History ElGoonishShive / TropesAToE

* AbileneParadox: Narrowly avoided in the "So a Date at the Mall" story where Elliot and Ashley are discussing whether to eat immediately or to wait until later. Both of them are hungry, but let the other make the decision as to whether to eat immediately. They both assume the other isn't hungry and agree to delay eating. Thankfully a [[http://egscomics.com/comic/2015-03-27 combined stomach growl]] gives them an excuse to do what they both want to do.

** Well, singular. [[BigBad Damien]] ended up making himself a sort of twisted father figure to Grace and her brothers, but there is nothing "fatherly" about him at all. He is an abuser pure and simple, able to control his "children" through fear and constantly hitting them whenever they displease him. And like any parent whose children are young enough, he's too powerful for them to do anything about it. And the reason he wanted Grace back? [[spoiler:He wanted to breed with her so that he could raise an army. Whether she wanted to or not. (She didn't, by the way.)]]

* AcademyOfAdventure: Two of them: Moperville North and South.
** Raven mentions offhandedly that South has many unusual children -- [[BadassTeacher and he's in charge of protecting them]]. What's more, he never states that other schools aren't like this -- we might just not have met Raven's Moperville North equivalent.
** Though Moperville North does have its "well-meaning, but completely nuts" principal, and the Goo showed up there twice.

** Susan [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2003-06-27 tells one of these]] about [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2003-03-11 Justin being gay.]] And [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2003-07-10 one more about]] [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2009-11-19 spontaneous hair color changes.]]
** [[OppositeSexClone Ellen]] and [[HalfHumanHybrid Grace]]'s math teacher pretends to [[AwesomeByAnalysis deduce facts about his new students]], and concludes that "the end result appears to be a duplicate squirrel of some sort." The girls are rather shocked about how close to the mark he is until he says he was just messing with them and it had all been [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2007-12-17 gibberish]]. Then again, this ''is'' [[AcademyOfAdventure Moperville High]], so he may well have been lying/unknowingly magical.
* ActionGirl: All the girls ([[GenderBender and some of the guys]]) except for [[UnfazedEveryman Sarah]].

** A variation. Susan flashbacks to an earlier encounter with an 'Aberration' -- a person who has used magic in order to become immortal through parasitically leeching off the life-force of others. She starts to describe to her friends about how it had some vampire-like characteristics, realizes her description sounds like it is of a vampire, and decides to say it was one. When her friends ask if it really was one, she said 'No, not really, but it was a monster that used to be human, hypnotized young women and sucked blood out of their necks. It doesn't matter what I say. You two are going to hear "vampire."' The accompanying comments say no, it's not a 'real' vampire. About one arc later, [[spoiler:the body-snatcher Sirleck is also identified as an Aberration, albeit one of a different variety than the one Susan and Nanase encountered in France. The common thread is that Aberrations are creatures that were once human, but physically and mentally transformed themselves into monsters in order to gain immortality.]]

* AlienAmongUs: [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2003-09-03 They're born on Earth, they're not aliens.]]
* AllCheeringAllTheTime: A sketchbook entry [[https://egscomics.com/sketchbook/?date=2010-11-11 explains]] why "Cheerleadra" is an awful superhero concept.
* AlliterativeList: Due to having the same prefix, "in-" in [[https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2008-08-25 2008-08-25]]:
--> invisible, intangible, and inaudible

* AlternateUniverse: Several. The one where Ellen and Kaoli "met" got Uryuoms and [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2006-08-25 seyunolu]] as an accepted part of Human life [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2008-01-15 for two centuries or so.]]

* AnAesop: [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2012-02-07 This]] comic and [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2012-02-09 this]] one pretty much sum up the aesop for the Death Sentence arc.

** Ellen is [[StockholmSyndrome weirdly ready]] to not only forgive, but even justify [[spoiler:Magus giving her body to [[DemonicPossession an aberration to inhabit]], [[GrandTheftMe possessing her brother]], and taking Ashley hostage.]] She insists that he was in a desperate situation, and wants him to get away with what he did.

* California University: The main cast (and several high school supporting cast members) plan to attend Moperville University, with Raven and Tenseided becoming part of the faculty.

* CharacterisationMarchesOn: Goes hand and hand with ArtEvolution and CerebusSyndrome as the author grows from an adolescent to an adult.

'''Aberration:''' I'm already worth millions, and you'd just be devaluing gold in general if you made more.
** Which, funnily enough, is actually the ABERRATION getting it wrong. A few million in gold has a negligible impact on gold's value, and gold would be far less traceable when transferring funds between his hosts. Presumably he just doesn't want to go to the trouble of fencing it.

** Tthe discussions about transformation can sometimes sound like it's being used as a metaphor for sex (or possibly kinky sex). Especially when the consent issue is brought up.

