"Some stories begin in schools, some at a park or in someone's apartment. This one starts on a spaceship."
The Law of Purple is a sci-fi webcomic centering around the Fayse family, a set of siblings from the planet Caligula, where race is determined by one's ear shape, not skin color. They crash-land on Earth and quickly make their first real friends since they left their homeworld.
This series provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- Daimon's stepdad, who raped him.
- Robbie's dad threw him out for being gay, and is an Expy of Gendo Ikari.
- Action Girl: Most of the female cast, but most notably Lette.
- Lynnah counts as well. She gave herself tennis elbow during the battle for Shanghri.
- Action Mom: Lily Wulf, back when she was alive.
- Affectionate Parody: The members of Red and Rose's parenthood group are mainly this. For the link shy, their descriptions are below.
- Poul and Tilda are Timon & Pumbaa.
- Bella and Vidal are Bulma and Vegeta.
- Bay, Beverly, Kim and Lissa are all based off the Barbie toy line. Beverly is "soccer mom approved Barbie" and Bay is Blaine, while Lissa is a more kitbashed Barbie and Kim is Ken (and no, Beverly and Kim are not getting back together).
- Adriano and Stella are Yugi/Atem and Sailor Moon, respectively.
- Hector and Meghan are loosely based off of Hercules and Megaera (more the myth than the Disney movie though, despite Meghan's resemblance to that version).
- Gilda and Oriel seem to be mecha pilots.
- All There in the Manual: In addition to little blurbs of info in the comic margins, the author has a forum accessible via a link at the top of the comic site filled with information about the characters and races, among other things.
- Amazon Chaser:
- Red first started falling for Rose when he saw her fend off a wanna-be purse snatcher.
- Green, toward Lynnah.
- When Morgan sees Lette punch out her Stalker with a Crush, he declares it the third sexiest thing he's ever seen. Synn expresses disgust at him rating that kind of stuff.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The Caligulans, where one family contains kids with red, green, blue, and white skin.
- Note that it seems that it's only partially random, several Caligulan children, like Zeva and Vanessa, have been shown to take after a parent's coloration to some degree, while others don't resemble the coloration.
- An Arm and a Leg: Lissa, one of the women in the pregnancy group is missing her right arm from a shark attack. You should see the shark (for the link-shy, she's mounted it up on a wall with the inscription "my arm").
- Ancient Conspiracy: The Organization has been around since the Third Century AD.
- Art Evolution: Compare this page with this one.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Seems to be how the Dark Forces works.
- Author Avatar: Jay is based on the author, Jessica Segaard. She even quits under similar circumstances. This one is more direct.
- Babies Make Everything Better: This belief is why female criminals can get early releases if pregnant on Caligula.
- Badass Preacher: The priest from Rose and Red's wedding, Father Amadeus.
- Beautiful All Along: Jel's cousin Vickie actually looks better without her customary layer of makeup.
- Best Woman: Boy cats are not eligible to be bridesmaids.
- Big Bad: Silver.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Daimon lampshades this when told about hybrid Experiment Alpha, freaking out and saying that he's too messed up to be a parent. As the Alt Text notes, this reaction isn't exactly unwarranted.
- Big "WHAT?!": When Lette hears that Sabre is pregnant, she lets out a what loud enough to be heard from Earth.
- Blah, Blah, Blah: Governor Dimka actually says bla bla bla in a speech he gives.
- Boxed Crook: Dross works for Silver because the evil king protects him from the death sentence that was supposed to have been carried out years ago for forcibly turning tEK, and maybe others, into a plug-in as a child, when the role is supposed to be something adults volunteer for (and remember, Caligulan society puts a high value on children).
- But We Used a Condom!: Lette's mother was in her mid-forties and using two kinds of birth control when she became pregnant with Lette. This is why Lette is about the same age as her nephew.
- The Caligula: Silver. Possibly lampshaded, as the planet he's the king of is called Caligula.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Lampshaded. Lette is building a harem.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: Blue and Brenna here.
- Cat Folk: The Nekojin.
- Chainmail Bikini: Lette is forced into one here. That's also the closest thing to a skirt we're ever going to see on that girl.
- The Chew Toy: Nick. Not that he doesn't deserve it.
- Colonel Badass: Synn used to be this before he went MIA.
- Covered in Kisses: [1].
- Covert Pervert: Danni.
- Cross-Cultural Kerfluffle: When Whitey and Gypsy's sister Elf meet, they immediately lampshade the racial connotations of each other's name in their culture. Gypsy then pops in and says that they should have been there when Myrddin first heard her name.
