Webcomic / TwoKinds

"Awkward interspecies romance at its best!"

— TwoKinds ad banner

TwoKinds is a long running Webcomic with heavy anime and furry influences. It revolves around Trace, a human who has lost his memory, and his anthropomorphic Tiger-girl friend, Flora. It debuted on October 22, 2003.

Along their way, they discover that the world is in a state of near open war, with Flora's race, the Keidran, openly targeted for enslavement and slaughter by the humans, led by the murderous Templars. Meanwhile, they discover Keith, a member of the mostly forgotten Basitin race.

Quickly caught up in the politics of the world—and its gods—Trace and Flora travel eastward, interested in finding out more about Trace's past, as well as a place that a Human with a dark (and forgotten) past, a misfit Keidran, and an outcast Basitin can call home.

While they may not show anything, there are still NSFW moments.

The author/artist, Tom Fischbach, has a DeviantArt page here. His brother, Mark, is none other than the famous Let's Player Markiplier, and Tom has appeared in several Markiplier videos.

---

TwoKinds contains examples of:

A to C

• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Mike, trying to hide from Evals while he's turned into a girl, blocks the door with a bookcase. All this accomplishes is briefly confusing Evals, because the door opens the other way.
• Adorable Fluffy Tail: The Keidran are a race of humanoid cannids and felids who often sport some large, adorable, furry tails. Special mention goes to Adira, a snow leopard Keidran sporting a long, incredibly fluffy tail that her shy, even more adorable daughter Maeve likes to nibble on.
  • The Team Pet, Mrs. Nibbly is a cute squirrel, so of course she counts too, and her tail becomes even larger in the Magical Mishaps side comics when a magic collar turns her humanoid.
• Alchemy Is Magic: Sealeen has a form of alchemy. Since she has little magic skill, she can bottle spells as potions that she throws during battle to activate, so that spells that would otherwise take her hours to gather enough energy for can be used at a moment's notice.
• All Animals Are Domesticated: Discussed with Mrs Nibbly. Maren points out that squirrels typically aren't comfortable around predators, several theories are thrown around, from diseased to an escaped pet to a baby dragon in disguise.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: This is one reason Sythe thinks Flora's baby is Natani's, the other is the hair.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Kathrin seems to genuinely have feelings for Eric, but though he treats her infinitely better than most humans would treat a slave, he still considers her to be his property. The only thing that indicates his feelings might be different is that he released her from the mind-control spell that forces a slave to follow any order.
  • It has progressed (somewhat) from "property" to "like a sister," but the problem remains.
• Almost Dead Guy:
  • Laura held on until she got to see Keith one last time.
  • For a humorous example, this is literally Tom's only purpose in the story. No, really.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: Of the rhyming variety; Flora, Nora, and Laura.
• Alpha Bitch: Iris^note a tiger woman on the diplomatic envoy sent to the human lands gets most of the bullet points.
• Altar Diplomacy: Flora (the long-lost Tiger princess) was supposed to marry Sythe (a Wolf duke) to cement their two tribes' alliance against the humans, whom Trace had whipped up into a xenocidal frenzy during his Evil Sorceror days. She was so opposed to the idea that the first thing she said to Sythe was "Your ponytail looks stupid" in an effort to drive him away. She eventually ran off on the way to their wedding, running splat into Trace, who was out to kill them in an effort to stop the alliance. Luckily, Neutral whomped Trace with the Laser-Guided Amnesia stick, driving his evil side underground before he could get them.
• Alt Text: Sporadic, and only on the most recent pages. Each new page seems to have alt text, but when the page is thrown into the archive, it loses the text for some reason. For instance: the alt text for page 769 was "Save the bucket helmet."
• Ambiguous Gender: Lynn appears to be a male, but we're not certain. No entry on the cast page means we might never know since Lynn's not talking.
  • Lynn later reveals that he is asexual which is useful to Basitin society as a whole (they are so rigorously segregated along gender lines they need "messengers" like Lynn as go-betweens) but doesn't benefit Lynn so much (pity is implied). How Lynn got this way (birth, accident, surgery, or drugs) is still a mystery though he is referred to with male pronouns, meaning he's probably physically male, at least.
    • Surgery (as in, being castrated) is unlikely, since he did once get an "ear boner" when he saw Keith and Natani kissing.
• And I Must Scream: The slave collars, which slowly lobotomize any Keidran wearing them. Most obvious when Eric re-collars Evals and he goes from screaming to dead-eyed and apologizing. The alt text refers to the trope by name.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Kathrin to Eric, in this strip. This doubles as an in-universe Wham Line and What Have I Done moment for Eric, as well.
  Kathrin: Maybe I've been foolish. I think a part of me has always hoped one day... you'd care enough... That I wouldn't have to ask.
  • Unfortunately, he remains oblivious to her true feelings, and in the end agrees to release her because he thinks of her as a sister.
• Animal Eye Spy: Master Seer's daughter possesses a cat to spy on the main character, but Lady Nora uses her shapeshifting powers to distract it. He later possesses a horse. Its rider is suitably wielded out.
• Animal Facial Hair: Many of the Keidran and Bastitins (particularly the older males) have various kinds of facial hair. Keith eventually grows a small goatee.
• Animate Dead:
  • Trace does a telekinetic variant of this in strip 514, abusing the corpses of a few soldiers to block attacks.
  • Trace tried to use this on Saria after she died, which went wrong and drove Trace insane and genocidal or omnicidal.
• Anti-Magic: Dispel and Mana Sinks. Dispel shuts off mana flow or dissipates it, while Mana Sinks steal mana from whom or whatever is placed on its platform.
• Apologetic Attacker: Laura, when she starts strangling the Intelligence General with his own necklace.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Mike is informed by Evals that not only has his gender changed, but also that the fur pattern on his rump was changed to a heart shape. He says that messing with his gender is one thing, but changing his fur pattern is unforgivable.
  • At Keith's court hearing, he's been charged with disobeying orders, trespassing on royal grounds, destroying royal property, committing treason, and breaking curfew — which is still a federal crime amongst the Basitins.
• Art Evolution: A lot.
  • Compare this or this early page to this. Or any of the previous to this.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Because of a double taboo (first against nudity, second against seeking aid), the Basitin doctors blindfold themselves and navigate by ear.
• Art Shift: The Towers originally looked much like something you'd see in a far-future science fiction setting; the most recently seen one, however, looks almost exactly like a standard-issue medieval castle turret... with a crystalline superstructure and a big glowing orb floating above the top.
  • Could be due to refinements in the tech, allowing them to disguise them as ordinary wall turrets.
    • Notice that this particular Tower is built on the Basitin Islands and not on the Human-controlled mainland, and is built without the knowledge of the Basitin people as to what it really does. The new look might be intentional, as — unlike the others — it doesn't look like a doom fortress.
  • The Templar logo at the start of the comic is a blue circle with three black lines on it. In later comics, it resembles a stylized sword superimposed on a wheel.
  • After Natani awakens from his coma in Chapter 18, he seems to be drawn with softer lines and more rounded edges, indicative of his mental merger with his pre-soul splice, more-feminine aspect.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Red and Sythe take mutual roles as the leader of group B simply because they have more combat experience... and because they're being chased by an assassin. Justified as they're the only ones who can take Zen out.
  • A high-ranked Basitin is quite capable of fighting, in fact, this turns out to be how they choose their generals and king. Even the Intelligence General was capable of fatally striking an obviously younger soldier with a single attack.
• As You Know: "You are familiar, of course, with the basic fundamentals of magic and how our towers function," but let me explain it to you anyways.
• Author Appeal: A surfer viewing the artist's DeviantArt page will find tons of fanart of his own characters... but mostly Flora. If you idle in the IRC chat room long enough and at the right hours, you can sometimes catch the author chattering about why he writes the comic. He admits it was mostly personal appeal at the time.
  • The author also seems to have a thing for drawing his own characters naked, or showing off their feet-paws.
• Author Avatar: Tom has shown up in the comic twice — one time as a pizza delivery man, the other as a postman. On both occasions, he was struck down by a character as soon as he appeared.
• Awkward Kiss: How Keith kisses Natani when they finally explore their feelings. When he starts thinking he sucked at it because, though he does feel for Natani, Natani is "one of the guys," Natani kisses him with a lot more confidence.
  Natani (thinking): Well it wouldn't hurt to try again!
• Bad Boss: The Intelligence General kills one of his solders for pointing out that the inn they're going to set on fire in order to kill the main cast still has some of his solders and a group of civilians in it, and he's the one that appears to live the longest.
  • While he was a Jerkass of epic proportions, that was probably magic-induced insanity, since his My God, What Have I Done? moment happened right after the tower started to blow.
• Bait-and-Switch: in this early comic, Trace and Red discuss that they're going to "help out," Keith- said while they both have evil glowing eyes, aggressive postures, and angry faces. The next panel shows Trace cheerfully asking Keith how he can help, with Red showing exasperation.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Ephemural, known to the humans as Neutral, is the goddess of Neutrality as well as part of the Big Bad Ensemble.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Somewhat justified with the Keidrans, as their naughty bits are obscured by their fur. However, that doesn't explain why the human characters don't have anything going on. Well, in other cases it's just covered with background objects.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: The furry characters. When they elect to wear clothes, anyway.
