Line #62 Webcomic/BlasterNation


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2	[[caption-width-right:350:Actual blasters not included.]]
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4	''[[http://www.blasternation.com/ Blaster Nation]]'' was a SliceOfLife webcomic created by Leslie Ortigio[[note]]Now Brown[[/note]] and Brad Brown. The webcomic centers around seven different characters in the fictional city of Sucre Marron, each with their own hobbies:
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6	* '''Mathew Palmer''': A fan of table-top gaming, magical girls, and space marines who just returned just from serving in an Air Force Haiti relief tour. Living with his parents, he tries to find his own place in the world. He likes to narrate his own life.
7	* '''Daniel Foreman''': A hardcore gamer, Daniel is eager to please, but also easy to frustrate. He lives in an apartment with girlfriend Kimberly and roommate Rinnie. He aspires to be a video game journalist, but aspiring is all he really does. Or is it?
8	* '''Kimberly Adler''': Daniel's girlfriend who loves to read books and works at a local bookstore, much to her delight. She is blindly devoted to Daniel and torn between Asleigh and Rinnie. She wants to write a mystery novel someday when she get her ideas together. She owns a ferret named Rikki.
9	* '''Erin "Rinnie" Wilhelm''': A slacker and comic book expert, her military-trained parents are disappointed in her, prompting her to sail across the seas and stay with Kim. She likes cooking, paranormal investigation, and writing adult fan fiction. She dislikes job-finding.
10	* '''Ashleigh Hicks''': A lonely otaku who lives in a trailer with her stepmother. Ashleigh lacks social skills and spends all her time on the internet, where she is well-known in her Deviantartist circle. She is very defensive when someone insults her favorite anime. She wants to be a self-published artist, but is afraid of what other people might think of her. Has a borderline obsessive crush on a mysterious fan fiction author.
11	* '''Derrick Dominque''': An expert Beatmania expert who is clumsy and awkward. He is Hai's best friend since early childhood and met Dan and Matt sometime in high school. He is very concerened with his material goods, which stems from the fact that he comes from a moderately rich family. He dreams of playing music as he can in video games.
12	* '''Hai Wu''': Derrick's best friend. A smooth guy who is not much better than Derrick at picking up chicks and is also a bit of leech (likes borrowing money, but hates paying back). Always concerned about his hair and clothes and is fond of fighting games. He usually hogs the Dance Dance Revolution machine at the arcade and plays nothing but the butterfly song on Hard Mode.
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15	!!This webcomic provides examples of:
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17	* AmbiguouslyGay:
18	** Rinnie, the amount of times she flirts with or gropes Kim, added with not having shown any interest in any guys, wanting to buy a hooker, and having a dream where a girl is on each arm, all point to gay, but she writes and enjoys {{Yaoi}} fan fiction, and other than Kim doesn't really show interest in girls either.
19	** Ash is a lot less Ambiguous, but while she is obviously in love with Rinnie and once tried to take a peek at Kim's panties, her favorite pastime is masturbating to Rinnie's Yaoi fanfiction.
20	** Chapter 12 ends that debate [[spoiler: after Rinnie and Ash sleep together.]]
21	* AnimeHair: Rinnie has spiky red hair, though it's shown she has had many different hairstyles and colors over the years.
22	* ArtEvolution: Characters have gotten fuller and more detailed as the comic has gone on.
23	* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Matt is a constant source of this, here is just a few.
24	** Matt is constantly stated as being in the Army, despite being in the Air Force. Matt himself never says it, but he never corrects anybody either.
25	** Then there is the issue of his deployment and enlistment status. Most deployments last longer than six months and an enlistment contract is three years for active duty and six years for reserve or guard, but according to Matt he left, was trained and did his tour all in six months, despite training alone for basic and radio repair would have been around six months itself.
