Line #25 YMMV/KevinAndKell


1	* {{Adorkable}}: Harcourt definitely has his moments. A good example is when [[https://kevinandkell.com/2014/kk1209.html he used a presentation]] to apologize for failing to compliment Coney on a dress. The gist of it is that he's not good at communicating yet, and it takes time for him to respond properly.
2	-->'''Coney:''' So...you're like an Easy-Bake Oven?\
3	'''Harcourt:''' Trust me, this isn't easy.
4	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In the RedHerring situation [[https://kevinandkell.com/2016/kk0912.html at the start of their sophomore year at Beige University]] in 2016, the accepted assumption was that Fiona initially thought that a bulge in Greta's midsection meant that she ate her boyfriend, Todd. But a minority opinion of fans was the thought that Greta got pregnant with Todd, and was carrying an egg.
5	* {{Anvilicious}}:
6	** It comes with the territority when the titular characters are in a MalignedMixedMarriage. Bill loves to beat his readers over the head with the [[AnAesop aesops]] he's trying to push. And he also makes little effort to obscure his own biases.
7	** Non-racial anvils dropped include [[https://kevinandkell.com/2019/kk0325.html slamming anti-vaxxers]] and [[https://kevinandkell.com/2019/kk0323.html protesting whaling]].
8	* ArchiveBinge[=/=]ArchivePanic: Going back to ''1995'', this is one of the longest-running webcomics with over 9,000 strips and still counting. That's 28 years of DAILY strips.... You don't need to read the full archive to understand the newer strips but you have to read them if you want to get the full story.
9	* AssPull: The "Kevin getting a recall election," storyline, starting [[http://www.kevinandkell.com/2011/kk0608.html here.]] The whole thing is built up so that all rabbits are divided on how the ears are portrayed- ears up is one side, and ears down is the other. Both sides hate each other with the same vitriol as opposing political viewpoints. Kevin has one ear up and one ear down. So Bill Holbrook has the option of either going into a storyline that delves into politics and Kevin struggling to find compromise and balance in the system... or he could have every rabbit in the world suddenly have ears like Kevin with absolutely no explanation, getting him re-elected and preserving the Status Quo. [[http://www.kevinandkell.com/2011/kk0620.html Guess which one Holbrook went with.]]
10	* BrokenAesop: Nothing overarching about the situations of Carl and Ophelia seem to have major societal issue that, in the real world, most certainly apply. The obsession of certain hunters over Carl's horn and Ophelia's pelt could be extrapolated to a situation that in the real would trend toward extinction, but in a WorldOfFunnyAnimals would veer head-on into ''genocide''. At least, in the case of Ophelia, it's implied to extend beyond her family, even if there's no sort of stigma or movement against it. In Carl's case, no other rhinoceroses--not Rachel, not even Carl's parents--seem to have the difficulty with poachers he and his daughter Savanna have personally needed to deal with, which instead points toward ''stalking''.
11	* CluelessAesop: Holbrook has long used changing species or diet as a in-universe analogue for being transgender. While it’s always been a little awkward and isn't meant to be one-to-one, it’s been explained that nobody cares about gender or sexuality that much due to species and diet classification being considered more important. Initially the only character to go through this was Bruno, whose arc played out over several years and showed him going through a massive emotional arc as well as eventually embracing surgical transition. This is not the Clueless Aesop, the fans overall thought this arc was done tastefully. Flash forward to much later example in which Ophelia unironically became "trans-turtle" simply because she wore a turtle-shell as a disguise once. She has this overnight revelation and massive lifestyle change in a week. Bill seemed completely ignorant that he’d just written a character that is an example of the transphobic stereotype of a "Transtrender." She also faces none of the discrimination or difficulties Bruno did, seemingly either ignoring or retconning it. This went a step further when she married a gopher, George Gopher, who gets disowned by his gopher family for wanting to marry her. After [[https://kevinandkell.com/2023/kk0301.html a group of turtles convinced George Gopher that he should transition to fit in]] when he married Ophelia, even transgender fans called this out for being incredibly insensitive and again, for using a transphobic stereotype (this time of transpeople "recruiting" vulnerable people.) At bare minimum, it made the allegory as Holbrook had initially presented it feel cheapened.
12	* FanNickname: Fans tend to capitalize Vin's name to differentiate them from [[OneSteveLimit Vin Vulpen]].
13	* FriendlyFandoms: It's not uncommon for K&K fans to also discuss and share ''WebComic/TwoKinds'' and ''WebComic/DocRat'' within the strip's discussion threads.
14	* GeniusBonus:
15	** In [[http://www.kevinandkell.com/2000/kk1218.html this comic]], Coney is losing marks for not sharing her meals by regurgitating them. Most people would find this funny due to the idea of the rabbit being greedy, but the thing is, rabbits are physically unable to vomit, meaning that she literally cannot share her meals by regurgitating them.