• Beam Spam: Arguably here and here. Could also be Combat Tentacles, but since the tentacles are made of black mana, they would be non-corporeal.
• Beard of Evil: The most recent High Templar is an absolute bastard and has a goatee. It’s the same with the Intelligence General.
  • We've seen the Intelligence General's son. The look appears to be genetic.
• Beast Man: Keidrans are a species based off of wolves, cats, and dogs.
• Bee People: Basitins, of a sort. They lack the hive mind aspect, but they do have a really big female "King" leader, a very rigid class system, gender segregation, an alien culture (dialing the nudity taboo up to 11), and a biological compulsion to obey orders.
  • Although recently, it has been revealed that all of this only applies to Eastern Basitins. The Western Basitins at the very least do not have a biological compulsion to obey orders, and are hinted at having an entirely different culture.
    • A character sheet on the author's DeviantArt page suggests that Western Basitins are much closer to Flora than Keith. Body Paint (or at least, "patterns in their fur") covered hippies.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Averted. Until the next page, at least.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Trace does this after Flora tells him about her pregnancy. He wasn't yelling at her, however; he was telling the annoying smoke hallucination to stuff-it, leading to one of the comic's biggest CMOH.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Whilst not as strange as some examples... Keidran women have a fairly regular heat period, during which their libido increases markedly. However, they only ovulate in the week after their heat period ends; they use the enhanced sex drive to, basically, find a compatible mate and then make babies with him.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Basitins consider nudity heinous and not following orders unthinkable, while the Keidrans literally use sex to get to know people. As one might expect, humans and Basitins think they're promiscuous, but it's supported by their biology: They're only fertile the week after they're in heat.
• Brick Joke:
  • On this page, Keith makes a call back to this page. To the other characters on the page, it's an Inside Joke for which they had to be there and weren't.
  • 6 chapters and 14 years later, Flora's excited to finally meet someone with a smaller bustline then her.
  • Also many chapters and years later, Trace once again yeets a crate at a powerful enemy, who's more surprised than injured.
• Bury Your Gays: Alaric was one of the only male characters with alter-sexual connotations (that thing with Mike and Evals was just a gag). The author threw him off a bridge. Averted by Natani and Keith thus far.
• But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Despite a doctor confirming it, Flora refused to believe that she's pregnant until Chapter 14. The reasons for this were many: the doctor who told her was a Basitin doctor; the doctor was racist (insinuating that Flora must have found some random Keidran stranger to have sex with during their trip) and also wore a blindfold because looking at her patients unclothed would be obscene. And as Flora herself noted, Keidrans and humans had coexisted — yes, she meant that — for centuries and there had never been any hybrid offspring. But she's finally accepted the truth and has now begun debating when and how to tell Trace, though she still can't figure out how they're the one couple who conceived. Unbeknownst to Flora, Euphemural has decided to allow the pregnancy to occur after a long time of actively preventing such reproductions.
  • Apparently, whatever magic that Euphemural was using wasn't perfect, as one human/keidran half-breed does already exist. Apparently her father's innate magical ability to shape shift into a human form allowed him to "work around" that limitation.
• Call-Forward: In the Tenth Anniversary "flashback" to Trace and Flora's first night, in which she explains what Keidran and Basitin are.
  I can guarantee you'll never have to worry about meeting a Basitin. They live far off on some weird island or something.
• Can't Hold Their Liquor: Keidrans get completely smashed off a mouthful or two of normal ale.
  • Probably their hyper metabolism. It does what it's made for quickly.
• Canon Foreigner: One book-exclusive story has the "A" cast (plus Eric and his crew) get punk'd by a fairy. They don't show up in the comic proper.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Flora is still trying to work up the nerve to break the news of her pregnancy to Trace. Granted, in the comic's time, it's only been a week or two since she learned about it (in real time, it's been a couple of years). In recent strips, it's less that she can't spit it out; rather, she keeps getting interrupted before she can do so.
  • As of May 16th, 2013, she's finally told him, and Trace's reaction was... well:
    Flora: Trace, you promised not to freak out. I consider falling unconscious to be a form of freaking out.... Trace?
• Cast from Hit Points: The spell that caused Natani to need Zen to get a part of his soul copied onto Natani's, as well as mentally-linking them, considering the caster died using it, was most likely this.
• Cast from Sanity:
  • Dark Mana spells damage the caster's mind (this was what led to Trace going Ax-Crazy), and will eventually kill you if you keep using them.
  • Regular magic does this to Basitin who cast it, which is the basis of the Templar conspiracy on their island: Teach them magic and encourage them to destroy themselves.
• Cast Full of Gay: Many main and supporting characters are queer:
  • Keith and Kathrin were shown to be attracted to men, women and transgender people, which likely makes them pansexual.
  • Natani is transgender male and gay.
  • Alaric was confirmed to be gay and attracted to Keith.
  • Madelyn and Maeve were confirmed to be lesbians.
  • Lynn is genderqueer.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Keith and Natani repeatedly avoid this trope. The latest instance, Keith and Natani, both naked (remember, Natani is hiding his body, since he is trans from the group), with Keith being paralyzed, in a inn room that was just set on fire, looks like it might be harder to get away from. Mike and Evals recently played this trope straighter. Well, sort of straight.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: The Arms General can deflect throwing knives with his abs!
  • Keith and Alaric damaged the (stone) ground in their fight with their bare feet.
  • King Adelaide can fight Templar!Trace (who can fight gods) to a standstill despite Templars poisoning her for some time.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The summoning tables.
  • First, they are connected to a central mainframe through which it can sense and interact with objects of interest.
  • Second, they are a convenient source of items.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • That necklace Trace gave Flora early on. Turns out that's the only thing that made Ephemural lose control of Flora.
  • Madelyn's, AKA Stalker Girl's, letter that she wanted Natani to give to Keith turns out to be a document showing her being a witness to Alaric and Keith's fight.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Eric is this to a T, though sometimes he does get kind of creepy. See Fridge Horror, below.
  • It's made fairly blatant that Eric is only a slave trader because it's the only socially acceptable way available to explore his Keidran (and, once he discovers them, Basitin) fetish. He's far, far more interested in flirting and painting portraits of nude Keidrans and Basitins than anything else. In addition, we haven't seen him buy or sell any of his slaves, so he may actually just be a slave collector.
• Conveniently Common Kink: Basitins have a species-wide foot fetish, according to the author.
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: When Keiren apologizes to Trace for trying to arrest him, Keiren begins to almost recognize him and questions who he is. Luckily, they hear an explosion in the distance and Keiren leaves to investigate, promising to continue their "discussion" later. The explosions came from Seraphina who Keith, Lynn, and Addy are dealing with. When Keith said they need something to distract her to get an opening, Keiren comes along and fires a arrow at her but the head of the arrow is all that makes it to her due to her fire ability burning it and it hits her head. When Seraphina turns to see who hit him, Keith, Addy, and Lynn use this opportunity to destroy her emblem.
• The Corruption: The author seems to be treating Dark Mana like this now.
  • Magic-wielding or tower-exposed Basitins. Magic is bad for their brains.
• Cosmic Chess Game: The gods seem to be doing this with the humans and keidrans.
• Crapsack World: The continent that Twokinds takes place on is in the middle of a massive war that has taken countless lives and is fueled by magic slavery. The humans are Knight Templar purge fanatics, the Keidran infight and enslave each other so much that humanity took notes, and the Basitins — the only people who could affect a change in the war — are xenophobic isolationists (and have recently lost most of their major civilian and military leaders). Under regular circumstances, the main characters would be leading their respective factions to battle against each other, and one of them is starting to have aspects of his murderous alter-ego (who started the war in the first place) become more and more prevalent. The "gods" that watch over this world are sadistic parasites that refuse to stop the war or outright encourage the conflict, as it represents their own power struggles to become the one Top God. You know it's a Crapsack World when, out of the nicer characters in the comic, one is a literal slave trader and another is implied to suffer from depression due to her... peculiarities and differences. As in, having an as-of-current-events poorly controlled shape-shifting capability, that was suppressed by her mother due to the racism of the setting, and terrified that she might be killed as a result.
• Crazy-Prepared: Alaric. From the time Keith was banished, Alaric had been working nonstop, becoming a general, exploiting every loophole in the law he could, and writing hundreds of documents, all so Keith would have to be acknowledged by society. Keith is now recognized as the Ambassador for Basitin society, representing their entire civilization to the world.
• Crossover Cameo:
  • Hero and Dianne from RPG World.
  • PenPen (the penguin) from Yosh!.
• Culture Clash: Quite a few. It's no wonder why the three don't get along most of the time.
  • The humans are perfectly OK with the concepts of slavery and racism, regardless of who's doing it to whom.
  • The Keidran have a blatantly different biology then the other two races and live a mostly tribal existence; the wolf Keidran like killing civilians.
  • The Western Basitins live in a very orderly and militaristic republic.

