Webcomic / PAY DAT RENT!!!1

You come home from a long day of being a loser and-
Oh shit what the fuck is that. [1]

No, not the 2015 rap song of the same name. [2]

PAY DAT RENT!!!1, or PDR, for short, is a web comic written by "Grumpisimo" that began on July 22, 2014. It uses the Homestuck style of writing and presentation, and even has a home on the MSPFA website...which makes it a lot like Homestuck.

What doesn't make it a lot like Homestuck is the fact that instead of a curious child playing videogames, we have a constantly stripping average protagonist trying to pay an overdue rent. This spirals out of control as the protagonist is dropped into a chain of events involving such things as stealing bikes from children, selling his soul to a demon, joining a cult, and much, much more confusing stuff. All this confusion is driven by the fact that the actions done in the comic is all suggested by readers of the comic, who in turn also submit characters to appear in the comic.

Beyond this paragraph, all spoilers are unmarked as one, the comic is not that long, and two, the ludicrous amount of plot points start off early on, as one aspect leads to another.

You good with the spoilers?

Good.

Let's...

READ DOSE TROPES!!!1

• Art Evolution: The thumbnail above shows the comic's initial art style: drawings were sketchy, simplistic, and inconsistent, matching the "shitpost-y" tone the comic had at the time. Over time, however, the outlines became cleaner and character designs become more complex and continuous, reflecting the comic's growth in plot and writing.
• Author Avatar: The artist and writer for the comic, Grumpisimo, makes a brief, non-canon cameo appearance early on.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Of a sort. A lot of the higher-tier demon powers, such as time travel, require so much demon energy to use that the user can risk overloading themselves and exploding. As such, most of the lesser and more specific powers become Boring, but Practical in comparison, since they will often use less energy than their upgraded counterparts.
• Bag of Holding: PDR Guy's wallet, which can store an unlimited amount of currency whilst also serving as his main inventory. It has 16 slots for items (not counting further nestled Bags of Holding), and can hold objects as large as a 100-scoop ice cream cone without issue. Its contents can be viewed at any time through this link.
• Big Bad: The Landlord. He kidnaps the protagonist's girlfriend for no real reason, and has apparently been spying on him for a good chunk of the adventure.
• Cardboard Prison: PDR Guy ends up in jail three times, and he escapes jail three times: once by having his bail paid, once by faking a heart attack and being thrown out with the garbage, and once by covering up his demon eye with a bandana and claiming he was a falsely-imprisoned baron. Psychotic Asshole and Pretentious Broad later escape jail themselves via the former seducing the Sexy Cop.
• Cat Girl: The party sisters.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Every species in the comic is given a unique color (or color range) to represent what species a character may be.
  • The only exception is humans, which can come in any color imaginable. In fact, some human characters in the comic even use colors similar to those of demons!
• Chekhov's Gun: The Rock-It Launcher, which is only very helpful in calming down Psychotic Asshole during Restore.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Occurs a lot within the story, as many characters that have appeared once have a high chance of appearing again.
  • The biggest moment goes to the Faithful Dimwit when the left behind child reappears as the Demon Realm's overlord.
• Creepy Child: The Disturbing Youngster. Hell, it's even in his name!
  • The Faithful Dimwit as the demon Overlord also qualifies, although he falls more under the Enfant Terrible category.
• Cult: The island cultists, a tight-knit community of navy-colored humans who worship the demon goddess Deva. Although all signs would point to this being a Religion of Evil, it's actually subverted, since Deva herself isn't an evil goddess, and the cultists are generally personable and helpful to anyone they see as an ally.
• Damsel in Distress: The protagonist's girlfriend after being kidnapped by the Landlord.
• Elemental Weapon: The Crux Cane is a special Socketed Weapon which temporarily gains the elemental aspect of whatever Crux Core is inserted into it. So far, the known cores include:
  • the Bubble Core,
  • the Thunder Core,
  • the Ember Core,
  • the Sword Core,
  • and the Butter Core.
