Characters / El Goonish Shive Main Characters

Main Character Sheet | Main Protagonists | Civilians | Magic Community | Non-Humans | Fourth Wall Mail Slot

In General

• Big Brother Is Watching: Pandora reveals to Sarah that Edward has been reporting every detail about her friend group to his agency. This is for a benevolent reason though since the full disclosure protects them from people who would otherwise demand a closer watch on them. Still, as Pandora warns, this does mean every ability they have that Edward knows about is in a file that those with access or the right skills can read.
• Cast Full of Gay: Pretty much all of them are Queer of one type or another. Justin and Nanase are homosexuals. Ellen identifies as a bisexual homoromantic. Susan, Ashley, and Diane are attracted to both men and women though their sexual orientations aren't quite explicit, and Susan doesn't like getting involved in the actual physical acts herself. Tedd is genderfluid, while Elliot has come to enjoy turning into a woman, suggesting his gender identity isn't quite cis-male. Sarah is primarily attracted to men but has on occasion shown an attraction to women. Grace was described as a Tedd-sexual in the early comic, but there are hints of an attraction to Sarah.
• Cast Herd: Starting from the Sister arc, there are eight main characters, however, they are split in half based on which school they went to. Elliot, Tedd, Sarah, and Susan all go to Moperville North. Grace, Nanase, Justin, and Ellen all go to Moperville South. The addition of Ashley and Diane to the main characters does not change this dynamic, as both have their own friend groups they hang out with more.
• Fire-Forged Friends: What cemented the main eight friend group as a friend group is that the eight of them worked together to take on the Goo in its second attempt to kill Tedd.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: After the establishment of the main eight, some of them hang out more with certain members of the group than others. Sarah and Ellen for example hardly ever spend time around each other, something Grace noticed by the events of the NP storyline MV5.
• Home Base: Tedd's house, aka his VIP father's house, is the default location where the main characters get together to discuss supernatural things. Tedd's dad put a lot of security into their house, so it is safer to have such discussions there than at any of the others' homes. It is also where they choose to have their parties if they decide to use magic or alien tech for fun without risking the wrong people knowing about it.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: Outside the actual romantic relationships, the main characters feel physical attraction to each other and generally consider such attraction an inconvenience, if they manage to acknowledge them to begin with:
  • A common occurrence with Elliot and Tedd is that they feel attracted to each other when one or both are female, more rarely when both are male.
  • Susan is attracted to both Justin and Elliot, and acknowledges this, but doesn't want to even consider acting on it.
  • Justin once demonstrated an attraction to Tedd when he showed up at the comic shop with a new look, which made him decide he really needs to find a boyfriend.
  • Sarah is attracted to Grace but vehemently calls herself at most a 1 on the Kinsey scale and is in denial about her attraction.
• True Companions: Starting from the Goo incident and everything else that happened since then, the main cast developed strong bonds with each other and push comes to shove, they have each others back.
• The Watson: As of New and Old Flames, because of all the incidents that they get involved that requires the intervention of The Men in Black of which Mr. Verres is a part of, Mr. Verres becomes willing to explain certain things to them on a need-to-know basis.
• Weirdness Magnet: The friend group as a whole has a particular tendency to get involve in magical or otherwise paranormal incidents. It's bad enough that when Elliot calls Edward about fighting a monster during the events of Sister 2, Edward goes Oh, No... Not Again!.

Elliot

Elliot Daniel Dunkel

"Because it sounds like one big, awkward moment."

One of the first characters introduced in the comic, Elliot started off as an everyman and foil to Tedd's devious antics. Since then he developed into a well-meaning, if somewhat inhibited, sufferer of Chronic Hero Syndrome who would do anything for his friends and loved ones. He attends Moperville North with Tedd, Susan, and Sarah. He's Tedd's best friend and Ellen's brother/father/mother.

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• All Men Are Perverts:
  • Major aversion. He was at the very beginning of the comic, but then Characterization Marched On.
