists in the neighborhood.
• Killer Rabbit: Eegor, Schmitt's genetically engineered minion/monster/child? looks like a cute and fluffy fennec-taur who communicates in whistles. But he also breathes fire and can toss a dumpster.
• Mad Scientist: Celia. Obviously. As well as the entire Mad Science university she goes to apparently.
  • Mark was in denial about it for a while because he wants to be a superhero, then Celia tricked him into taking the entry exam.
• Magic Pants: Geenie has enchanted most of the main characters' clothes to resize themselves when they change sizes.
• The Men in Black: Played for humor, initially a bunch of seemingly identical agents named "Mr. Smith" who tried ineffectually to "classify" various experiments and other transformation accidents, only to get transformed en masse and crash a helicarrier. They've since acquired some unique agents; such as "Ms. Smith" who decided to remain a foxgirl instead of changing back to human, "rogue Smith" who tried to become a cigar-chomping badass, a giant robot bunny, and a hippogriff who's also the Goddess of Awkwardness; though they're no less incompetent.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Caroline, the scaredy-demon, has blank white eyes. Also Celia in some of her transformations.
• Multiarmed And Dangerous: Lukas, after growing a second set of arms during the crossover with At Arm's Length, displays remarkable quad-wielding sword skills.
• Nerd Glasses: Mark wears these, and it makes sense. He's a super nerd. With glasses. He built a glove to control a submarine wirelessly, and he plays a lot of online games.
• Ninja: Lukas. He can do many cool things.
• No Fourth Wall: In-universe. The fourth wall has been broken so many times it has degraded away completely.
• Odd Job Gods: Whi’kka, Goddess of Fluffy Foxes, whose worship is slowly growing as people get transformed into fox people. There’s also a God of IT who looks suspiciously like Mark. And Clara turns out to be the Goddess of Awkwardness, and possibly Classification according to her cult in the MIB.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Throughout the entire comic, no matter what, every time someone becomes a kind of centaur, it's never a classic centaur. Usually.
• Our Demons Are Different: In the magical world demon is a job rather than a species. Demons are granted immense Reality Warper powers for granting wishes, but they’re supposed to be malicious about it, Catherine is very bad at that part.
• Our Genies Are Different: Like demon, genie is a job not a species. Their purpose being to siphon off excess magic from the magical world by using it in the non-magical world.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Just like Our Centaurs are Different. There will NEVER be classic mermaids in the comic. NEVER!
• Planet of Steves: Most of the MIB go by "Smith", but they usually know which agent one is referring to anyways. The "rogue" Smith has revealed his real name, but it's a mouthful so he's normally just called Smith.
• Rule of Cute: Whenever someone is transformed into something small and cute, or in the case of Lukas in a few comics, a puppy-taur.
• Rule of Funny: The whole comic. It's all supposed to be funny. Why else would it be called a comic if not to be funny?
• Scaled Up: Celia frequently transforms herself and her friends into dragons. Lukas has become a naga on occasion as well.
• Second Law of Gender-Bending: Depends on the character.
  • Played Straight in the case of one MIB agent who has opted to remain an anthropomorphic vixen rather than turning back into a human man like the rest of the MIB.
  • Played Straight by Konstantine, who barely seems to notice that his body is female, more that it's an appropriately-sized gerbil.
  • Zig-Zagged in the case of Mark who defaults as human and male but changes into a vixen with some regularity and is quite comfortable with the form. On one occasion he even transformed himself simply because he felt like wearing his dress for Thanksgiving.
  • Inverted with Lukas, who hates being genderbent.
  • Averted with Schmitt, who didn't even seem to notice that he'd been genderbent until it was pointed out to him.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Happens whenever someone becomes bigger or smaller. The mass it taken from someone else near by, and so two people are changed.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: A few characters have been subjected to permanent transformations that are nigh-impossible to reverse.
  • A mad science accident transformed Vivian's head into a cat's head and made her virtually untouchable by magic or science. After a lot of effort Celia and Schmitt were able to change her head into a kitsune's, which can naturally shapeshift, but she's been a cat so long she defaults to that form.
  • Mary and Andora intentionally locked themselves into fox-taur forms, and are distressed when the lock is temporarily suppressed.
  • Clara was turned into an anthropomorphic hippogriff after reading a cursed book out loud, and nothing, not even forbidden magic, has been able to change her. Possibly because she's a goddess now.
• Shapeshifting: Fairly obvious, since this also is a Transformation Comic.
• Snake People: Geenie is an example. She's a naga. With hair.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: As other characters Konstantine's size (mouse-sized) are few and far between, this was inevitable when Konstantin started looking for a queen. S/he ends up with Dominique, who towers over most of the cast
• Transformation Comic: The entire thing is this! Come on! It's obvious from page one.
• Transformation Ray: Celia LOVES using this as her primary method of changing everyone else. Such Zappy Fun!
• The Unmasqued World: Despite the MIB's best efforts, super science and magic have become public knowledge thanks to one too many Mass Transformation events.
• The Woobie: Catherine. So many things have happened to her that she's frightened and scared of her own shadow half the time.
  • Clara, a character introduced in the strip from June 7, 2021. She was a normal human being but due to reading out loud a spell from a magic book that Celia lost, was transformed into an anthropomorphic hippogryph. After she tells her background story to Celia and friends, mainly, how she was transformed, it affected her life and got some supernatural powers, Geenie delivers a totally blunt Wham Line for her, that she doesn't know if they'll ever make her human again. In later pages, the way Clara reacts to it leaves her in a shocked and depressed mood, even crying in a totally non comedic way (every time any character has cried in this comic, it tends to have been Ocular Gushers). Then comes Catherine, who gives a better description of the origins of the book, that it was made by a mad magician, it gave her power and a new form and that she'll never be human again, specially since the mad magician disappeared. Clara then just states that then there's nothing left for her but to accept her new life, while also crying some more. Catherine and Celia even start crying for her, although in a more typical cartoonish way, but even with that, we could say that Clara's introduction arc is probably the first Tear Jerker ever in this webcomic. At least she gets better by the end of it.