- The then explains that calling a Romani person "gypsy" is more offensive than calling a white persona "whitey", and that she hasn't changed it because she has now idea what she'd change it to, not to mention the paperwork. Lette then pops in and suggests she change it to what they call her, causing her to protest and say that she isn't going to change it to "boss".
- Damsel out of Distress: Lette, in Dogs of War. The only reason she didn't escape earlier was her not knowing how to fly a spaceship.
- Dead Guy Junior: Rose names her daughter after her deceased mother Lily.
- Deadly Doctor: Doctor Dross.
- Descriptively-Named Species: The Nekojin. (Neko means cat in Japanese)
- Designated Girl Fight: Starts on this page.
- Dissonant Serenity: France is described as "mildly astonished" when a Sasquatch army marches on them.
- Dumb Blond: Invoked by Shi Shi here.
- Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Thud puts it beautifully.
- Entitled to Have You: Shishi clearly feels this way about Blue. Apparently it's cultural for Myranian women to feel that way.
- Nick also feels like this towards Lette a bit, unable to get that she will never be interested (though Blue suggests that the lack of attainability is part of the allure for him).
- Even Evil Has Standards: Silver may be a real nasty piece of work, but he doesn't like causing unnecessary suffering purely For the Evulz (though his definition of "necessary" suffering still includes a lot of nasty stuff).
- Evil Gloating: Blue knows for sure that Silver was behind the attack on their family because when Blue was escaping with his siblings, Silver spoke to them over the loudspeakers saying that they wouldn't get away, and that he'd tell the world that Blue was responsible for the massecre.
- Evil Laugh: Lette, in this comic. And she pulls it off beautifully.
- Expy: The author freely admits that Lette's design is based on Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh!. She's even done Kaiba Cosplay.
- Also, Juni is Alister, and Carli/Carly/Carleigh is Zigfreid von Schroeder
- Skyla is Yugi, and her uncle Max (male) is Pegasus.
- Mr. Daschund is, visually speaking, Sephiroth.
- Robbie's dad heavily resembles Gendo Ikari, to the point that one character explicitly compares them, especially after learning that he kicked Robbie out for being gay. Word of God even mentions a Yui analog as well.
- Lynnah's parents are basically Kamina and Yoko.
- Expressive Ears: 2nd kind Caligulans seem to have a tendency towards ear-wiggling when feeling playful.
- Face–Heel Turn: Synn, before the start of the comic, although it's not clear how bad he really was before Heel Face Turning back.
- Fanservice: [2] [3][4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. Please note that the page titles for several of these mention their fanserviceyness.
- Fantastic Racism: Most Caligulans with round ears (1st kind) have this to Caligulans with pointy/elf ears (2nd kind).
- Filler Strips: Usually very amusing ones.
- Friends with Benefits: Sabre and Memphis, since the latter is aromantic.
- Gender-Restricted Ability: Myranian women can access and manipulate peoples' nervous systems. Men cannot.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: Dex looks like the very attractive Lette when his glasses are removed.
- Go-Go Enslavement: Lette is subjected to this while being held hostage by Governor Dimka. In an unusual twist for this trope, not only is the person who forced her into it a girl named Lark, but Lette is actually showing less skin than she is (Lark finds clothes, at least outside of dress-up, to be a necessary evil). When she sees what the bounty hunter who kidnapped her was forced into, she thinks she may have gotten off easy.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: It's not obvious, but Ingrid's skin is green
- Guest Strip: [9][10]
- Half-Human Hybrid: Mentioned in this early comic.
- Later, we find out that Daimon is a wraith/human hybrid.
- Even later, Memphis gets Sabre pregnant, and Red and Rose are also expecting.
- As it turns out, this is nothing new, Word of God is that several minor characters probably have some alien blood somewhere.
- Halloween Cosplay: Lette dresses up as Priest Set(o).
- Hammerspace:
- Lynnah eventually gains a sword she can seemingly pull out of nowhere.
- Rowan from Dachshund's has a similar sword.
- Heel–Face Turn: Several characters could qualify for this, although how much of a bad guy they were beforehand is variable. Daimon probably fits best.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: This bounty hunter, who mutters "ninja, ninja, ninja" under his breath when sneaking around, and startles easily.
- Homosexual Reproduction: Baby packs act as a type of Uterine Replicator that allows indivuals of the same sex to have children together.
- Hostile Show Takeover: Silver attempts this in the "Captive Audience" filler special, trying to get the author to make Blue evil, turn him into the protagonist, avert his Bald of Evil status, and make his secretary Ingrid dress in more revealing clothing (Though he doesn't need the author for that). It fails.