    Elliot: I fail at perversion.
  • He does have a libido, it's just that his Superego is very good at thwarting it because he now has a very good idea of what it would feel like to be the object of any of his own fantasies.
• Amicable Exes: Remained on good terms with both Sarah and Nanase after their respective breakups.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Does this to Magus, asking him "If the only issue is strength, can't you just make default physical forms stronger without making them male?" His "That's just the way we do things" response is rather telling.
• Bad Liar: As both Damien and Mr. Verres noticed.
  Elliot: It's the price I pay for being one of the good guys.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Towards Ellen, despite her being his Half Identical Twin/Opposite-Sex Clone who technically has more life experience (thanks to her dream life) than he does. And there is the fact of Ellen possibly being considered being his daughter.
  • As the title of this strip puts it, Fraternal-Paternal-Maternal Instinct.
  • Actual quote from Dan Shive: "Do not threaten or otherwise endanger Ellen. Elliot will break you."
  • Elliot himself describes it in the simplest terms here.
• Birds of a Feather: With Ashley. They're both Extreme Doormats who have a lot of trouble voicing what they're actually feeling.
• Blessed with Suck: Elliot's original shapeshifting powers only allowed him to turn into a catman, which hurt. Then he developed the power to change into a girl, which he dislikes, and all of the powers he's developed since are girl or girl-related transformations as well. At least the super heroine can fly. Tedd theorizes that Elliot's magic will keep giving him girl-related transformations until he convinces himself he's satisfied with the girl forms he already has. However, this is not the only theory in play. See Hidden Depths below.
• Blood Knight: According to these two strips, he believes himself to be one. He openly admits to enjoying fighting people who attack other people, and being Elliot, he thinks that this makes him evil.
• Berserk Button:
  • Gay-bashing. He gets worked up about it to the point that Grace needs to glomp him to keep him from losing his cool.^note The blonde in the strip is Elliot, just shifted to burn off magical energy.
  • Bullies in general. Which led him to become a...
• Bully Hunter: He mostly abandoned this habit, with a few exceptions like Justin's case — though he's still ready to jump in. Goes part and parcel with his Chronic Hero syndrome (see below)
• Butt-Monkey: He gained the ability to turn into a girl, then had to start doing so several times a day or risk it happening on its own. He gained a super-powered alternate form, but it's female. He gained secret identity forms (tying in with the superhero form), and at least one of those is attracted to his gay friend (who, by the way, is attracted to male Elliot). The author is on record that he enjoys tormenting Elliot.
• Chick Magnet: Let's see:
  • Sarah: They had a relationship lasting quite a while before they broke up.
  • Nanase: Despite the fact that she's a lesbian, albeit in denial at the time, she liked Elliot for his personality. Later, she forms an Official Couple with his Opposite-Sex Clone.
  • Susan: She got attracted to Elliot through their various interactions.
  • Diane: Just watching Elliot on the reviews he does with Susan was enough to make her fall for Elliot.
    Diane: You will be mine. Oh yes. You will be mine.
  • Ashley: Like Diane, watching Elliot on the reviews he does with Susan was enough to make her fall for Elliot. Seeing him transform into a girl didn't hurt either.
    Ashley: I guess this means that Elliot guy is available. Not that I'm interested in some funny athletic minor celebrity guy who's openly sensitive in his movie reviews.
  • He has a lucid dream portraying himself as this.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Susan once pointed out that Elliot would save his own worst enemy. Elliot denies it after envisioning himself allowing Damien to fall off a cliff, then promptly protects the worst bully in the school from a supernatural creature. Justified because even though Elliot hates Tony for his bullying, Tony is still just a regular guy and not a part of the magic world the main characters are finding themselves in. It's later established that they were friends in 3rd grade, so that may have also played a part.
  • His selfless personality is slightly deconstructed in later story arcs. It's noted that this makes him ignore his own wants and not make decisions.
