''[[http://www.treadingground.com/ Treading Ground]]'' was a {{slice of life webcomic|s}} drawn by Nick Wright.

Nathaniel "Nate" Ashborne spends his dreary life working at the “Food Baron” supermarket, a task he performs with limited enthusiasm. When Nate moves into his friend's Steve Adams and Derek Wilkins' apartment, it doesn't take long before he meets the spunky girl Rose Crowley. They get off to a good start, quite good in fact. Really... very... good. It looks like this could be the turning point of Nate's crappy life, but there are two problems: Rose is known as the neighbourhood bicycle, and she's 17 years old.

The comic follows Nate and Rose, as well as their friends and work pals, as they try to make their relationship, jobs, school and life in general work out. The script and dialogue is fast and sassy, and the humour is direct and disrespectful, with some of the situations Nate encounter in the supermarket taken from the author's personal experience. Occasionally, some pages are marked NSFW, mostly due to Rose.

The comic has had a long life due to ongoing breaks in the author Nick Wright's attention; only 77 strips were between 2003 and 2006. From February 2010 onward, he finally managed a steady Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, producing the remainder of the 251-strip plotline in less than a year and a half. The webcomic concluded on Friday July 8th, 2011. He briefly started a sequel series, ''Peached'', featuring two of the supporting characters of ''Treading Ground'' going off to college in Atlanta, but put it on indefinite hiatus and shifted his focus to working as a writer and producer for WebVideo/ThatSciFiGuy (to the point where he redirected the website for said sequel comic into a website for that show).

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!!''Treading Ground'' provides examples of:

* AllMenArePerverts: Nate writes a book titled ''How to Get Laid'', consisting of only two instructions, one for men and one for women. For women, the instruction was to simply walk up to the nearest man and grind against him suggestively.
* AllWomenAreLustful: Rose, her mother and her sister all have a big sexual appetite, as well as [[spoiler:Tracy]] later on.
* ArtEvolution: Compare [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=202 this]] to [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=944 this]]
* BrandX: The “Food Baron” supermarket chain.
* CampStraight: Butch Straight: Aya almost always wears flannel shirts and listens to Music/TeganAndSara, among other stereotypical lesbian behaviours, but is totally straight. She gets MistakenForGay often enough that it annoys her, especially after going to college in ''Peached''.
* ButIWouldReallyEnjoyIt: "I'm a sexual hypocrite."
* CantHoldHisLiquor: Can't Hold Her Liquor: Aya. At one point, she gets drunk off a single O'Doul's (which has about 10% of the alcohol content of a standard American beer).
* CerebusSyndrome: A relatively mild example, but the comic started out as a lighthearted comedy about Nate and Rose's JailbaitWait and his interactions with his roommates and coworkers. Then Rose got [[AllWomenAreLustful impatient]] with the wait, and it took a turn for the dramatic.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Purvous is mentally challenged and more than a little... strange.
* GoldDigger: From Nate's book, ''How to Get Laid'', his only instruction for men regarding the matter was "become rich".
* HollywoodProvincialism: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] [[https://og.treadingground.com/comic/242/ here]].
* IdiotBall: The day after Nate dumps Rose, Aya talks him into making up with her. He comes to meet her and apologize, and Rose pulls an impromptu OperationJealousy before he can say a word. It goes over about as well as it would in real life. The light bulb goes on after Aya chews her out, but by then the damage is already done.
* IfItsYouItsOkay: Rose and Aya are both ostensibly straight, but Rose admits she thought about propositioning Aya during a dry spell.
* {{Jerkass}}: Arne, Nate's supervisor and Nate's roommate Steve.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: After the disastrous OperationJealousy, Rose starts having meaningless sex with Trevor (whom she doesn't even like), telling herself that it doesn't matter now that Nate wants nothing to do with her.
* LudicrousGibs: [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=322 Category 4 roadkill]].
* ManicPixieDreamGirl: Rose starts out hitting this trope pretty hard.
* OperationJealousy: Rose thought her best friend wanted her to do this, and went ahead with it before she could explain. It put the final nail in her relationship's coffin instead.
* RagingStiffie: [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=254 Nate gets one]], and isn't a fan of the "Up periscope" trick.
* ReallyGetsAround: ZigZagged with regards to Rose. On the one hand, she mentions that she's only had sex with about four different people in total. On the other hand, she had sex with two of those guys at the same time, in public, on the side of a freeway where anyone driving by could see them.
* RightBehindMe: [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=205 Subverted with Nate's reaction.]] [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=290 And Arne's]].
* ShoutOut: to ''Manga/AiYoriAoshi'' [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=625 here]]. Subverted in a sense, as it's merely a result of the author using his old Website/DeviantArt works for random posters rather than out of the desire to intentionally make a shout out to the work.
* SpinOff: There's a sequel focusing on Aya going to college.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: When Nate and Steve were teenagers, they decided to hell with school and that they were smart enough to make do without it. Fast forward five years later and they're both working cruddy retail jobs.
* UrbanLegendLoveLife: Despite rumors to the contrary, Rose has only had sex with three guys. Granted two of those were at the same time. And at only 17 years old, 3 partners is nothing to sneeze at.
* ThrowTheDogABone: Les regains his former position as a butcher, and [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=1509 even gets]] [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=1516 a date]] with his ex, Lilith.
* YaoiFangirl: [[http://www.treadingground.com/?p=201 Derek's unseen ex-girlfriend, as well as Nate's.]]
** And then {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Nate in the very next panel.
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