16	** Also the mole scientist named Avagadro: in chemistry, Avagadro's Number is the number of molecules in a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_%28unit%29 mole]].
17	* HilariousInHindsight: A football-themed strip [[https://kevinandkell.com/2006/kk0101.html on New Year's Day 2006]] showed even the players at a bowl game had corporate branding. Fast forward 15 years, and college football players can now benefit personally from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). This was further invoked in 2022 [[https://kevinandkell.com/2022/kk0708.html when Rudy was again able to sell his produce after the gardening season harvest.]]
18	* ItWasHisSled: The Great Bird Conspiracy, that they ran the world until they gave it up.
19	** Getting to this trope is that Lindesfarne and Danielle are former humans.
20	* MisaimedFandom: Surprisingly, the comic really does make some fans appreciate the world we live in a lot more. (Mostly because RealLife could be a hell of a lot worse.)
21	* TheScrappy:
22	** Francis to some. He was interesting as a speciesless furry infant, but when he turned human, he became insufferable. Every strip since he's become a toddler he appears in has to emphasize how ''unique'' and ''clever'' he is, when most of the time he's acting like a brat causing trouble. This culminated during the storyline where he went to summer camp. He maliciously caused trouble all the way up to the point where Carl was so badly injured he needed CPR and had to go to the hospital. Many fans vocally posted in the comments they were perfectly fine never having him in another storyline again. This even extends to in-universe: the summer camp staff had such a bellyful of him they asked him never to come back. Holbrook seems to have taken the hint and limited his appearance to a handful of strips after the summer camp storyline concluded.
23	*** Holbrook took deliberate steps to [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap remedy the situation]] with Francis by giving him more of a presence at the summer camp storyline of 2021, showing that he'd matured a little, and ending with him saving his friends from a vicious leopard by putting his own life in danger. Lampshaded by the title of the strip being [[https://kevinandkell.com/2021/kk0630.html "Francis redeemed"]] and Lindesfarne mentioning it [[https://virtual-quill.tumblr.com/post/655748373716008960/intruder-part-3 on her blog]] as well.
24	** Fiona has attracted some of this over the years, given her often jealous tendencies (she once threatened to end their relationship over the sheep character he drew in his webcomic and had a fit when he proved to be a better hunting captain than her). Granted, Rudy ''did'' cheat on her at one point, and not being the hunting team's focus would have been hard given the time she spent literally fixing the world's problems before Y2K. But though Rudy has developed over the years, there have been times where fans have been off-put by Fiona's treatment of him. Particularly during the drama around their scholarships going into Beige.
25	** Desdemona Fuscus became this especially during the lead-up to Lindesfarne and Fenton's wedding; see below in TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot.
26	* StrangledByTheRedString: Rhonda dumps Edgar, a character she had been dating exclusively for much of her history in the strip, for Quinn, a character the readers have just met, has had no build-up at all, and it's supposed to be "true love". She would then be PutOnABus for several years before returning to join Kell's business.
27	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Lindesfarne and Fenton's wedding, which was the culmination of roughly a decade of the strip's history, should have been an occasion to show off the entire diverse cast over the years and highlight the much-anticipated union of two characters who had been dating since the strip's earliest years. Instead, the entire thing was derailed to introduce and glorify Fenton's mother, Desdemona, a character than until this arc had literally never been seen outside of a silhouette. The entire plot about the wedding was hijacked to focus on the bigotry she faced as a vampire bat, with very little of the storyline having anything to with the actual main characters unless they were somehow critical to pushing Desdemona onto the readership. On top of that, the idea of vampire bats facing bigotry was also brand new to the strip, which is even more contrived given that by this point the series had run for ten years and nobody had so much as breathed about having problems with different bat species. Not only were main characters sidelined, Lindesfarne suddenly had a significant portion of her wedding guests apparently abandon the wedding just because the mother of the groom was revealed to be a vampire bat... something that you'd think would be horrifying to learn about on the eve of your own wedding, but Lindesfarne shrugs it off because showing any emotion from her would distract from how wonderful Desdemona is and how mean the world is to her.
28	** And then in the aftermath of the "Desdemona is the Greatest Character ever oh and I think Lindesfarne got married" storyline, Lindesfarne and Fenton spent a lot of time off camera in favor of... guess who?
29	*** This is just building off of a general issue in Holbrook's comic strips, where he inevitably gets bored with his current cast. Rather than naturally phase out characters he's lost interest in, he just starts inventing new characters that he then devotes all of the strip to glorifying and expects the readers will carry about the new hotness as much as he does. We should be grateful he at least never changed the title of the strip to "Kevin and Kell, starring Desdemona" or paid a cosplayer to wear a Desdemona fursuit.

Context YMMV / KevinAndKell