• Enfant Terrible: The Faithful Dimwit, while wearing the demon overlord's hat.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Every character that isn't the main protagonist is referred to the nickname or description the protagonist gives them. As for the protagonist, fans often call him "PDR Guy".
  • The only real reason this isn't His Name Really Is "Barkeep" is because we at least have one name: Demonic Deity Deva.
• Forgot to Pay dat Rent: If all else, the very reason why this story even started.
• Genki Girl: The Protagonist's Ex.
• Gory Discretion Shot: When Spider Furry is commanded to kill a demon, the carnage is only seen through PDR Guy's horrified reaction.
• Naked People Are Funny: PDR Guy will strip for almost any reason ever, from simple greetings and seduction, to intimidation and puzzle solving. This has gotten him thrown in jail multiple times, and, on one occasion, killed.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: An Averted Trope. Since all the powers are seemingly selected by the fans, and the (earlier) powers are not that powerful anyways, PDR Guy's powers are easily forgotten and only come up for the sake of comedy. On the off chance they are used for something useful, they tend to not work as fantastically as one hopes.
• One-Shot Character: As a suggestion comic, PDR allows for many characters (and even species) to be submitted by its fans. While some submitted characters like Pretentious Broad and Nerd seemingly are mainstays, a good chunk of submitted characters are seemingly around for a single scene.
• Our Demons Are Different: Even the very demon plane is separate from the land of the dead, complete with their own society, form of government, and usable currency.
• Our Souls Are Different: All species, with the exception of synthetic ones like androids and titans, need a soul to survive. A soul provides Life Energy and acts as a long-term storage for an individual's memories and basic personality traits, although a mind is still required to properly process that information. Souls can be sold to other species, usually demons, but true soullessness is a serious condition that eventually leads to total mental and physical collapse. An In-Universe guide exists to explain the concepts in more detail.
• Police Are Useless: Zig-Zagged. While the two officers have been fairly effective at arresting PDR Guy on multiple occasions (and successfully captured Spider Furry at least once), they're largely ineffectual when dealing with PDR Guy's kidnapped girlfriend. Their competency is also questionable, since at least one of them has gotten drunk on the job before.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Subverted with Pretentious Broad; she seems insecure about the appearance of her eye color.
  • Zig-Zagged with people who have sold their souls. While it's been said that they can be used for evil intent, so far, they've only been shown to be generally helpful.
• Rule of Funny: Some of the sillier moments of the story are excusable by this, such as PDR Guy's spontaneous power to generate sunglasses for a gag (which is lampshaded), or the huge racket.
• Running Gag: There are quite a few:
  • Doing silly dances.
  • The soul burgers.
  • The protagonist stripping for any imaginable reason.
  • Attempting to reenact Titanic.
  • The disturbing youngster disappearing whenever the readers prompt the protagonist to talk to him.
• Second Hour Superpower: Selling your soul to a demon apparently grants a multitude of magical powers. While his powers start small, they grow into a multitude of interesting powers.
• Ship Tease: PDR Guy's constant flirting can sometimes create hints of this, especially with characters such as the Cool Mercenary and Nerd (who outright blushes after he's been complimented). Considering that he is in a monogamous relationship with his girlfriend already, though, it's unlikely anything will ever come of it. Occasionally lampshaded.
• Shout-Out: A few.
  • Don't Screw This Up, another one of Grumpisimo's webcomics, gets a brief mention later on in the story.
  • Pretentious Broad's eyes are damaged because she fell asleep with her eyes open, frying them red in the harsh sunlight...sound like a certain other, blind troll?
• Tagalong Kid: The Faithful Dimwit during most of the robbery arc, much to PDR Guy's annoyance.
• Take a Third Option: The Landlord's office on the top floor has a heavily-fortified door which is nearly indestructible. PDR Guy's response? Blow a hole through the floor!
• Taken for Granite: One of the human merchants in the demon marketplace literally petrifies after PDR Guy strips for them.
• The Worf Effect: The entirety of the Overlord arc.
• Would Hurt a Child: The amount of abuse PDR Guy carries out on the Faithful Dimwit early on in the comic occurs so often that it's almost a running gag.
  • Was practically forced to fight children during the Overlord Dimwit arc.