D to G

• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Black Magic, which is more-or-less Necromancy with a bad habit of Magic Misfire (as stated elsewhere on the page).
  • Basitin magic, since they have a relationship with the stuff comparable to the one between oil and water.
• A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 13 starts with the side characters from Trace's old hometown, now on the run from an advancing Keidran raiding force.
• Deadpan Snarker: King Adelaide has shades of this.
  "Tragically I survived."
• Deal with the Devil: The old High Templar asked Neutral to give her human form back. In exchange, Neutral possessed her for a time. Flora also got the short end of the stick when she accepted Neutral's help.
• Death Glare: Eric is not amused when Messenger Lynn also appears on his boat. It lasts up until Lynn reveals he prepared tea and coffee cake.
• Death World: Invoked, the Basitin Isles are so toxic as to have rendered their inhabitants immune to nearly all known poisons and diseases, and given them a mild Healing Factor.
• Defeat by Modesty: An inverted example, the artist has posted a few "lost strips" on his DeviantArt page showing that Flora and Natani almost defeat the Eastern General with nudity. Not his, but Flora's; Natani notices the general reacts poorly to her not wearing socks, so he steals Flora's clothing, leaving the general a blushing, stammering mess.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • Yeah, remember when Natani (and his brother) tried to kill the group? Now Natani has a crush on Keith and is being very lax about following his orders to kill Trace...
  • Later on, the exact same thing happens between his brother and the B team.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Eric is a Keidran slave dealer. He's downright progressive in his treatment of Keidrans compared to most other human characters (he refuses to put "control spells" on his favorite slave, Kathrin, and is more than willing to deal with free Keidrans as equals), but he still sees his other two slaves, Mike and Evals, as little more than his property and refuses to sell them to Trace (who wants to free them). He later reveals that this is because he can't; Templar law not only forbids freeing your own Keidran slaves, but forbids selling them to someone you know is going to free them. Doing so results in prison for the humans and reenslavement for the Keidran. Eric eventually agrees to sell his slaves to Trace anyway.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Poisoned arrows. Magic-infused arrows are also the best way to take out a tower.
• Determinator: King Adelaide gives us this incredibly badass quote when informed that she was expected to have died by a mortal wound at this point.
  King Adelaide: Yes, I'd been told that as well. I chose to ignore it and continue living.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • Divine help rarely doesn't end up breaking rules or getting people injured, but Trace impregnating Flora couldn't have happened otherwise and it's looking like a good thing currently.
  • Ephemural wiping Trace's memory saved Keidran-kind.
• Did I Say That Out Loud: Happens to more than one character.
  Flora: "If he gives me trouble, I'll just kill him myself!!" "<Uh... What language did I say that in again?>"
  Reni: ...The captain is kinda cute.
  • She doesn't say anything but her slightly panicked expression and hurried I Need to Go Iron My Dog speech in the last panel just scream this trope. But it was the author's tweet that seals the deal. Keiren wisely decides to ignore it.
• Didn't Think This Through: In a non-canon strip, Mike makes a horrible move in regards to using black magic.◊
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Trace, stop killing everyone when your girlfriend/wife gets hurt/killed, not cool dude.
  • The old Intelligence General murdered Keith's mother, blinded and scarred Alaric in one eye, and got Keith banished for self-defense. Because he didn't like the choices his friend made, and all this before the comic starts.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy: Illusion-bent Mike was attracted to his/her own reflection in the mirror.
• Divide and Conquer: The Templars split up and recruit both subraces of Keidran, each legion pretending to ally with one subrace while villainizing the other, ensuring that they remain in control of the ensuing civil war.
• Divine Intervention: Flora's half-human baby is due to Ephemural's intervention. Although it's strongly implied it's more that the god in question has been preventing human/Keidran sex from producing crossbreeds until now.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Dark Mana is very similar to Defiling Magic from the Dark Sun campaign setting.
  • Keith keeping watch for Natani. Keith's tail.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Flora and Kathrin trying to bully Mike and Evals into finding Trace and Eric right after being freed (meaning Eric would most likely re-enslave them) is played for laughs. Fans were not laughing, and this was quickly corrected.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Directly invoked. Remember that Eric is a slave trader who collects Keidrans because he doesn't consider them people, just objects of his own perverted lust? The fan base mostly forgot, so we're forcibly reminded when he accuses Evals of attempting to sabotage the ship and flee and decides to re-enslave them. [invoked]
  • Trace smacks himself with this repeatedly once he discovered who he used to be. As in, an unapologetically Evil Sorcerer responsible for the deaths of countless Keidrans, and the plan that nearly lobotomized the Basitins.
• Dragon Knight: Adrakists, although they're more like dragon clerics. People (at least humans, we're not sure about keidrans and definitely not basitins) sometimes worship dragons instead of the gods and are granted dragon magic and a Partial Transformation into a dragon (it's implied this is a slow change into an actual dragon).
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Even without the illusion, Mike does have feminine features. He has a kind of hourglass figure with wide hips. He sports long hair and has a thin face. He also lacks muscles. He has has the same amount of "chest hair" as Flora. It's more obvious when he stands next to Evals who is more manly looking.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Seen here. More like Dull Eyes of Death, though. Keith, and possibly all Basitins, are a strange case; they seem to have "standard eyes" (i.e. pupils and sclera) when young, but change into these as they grow older.
• Ear Ache: Cathleen left her mark on General Alabaster.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The Keidran Super Mode..
  • Towers looking like a cross between Barad-Dur and the Enterprise.
  • One early strip mentions airships; these haven't shown up anywhere. Although, given the context, it may have simply been a Non Sequitur, *Thud*.
• Everyone Has Standards: Although a pervert who enjoys taking advantage of Keidran females, Eric considers Madelyn Adelaide too young for his tastes.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Templars seem interested in making a large number of these, basically magic batteries. Oh, and they cause brain damage to Basitins, a fact that they are unaware of, but that the Templars are. They also do something to Keidrans' instincts — probably something very bad — but this has not been explored yet.
• Expy: The Intelligence General looks a lot like Gnarl.
  • Lynn seems very similar to Zellos.
• False Flag Operation: Turns out the "Templar" attacking the town were wolf Keidran impersonating Templar in order to drag the tiger Keidran into their war with the humans.
  • This might go even further, as the Templar have recruited turncoat wolves to their cause, and could easily stage the attack to goad the Tiger clan into joining the Templars.
• Fantastic Arousal:
  • Having one's ears rubbed is a turn-on for Basitins.
    "Natani... you do realize Basitins consider ear-rubbing to be... an intimate gesture?"
    Natani: Oh... do... do you want me to stop?
    Keith: *sigh* No.
  • Raine's tail is also shown to be rather sensitive.
• Fantastic Racism: Due to separatism and the resulting whirlwind of misconception and propaganda, everyone in TwoKinds thinks everyone else is Always Chaotic Evil.
  • The keidran rarely meet humans other than slavers, while human culture portrays keidran as wild, dangerous animals. In the backstory, this allowed Trace to whip human culture into a xenophobic frenzy, leading to widespread hatred and prejudice towards keidran in human lands.
  • The eastern basitins, a proud and isolationist people, believe that humans are undisciplined rabble and keidran are perverse undisciplined rabble. The few basitins that don't follow that doctrine — including the western basitins — are hated above all others.
  • Wolf keidrans have some internal tension between the brown forest tribes and the white snow tribes. Although Natani could just be making this up, as the supplemental story "The Dragon Masquerade" shows that Natani and Rose have met before, which would explain Natani's apprehension towards Rose.
  • Some kind of animosity between dog and fox keidran is also alluded to by Mike and Evals.
• Fascists' Bed Time: Basitins rigorously enforce their curfew.
• Fastball Special: Lynn launched Addy and Keith so that Addy can give Keith an additional boost to defeat the wannabe dragon.
• Fire-Forged Friends: It isn't the most noticeable, but Keith at one point grudgingly says something that represents this trope:
  Keith: Huff... If it wasn't for the fact I still need you for my mission... Well... I'd probably still save your ass. But then I wouldn't have an excuse for it.
• Flat "What": On page 648, this is Natani's reaction to Mike telling him and Kathrin about the time he was turned into a girl.

  Natani: Wat

• Forced Transformation: Trace does this twice; he turns his old boss into a wolf Keidran and makes his ex-girlfriend's annoying sister grow cat ears and a thin fur coat because she was annoying him. This kind of backfired in the latter case, as she likes the look, and she gets a heightened sense of smell.
• Foreshadowing: A fairly unsubtle example here.
  • There's a silhouette with yellow eyes in the background here and here...
  • In strip 71, Sythe and Maren are shown sharing a pizza; lamenting that they'll have to be enemies when it's finished. Several hundred strips and nine years later, they've teamed up.
  • In this comic, Trace and Flora get intimate for the first time. In-universe, the day before is when Flora came out of her Heat (a condition that makes her and other Keidran... well, horny). Years later, Eric reveals that Keidran bodies aren't able to conceive until the week after Heat is over, since the Keidran use sex as a way to get to know the partner. This directly foreshadows that Flora did get pregnant, and in the correct time period as well.
• Formerly Sapient Species: This is the fate of any Keidran that stays in feral mode for too long; they become less and less sapient until they forget how to turn back.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Natani offers, perhaps seriously, to do this permanently with Kat if he ever learns a spell for it, even though it would mean both of them switching species. The reason being that because of the soul-bond between Natani and Zen, Natani mostly identifies as a heterosexual male, but has a female body which still goes into estrus (heat, during which Natani feels a female's biological compulsion to mate with a male). Meanwhile Kat was specifically bred to be barren (and has never experienced estrus) but wants to have children and therefore can't.
• Freeze Sneeze: The only thing that can get a Basitin sick is being cold and wet. It apparently clears up as their body heat stabilizes.
• Funny Background Event:
  • During King Adelaide's speech about her near fatal wounds, the younger Basitins are... impressed.
  • Earlier, you can see Lady Nora shooting flame at seabirds in the second-to-last panel here.
  • When Reni asks Raine where she teleported Carver, Ms. Nibbly is crawling into Maren's shirt.
  • Daniels, a member of the guard, ogling a female Keidran, who is smiling flirtatiously at him. Later on, we see the portions of his face not covered by his helmet covered in lipstick kisses. This got somewhat expanded in a series of images which reveal that the two did get together and had a child.
• Fun Size: Basitins don't get much bigger than 5 and half feet. They're pretty much anti-hobbits.
  • Except their King, good lord. She must be closer to seven or eight feet tall. And she's built like a brick house!
• Gambit Pileup: We know Ephemural isn't the only god who has plans for Trace, plus Trace/The Templars' plans, plus whatever the Basitins want from Trace ^note  Which turned out to be "hand him over to the Templar for magical goodies.", PLUS the groups chasing Trace and Co., PLUS... it looks like all the people on the Templar Grand Council are playing Xanatos Speed Chess against each other, not just the governments of all the nations and the main party. To what ends is anyone's guess at this point.
• Gambit Roulette: Deconstructed by Master General Alaric. Instead of devising a risky plan that involved precise timing, coincidence, and the other hallmarks of a traditional roulette, he planned for "many things" by crafting hundreds of documents that exploited every loophole in the system.
• Gender Bender: During the Basitin Isles arc, Mike is hit with an illusion from Lady Nora that makes him look female, but is still male. The artist does a fair amount of this stuff on his DA account. And a recent incentive has the main characters with swapped genders.
• Give Him a Normal Life: Discussed. Trace doesn't consider himself very good father material due to his Amnesia, little world experience because of said amnesia, dark forgotten past, bunch of people wanting him dead, others wanting him back to the way he was, and a Superpowered Evil Side that's becoming more active. All very good reasons, of course, but... uh... well, the reason the subject came up was because Flora was trying to find a way to break the news of her pregnancy to him.
• Good All Along: It's shown in strip 560 that Keith's father, Cornelius, cared about him and his mother Cathleen. It wasn't even him who attacked her. The statement Keith said about "falling onto his spear" might be exactly right.
• Gorn: In one of the later chapters, one of the characters gets killed off in a manner befitting the bastard love child of a ''Candiru asu'' and a hand grenade. The reaction from some of the fans was mostly positive.