  • Note that the end conclusion of these tendencies getting more extreme can be seen in the form of, for sake of example, Shirou Emiya, who doesn't have wants aside from helping other people. And Elliot already has shades of his character. One can understand why people would want him to get over this trope at least to some degree.
  • When explaining to Tedd that Elliot is a very bad example of what most people would do if they had magic, Mr. Verres said "Seriously, that kid's ridiculous. I think he was born wearing a Boy Scout uniform."
• Clark Kenting: His three secret identities are also based on superhero comics; mainly mild-mannered (Superman, again), angsty goth (Symbiote-era Spider-Man), and party-girl (Iron Man).
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Has attracted the attention of several girls, without realising it. His own sister has this to say:
  Ellen: I'm betting the day Elliot actually tries to attract women will be the day that they collectively lose interest in him.
• Desperately Craves Affection: After breaking up with Sarah, he starts to have a lot of Erotic Dreams. His subconscious (in the form of Tedd) make him realize that he just wants a girlfriend who's not like a sister to him.
• The Ditherer: When he sees someone in danger he's swift and resolute, and if given a specific task he works diligently on it until he's seen it through to the end... but he's terrible with making decisions or taking initiative. If left to his own devices, he usually puts decisions off for so long that he forgets he was supposed to make them in the first place.
• Embarrassing Superpower: Almost all his spells involve turning into a girl in some fashion.
• Erotic Dream: After a long time, he gets a dream of him and Susan and started to freak out. Ellen calms him down, telling him to see if it was just "teenage hormones" or it really meant something. Elliot goes for the hormones...at first. After he and Sarah break up, he ends up having more dreams until he meets Ashley.
• Everyone Can See It: With Susan. Not only do each of the main characters have at least some inkling of it, but the in-universe fandom for their movie review show ships them.
• Famed In-Story:
  • His Cheerleadra identity is well-known throughout Moperville and beyond, even if very few people realize he's Cheerleadra.
  • Revealed to be well-known at his school, due in no small part to his Chronic Hero Syndrome and the stuff he gets up to with Tedd. Wall running probably doesn't help him keep a low profile. It's implied he does this kind of thing a lot without noticing. Also that thing with the griffin asking for directions.
  • Much more mundanely, he has a review show with Susan, which is how a lot of people know him.
• First Law of Gender Bending: Leads to Power Incontinence, Involuntary Shape Shifting, Voluntary Shape Shifting, you name it.
  • Second Law of Gender-Bending: Played with. Tedd theorizes Elliot's magic will continue to provide him with girly transformations until it finds one that satisfies him, putting Elliot in the awkward position of having to accept some aspect of femininity in order to escape the rest.
  • Third Law of Gender-Bending: Elliot's female transformations usually affect his clothes as well, apparently because he just can't help visualizing girls in "girly" clothing.
• Flying Brick: As "Cheerleadra", he gains a set of standard superhero abilities.
• Gender Bender: Almost all of his spells involve him turning into a woman.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Routinely shown in the way of naivete, such as when he doesn't understand either the idea that a person would trick a superhero into revealing themselves by preying on their heroic idealism, or that a cop would go into law enforcement for any reason other than to help people.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: When in his mild-mannered girl form, he finds himself suddenly unable to use crude swearwords. Although he can still swear if he makes a conscious effort.
• Grand Theft Me: Magus takes over his body which turns his hair white.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Elliot is more willing than anybody in the cast to defend others (see Chronic Hero Syndrome), but doesn't actually notice this himself. Instead, he worries that he does the right things for the wrong reasons. Perhaps the most noticeable when Ellen (who has only a day to split off from Elliot) is surprised at everything he's willing to do for her.
• Hidden Depths:
  • It is implied that Elliot's "wooden reserve" is due to his fear of losing control of an extremely violent temper.
  • The actual plan was for Elliot to have a Superpowered Evil Side that would emerge if he did go all-out. However, Word of God has said this has been dropped.
  • A little introspection reveals a lot.
