YMMV / 9 Chickweed Lane

• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Juliette and Edda are actually pretty excited that they're a lovechild and -grandchild, respectively; even Gran's pleased that her first child was with the passionate and artistic Kiesl rather then the conservative and possibly brain-damaged Bill. Subverted when they actually meet Kiesl and tell him he's a fool for letting Edna get away and then wasting the rest of his life pining for her.
  • Seth doesn't seem to be having an issue with falling in love with and sleeping with Fernanda. Seth's boyfriend Mark doesn't seem to have a problem either, even though Seth technically cheated on him.
• Arc Fatigue
  • "Are They Still In The '50s?" Apparently someone told Brooke to wrap it up so we don't hear anything about Bill and Edna's relationship other that he was a good man.
  • "Are They Still In France?" The flashback ran from November 2013 through February 2015. Let's just say that as a rule, if there's a flashback in this strip it will go on for an extremely long time.
• Ending Fatigue: Every time it seemed that the World War II flashback would end, another complication appeared to extend things further. One would think it would have ended when Edna and Kiesel reunited and absconded to Vienna to get married, but then Edna's son Roger unexpectedly showed up at Edda and Seth's apartment. There was additional drama with Roger setting off Seth's don't-call-it-gaydar, than Seth falling for a woman while Roger suddenly accepted that he's gay.
• Fan Nickname: "Colonel Iago" for Col. Yancey.
  • Gam-ma, and by extension Gampa for Bill and Kiesl.
  • "Big Gay Seth"; Gay Hulk or Ghulk
• Fetish Retardant: A critic, wondering why the faces bothered him, suddenly realized that all the women looked like Gadget Hackwrench minus the mouse ears. There's also the toothy grins sported by the women when they're in the mood.
• Heartwarming Moments: After Sister Steve helps Diane with childbirth, Diane gave her newborn daughter the name "Florence Anne" (which was Sister Steve's name before she joined the novitiate); Sister Steve asks for ten more boxes of tissues and the door be closed behind her.
• Nightmare Fuel: To some readers, Brooke's art style is such that whenever a character opens their mouth wide it results in this — "this" being pitch-black holes with rows of teeth — teeth which outright refuse to acknowledge anything even remotely resembling the actual anatomy of the human mouth.
  • This July 2013 strip [1]. Tongues should not extend that far out of a human's mouth.
  • Polly and Lolly's character design can look pretty horrific at times. It makes readers glad that they hardly ever appear in the strip.
• Squick: Even among people as close as Juliette and Edda, is it normal for mothers and daughters to ask if they're wearing the sexy-print bras they bought each other? Also, Gran telling her sexual past to her daughter, with her granddaughter and her entire ballet class listening in. And now Juliette and Edda swapping masturbation aides I mean fantasies about Seth in various historical settings while he's standing right there (he should have never brought up his "Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, 'cause I'm totally dating all these hot chicks" phase to Edda).
  • Brooke is his own hand-jive model and Edda is based on his daughter, who is a ballerina and allegedly as wordy as her dad.
  • Amos repeatedly tells Juliette how much he lusted after her when he was a child.
  • There are multiple flashbacks of a preteen Edda telling Amos that they're going to have kids one day, and all that entails. The frequency and (implied) detail of these talks crosses the line from From the Mouths of Babes to Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, especially when Edda's own mother asks her for advice.
  • Polly and Lolly are (mostly accidentally) exposed to sexuality; even when they're less than a year old, they have enough cognizance to be squicked by watching their parents make out, and later Amos considers praising them for peeking under Edda's skirt. They also repeat what Seth says when he talks in his sleep during erotic dreams. Like the above, it's the frequency of these events that's eyebrow-raising, especially when they rarely exist outside of these bizarrely sexually-charged incidents.
  • Hugh attempts to have sex with Xiulan mere seconds after she just finished giving birth.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Juliette's (and Edda's) reaction to finding out she's the love child of a Nazi officer^note Yes, Kiesl considered himself a Austrian officer whose superiors just happened to be Nazis, but how many readers would really make that distinction, much less characters in-universe during the 40s-50s? boils down to "Really? Cool!"
  • Roger is (understandably) disapproving of his mom's "affair" (he practically disowns his sister) and disturbed that his parents' marriage may have been a loveless lie while he's trapped in his own (maybe) loveless marriage, and with 11 kids to boot.
  • Seth suddenly proposing to Fernanda after learning she/her art was a virgin. He might just be doing it to protect her from shame in her (presumably) really Catholic country, (where she doesn't even live anymore) though. Then later on marrying her for real, without apparently breaking up with Mark first or any references to the fact he had considered himself gay for much of his existence in the strip.
  • The implication that Gran wanted Edda to have the baby despite the fact that, love for her children aside, her own unplanned pregnancy caused her to go from a burgeoning career as an opera singer in New York City to a passionless marriage in a small, presumably artistically sterile Midwestern town. A moot point, since it turned out to be a Pregnancy Scare.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: A lot of casual readers seem to be unaware that Brooke is a man. One critic thought that this was the only reason he hasn't been completely removed from syndication since readers would protest the canceling of a strong, creative, and sexually-independent female author.

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