H to L

• Happiness in Slavery:
  • Kathrin has a wonderful life by slave standards (basically a Sapient Pet) and is happy with her lot in life (until recent plot lines have caused her to question this).
  • Flora used to be a slave as well. However, she was lucky enough to be purchased by a friendly human family who treated her more like a daughter then a slave, and they actually let her return back to her people after a few years. Thus, Flora recalls her days of slavery with an unusual fondness.
  • Mike is definitely a type 4^note "Slavery Is the Lesser Evil". He was born into slavery and wouldn't survive out in the wild, having neither the physique, skills, connections, or cultural knowledge to rejoin Keidran society.
• Happy-Ending Massage: Kathrin's "services."
• Haunted House: The Legacy Estate is haunted by the ghost of Rose, the former seneschal necromantically bound to the house, both controlling the house and being the house. Later it turns out a remnant of Trace's old personality is in there as well.
• Head-Tiltingly Kinky: Deconstructed. The Basitin culture is so sexually repressed that an entire tavern drops everything to watch a disrobed Flora chase Kathrin (also naked) out of her room for calling her fat. It takes Trace shouting them down with a little help from Templar!Trace to smooth things over.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Laura gives her life to destroy the Templar tower, hanging on just long enough to say goodbye before dying.
• Hidden Elf Village: Lyn'knoll, a town populated by all three races in harmony.
• Honor Before Reason: Eastern Basitins have such a huge Lawful Stupid habit that this is often in play. They consider it more honorable to die in battle than to survive humiliated and/or compromised.^note This is why all their doctors have to be blindfolded.
• How Is That Even Possible?: How Trace and Flora both view her pregnancy when they learn about it. Flora believes it quicker(since she can see and feel the changes in her body), while Trace gets into a screaming match with his barely-suppressed evil side(who is trying to convince him that Flora's been sleeping around).
• Humans Advance Swiftly: There are three civilized races in the setting, Humans, Basitins, and Keidran. There are other sapient races, like Dragons, but they don't really form societies. Out of the three civilized races, humans are the most advanced, both technologically and magically, and continue to progress the fastest. This is why Chaos, the Ethnic God of Humanity, is winning the Divine Conflict and becoming the strongest god.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • Trace's 'reaction' to losing his family was to go completely insane and start a genocidal war that left the Keidran on the brink of extinction. It took Laser-Guided Amnesia to restore most of his sanity.
  • Sirus seeks to fight the gods... with identity theft, manipulation, and first-degree murder. He bound and gagged a merchant to take his place, and sold Trace a wedding necklace with binding properties. Then he magic-fisted a Basitin general to death. Backstory reveals he put his co-conspirator through a loyalty test by forcing him to watch his cousin get hanged.
  • Eric is one of the nicer slave traders, with exploitation and sexual predation tendencies slightly toned down.
  • The current Grand Templar staged a False Flag Operation to divide the Tigers and Wolves into easily-conquerable factions.
  • The human nobility clearly have a medieval rich-poor divide, even enticing some Keidran slaves to get in on the fun.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Given the rapacious manner in which they take over and enslave Keidran villages, most Keidrans assume that humans are devoid of mercy or compassion and even that they're cannibals (taking the meaning that they eat sapient prey). That, and they think Humans live "unnaturally long" (humans live about twice as long as Keidrans, for whom "elderly" means mid-twenties), and can use magic with surprising ease (see next). So humans, to Keidrans, are nigh-immortal magical beings who swipe the population of entire cities to become brainwashed slaves or snack food (or even clothing; at the start of the strip, the guy Trace gets Flora from states her skin will fetch a good price). Imagine their shock when they meet a pleasant human, and/or when it's explained to them that humans are really just a sort of bald ape-creature that happens to have a slow metabolism and a mean streak.
• Humans Are Special: Humans are the only race that can use magic without special equipment (Mana batteries for Keidrans and brain-rotting mental conditioning for Basitin). Humans can also drain mana from the surrounding area to fuel their own spells ^note Or at least, Trace can. It's considered a very poor idea. And they live substantially longer than Keidrans. So, humans are pretty much the "elves" of the setting. Remembering what Terry Pratchett said about elves, that is...
  • Actually, keidran can manipulate mana; they're just not very good at it, as shown when Natani tried to recharge his crystal "batteries" (they didn't last nearly as long the second time).
• Humans Are Ugly: One tiger keidran female thinks humans are revolting, even though she intends to see if they have tails by sleeping with one.
  • This is shown to not be an wholly-held belief, as one of her subordinates starts a relationship with one, not to mention Trace and Flora, and even Dragons are shown to take interest in humans from time to time.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: A minor example; Keidran have a metabolism about two times faster than that of a human. They gain less weight and age twice as fast. This is one of the subtle hints of Flora's pregnancy; she notes in one strip that she's put on a little weight. She initially passes it off as making herself more attractive by Keidran standards.
• Idea Bulb: Clever panel arrangment turns Eric's hair being slightly on fire into this on the Basitin Isle.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Red starts playing with Raine's tail after she swats his face with it. He then begins to touch and rub it, with panels showing her humorous facial reactions and blushing.
• If It's You, It's Okay:
  • "Red" and Raine's being Keidran, even if it is part-time.
  • Keith and Natani, on multiple levels. Each seeing the other as "one of the guys" (and still being attracted), opening up to each other, sharing weaknesses.
• Impossible Task: Keith was set an impossible — nay, suicidal — task ("bring back the Grand Templar") as a condition of his banishment. Nobody dreamed that an (amnesiac) Trace would cheerfully accept an invitation.
• Improbable Weapon User: While fighting the Ephemural-possessed Flora, Trace magically throws a wooden crate at her, leading her to observe: "You used... a crate... I mean, really... a crate? Come on..." There's also Eric's brother, Roderick, who uses... Wait, what the frak is that? I think that's a pizza cutter of some sort. That can't be useful in a fight.
• Instant Fan Club: King Adelaide had men lining up from Lisbon to Vankarem to become her concubines just hours after appearing in her first strip, laws of reality be damned. And not only men either.
• Interspecies Romance: Practically every possible pairing introduced in the comic, especially the main one, Trace and Flora. Another, between Edinmire Guard Daniels and tiger Kiedran Therie, was explored in supplementary material here.
• Intoxication Ensues: When Flora gets drunk, she starts to speak Kitteh Pigdin.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Trace's first wife's ghost, who's just happy Trace is back to his old, not-evil self.
• Jerkass Gods: The three Mask Gods, hands down. Humanity's patron god endorses the genocidal conflict between Humans and Keidran, with the end-goal of exterminating all non-human civilization, including Basitins and Dragons. Ephemural, the goddess of Keidran and Balance, seeks to manipulate the war into a perpetual stalemate so that all sides will be equal, regardless of the damage that stagnation and isolation will wreak on all sides. The Basitins' god endorsed an oppressive dictatorship on one half of the island and made them wage a Cold War on the less-advanced other half (which may have backfired as half the island worships the law instead of their god and he may have starved to death). All three are puppeteer-parasites who use their 'avatars' as meatshields and discard them once the damage to their soul has become irreparable.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: During Chapter 18, Natani — knocked into a coma after the events of Chapter 17 — retreats into his mind, and meets a fragment of his soul that retains her pre-soul splice personality.
• Kangaroo Court: Keith's trial seems rigged to end up with him getting banished again, what with one count Conflict of Interest (the victim's son is the judge) and two counts of Unclean Hands (Murder and Disobeying a Superior). In fact, Alabaster Jr. would have succeeded if Adelaide and Lynn hadn't shown up at the last second and made it known Keith beat Alaric, making him the Master General. The final straw for Keith was that all non-Basitins with criminal charges are automatically declared guilty in court, regardless of evidence or testimony^note The slaves are considered incapable of crime due to lack of citizenship and automatically declared innocent, but it's still a slap in the face.
• Kansas City Shuffle: The "Templar" attack served as a cover to draw the guards on the "wolf pens" away from their stations so wolf Keidran prisoners of war would be left unguarded.
• Klingon Promotion: How Basitins determine the best people to be leaders. It's not merely custom, either — the law expressly states that "rank can only be earned through succession or combat". This is exploited when it's brought up that Keith did defeat Alaric in single combat.
  Alt Text: You can't do that! Only we can use the law to manipulate the system!
• Knight Templar: The Templars, duh. The lower ranks are fairly reasonable, but the high ranks are ruthless manipulators seeking total domination of their grand design (including the ones on Trace's side).
• Lack of Empathy: The masks. The Black Mask^note God of Order or Chaos, currently unknown seeks the total genocide of all non-human races, in order to gain total supremacy and worship from their human followers. Ephemural, the Neutral Mask, seeks to restore the status quo, even though it will drive the war into a permanent stalemate and lead to endless bloody border skirmishes. Neither of them care for the individuals of each race beyond 'unwitting pawns' and 'spare bodies'.
• Language Barrier: Natani's illiterate and can only speak Keidran. Thus, he's often left in the dark during conversations between species.
• Large and in Charge: King Adelaide is twice the size of any other Basitin and the tallest character in the comic — Tom stated that King Adelaide's height would be 7'5".
• Last-Name Basis: Some characters, such as Nicholai "Alaric" Alaric and King Adelaide, are only referred to by their last names.
• Lawful Stupid: The entire Eastern Basitin race is Lawful Stupid; they have a biological imperative to obey their natural pecking order, regardless of their own opinions. Keith is so torn over disobeying his superior's command to kill Natani that he tries to kill himself rather than have to continue feeling the pain of disobeying.
  • Western Basitins, however, have no biological imperitive to do so, which is why Keith can disobey- he's half-Western.
  • Keith's speech about it has become the page quote.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Sheik shows up once in the first panel.
• Let Them Die Happy:
  • Keith to Laura, as she dies in his arms.
    Keith: No... Laura, you're fine. You're fine! Everything's okay now... We can finally be happy... please... I'm sorry... I'm sorry I asked for more time. I shouldn't have waited... But we can still go back... to the way things were... When you wake up, we'll be together again...
  • Alaric knew his defeat would begin a chain reaction of events he planned out that would make Keith acknowledged as part of Basitin society, smiling to himself as he succumbed to his wounds and knowing his efforts wouldn't be in vain.
• The Lifestream: Dark Mana works by sucking the life-energy from the earth and using it to cast shadow magic. The catch is that it will never work for anything more than the occasional cantrip, because it kills the caster before they can complete the spell they're using it for.
• Live Mink Coat: In a set of spinoff comics, a half-dragon girl wears her half-brother as living clothes.
• Living Memory: Keith begs Natani to cast the "heart's desire" illusion on him again, so he can see and talk to Laura again. Natani tells him that it runs off his life-force and will kill him if he lets it go too long, and that it won't really be her, but he says he just wants to say goodbye. At least until the "illusion" claims to actually be Laura's soul having finally found a way to manifest.
• Logical Weakness: Trace sucks at coming up with fake names on the spot, because he's an amnesiac and thus only knows the names of the 15 or so people he's met since waking up. This leads to a crowning moment of funny when he realizes this while trying to think of baby names.
• Loincloth: Wolf keidran wear these on the regular when they're not just naked. Their Special Occasion clothes are a little more substantial.
• Longest Pregnancy Ever: Due to the glacial movement of Web Comic Time in the canon, Flora has been pregnant for 16 years as of the end of 2023.
• Love Confession: Unintentionally played with in recent pages. What Tom had intended was for Kathrin to express to Eric a desire to be free, but the way the dialogue is written made fans believe she was confessing her love to him.
  • Then again, given Kat's reaction when Eric does set her free (and declaring their relationship Like Brother and Sister in the process), perhaps she really did mean it as a Love Confession...
• Love Potion: Sealeen attempts to use one on Lynn that releases a gas cloud to force a male opponent to help her. It fails because he's asexual, though he is flattered by the attention.
• Low-Tech Spears: The primitive-seeming keidrans are often seen wielding serrated spears. However, upon inspection, these are clearly metalwork rather than knapped flint (the serrations are drawn out of the metal like claws, and moreover only appear on one side), and are fastened to the haft with a pin-and-cup attachment rather than sinew lashing. Despite this obvious craftsmanship, no keidran is seen with swords or halberds (they use nothing larger than a dagger made with a similar technique to the spearheads), pinning down a "primitive" aesthetic.
• Luminescent Blush: They are very prominent and happen with a startling regularity.