  • Elliot's depths have even been known to surprise Ellen on occasion. Depths can't get much more hidden than that.
  • Also worth mentioning: Ellen (his opposite-gender clone with his memories) has never suffered from gender dysphoria.
• Hot-Blooded: though he ruthlessly suppresses it, resulting in his notorious "wooden reserve", because he considers it a character flaw
  Elliot: Have I ignored non-violent solutions because I wanted a fight?
• Human Shifter: He can transform into almost any person he can imagine, along with his clothes. It only works to become a girl, though.
• Incompatible Orientation: With Justin. Possibly subverted with Elliot's recentrevelations concerning both gender identity and sexuality.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: Thanks to Elliot's improper Awakening, he suffered from magic buildup. If he didn't use magic frequently, the buildup would force him to turn into a girl at inopportune times. He gets past it eventually.
• Kamehame Hadoken: True to the Anime and Fighting Game roots, his first magical power is "Tamashii Gekido" ("Soul Fury") — a short-range force blast hurling the opponent away. Accompanying it by screaming may or may not be necessary, but the gesture is, as Elliot discovered while bound.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: As a result of Anime-Style Martial Arts training, Elliot can use magic in conjunction with martial arts in combat.
• Last Het Romance: He was the last of a long "Nanase's boyfriends list".
• Like Brother and Sister: Elliot, while describing to Tedd how he feels about Sarah when he is questioning his relationship with her, realised that this was the case with Sarah, paralyzing him with shock.
• Line-of-Sight Name: His "party girl" form gets the name Heidi because it was the closest thing Melissa could think of to "hide".
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Averted, except for one mirror scene early on. Tedd even theorizes that Elliot's failure to "embrace" any of his girl forms is why his magic keeps giving him new ones trying to find one he will accept.
• Mistaken for Gay: After breaking up with two girlfriends (not at the same time) and remaining on friendly terms with them — particularly after his breakup with Sarah is mentioned on his web series — rumors start flying. Those rumours had their credibility diminished here.
• Most Common Superpower: Elliot's female forms tend to be well-endowed because his default female form was designed by Tedd, and others differ only as much as he concentrates on the differences.
  Elliot: What does 'exorbitant breadth' mean and what does it have to do with my chest?
• Motor Mouth: He gains one in his party girl form.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: He and Sarah, before they broke-up and before Sarah gained magical powers of her own. Happens again when he starts dating Ashley, although ironically, like Sarah, Ashley eventually stumbles into becoming magical herself.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Elliot has a talent for sensing things, capable of sensing when the Goo found steroids as early as the beginning of the story.
• Nice Guy: A few Early-Installment Weirdness moments aside, Elliot is kind, generous and accepting to a fault.
• On the Rebound: What his relationship with Ashley seems to boil down to. He starts dating her very shortly after his break-up with Sarah, claims after only two dates to love her even though he doesn't know her all that well, and his subconscious pointed out to him before that what he wants is just to date someone.
• Painful Transformation: He generally avoids using his catman form since transforming into it hurts like hell. He does get a pain-free version of the spell sometime off-panel, though.
• Pink Means Feminine: Judging by his choice of pajamas, he's finally gotten used to sleeping in his female form.
• Power Incontinence: For a long time after his Awakening, Elliot had to shape-shift several times a day to keep his powers in check.
• Secret Identity: In addition to Elliot not liking the idea of everyone knowing he is "Cheerleadra", the spell turning him into a stock Superheroine includes for this purpose three other (and also cliché) forms that provide an efficient disguise not dependent on his acting ability. He has a mild-mannered Clark Kent pastiche, a gloomy Goth girl, and a party animal socialite.
• Seen It All: Sort of. Most definitely. And it never occurred to him that people might find him interesting because of it.
• Ship Tease: With Susan. Their friendship started to develop after he got hired in her job and started to spend more time together reviewing movies.
• Shout-Out: to the Superman mythos.