26	** His being home. If he was Active Duty he would have had two weeks leave after basic before being shipped to live with his unit for at least three years. If he was National Guard he would have went home after basic then reported to his unit the next day, long before deployment, Usually a soldier will need to be with their unit for about six months to deploy with them, unless they volunteer.
27	* AxCrazy: Ashleigh seems to be heading in this direction. The two times in which she was afraid some embarrassing secret was about to be discovered or revealed, her thoughts instantly turned to planning murder. Ash recognizes Rinnie as the fanfic writer she crushed on? She tries to brain her with a pipe wrench, being stopped only by copious levels of {{Slapstick}} and being too enamored by Rinnie's beauty(and all the time she spent "under the blanket" while reading her fanfics) to carry out the deed. Kim discovers an erotic drawing of Rinnie in her sketchbook? Ash is internally laying out plans on how to make her ''best friend's murder'' look like an accident, Kim's life only being spared by the pure dumb luck of her not recognizing that the drawing is supposed to be Rinnie. Spending so much of her time alone in her (very dark) room, with only her alcoholic mother and the internet to socialize with, seems to have had some very adverse effects on her psyche.
28	* ButtMonkey: Matt seems to never be able to catch a break, whether its losing his spot at Dan and Kim's or being teased by Rinnie whenever she gets a chance
29	* CantTakeCriticism: After Rinnie decides to make her first original story, many of her readers (particularly Ash) noted all the failings after three chapters and gave her reviews. Rinnie's response? She created fake accounts to boost her own ego and banned all the ones who didn't give her a positive comment.
30	* ClingyJealousGirl: Rinnie hates Ash before even meeting her because Kim refers to Ash as her "first BFF". After meeting her, Rinnie is nothing but mean. Eventually she kind of apologizes.
31	* DeusExMachina: Hai and Derrick saving Dan, Kim, and Rinnie from a pack of stray dogs. {{Lampshaded}} by Dan.
32	-->'''Kim''': Do you think we'll ever see them again?
33	-->'''Dan''': Probably, if we ever need another DeusExMachina.
34	* DrillSergeantNasty: Played straight with [[spoiler: Rinnie's father]], but somewhat subverted in that [[spoiler: he's a really loving father when his coworkers can't see him.]]
35	* FamilyBusiness: Matt's family used to run the "Palmer's Meat Market". [[spoiler: Matt chose to not take over after Logan's accident, leading to its closure.]]
36	* FemininityFailure: Ash decides to try different clothes, since Rinnie does. [[http://www.blasternation.com/comic/472-ash39s-new-look It goes as expected, to her mother's shock]].
37	* HeavySleeper: Rinnie can fall asleep instantly and is impossible to wake up.
38	* {{Hikikomori}}: Ashleigh.
39	* {{Hipster}}: Dan is a gaming Hipster, and will spend hours telling people why old games are better than new, and how the Dreamcast is the best console.
40	* {{Hypocrite}}: Rinnie derides Ashleigh's love of anime, but Kim calls her out on it by making her remember how she (Rinnie) was once an anime fan.
41	** Dan, when after spending a whole chapter stating how crappy new games are compared to old, is later seen buying ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed''.
42	* IncompatibleOrientation: Matt develops a bit of a crush on Ash and tries to go on a date with her, but he's quickly friendzoned and its obvious even before that, that Ash is in love with Rinnie.
43	* InnerMonologue: Matt likes to do it when he gets the chance.
44	* JerkassWithAHeartOfGold: Rinnie, well maybe not gold, but she isn't as heartless as she likes people to think she is. She also apoligises. in her own way, to Ash for being so mean to her on their first meeting.
45	* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Dan, who poses and sneers at just about everyone, although his “super secret” job is finally revealed to be cleaning toilets at the mall.
46	* KickTheSonOfABitch: After Rinnie tells Kim that [[spoiler:she and Ash slept together after Rinnie tried to get free artwork from her and she is planning to dump Ash, Kim got so enraged that she punched Rinnie to the other side of the room]].