M to Q

• Magic A Is Magic A: Regular magic is video-game style attack magic, such as tossing fireballs and creating Deflector Shields. Fuelled by mana usually stored in a crystalline matrix called a "mana stone." Black Magic is necromancy and Summon Magic fuelled by stealing life-force from the earth itself, and it's got a nasty habit of backfiring and frying your brains.
• Magic Knight: Templars and the Basitin generals until it's revealed that it's not natural for Basitins to use magic, and that it was taught to them so that the Templars could have influence over the highest levels of Basitin society (magic deteriorates the minds of Basitinians when they use it).
• Magic Misfire: Black Magic has a nasty habit of backfiring on the user, either killing them instantly or driving them violently insane.
• Mana, and it's got an Evil Counterpart; Dark Mana.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: The groping in front of a mirror here.
• Marshmallow Hell: Zen did this to himself with Kathrin while he was loopy after his ankle injury.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Keidran life spans are extremely short, typically topping out in the mid-twenties, and most keidran characters are mid-to-late teens; as humans and basitins live for much longer, this presents a complication to most interspecies relationships. When Trace is informed of this, he is Not Happy. Really Not Happy. It takes Nora to remind him that she's alive now.
• Meaningful Background Event: A glowing pair of eyes watching the Party in #142.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: One of the voter bonuses states that Basitin medicine is essentially this due to their medieval technology and lack of magic. In fact, a common job of Basitin doctors is to grant their patients an "honorable" death.
• Mental Fusion: Twin brothers Natani and Zen are capable of this due to Zen using his soul to rebuild Natani's. They also share emotions, which comes back to bite Zen when he uses the link to threaten Natani's boyfriend, Keith.
  Zen: Natani's been through a lot of crap, and the last thing he needs is more. He won't admit it, but he's vulnerable, and he's put a lot of trust onto you. So just remember: I'm watching you. And if you betray that trust, I will feel it. And it won't matter how cute you are, I'll find you."
  Keith: Uh, "cute"?
  Zen: Huh? Wait, I meant far! How ''far'' you are! I, uh, I need to go bye!
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Princess Reni, mentally verifying Trace's identity, comes across his memories of being intimate with Flora.
  Reni: NO no no! Nevermind! Next! Sorry! That... I-I didn't think you... with a Keidran? Oh, my...
• Mirroring Factions:
  • The Basitins pride themselves on being morally restrained. On closer inspection, their duels seem to be mate-attracting combat displays. Honestly, one almost expected to see female Lt. Madelyn Adelaide^note aka Maddie, aka Madness watching Keith's battle with the harbor guard to head for the washroom with a jar of petrol jelly and Keith's picture. As it was, her report on Keith's duel with Alaric was part official document, part gushing fan-letter, and has a "disturbing number of hearts drawn on it."
  • Humans enslave Keidrans. Keidrans enslave humans.
  • Hell, Keidrans enslave other Keidrans, often under the pay of humans. Note: this is not entirely dissimilar to how the slave trade in Africa worked. There was an internal slave market, which foreign slavers ended up feeding off of and encouraging.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Mrs. Nibbly has a rather interesting reflection in the waterfall.◊
• Moment Killer: "Wait."
• Mood Whiplash: Apparently, Laura getting fatally wounded takes a back seat to comedy. It's only temporarily, of course.
  • Our author avatar is murdered in the space of four panels with Karen cheering about the fact that they are all about to die.
• Morphic Resonance: Shapeshifters retain certain attributes of themselves, such as eye and skin colors. For instance, Princess Remi, a Black Dragon, has a human form with dark skin, and Nora shapeshifts into a white cat.
• Multicultural Alien Planet: The humans are the only race shown to have a monoculture. Keidran culture varies from tribe to tribe (tigers are rather egalitarian whereas wolves are quite stringently patriarchal, just for one example), and Basitins have two variants that take after dwarves and orcs; the strictly-regimented, armor-clad Easterners and the tattoo-covered, hedonistic, colorfully-garmented Westerners, respectively. Naturally, they all hate each other.
• Must Have Caffeine: Landen carries his/her coffee cup into battle and is incensed when they find that Addy has drunk the coffee. She even abandons her allies when bribed with coffee.
• The Mutiny: Attempted by Evals, as a means of Slave Liberation. However, due to unforseen circumstances, he's prevented from carrying it out.
• My Fist Forgives You: Trace does this to Keith for punching him earlier, it apparently is also the Basitin way of settling these kinds of things.
• Naked Apron: Done by Kathrin in this strip. Notable due to Kathrin usually wearing even less — with the addition of this trope to her catalog, Kat is rapidly becoming TwoKinds' premier fanservice model.
  "Strange how wearing an apron can seem more revealing than nothing at all."
  • This image features Keith in one of these.
  • Done in this anniversary image, with Keith, Laura and Natani.
  • Flora does the same for this 12th anniversary image, which (in a Call-Back to Keith's previous example) seems to give Natani some ideas...
• Naked People Are Funny: Both played straight and subverted; for example, when an airborne drug/spell causes the various Keidran nearby to become drunk, the first thing Flora does is replace her clothing with ribbons. Later subverted, when a naked Flora runs out in public in the Basitin inn; it requires a stern, out-of-character threat/lecture by Trace to save her from the enraged bar patrons. Essentially, any time the crew is away from civilization, Flora disrobes.
• Necromancy: Dark Mana uses life-energy as magic.
  "Theoretically, it is possible to use Dark Mana to revive a dead person..."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ephemural was the one who wiped Trace's memories, and set up Flora to fall for Trace. The intention was to have him deliver her to the wolves, break her heart, and her to marry Sythe, which would unite the Wolves and Tigers against the humans, who would be weakened with the loss of the Grand Templar (Trace). This would then mean that all three major races are in balance, as Ephemural is also the mask of Neutrality. Unfortunately, Neutral didn't count on Trace reciprocating Flora's feelings, meaning no alliance between the Wolves and Tigers. This leads to war between the Wolves and Humans, where the arrogance of the wolves (which would have been tempered by the isolationist Tigers) would lead them to think they can win, no problem. This war, further, is implied that the Wolves will lose, and being one of the stronger tribes of Keidran, will remove a great deal of the species' strength. The rest of the races won't be able to stand up to the humans, who will eventually drive the Keidran to extinction or servitude. All because Ephemural's plan hinged on Trace not reciprocating the affections of a beautiful, kind, and friendly Keidran who genuinely loved him thanks to a nice helping of Rescue Romance. Which Ephemural set up. And because she was beaten by Flora and Trace, Ephemural can't re-enter the mortal realm to fix their massive screwup. Whoops.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Subverted, not only are there limitations on what they can eat, but the three races in the comic can't interbreed, at least without Deistic Intervention. Though it's implied that the intervention is what stops it from happening, not what allows it.
• No Biological Sex: The Masks. No gender stated, no known gender, and Ephemural has been shown using males and females as hosts.
• "No Peeking!" Request: When Rose is helping Raine turn her Involuntary Shapeshifting powers into Voluntary Shapeshifting, Raine orders Red to stay outside because she doesn't like being watched while she's transforming.
• No Pregger Sex: Averted — the first thing Flora does after finally confessing her pregnancy to Trace is tempt him into the bedroom, and Trace eagerly accepts after the weeks of unintended abstinence they've had. He isn't the least bit put off by making love to Flora despite her visibly pregnant state, and in fact is eager to celebrate the truth being out when she suggests they do so. Afterwards, he's shown commenting on how much he's missed being intimate with her. Neither is put off by the fact she's visibly pregnant by this point.
• Noodle Incident: Minor, but apparently Trace "destroyed" the Templar Academy at least two times (before becoming evil, that is). The second has been shown, but the first...?
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Keidran women have human-like breasts, but also several pairs of mammaries down their stomach (all hidden by fur)-if Sythe's teasing of Red is true, that is.