• Super Gender-Bender: His alter ego Cheerleadra, a Flying Brick stock superheroine and one of the most powerful spells in the comic.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: He goes to a dojo which teaches a martial Arts style based on anime.
• Superpowered Evil Side:
  • The comic initially planned for Elliot to be able to empower himself via "inner demons", but this was retconned due to being cliche and not fitting into the story very well.
  • Elliot eventually figures out that he can boost his "Cheerleadra" superhero form by "going villain". As in, giving up self-restraint, which is also the difference between normal Elliot being a hero or just a bigger bully. The results are an Evil Costume Switch with Red and Black and Evil All Over and nearly 2 times the stats of his base Cheerleadra form.
• Unfortunate Name: Not by default, but his superhero form, "Cheerleadra", was unfortunately named by the internet in-universe.
• Verbal Tic: "Za?", generally said when he is nonplussed.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Thanks to a side effect of the Dewitchery Diamond, he can turn into a girl or a catman at will. The shapeshifting tends to be pretty imperfect since he has to imagine all the details, but once he's taken a form he can return to it without incident at any time. He eventually gets other forms too, most notably Cheerleadra.

Tedd

Tedd Drew Verres

^{Click here to see their post-Squirrel Prophet arc look.}

"Those gaming peripherals were for SCIENCE!"

One of the first characters introduced in the comic, Tedd is a self-avowed pervert and mad scientist. Despite being one of the least magically capable characters in the main cast, their extensive research on the subject makes them the resident expert on the finer workings of magic. Originally written as a sex maniac, their relationship with Grace and exploring their gender identity have caused them to mellow out. They attend Moperville North with Elliot, Susan, and Sarah.

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• Accidental Pervert: Has seen Sarah naked. Multiple times.
• Achievements in Ignorance: While their enchantment glove didn't actually let anyone but a Seer create wands, it did let Tedd precisely program spell effects on a computer.
• A-Cup Angst: They're left feeling a little inadequate with their default female form after meeting Lavender and learning that her Impossible Hourglass Figure is all natural. The next page shows them hanging out in a much curvier form than usual.
• Anti-Magic: As part of their Seer powerset, they have extremely high spell resistance and an innate ability to disenchant themself. Their spell resistance is so high, they subconsciously caused a wand that was supposed to measure their magic potential to give a false negative, as a baby.
• Asian and Nerdy: Downplayed; they're definitely a nerd, but a lot of that seems to come from their non-Asian dad's side of the family.
• Aura Vision: They can see magic if they concentrate hard enough. Unlike Luke's abilities, they can figure out more than just someone's magic potential, but that person has to be using their power at the time. They can figure out how the magic works, but they can't use it themself like a wizard. It's so effective, that it even works on itself. It is later revealed that this is part of their status as a Seer. They can see how spells work and then apply that to wands, allowing other people to cast those same spells.
• Badass Longcoat: They have their own labcoat that they use to count as whether or not something is "Labcoat Worthy"
• Blind Without 'Em: Tedd tries to use this as an explanation for why they wore glasses. The truth is that they made them feel more masculine, along with having built-in night vision, x-ray, zoom, and video recording capabilities.
  • While this is averted when they get actual glasses, as they're just slightly nearsighted, avoiding this is part of why they ultimately decide not to try and use magic to correct their vision, they have a hypothesis that doing this too often over the long-term could result in their eyesight being worse when not enchanted.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Huge pervert. Repaired the TF Gun with little help and has subsequently been examining the fields of magic with a science twist.
• But Not Too Foreign: Tedd is half Japanese, half white (at least as far as we know).
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: Inverted. By the Sisters 2 arc, Tedd finds he can't act perverted towards anyone except Grace.
• Chekhov's Gag: In one of the earlier strips, Tedd yells "Aaaa! My eyes! My beautiful eyes!", but we later discover that they really do have beautiful eyes.
• Chivalrous Pervert:
  • So much. As acknowledged even by Susan, they're generally a nice guy, but...
