Webcomic / The Best Gamepiece Photocomic

Front to back, left to right: Martin, Val, Sven, Teddy, Vent, Tetra. Not pictured: Wasp/Vivian.

Martin: That doesn't make any sense.
Val: So?

The Best Gamepiece Photocomic (or TBGPPC, for short) is a Spiritual Successor to Terror Island made by TheFullestCircle. It focuses on roommates Val and Martin, the bizarre people around them, and the strange things they get up to. It can be found here.

The Best Gamepiece Photocomic contains examples of the following:

• Aerith and Bob: The people on the cover are named Martin, Val, Teddy, Sven, Tetra (a little unusual, but not unheard of), and Ventricle. Even lampshaded in the strip we learn his name.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Wasp is a wasp. Do not mention this to him.
• Animal Species Accent: Wasp (who is a wasp) stretches out Zs and replaces Ss with them. (Strangely, the other Tarpatis don't have this, even though they're also insects.)
• Beat Panel:
  • After Martin is informed that a building has dedicated exits for tsunamis, earthquakes, and tornadoes, it takes a second for the Fridge Logic to kick in.
  • Also occurs in Strip 15 after Sven uses a Logic Bomb against a Knights and Knaves puzzle.
  • A third, more dramatic one happens in Strip 100 as Martin and Val realize the implications of what was just said.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: All five members of the Tarpati family are human-sized insects (or arachnids).
• Brick Joke: This early strip features a Compulsive Liar claiming to be named Michael Barleycorn, and The Rant asserts that this is "the name of a random side character that'll probably get mentioned off-hand in like 100 strips and never actually appear on screen." 104 strips and two and a half years later, that's exactly what happens.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Sven gloats about how evil he is pretty much every time he's onscreen, usually in lieu of doing anything actually evil.
• Characterization Marches On: Teddy and Tetra were both lacking in characterization a bit when they were introduced. The first piece was at-the-time informed (but believable) flaws (Teddy being lazy and Tetra being oblivious), which their initial characterization was structured around.
  • Teddy wavered a bit between excessive laziness and a second Only Sane Man (it didn't help that he spent most of the rather long "let's find Rho" arc not saying or doing anything) before crystalizing into a more laid-back Foil to Martin, sane enough to realize that everyone around him is crazy, but not caring enough to do anything about it (and even he has his moments).
  • Tetra was on track to become a second Val before becoming the Wide-Eyed Idealist Genki Girl she currently is.
• Cloudcuckooland: Pretty much every character except Martin is either incredibly weird or directly linked to something incredibly weird.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Almost all characters are this to some degree, but especially Val, who has signed up for a raffle she herself organized to get rid of something, attempted to get herself arrested for legally crossing the street, guarded a door from herself...the list goes on.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The crowd shot at the end of Strip 7 shows six new characters, and while Daniel is introduced later in that arc, Calder and Thomas, Officer Bright, and the Council of 100 aren't introduced until strips 19, 35, and 98 respectively, and the domino still hasn't been introduced.
• Evil Brit: Sven's first strip established that he had a British accent. The strip after that (and all of his future characterization) established he was evil.
• Funny Background Event: This strip is mainly about Teddy arguing with Paris, but in the background Val can be seen trying to guard a door from herself.
• Greed: Convenience store manager Ventricle Clarkson writes up his employees for talking about things other than sales, requires customers to pay to make a complaint, and imposes a toll to leave the building. And this is all from the strip he was introduced!
• Harmless Villain: Sven is a self-proclaimed supervillain, but he does basically nothing other than misuse apostrophes, gloat about how evil he is, and at one point trap some people inside of a building by drawing a line on the floor and doing nothing else to impede them. (Which works.)
• Hypocritical Humor: Strip 18:
  Vent: There's nothing I hate more than a seller resorting to dishonesty because they don't know how to make a sale.
  Martin: The last time I went into your store, you rang me up for a $700 order I didn't ask for, then called the cops when I refused to pay.
  Vent: That's how you make a sale!
• Insane Troll Logic: All over the place. The comic opens with Val trying to convince Martin that they live in her house, but his apartment, which are the same, and it goes on from there.
  • One specific example shows us Val's thought process: Wasp (who is getting dating advice from an egocentric person) tells Val that he's ordering the most expensive drink on the menu, and she's getting water. Val "reasons" that the most expensive drink probably tastes the best, so it's probably the least healthy, and water is the most healthy, so Wasp must be sacrificing his own health for Val's.
• It's All About Me: Daniel, introduced in Strip 9, insists that he's above the rules due to his supposed superiority.
• Knights and Knaves: The focus of Strip 15. Sven encounters a fork in the road and must figure out which path to take, with the two of them being guarded by a liar and a truth-teller. The two guards become recurring characters.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Strip 14, after Val makes a pun about bread.
  Martin: ...get out.
• Logic Bomb: In Strip 15, Sven uses one against a Knights and Knaves puzzle, asking a question where all possible outcomes lead to a logical contradiction in the form of the Liar's Paradox. After a Beat Panel the guards just tell him the answer.
• Morton's Fork: As seen in Strip 20, the convenience store's vegan Oreos cost $80, but it also costs $80 to not buy them.
• The Omniscient: The All-Seeing Eye can see everything, although he can't see into the future.
• One-Hour Work Week:
  • It was mentioned very early on that Martin apparently works at a dump, but we've never seen the dump or Martin leaving to go to work there.
  • Val's job at the convenience store is mentioned several times, but she's only shown working there twice (here and here.) It's implied Vent doesn't care if she shows up or not.
• Only Sane Man: Martin is the only character who doesn't act weird, and frequently the only character who questions it when other characters do.
• Painting the Medium:
  • Sven's "superpower" is misusing apostrophes in his speech bubbles, which the other characters (or at least Val) can sense.
  • The Oracles and Vivian talk in a different font than everyone else (the Oracles to show their supernatural nature, Vivian so you can tell her apart from Wasp).
• Puppeteer Parasite: Vivian is a parasitic mushroom—ahem—commensalistic fungus controlling Wasp. He can take back over if he gets a strong burst of emotion (usually anger).
• Straight Man: Martin's role as the Only Sane Man means most of his screentime is spent having other characters bounce their wackiness off of him.
• Straw Vegetarian: Daniel is revealed to be one in Strip 20, where he admits that he at least partially only claims to care about animal rights due to wanting to feel morally superior to others.
• The Rant: Each comic has a description at the bottom. They usually contain a clever quip, behind-the-scenes information about the making of the comic, a link to a relevant trope, and after Strip 55, a link to the comic's (rather small) Discord server.
• Token Non-Human: While most of the cast is (presumably) human, Tetra is a demon...ghost...thing (the book wasn't exactly clear), and the Tarpatis are all giant bugs.