47	* ManChild: A lot of the fans think Matt is quickly starting to come across as this, what with his overblown despair over Ash "friend-zoning" him and his melodramatic reaction to his parents telling him to find a job and move out. To many people, these reactions come across as childish {{Wangst}} from an overgrown kid with entitlement issues who really needs to get over himself and stop blaming the world for his own problems. However, it's made intentionally ambiguous if Matt is really as pathetic as he seems, as there are several moments in the comic where Matt is legitimately screwed over by things out of his control, even by his friends (Dan in particular is not the greatest friend in the world).
48	* MsFanservice: Both Kim and Rinnie seem to take turns in this role. Kim seems mostly oblivious to it while Rinnie seems to enjoy doing it to mess with people.
49	* {{NEET}}: Rinnie started off as this, freeloading from Kim and Dan, living in their livingroom and doing nothing other than eating snacks and write Yaoi Fanfiction. This starts to change when Rinnie has her JerkassRealization once she [[spoiler:has to ask her father for money and makes serious attempts to be a real writer and have a work so she can properly pay rent to Dan and Kim]].
50	* NoSenseOfPersonalSpace: Rinnie and Kim are pretty bad about this.
51	* OccidentalOtaku: Ash, Matt and Rinnie represent this in different scales: Ash is more of the "purist" kind, who loathes English Dubbed anime and criticizes bookstores for only having "mainstream" material. Rinnie used to be a ''Weeaboo'' in highschool, who eventually migrated to comicbooks and western animation. And Matt is in middle ground, as he likes both anime and RPG.
52	* OfficialCouple: Dan and Kim, [[spoiler: Derrick and Melissa.]]
53	* OnlySaneMan: Derrick and Melissa, most of the time. Rinnie’s father also qualifies, as does Hai’s father
54	* SecretSecretKeeper: When Kim accidentally finds an erotic fanart of Rinnie in Ash's sketchbooks, Ash was already planning her murder, until Kim asks if that's an original character. Ash is relieved (but wondering if she didn't draw Rinnie well enough), but it's later revealed that Kim already figured out her crush on Rinnie, but kept quiet for Ash's sake.
55	-->'''Dan''': Someone actually ''likes'' Rinnie?
56	* ShoutOut:
57	** The ferret Rikki is named after the titular heroic mongoose in the classic Literature/TheJungleBook short story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, written by Creator/RudyardKipling.
58	** In [[http://blasternation.com/index.php?id=416 this update]], Daniel mentions how he tried to get into the LetsPlay scene, except he wasn't particularly good at it. He laments that he became the laughingstock of [=YouTube=] when [[WebVideo/{{Retsupurae}} two guys made fun of his LP]].
59	** Curt, the sudden rival of Derrick in the fighting game arc, with his getting "salty" easily, mass of dreadlocks, and obsession with games, is a not-so-sutble CaptainErsatz of [[WebVideo/TwoBestFriendsPlay Woolie]].
60	* ShowerScene: Just one frame, with CensorSuds, [[http://www.blasternation.com/index.php?id=371 here.]]
61	* TheSlacker: Rinnie. Though, [[CharacterDevelopment she's trying to get better recently]].
62	* SpeechBubbleCensoring: Used to preserve some degree of work-safety [[http://www.blasternation.com/index.php?id=358 here.]]
63	* StalkerWithACrush: An online version, Ash has been obsessed with Rinnie's online persona, Nijisolude, for a long time and while at first was devastated to find out her hero and Rinnie were one and the same, she has since developed a crush on Rinnie and stalks her online accounts.
64	* StraightGay: Hai.
65	* {{Troll}}: Brad has trolled the fanbase multiple times on questions they have, such as when and how Matt's dad lost his arm, and most recently, [[http://www.blasternation.com/comic/414-a-mystery-to-everyone cutting off just what Dan's job is multiple times in the same strip]].

Context Webcomic / BlasterNation