    Elliot: Whether or not Tedd takes interest in something is a good way to determine whether or not it should be censored.
  • As you can see from "A Disturbing Look into the Mind of Tedd", thry're secure in the knowledge that their girlfriend isn't against it. She even catalogued their fetishes (and access to the TF gun obviously allows her to personally implement a considerable part of this):
    Grace: ...and couples switching bodies is #37 on your list of weird things you like.
• Clock of Power: He uses toy watches to "program" a single transformation spell for a human wearer to use, i.e. one to lengthen hair, one to become a humanoid cat person. They effectively work like highly-specific wands, supposedly drawing from the wearer's energy. However, it is later revealed the watches only work in Moperville due to the town's ambient magic, and that Tedd was only able to do this because they are a seer with the ability to create wands.
• Closest Thing We Got: Arthur offers him a lab and funding to help research and develop magic in order to make it safer for people to use. Arthur admits he doesn't really want to use Tedd, but he needs a scientist who is a seer, and their only other choice is a foreign child.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: They have their moments.
• Congruent Memory: This is why they claim they're better at cooking while female. Tedd only cooks for themself when their dad is out of the house, and they're usually a girl when their dad isn't around.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Seen in this colored panel. Lampshaded in the commentaries.
• Doing in the Scientist: Zigzagged Trope; Tedd's technology has been changed from their own homebrew pseudo-science, to being from aliens, to running on magic, to running on energy that's essentially magic but still studied like a science. This has resulted in Tedd's Teen Genius status disappearing after the early comic, only to return in full force much later.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: For a long time, they were very self-conscious of their girly face, not to mention their (apparently) androgynous voice. It's to the point where their friends sometimes can't tell whether they're a girl or not. They also had long hair originally because, at least according to them, people would blame the hair for their girliness and assume they'd look more manly without it.
  Tedd: Either I'm a narcissist, or I'm just that girly.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: They consider "Drew" to be one. As Dan points, out, Middle Names are Always Fun!
• Empowered Badass Normal: While they're superficially magically impaired, Tedd's slowly discovering that they have very abnormal magical abilities after all. And, using their Magitek gauntlet, they can power themself up into a Super Mode.
• Evil Me Scares Me: For all that Lord Tedd hasn't done anything in a while, the shadow he casts looms large over Tedd as he considers what kind of person he could become. Tedd thinks that Lord Tedd is who he is without friends or restraints.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Tedd cut their hair and changed its color to pink. They affirm it's a way to own and embrace their own girliness (meaning that they no longer are ashamed of their androgyny) but also because they're rebelling at their dad's negation of exposing magic to public eye.
• Eyes Out of Sight: The character is introduced with Opaque Lenses that hide their eyes. When their eyes are revealed, they explain that they doesn't actually need glasses, they just used them to hide their girly eyes from bullies.
• Famed In-Story:
  • The magical community, at least, is surprisingly aware of Tedd. Jerry could identify them just from Susan's brief description, and the mention of them was enough to make Raven freak out and rethink his entire plan to capture the boar. They claim it's only because he's the son of Big Good Mr. Verres, though this doesn't come across as completely convincing. It's implied strongly it's because of their mother's status, not their father's. Jerry noticeably pauses before claiming Mr. Verres as the reason. Their dad also is very clearly hiding any info about their mother from him, even demanding Nanase not tell Tedd the reason Not-Tengu attacked her was because she's Noriko's niece, saying to claim it was because she's related to him instead.
  • It turns out that they're also well known among the Uryuoms on Earth, in part because of their development of clone forms that they could use, and more recently because of the Uryuoms regaining access to magic due to the aftereffects of Tedd's talk with the Will of Magic, albeit unintentionally on Tedd's part. It should be noted that Tedd currently has no idea about this, due to Edward hiding it out of concern about how Tedd would react (the Uryuoms only know about it due to an Immortal revealing it to them), but Tedd will find out inevitably due to Edward and Lavender's upcoming wedding, which will have a lot of Uryuom guests attending.