'''Edward Verres:''' This early on, tired is good. Mundane is good. You'll be doing stuff that makes me glad it's not my job to cover this stuff anymore in no time.\\

* CloningBlues: Played depressingly straight at first. When Ellen was accidentally created, she freaked out, with good reason. She had all of Elliot's memories, but suffered LossOfIdentity since she could never get back his old life, and all of his friends were now essentially strangers she only knew about secondhand. She was permanently stuck in female form, something the original Elliot was so desperate to escape that he resorted to using a dangerous magical artifact he clearly didn't understand rather than risk spending (at most) a few more weeks in that form. Ellen also had reason to believe she might have less than a month to live, and feared she'd spend that time locked up in a research facility as a test subject. She went a little crazy, and as a coping mechanism, tried being an EvilTwin for a while, which only made her more miserable. However, this trope was subverted in the long run. Ellen learned her fears of an imminent demise or being locked up for study had no basis in reality. Elliot's friends welcomed her warmly and treated her like a normal individual, rather than just an accidental female copy of someone they knew. Elliot became fiercely protective of her, treating her as a cross between a little sister and a daughter, rather than the EvilTwin she had tried to be. Even Elliot's parents accepted her surprisingly easily, given the circumstances. Ellen eventually developed her own personality and became a major character in her own right, as well as an unprecedented solution to an earlier LoveTriangle.

* {{Bishonen}}:
** Tedd isn't quite a classic bishie, but he is still both [[DudeLooksLikeALady androgynous]] enough and attractive enough when he takes his [[NerdGlasses glasses]] off to cause homophobic [[JerkJock bully]] Tony to [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2003-05-21 go into full-scale panic.]]
** Also Noah, who makes straight guys see rainbows.

* EveryoneIsInTheLoop: The main cast typically make a point of keeping each other in the loop regarding the constant supernatural happenings. As such, plotlines regarding one character not knowing something important only happen outside the main cast, and even temporary misunderstandings only happen when Susan is being reclusive and hasn't talked to anyone in a while.

* BoobsOfSteel: Nanase, Ellen and (by extension) Female Elliot are the best physical fighters of the main cast, and they also have the largest chests.

** One complicating factor that most of the cast don't seem to have brought up is the development of technology compared to magic, particularly weapons. [[spoiler:Pandora]] raises the reasonable point that while magic can be an exotic and scary threat, even a well-trained wizard could be taken out by a random fool with a gun. In their eyes, making magic widely available would allow them to develop better defemses against both magical and mundane threats.

* CastFullOfGay: In 2019, a Q/A confirms that the entire main cast is somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and Dan himself considers this to be the norm for humans. Just to break it down; Justin, Nanase, Catalina, and Lucy are all homosexual (or have only been shown having serious romantic interest in the same gender), Tedd and Elliot are gender-fluid and are therefore open to both genders romantically (although Tedd less so due to childhood trauma over being teased for appearing gay), Grace appears to be pansexual (although she describes it as "Tedd-sexual", she is attracted to Tedd regardless of his/her form or gender), Ellen, Rhoda, Ashley, and Diane are bisexual, and Susan is asexual (although not aromantic). One InUniverse explanation is that high magic power provided subconscious gender neutral attraction, making people who are various degrees of bi more likely to notice an interest in the same sex.

* CriticalStaffingShortage: The feds specialized in magic are short on numbers, to the point that their head has "[[https://www.egscomics.com/comic/ourf-028 one full agent, a trainee, a history teacher, and a criminal"]] going after one fugitive mage, making Arthur keep an eye on the main cast, desperate to recruit more.

* CastFullOfGay: In 2019, a Q/A confirms that the entire main cast is somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and Dan himself considers this to be the norm for humans. Just to break it down; Justin, Nanase, Catalina, and Lucy are all homosexual (or have only been shown having serious romantic interest in the same gender), Tedd and Elliot are gender-fluid and are therefore open to both genders romantically (although Tedd less so due to childhood trauma over being teased for appearing gay), Grace appears to be pansexual (although she describes it as "Tedd-sexual", she is attracted to Tedd regardless of his/her form or gender), Ellen, Rhoda, Ashley, and Diane are bisexual, and Susan is asexual (although not aromantic).

** Hints dropped at Ellen having depression and taking up drinking were later explained away because the creator didn't like the direction it would take. Then, the unopened cans are stuffed back in the refrigerator by Elliot... [[IncrediblyLamePun behind the]] RedHerring.
** The "Lord Tedd" arc will presumably pick up again some day, but it's more or less indefinitely on hold because the author realized he introduced it too early.

* ArtImitatesArt: The second panel of [[https://egscomics.com/?date=2012-02-14 this]] page contains an extra imitating Edvard Munch's ''The Scream''.