- Human Aliens: Most alien species look human, with a few differences, and many can interbreed. All There in the Manual material hints that a Precursor race is responsible.
- Hybrid Power: Ancient Caligulan gene editing means that a Caligulan woman having a child with a human can result in a large baby, Sabre and Memphis' child Blaze Gem is 18 pounds at birth, nearly twice the average for a human child!.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Blue at one point jokingly threatens to give the "shovel talk" to Sapphire's boyfriend.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Only a dream, but...
- Important Haircut: Lette, in Behind Blue Eyes
- Interspecies Romance: Let's see...Sabre and Memphis, Blue and Lette (and Synn), Red and Rose, Aaron and Tuyen...the list goes on.
- It Runs On Nonsenseoleum: The series is named after the in-universe law of purple, which states that nature loves purple, but hates a vacuum. So the vacuum between space is purple.
- Kick Chick: Mari resents not getting the opportunity to be one of these.
- Klingons Love Shakespeare: Krackadoom is most impressed with cake.
- Lady Land: Myrania.
- Lecherous Licking: This is only a dream, but the lick at least is absolutely in-character for Robbie.
- Like Father, Like Son: Blue has a similar overprotective reaction to something Zeva does that his father did to him.
- Little Green Men: Green until his growth spurt.
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Rowan got his sword from what seemed to be one, but it turned out to be subverted, the people who gave it him didn't work there.
- Lizard Folk: Non-evil example, the Drakon
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Danni.
- Love Triangle: Robbie and Lynnah are both after Green.
- Lured into a Trap: Lette is smart enough to realize that the leak of Blue and Daimon's baby pack produced daughter is probably a trap.
- Mad Doctor: Doctor Dross, who tortured and experimented on Synn, and used a baby pack to create a child with Blue and Daimon's DNA solely to use as a lab rat.
- Manipulative Bastard: As of this comic, Dross seems to be adding it to his repertoire of villain tropes.
- The Men in Black: Memphis, Rose, and Violet's parents used to be in one of these organizations. Lette and her nephew's boyfriend are currently members.
- Moment Killer: Shishi is really good at this
- Most Common Super Power: ShiShi's wrong, by the way.
- Mr. Fanservice: It would be shorter to list the male characters that don't qualify for this than those that do.
- Mundane Fantastic
- Nerves of Steel: Sabre is super chill despite being in labor, to the point that others start to get worried because she's so calm.
- No Bisexuals: Mentioned in this comic.
- No Fourth Wall: Filler strips, at least, have the characters interacting with the author, and Silver once tried to do a Hostile Show Takeover.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid:
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: As noted by the author here, the stuff that's getting Lynnah so worked up is almost all stuff that's been said to her at some point.
- She makes more about other situations that occur at the Dachshund's Market.
- Nosebleed: Yes, Blue is that sexy. [11] [12] lampshaded here
- One-Steve Limit: There are two characters named Max, one male & one female.
- Our Dragons Are Different: 'Dragons' are actually higher-dimensional creatures that spend most of their time in another plane of existence.
- Author Avatar Jay is apparently THE dragon.
- Papa Wolf: Becomes worried about stranger danger while Zeva is staying with him, causing him to call Van and ask her if she'd talked about that with her (which she had).
- Rose speculates that Daimon might become this if he knows about the child Dross created with his DNA.
- Parental Neglect:
- The Wulf sibling's dad loves them, but being perpetually ill in the hospital means that he wasn't really there for them as much as he would have liked.
- Blue's dad loved him, but the whole being 2nd Kind thing meant that he was emotionally distant from Blue, and rarely gave him advice.
- Physical Goddess: Jay is introduced as one, and apparently was one, as revealed by the supernatural display when she quit. She reveals draconic features when she flies away.
- Polyamory: Lette and her harem.
- Fairly common among the Drakon.
- Power Dyes Your Hair: Wraithe hair changes color when they go in badass-mode.
- Pregnant Badass: Sabre.
- Also Rose. She kickboxes.
- Prince Charming Wannabe: Nick. He just can't seem to get the message that Lette isn't interested (which Blue attributes to him chasing the unattainable), and his attempts to hit on other girls at the wedding fall short as well.
- Promoted to Parent: Red, after his parents were killed, and Violet had her siblings, mainly Rose, take over raising her after her mom died and her dad became bedridden.
- Psychotic Smirk: Lette pulls this off brilliantly despite not being evil.
- Punny Name: All of the Fayse siblings.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Lette does NOT appreciate the outfit.
- Sarashi: here.
- School Clubs Are Serious Business: Dex's excuse for why he'd be willing to help out Robbie.