• Nonhumans Lack Attributes: Generally follows the "covered in fur" approach. Lampshaded using those exact words when Maren reminds a shy Raine that "You're covered in fur, remember? Nothing's going to show." Raine, who has severe body image issues due to her barely controllable Voluntary Shapeshifting, admits her modesty is silly but helps her feel human. The nipples are definitely there, though, as told by one character that female Keidran have rows that go below the two "primary" mammaries.
• Nosebleed: Every main character has had at least one, even Flora.
• No True Scotsman: Free keidran don't consider slave keidran to be real people.
• Not What It Looks Like: Used when Flora saw Keith and Natani in the tub together. Hilarity ensues. Also used when Flora drinks milk laced with some kind of aphrodisiac. She falls asleep with Trace on top of her, just as the entire cast of the comic bursts into the room. Subverted here, in that it rapidly becomes what it looks like.
• No Woman's Land: Wolf clans are extremely sexist; Natani had to hide her gender because they wouldn't accept female soldiers. Everywhere else has equal-gender rights, even if racism is at an all-time high during the story. Though, the Basitins segregate the men's houses from the women's, but that's mainly because they have a low libido so it works out.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Flora does a little at a point.
• Oh, Crap!: Flora gets several in a row from comic 736 on, when she finds out that Trace's Superpowered Evil Side is actively talking to him. Worse, it's trying to turn him against her.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted to a perplexing degree. Cathleen, Kathrin, and even Karen are all variants of the name Katherine. What are Tom's reasons for his interest with the Katherine name?
• Our Dragons Are Different: They're telepathic shape shifters, and rather friendly to certain people. And apparently humans can be transformed into dragons.
• Our Humans Are Different: Hailing from a forgotten continent far over the eastern sea, have Amazing Technicolor Hair, and are treated the way a more orthodox fantasy epic treats elves. Humans passively absorb mana from the environment and store it within themselves, allowing them to cast, basically, until they've sucked all the magic from the immediate vicinity (although a spell exists to supercharge this and it's something of a Dangerous Forbidden Technique-once all the mana's gone, it starts guzzling up Life Energy, and having more that ones fair share of that is the basis of the settings Black Magic). Keidrans can only cast as many spells as they have mana stones, and basitins can't cast at all unless they're irradiated with a large ammount of mana (which slowly erodes their mental faculties). This affinity for magic, rather than intellect and opposable thumbs (which three, possibly four or five if the rumors of merpeople and Lizard Folk are true, of the settings other peoples have), is what led mankind to becoming Mekan's dominant sapient speciese.
• Our Nudity Is Different: Basitins always hide their feet, wrapping them from the ball of their toes to their ankles. One can get away with Sarashi-like bandages, but the fashion seems to be an armored foot-sleeve dealie-o. Word of God is they have a species-wide foot fetish, and thus consider bare feet nudity. Alaric's statue of Keith has only the feet covered.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Some strips near the climax of the "Ephemural" arc. Trace's mind/soul looks really young in there, which is probably due to his amnesia...
• Out of Focus: We know next to nothing about Nora or the "gods".
• Painting the Medium:
  • The character biography page. Trace has two entries, one for his current persona, the other for his original/real self, openly hostile to the rest of the cast. One of the character's names is replaced with [database error] as well.
  • Karen in the beginning of Chapter 12, which started in 2009: "It feels like we haven't done anything in four years!" Their last appearance was in 2005. It would have been Leaning on the Fourth Wall if the line hadn't sounded so forced.
• Panthera Awesome: Flora is a tiger Kiedran. And now, in a bar in a human village we have a snow leopard barkeeper and her daughter.
• Pardon My Klingon: In one of the early chapters, Flora breaks her foot. When Trace checks it out (by squeezing gently), she lets loose with a string of (untranslatable) Keidran phrases.
• Pet the Dog: Templar!Trace had one such moment five years ago: Laura had been captured by a group of wolves while she had been trying to find Keith. They had been planning to sell her into slavery, but were attacked by Trace en route. What happened was... not pretty, to say the least, as Trace was well into his "Death to all Keidran" mentality at the time. He spared Laura, however, because she reminded him of his late wife.
• Pillar of Light: The results of the destruction of one of the Templars' mana towers.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The Magi Brothers tout a fearsome reputation as skilled, lethal assassins. When they get involved in the story, charged with assassinating Trace, they repeatedly get beaten off in battle, and then separate for different reasons. Natani gets taken prisoner by the protagonists, ultimately comes to befriend them, and falls in love with Keith. Zen, on his own mission, ends up being tricked by two of the more incompetent members of the cast and subsequently captured. Heck, the official cast page actually says that the Magi Brothers' reputation mostly stems from a mixture of dumb luck and bragging, and they're actually not very good at it. In fact, the reason that they became so notorious in the first place is that their first target accidentally killed himself using a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that splintered Natani's soul, which was the cause of all his identity issues.
• Poke in the Third Eye: While reading Trace's mind, Reni finds a memory of Trace talking with Lady Nora... and learns the hard way just how terrifyingly powerful the nigh-demigod elder white dragoness is when she forcibly ejects Reni from Trace's mind from inside a memory! (Seriously, don't mess with Lady Nora.)
• Power at a Price: Black magic. It warps the mind of the user, which is typically fatal. Trace is one of the few mages who have used massive amounts of black magic and survived, but it drove him insane.
  "There's a reason it's forbidden."
  • The mage that attacked the Assassin Brothers killed himself using black magic.
  • In short, it will either drive you mad, physically mutate you, or kill you.
• Power Crystal: Large concentrations of mana solidify into crystals. Humans have an internal core, allowing them to recharge mana from the environment over time. Keidran lack a core and require mana crystals to cast spells, but they do have their own advantage. While humans can recharge anywhere, they can only cast spells from their core, and therefore take more time to recharge, even if they have crystals on hand to accelerate the process. Keidran are better adapted at using mana crystals and can cast spells out of them directly.
• Power Perversion Potential: Keidran slaves are required by law to be magically bound to follow their owner's orders. Let that sink in. The artist has also done a small number of pics showing some possibilities for magic mishaps.
• Properly Paranoid: A good trait, considering the world they're living in. Alaric wasn't convinced one of his plans would be enough, coming up with dozens.
• Proportional Aging: Keidran can live up to their mid-twenties and are adults around age 8 or 9 (about a third of their lifespan).
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Basitins (in theory).
  • West Basitins embrace the tribal amazonian tribe culture, while East Basitins are a relaxed Police State.
• Psychic Link: Natani and Zen. Natani's uncomfortable with it because his brother can poke through his memories (particularly his developing feelings for Keith), and annoyed by it because they're separated by thousands of miles and Natani can't hit him.
  • In a voting incentive, Natani gets around this problem by making Zen feel thoughts about Keith.
  • It's recently been confirmed that Zen found himself experiencing Natani's heat the first time Natani went into estrus after the link was forged, something that immediately makes Kathrin wince in sympathy.
  • Something of the sort is how Trace beats the Ephemural-controlled Flora.
• Public Bath House Scene: Two, one where Trace, Flora, and Keith go to the baths in their second town, and once on the Basitin Isles. In the first instance, the bath house staff make a special announcement, telling the other patrons not to rough Flora up or Trace gets to kill them. In the second, Natani is astonished that the ultra-conservative Basitin even have bath houses. Keith explains that not everyone can afford in-home baths, so they do exist, but they're strictly gender-segregated. Patrons must also keep their foot-wraps on at all times.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Flora demonstrates that tigers can pull off this trope very well here.
• Quickly-Demoted Woman: The last Grand Master was ousted by Trace by using magic to make her look like a Keidran, causing the nearby solders to attack her and drag her into slavery. ^note And for some reason, she doesn't blame Trace for this... (Granted, he was crazy at the time, but still.)
• The Quisling: Clovis is willing to sell out his own kind just do get his hands on magical artifacts.