• First Law of Gender Bending: Played with. Thanks to their magic mark, Tedd can now have both male and female default forms. Only they and Grace notice the difference. Other enchantments affect them relative to their current default form, but can change their default form if they really want them too.
• Freakiness Shame: They're upset by their father's reactions to their constant gender bending.
• Gender Bender:
  • Likes to become a woman for certain tasks, like cooking or showering. Literally all the gender bending in the series that doesn't involve Dr. Germahn's office or the Uryuom is ultimately their fault; according to Word of God, he's the only person (other than villains) Ellen will zap without permission.
  • At times it's hinted that Tedd may be a full-blown (albeit self-closeted) trans person. Eventually, Grace brings up that Tedd might be gender fluid (confirmed by Word of God in the commentary the following day). They didn't know that transness (or any gender identities outside of cisgender) even existed, due to never hearing it properly discussed outside of references to their TF gun, and assumed that their own feelings were the result of the magic influence in their life.
  • Due to Pandora's involvement, Tedd can now alter the gender of their default form based on which one they wish to be most at any point in time. The more they want to be one gender, the easier it is to become it.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Their mom leaving when they were a kid had this effect on them, to the point that Nanase thought Tedd was mute for a time.
  • They also don't take finding out that magic is a Sentient Cosmic Force that wants to keep The Masquerade up and running very well, to Voltaire's delight.
• Hidden Depths: During Grace's birthday party, they are revealed to have a pretty decent singing voice when genderbent, due to practicing in the shower.
• I Am Who?: Turns out Lord Tedd is enough of a threat in his own universe that he conquered the planet. It's been heavily implied that Tedd could go the same way. This seems to be because Tedd combines Anti-Magic abilities with unique Magitek technology.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Grace as a male Tedd seems to be the only guy female Tedd will allow themself to be attracted to. This was frequently accompanied with the phrase "Either he's a narcissist, or he's just that girly." Though there have been hints that, meanwhile, they more comfortable around male Grace, and also that Tedd in their female form might be subtly attracted to Elliot.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Due to a mutation, Tedd can't gain any magical abilities. They're left somewhat jealous of their friends, especially Nanase. In part, this is why they designed their Magitek items. Then it turns out that Tedd does have magic, but just a very different kind.
• In Spite of a Nail: There is always a Tedd in every universe. Given that at least two Tedds have independently built Magitek gauntlets, this may not be a good thing.
• It's All My Fault: Blames themself for their parent's divorce. Raven says it's not their fault though.
• LGBT Awakening: Tedd didn't know being genderfluid was a thing until Grace taught them about it.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Tedd does generate basic levels of magical energy, like most living things. Their gauntlet siphons small amounts of this off at a time, which is useless to Tedd normally since they can't use magic. But when it gives all the energy siphoned back in one burst...
  • They can also get magic marks, since it technically doesn't count as their own spell and he doesn't need as much magic energy due to the overload in ambient energy.
• Magitek: The prime source of it in comic. The TF Gun runs on it, as does their gauntlet.
• Mad Scientist:
  • They began with mixing human and Uryuom technologies, but now conducts their own research on their possible Magitek applications.
    Tedd: How did I accidentally turn myself into a girl? I was fixing a toaster.
  • As they've gone on, they've moved away from transformations mostly and is instead investigating magic in general.
• Missing Mom: Exactly the hows and whys of Tedd's mother is one of the biggest ongoing mysteries of the strip, although it's been hinted that Tedd believes she left because of them.
