One of the throwaway joke episodes.
Public Humiliation
is a webcomic by J. Riley McCool hosted on The Duck. The story focuses on the Fiveclaws, a mixed-species family of dragons, humans, and pookasnote .The original comic ran from Jan. 25th 2006 to April 9, 2016. J. Riley also wrote a prequel comic, Life With Dragons. And two currently running sequels, A Little More Humiliation and Habibah's Song.
Tropes:
- Author Avatar: Jess and Drake were based slightly on J. Riley and her husband.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Played straight in the page image, where the wish to be seen cute by girls polymorphed the wisher into a cat.
- Blood Magic: Runes, the only form of magic that can be used by anyone, are written in pooka blood.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: The main comic starts out with Jess killing one of Drake's ex-girlfriends, but she was kind-of threatening to eat her. Dido was homicidally possessive of Lan in the early comics, though she later arranged for him to marry another eight pookas.
- Crossover: Recurring with Magical Misfits.
- Divine Parentage: Lan's grandfather is Hades, hence why he can reanimate the dead. And he ends up inheriting the job in the sequel.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: See Hades below, most of his Psychopomps are pretty amiable as well, if a bit arrogant in some cases. When Lan becomes the new Hades his adoptive brother Warmwind becomes the God of Peaceful Death and his son starts training to be a Reaper.
- Dragon Rider: Through all the interdimensional laws and rules that they've gone through, Lan is Warmwind's rider as well as his foster brother.
- Exotic Extended Marriage: Pookas practice polygyny to care for widows. As Lan finds out after he liberates a pooka farm and finds himself with eight more wives than he had before.
- Everybody Hates Hades: Hades isn't particularly well-liked by mortals in-universe, but he's actually a pretty nice guy who spends most of his time partying on the Isle of the Blessed.
- Fate Worse than Death: After some of Lan's kits are killed and butchered Lan kills the butcher responsible and reanimates him as a sentient zombie for interrogation, then feeds his still-awake and screaming carcass to a flock of harpies.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Montigo can only change into inanimate objects (often a toaster) or machines, but its' also given him a strong affinity with machines.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Lan's birth mother was a human demigoddess and his father was a pooka. While Drake and Jess have three kids who combine human and dragon traits.
- Happily Adopted: Skye and Spencer consider Lan just as much their child as any of their biological ones, and Skye is his first thought when someone mentions his mother.
- Kid from the Future: Lan's apprentice Lana is his time-travelling great-great-granddaughter, though the timelines got a bit screwed up.
- Mage Species: Pookas and dragons have inherent magic, a number of other species used to but interdimensional events led to their world losing magic centuries ago, which was when they started using pooka blood runes. While necromancers usually have Hades somewhere in their family tree.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: Pookas have litters, and Lan found himself married to nine of them. His kids number in the dozens. Though Boo was the only one of her litter to survive and she was an only child for a while, it was a bit of an adjustment when her first half-siblings were born.
- Necromancer: Lan (and a few of his progeny), is a necromancer. But he gives most of his zombies free will and their old souls, choosing to view their reanimation as a second chance.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The Fiveclaws are mostly humanoid, though more traditional European dragons appear from time-to-time.
- Out of Focus: The strip started out oriented more towards Drake and Jess, but as it progressed the focus shifted more to Drake's siblings Lan, Warmwind and Summer (mostly Lan.)
- Papa Wolf: Mess with Lan's kits, and he's likely to kill you and reanimate your corpse, actually kill some of his kits, and you'll suffer an even worse fate.
- People Farms: Elves farm pookas as meat and for pets.
- Telepathy: Warmwind's first magical ability to emerge was telepathy, which has helped him call for help a few times.
- The Voiceless: Habibah is mute, causing some of her nest to write her off as "damaged goods", but Montigo still accepted her as a mate and gave her a smartphone with a text-to-speech app.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Pookas can assume a variety of forms, though kits have some trouble controlling it.