R to Z

• Realpolitik: Played surprisingly straight whenever Trace and his allies find themselves in a sticky diplomatic situation.
  • The Templar further the divide between tigers and wolves, so they can ally with the tigers to fight the wolves now, and enslave the surviving Keidran later. They stage a Kansas City Shuffle False Flag Operation to seal the alliance. There are also wolves joining other divisions of the Templar.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Saria, after being temporarily resurrected in Maren gives Trace one (Actually, to the inner locked-away consciousness of Evil!Trace, rather than the outer friendly version we all know.):
  Saria: Trace... ...I'm ashamed. The things you've done... not just here, but out there... To the Keidran... To my Rosey... It's just unforgivable. You've caused so much pain to the world. In my name! I am gone. And so is the man I once loved. I only hope the man you are now is willing to undo some of the damage left behind... ...and what you became after I died never comes back!
• Redemption Quest: Keith is sent on one by the Basitin leaders as punishment for his father's murder. Except that it wasn't meant to be possible; he was told he could come back when he had Trace Legacy, a hotshot talented mage. Roughly equal to someone saying: "Hey, you can come home when you bring Osama bin Laden with you for tea." So when Keith showed up with Trace in tow, especially after after Trace rose to the top of the ranks as Grand Templar, no one had any idea how to handle it, as pretty much all "redemption quests" are meant to permanently exile the convict, and no one had ever accomplished their Impossible Task before.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Trace used dark mana, the thing he summoned and he both had red eyes, and when we meet Roderick (Eric's brother), he is first shown with them. Roderick is an active Templar and enemy of the main cast.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Maeve is a young snow leopard. We get to see her doing the stereotypical tail nom here. A vote incentive picture featured her mother, Adira posing for a painting doing the same thing.
• Right Behind Me: Seraphina angrily and proudly delares herself a dragon. Just as a very large shadow approaches. The last panel seems to do double duty as an Oh, Crap! moment.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: It's accepted as fact that humans can't interbreed with Keidrans or Basitins, with no examples of hybrid children recorded in any modern history. After learning Flora is pregnant, Trace wonders if hybrid children are really "so unprecedented" and makes the quite logical guess that that perhaps the reason no one knows about them is because of how few people are literate, saying they might be "so rare they've just gone undocumented". As readers have long known, the real reason hybrids haven't been around in centuries is because Ephemeral has been actively preventing their conception, and only allowed Trace and Flora's child to exist due to some unrevealed plan.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The current Grand Templar has signed a peace treaty with the Tiger Clans to take out the Wolf Clans. Meanwhile, Templars in the west have recruited Wolves to fight as Templars.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Keith's role as Ambassador. Keith, who is now a Stranger in a Familiar Land due to his experiences, isn't sure if it's a punishment or mercy. King Adelaide knows it's both, allowing him to leave but tying him to home. At least it gives Keith a purpose.
• Relationship Upgrade: "Come on. How about, for once, we actually share a bed on purpose?"
• Remix Comic: The "Panel Shuffles" on the forum.
• Revealing Hug: Eric threatened to molest a 13 year old girl! Or did he?
• Running Gag: Any time it looks like the red-haired swordsman is going to give his name, something happens to prevent it. This even extends to the cast page, where he is listed as [database error]. Whenever there's a fire around Eric, the top of his head catches fire. He never notices it.
• Sad Clown: There is a pic of Evals on DeviantArt by the comic author, and with Word of God about his past, he could be either this or The Pollyanna.
• Sapient Fur Trade: It's mentioned on multiple occasions that humans have killed keidran for their pelts and according to Adira's reference sheet snow leopard keidran were hunted extensively for their fur which left them scattered and near-extinct.
• Sapient House: The Legacy Estate is infused with a sapient will, which has vast control over both the house and grounds, though with some limits magically imposed on it by its creator.
• Sapient Pet: Keidran, by some of the nicer humans (of course, they're also seen as a source of cheap labour by more dickish humans). The Keidran are officially slaves.
• Scenery Censor:
  • When Keith and Natani fight each other while naked, it appears that Natani's tail has a will of its own and is determined to guard Keith's modesty no matter what.
  • There is a noticeable evolution of the censorship as the comic progresses. Very early on, all Kiedran nudity was covered up like this, but after a short while bare breasts began showing up completely uncensored, albeit in Barbie Doll Anatomy form. The lower regions kept the censorship longer, but eventually switched as well. The censorship stuck around with males, though, as the Barbie-doll trick would be somewhat harder to explain away.
• Schizo Tech: As pointed out on a certain forum thread, despite the author saying that this is a pre-Medieval setting, many things in the comic can only be achieved with modern technology. For example, the characters order a pizza without phones or long-term sustainable farming being available. Also: bronze and architecture in a culture that's remembered when it was non-evolved animals by a character who is only 2000 years old.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The Keidran tribes are stated to be very fast breeders (what with their views on sex being the same as a Centauri and their short life spans), yet the largest city of the Wolf Clan (the largest tribe) is less than six thousand; even for a faux-Medieval setting, that's rather low. Also, there is a timber forest and a rain forest rather close to each other (and on the same latitude line, no less). Possibly justified for the Keidrans in that they're nomadic — so the people living in a city are the minority — and that they've been on the losing end of a war of genocide/slavery with humanity for the past few decades. (The 6,000 population has since been retconned to be 36,000.) Let's not forget Zen's hint about the race being at risk of dying out.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Landen, after Addy offers to pay Landen a salary that can buy all the coffee Landen can drink.
  • One of the Templar zaps out the moment they realize they're really facing Trace.
  • It becomes combined with Know When to Fold Them when the leader of the Templars realizes that the dragon, Reni, doesn't have to breathe fire (which they're shielded against) to hurt them by using her sheer physical bulk to swat one of his men off the wall and into the ground, ironically the same man he tried to convince not to run away.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Red originally had brown eyes. These became green after the Basitin Islands arc.
  • Eric's ship, the Nai'Ren, was white but switched to brown after the same arc. Although it might just have lost its paint job after a month at sea.
• Seven Deadly Sins: All of them, though some may not be obvious:
  • Pride: Master Seer Brahn, as he thinks he's a better leader of Templar Order than Trace, and refuses to entertain the idea that his gift of foresight is flawed.
  • Greed: Clovis, self-dubbed "Prince of Greed", doing everything only for money, putting his self interests above everyone else, and killing/backstabbing anyone who could be a potential hindrance to his plans.
  • Lust: Lady Nora, is a flirtatious 2000 year old dragon always seeking pleasurable experiences, who is completely obsessed with Trace Legacy, and has been shown having several sexual fantasies about the two of them.
  • Envy: Detritus, as he's jealous of Trace's life with Saria.
  • Gluttony: Landen, who is obssessed with coffee and even betrays her friends for it.
  • Wrath: General Albion Alabaster, always seen angry, abusing his own underlings and being responsible for deaths of most of Keiser family members for petty reasons.
  • Sloth: Trace Legacy (Pre Amnesia), had all the talent, potential, and power that would have allowed him to accomplish practically anything if he put his mind to it, yet never bothered to push himself until he lost everything.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Evals is "slave" backwards.
• She Is the King: The current Basitin ruler is called a king, regardless of gender. Such as it is with the current one, Adelaide.
• Short-Lived Organism: Keidrans live for about twenty years naturally, and hit adulthood at age 8 or 9. Since this gives them an effective adult lifespan of just a little over a decade, this can be a serious issue for inter-species relationships, romantic and non, with the longer-lived humans and basitins.
• Shout-Out: The Author will sometimes reference the fan-base in alt text.
  • The Arms General is a dead ringer for Major Armstrong. See here.
  • Flora dressed in a Rambo costume for the Jan 19 2011 strip.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: After Flora reveals she's pregnant, Trace's inner voice tries to drown her out in order to be able to drive Trace to a jealous rage. Trace yells at him to shut up — out loud, which makes Flora think he's yelling at her.
• Side-Story Bonus Art: The author's whole DeviantArt is full of such images. (Some are NSFW, so they can't be seen without registering.)
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Keith and Natani literally after Keith tried to kill Natani at the Basitin tavern.
• Slave Liberation: Attempted by Flora, who offers to let Trace buy Eric's Keidran slaves in order to set them free... even though Eric knows Trace can't afford them, even if he was selling. Meanwhile, Evals attempts to organize a mutinous version of this trope.
• Soul Fragment: After Natani's soul was fragmented by an evil mage, a piece of his brother's soul was used to hold the remnants together. Because one of the missing soul-fragments was Natani's gender identity, "he" thinks of himself as male, despite being biologically female — and does his best to ensure that everyone else does, too.
• Spit Take: Red on being told that Raine in her keidran form has a row of nipples going down her stomach. (Although Sythe is most likely just trying to mess with him — no evidence of this has been provided. And Red knew it, too.)
  • Reni, when Trace realizes she's dragon royalty and asks if Nora takes orders from her. She ends up soaking Sythe.
  • Keith, when Madelyn decides to walk out her room bare-ankled in an extra page◊.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The villagers have fallen by the wayside. The Lower-Deck Episode that was originally meant for them got snatched by the regular cast.
• Square Race, Round Class: Played for Drama. Basitins (a three-way hybrid of orcs, dwarves, and beastmen) biologically cannot use magic. Their three generals become Magic Knight Super Soldiers through human magical experimentation. However, normal magic damages the Basitin brain in the same way Black Magic damages the human mind, leading to the Basitin High Command slowly lobotomizing themselves. Something the human magicians were fully aware of, but the Basitins were not.
• Squee: While it's not exactly a proper "Squee", the same general effect happens when dragon wannabe Seraphina actually meets genuine dragon Princess Reni here. She even does the overexcited puppy tailwag.
• Status Quo Is God: Literally! Ephemural's only motivation seems to be to maintain a constant stalemate between the three regional powers.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Averted with humans and Basitins. Played straight with the Keidran assassin guild; if they catch a female in their ranks, they just off her. Female wolf-Keidrans also seem to stay home and let the men fight.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: While Maddie Addie might be an absolute master of this trope, this page shows that Lynn is no slouch at it.
• Super-Strength: Basitin minds cannot handle magic and will slowly fry if forced to, but it is speculated that their bodies can, which may be what makes their their superhuman feats possible.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Sythe's reference sheet specifically notes that there is "Nothing strange" about his pet squirrel Mrs. Nibbly. Just ignore the reflection in the waterfall, she's a totally normal squirrel.◊
• Tamer and Chaster: Remember when Flora and Kathrin were Innocent Fanservice Girls, with Kathrin having a healthy dose of Innocent Innuendo included on top of that? With the recent switch in hosting to Keenspot, this has been dropped off the main page and all the characters are wearing mostly conservative outfits, with only Eric having something that wouldn't be appropriate at a mall in the US (and even he is dressed as a Shout-Out to Hugh Hefner). Remembering that at least one point◊ the comic title banner had a (non-sexually) nude Flora on it...