- Screaming Birth:
- Gypsy gives birth off-screen, so it's unknown whether she has a genuine Screaming Birth, but when her contractions start she immediately announces this fact to her husband (and the three other men in the room with him) by bursting in and screaming "I'M GOING INTO LABOR!!".
- Sabre, on the other hand, due to highly advanced pain management training, is super calm when she starts going into labor, to the point that a nurse is a bit worried.
- Rose's labor plays this straighter by having her screaming "Ai! Ai! Cthulhu Ftaghn!".
- Self-Made Orphan: Silver kills all of his family that he can, including his own mother. He waited until he was already king to do so though, since a royal killing the current monarch eliminates them from the line of succession.
- Shout-Out: Lette's character design is stated to have been based off Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh!, as referenced here and here. There's also the yearly "beware the ides of March" Tribble joke. [13] All of them up to March 2016 can be found on the author's Tumblr here.
- Shower Scene: The author loves her shower scenes.
- Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: The comic as a whole is fairly good about this, which characters of both genders being badass.
- Likewise, Caligulan society, for all the Fantastic Racism against 2nd-kind, is very good with gender equality. Heck, Word of God says that it's pretty much as gender-equal as you can get in a species with multiple genders.
- Myranian culture, on the other hand, is very female dominated, in part due to the fact that only the females being able to "memtwist", to the point that men are seen as breeding tools/living sex toys. Shi Shi's brother was actually named "Stud" by their mother, and in a bonus page he states that "courtship" there would be tantamount to rape elsewhere. This problem is depicted as cultural though, as Stud's other sister realized how wrong things were after leaving.
- Space Elves: Second-kind Caligulan.
- Space Pirates: Morgan.
- Spared by the Adaptation: The author states that there's a whole lot of people who were going to be killed off in earlier drafts. Luckily, most of them were the good guys.
- Stalker with a Crush: There are a few.
- Shi Shi is a Myranian who feels entitled to Blue.
- Nick is a Prince Charming Wannabe that can't get the hint that Lette isn't interested.
- A male employee at a pizza place starts obsessing over Green.
- Stella's ex Darcy shows up at one point.
- Super-Strength:
- The Wraithes become much stronger in their metallic-skinned forms.
- Some humans, like Rose and Lynnah, have a lower key version of this.
- Talking Is a Free Action: [14]
- Thanksfor The Mammary: [15]
- This Explains So Much: Lette learning that Morgan grew up on the Drakon homeworld, where Polyamory is common enough that he thinks that it's weird not to love multiple people, has this reaction.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Once Silver tried a Hostile Show Takeover by tying up the author in an attempt to force her to make him the star. It failed.
- Thou Shall Not Kill: Because of Caligula's small population (relative to say, Earth), the military is big on only killing when necessary.
- Threesome Subtext: [16]
- Took a Level in Badass: Lette, in the Behind Blue Eyes ministory.
- Touched by Vorlons: 2nd Kind and their abilities are (at least partially) the result of a dragon messing with Caligulan genetics.
- Trap Is the Only Option: After tEk finds out about Hybrid Experiment Alpha, AKA Blue and Daimon's baby pack produced daughter, they and Adelia agree that it doesn't matter if it's a trap. The others who learn of it have similar reactions, and make sure to bring backup.
- Uneven Hybrid: There are some Earth humans with a alien ancestor way back when, resulting in this.
- Unusual Ears: Most notably Caligulan second kind, but some other alien species also fit.
- Uterine Replicator: Baby Packs.
- Villain Protagonist: Silver attempts to compel the author to make him the main character.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Thanks to Silver, Blue is the one believed by the general public to have orchestrated the murder of the royal family.
- Virgin Power: The Wraithe species has the phenomenon of the "Virgin Seer", which only manifests in members of the species that make it to a certain age as virgins, though few do. The only example seen so far is Daimon's sister Sylvana, and she only made it to the necessary age because of Daimon's Big Brother Instinct.
- Wacky Cravings: discussed by Red and Rose's pregnancy group here.
- Webcomic Time: here.
- Weirdness Censor: Earth people are often too wrapped up in Earth people problems to notice alien stuff.
- World of Action Girls: Myrania is a planet where the women have kick-ass powers and the men are seen a good for nothing but breeding and moving furniture.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Lette tells this to Synn, rather forcefully too, after he, spontaneously, told her that he's fine with her and Blue being togethrt, and that he knows that he's no good for Blue.
- You Are Number 6: Drox numbered the baby pack produced daughter of Blue and Daimon "Hybrid Experiment Alpha One".