  • The Fanservice content in the comic itself has been dialed back as well, and Flora and Kathrin's Innocent Fanservice Girl tendencies have dialed back immensely, although Flora has a few excuses about it ^note being pregnant and being around Eric. Kathrin does go around nude still, although in the chapter post-switchover (Chapter 14), she instead wears a Naked Apron designed to minimize her fan-service content outside of a single specific scene.
  • As of strip 900, nudist keidran make a reappearance.
• Tap on the Head: Multiple times — Trace gets knocked out by Basitin soldiers and spends a good while unconscious, Natani and Flora are knocked unconscious and captured when attempting to rescue Trace, and Red ambushes Zen by knocking him out with a rock.
• Tempting Fate
  • "I can't believe I made that!"
  • "My technology is infallible."
  • "I'm just glad there's nothing ELSE for us to be worried about." ^note *facepalm* "Why! Why did I say that out loud?!"
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Eyelashes.
• Thanatos Gambit: Thought it might be better titled the Thanatos Crapshoot, it still counts.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Seen here.
  Medic: My Lord! This man is horribly disfigured! I... Oh... Oh my...
  • Natani creates an illusion to hide his breasts and shows it off to Keith. Keith, curious about Natani's seemingly flat chest, tries to run his hand through the "air" in front of Natani with the expected result. Natani is flustered, but shrugs it off and just suggests they pretend it didn't happen.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Somehow, one of Trace's memories directly addresses someone who is reading his mind. Given how said memory is of Nora, it makes sense.
• Their First Time: When Trace and Flora have sex for the first time in strip #203. It's technically not Trace's first time (what with his having been married before), but it still counts since he doesn't remember that. Then in strip #804, Flora states that she had never been with anyone before Trace.
• There Was a Door: Used twice in the same scene. Lampshaded when Keith enters through the door, pointing out that it was unlocked.
  Trace: Um... could I get a new room? Mine seems to have a few holes...
• They Were Holding You Back: The reason the Intelligence General murdered his best friend's wife and exiled his son, Keith. Keith's father had illegally married a Western basitin, worried that he would soon be found out, and was prepared to sacrifice his career over them. So, the Intelligence General got his wife out of the way "for his own good" by murdering her, and when that resulted in his death too, "avenged" him by exiling his son.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: Every furry who sports a Luminescent Blush.
• Time for Plan B: A rare, non-comic example: Flora's pregnancy (among many others) is Euphemerial's plan B when her attempt to pit them against each other fails.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Flora is a tomboy, Kathrin, and Laura are girly girls. Adelaide seems to have gotten a happy medium between the two.
• Toplessness from the Back: Happens in an extra page gag◊, when Zen attacks the group disguised as Maren, Raine tries to expose he's a fake by removing the illusion's shirt and displaying the lack of wounds only the real Maren had suffered, leaving Zen-as-Maren topless in front of Red and Sythe who forget about the situation as they both start Eating the Eye Candy.
• To Serve Man: Parodied. Flora jokes that she wants to taste human flesh (to set up a Reaction Shot gag from Trace).
• Translation Punctuation: Keidran speech has "<" and ">" on the ends usually. Basitin has "[" and "]" on the ends. Human speech has no marking indicators thus far.
• 20% More Awesome: The B Group archive has been determined to be 67% cooler than the main group.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The comic cuts back and forth between the primary protagonists and a simultaneous subplot featuring the secondary characters. The two plots intersect through the assassin siblings, with Natani being a protagonist in the A story while his brother Zen is an antagonist in the B story.
• "Uh-Oh" Eyes: If a character is dangerously psychotic, they have a red glow in their pupils. If they OD on Mana, they get Blank White Eyes. Keidrans, when drawing on the Feral side of themselves, get Glowing Eyes of Doom. Templar!Trace? All of them, AND Black Speech. Run.
  • Basitins can also have glowing yellow or white eyes (depending on the emotion causing the distress). Yellow for extreme anger. White for calmer pride AND anger.
• Under the Mistletoe: Invoked several times.
  • Like here, where Flora ties mistletoe to Keith's tail, leading to an uncomfortable situation between him and Natani.
  • And here, where Flora is trying to hang an enchanted sprig of Mistletoe that'll cause whoever stands under it to kiss whoever they first see, only to try and hide it behind her when several bit characters show up. Hilarity Ensues as it causes Trace to give her a kiss under her tail as a result.
  • Also here, where Kathrin wears the enchanted mistletoe as a necklace, and the aftermath.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Flora and Trace before they get in bed. Keith and Natani all the time. Mike having his body turned "female" temporarily has revealed something similar with him and Evals. It seems to still be there for Mike.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Dragon bathing in the harbor? No big.
• Unwanted Harem: Keith gets one of these in the Basitan Island Arc, between Natani, Laura, Maddie and maybe Alaric. Laura and Alaric die, Maddie is revealed to be a teenager and thus too young for Keith, and Natani becomes Keith's official Love Interest.
• Unwitting Pawn: Both Trace and Flora. Ephemural/Neutral was the one who set the plot in motion; first by wiping Trace's memories and then arranging the circumstances in which he met Flora. The plan was to have Flora form a close bond with Trace as they traveled, and at the very end unleash Trace's old personality and vicious racism in the vicinity of the Wolf clan, breaking Flora's heart enough to truly marry Sythe, and ensuring Trace would be mauled to death by a vengeful pack. With the Keidran clans united by the marriage and the former Grand Templar Trace dead, the power imbalance between the winning Humans and the divided Keidran would be stabilized and restored to their equilibrium of an endless cold war. Then Sirus used her pawns against her and strengthened their bond to overpower Trace's hatred, and channeled his hate into a weapon that could cripple Ephemural.
• Vague Age: Due to the art, all humans (save Master Mage, but even he looks too young) look like teenagers but are in their mid to late 20's (Trace is 25).
• War Is Glorious: Not just glorious, but fun. The Basitins purposefully abandon any ground they've captured so their "enemies" can take it back and keep the war going.
• We Are as Mayflies: Zig-zagged. Humans live a lot longer than keidrans, who typically reach twenty-some years at most, but basitins live around as long as humans do and dragons have no maximum lifespan.
• Webcomic Time: The Basitin Isles story arc has gone on for almost four years. It takes place in the space of three days. This is lampshaded by Karen saying "It feels like we haven't done anything for four years..."
• Wham Episode:
  • Keith's trial, where we've just found out Gen. Kaiser didn't kill Keith's mother like he'd thought; Gen. Alabaster did. We find this out from Alabaster's son, to boot.
  • The February 11 2015 issue: To prevent the spell-casting Zen from escaping, his captors put him in a magic-nullifying shackle. As mentioned earlier above, Zen and his sibling Natani share a Psychic Link based on melded souls, which kept Natani from dying. The second the shackle is closed, Natani collapses onto the floor, with both of his eyes blank and lifeless... and with the brown eye he developed as a result of the link having changed back to gray. In shorter terms, it's implied that Zen's captors may have just killed Natani.
  • On page 1113, Trace and Flora find a painting on the third floor that reveals that Rose died two years prior to the beginning of the comic.
• Wham Line:
  • Between Keith and Natani:
    Keith: But I know you wouldn't like me suddenly kissing you for no reason and saying it was the "heat of the moment"!
    Natani: Well maybe I would!
  • And then this heartbreaker:
    Flora: A crib? What's something like this doing here?
  • After Sythe breaks the crystal holding Maren hostage (which ties into the Wham Shot below):
    Detritus: ...! Saria!
• Wham Shot:
  • Carver surrounded by basitins. Western basitins. Raine ended up teleporting the fox half way around the world.
  • Rose also has Perfect Shapeshifting.
  • In a hidden room of the Legacy Estate, Trace and Flora find an unused crib. When Saria died, she was pregnant.
  • Trace and Flora also find a portrait of Rose that shows her year of birth... and death, two years ago.
  • Detritus stops a few inches from killing Sythe, who shattered the crystal containing Maren, and spots a familiar shock of white hair on her bangs.
• What Could Have Been: This is mentioned In-Universe. "It Could Have Been."
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: "My technology is infallible."
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Maddy upon trying to fall asleep under Trace's bed.
  • Sythe when he noticed that Flora was pregnant.
  • Trace when he remembered that Saria was, too. Even moreso in the sketch version.◊
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Apparently all users of Dark Mana, especially Trace. And ANY Magic does a number on Basitin brains.
• The Worf Effect: The Eastern Basitin Islands Arms General does this with Natani, the professional assassin, beating him with little effort. Then he gets ripped to shreds by an unknown foe off-screen (presumably the master spy).
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Appears in one of the Modern AU Patreon bonuses, in which Tom explains the value of a G (in the context of an SNEP selling for 24.99 G) but gets digit-shifting wrong^note Given the picture, the correct answer is that the dollar is 1/10 of a G:
  For those wondering about the prices, the Modern AU's currency (G) is around 1/10 of a dollar. (It's actually slightly less, but 1/10 makes it easy to just move the decimal over to the right one place and get a rough idea of the equivalent value.) I have a fondness for settings that uses smaller values for prices, so that the pennies are still useful. I just think the novelty of it is fun. :9
• Wrong Context Magic: Originally, the Keidran learned how to use magic by storing Mana in special marbles — no marbles, no source of magical energy, no spells. Then the Humans appeared, learned the magical arts of the Keidran, and proceeded to break the rules by drawing mana directly from the surrounding environment, usually killing nearby plant-life and small animals in the process. This came with its own drawbacks, namely what happens if you kept drawing energy from the land after all the nearby sources ran out. They then compensated for THAT by building huge towers that stored enormous amounts of mana that nearby human spellcasters could draw on. Then main character Trace is shown to be capable of using Black Magic without the usual associated side-effects of 'permanent insanity and/or death', instead getting away with nothing more than a temporary Unstoppable Rage, a Superpowered Evil Side, and a Red Right Hand. And finally, the Basitin were well-known to have NO magical power whatsoever... until someone figured out how to break THAT rule, too. (Hint: It was the humans. Humans are really not big on rules, as it turns out.)
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Ephemural's plan to unite the Keidran tribes (and when this one failed, continuing with his (her?) facilitating Flora's apparent pregnancy). There are several dozen others (Gods are fun!), most of which focus on Trace, Flora, or one of their friends.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Unsurprising for a love mage, Sealeen is one of these.
• You Can't Go Home Again: the conditions of Keith's banishment were likely to get him killed and intended to be impossible for him to fulfill. (Let's just invite the Omnicidal Maniac to tea, shall we?) Ironically, after he does manage to fulfill them (though not without a generous heaping of divine meddling) he finds himself a Stranger in a Familiar Land who can't bear to stay anyway.
  • If you look carefully at the mysterious killer of the Arms General here, then at the innkeeper mentioned above and consider that the murder was done by strong magic, we can pretty much infer that Master Spy killed the Arms General. The Master Spy's "disguise" is so weak, it's actually very funny nobody has called him out for that. Mid-length brown hair, blue eyes, wears a cross-pendant, and ALWAYS keeps the bandages on his right hand. So far, he's been the shop-keeper giving Trace the pendant that later decides the fight with Ephemural, an inn-keeper, he's been a guy organizing a ship for them (although without the cross necklace), he's been the Basitin inn-keeper, and he's most probably the one who murders the Arms General. He's has been nothing but helping Trace and the crew, which makes his goals seem kind of blurry.
• Zig Zagging A Trope: Keith vs. Flora.

---