  Tedd: Nobody is leaving for Europe and then never visiting because it's too expensive even at Christmas.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Tedd's parents are Noriko Kitsune and Edward Verres, two powerful wizards. A child of two wizards is guaranteed to be another wizard, but Tedd registered as completely magically inept. "It just doesn't make any sense". With time, the problem became worse as their circle of friends includes more of powerful folk and they meet more powerful troubles. After an object lesson on why they could need power, the quest for an alternative solution is well underway now. It turns out to be a subversion. The magic-detecting device they used gave a false negative because Tedd is a Seer with high magic resistances and resisted the device.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: Despite being one of the least magically capable characters in the main cast, their extensive research on the subject makes them the resident expert on the finer workings of magic. Subverted later on with the reveal that Tedd is in fact magically-gifted and specifically has gifts to make it easier to understand magic.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Via Rule of Funny, Tedd has the ability to sense whenever girls he knows have moments of sexy awesomeness or nearly have that kind of moment.
• Nerds Are Pervs: Tedd Verres is a bespectacled Asian and Nerdy Mad Scientist who has a huge transformation kink (helped by their working Transformation Ray) and proudly calls themself a pervert. But Character Development through their love interest Grace eventually makes them only pervy towards her and no one else (which she is perfectly okay with).
• Nice Guy: In spite of their massive perverted tendencies, Tedd is mostly pretty friendly.
• Noodle Incident:
  • It's implied in pre-Cerebus Retcon strips that they've done weird stuff to Elliot over the years, to the point that Elliot learned a self-hypnotic suggestion so he wouldn't Freak Out whenever he went to Tedd's house.
  • Sarah and Tedd have apparently accidentally seen each other in their birthday suits. On multiple occasions.
• Official Couple: With Grace.
• Patchwork Kids: Their father has blue hair, and their mother's niece Nanase has red hair, so Tedd's purple hair is genetic.
• Phrase Catcher: Whenever they get mistaken for a girl when presenting as male, someone will almost always comment that they are "just that girly."
• Pretty Boy: Much to their dismay. Doubles as Bishoujo due to their constant gender bending.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Wore them to look more masculine. Ironically, when they actually get prescription glasses, they're first shown wearing them while female.
• Running Gagged: In comparison to some later characters like Noah, Tedd really just isn't that androgynous and the old gag has been retired. Then brought back with a redesign. Then killed when Tedd is officially declared Gender Fluid.
• Seers: Voltaire describes them as a Seer, and is apparently important enough as one that Voltaire's plan to kill Elliot was simply to traumatize him with the loss of their best friend.
• Shrinking Violet: They barely spoke when they were younger. That changed when they received the TF Gun and started experimenting with their gender, which gave them a lot more confidence.
• The Smart Guy: Is knowledgeable in science and magic to the point of being able to create magic watches that can cast spells for the user.
• Start of Darkness: Tedd may be skirting The Dark Side pretty close. They had a dream with himself as Lord Tedd duking it out with some nebulous monstrosity, and now they built a gauntlet just like Lord Tedd's. This comes at the end of an arc called 'One Way Road', after Tedd has declared that he's going to balance science and friendships and demonstrated rather militant devotion to this, especially in narration.
• Stepford Smiler: In a cast of a lot of people who've undergone tragic pasts, Tedd is the most upbeat and heavily suggested to be the most miserable, at least before meeting Uryuoms.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Tedd with shorter hair looks very similar to short-haired Nanase.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Grace seems to think that the reason Tony picks on Tedd is because he's secretly attracted to them, which seems to be confirmed when Tony sees Tedd (really Grace in Tedd's form) without their glasses and freaks out.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Him being a Seer is due to having the right ancestors in his family tree.
• The Tease: When Elliot is asking Tedd why they want to be seen as sexy at Grace's birthday party, to which they explain that others treat you differently when they want to be with you. Elliot translates that to Tedd being a tease, to which their only response is "Yes!!!"
• Third Law of Gender-Bending: Discussed and averted. Tedd claims that they're a better cook when female. They justify this in this strip, explaining that they're just used to cooking as a girl rather than this being some exclusive female trait.
• To Unmasque the World: One of their big goals is to safely bring magic to everyone. Finding out that magic itself is opposing him hits him hard. That said a few pages later He manages to convince magic that due to internet and humanity's large population, everyone's going to eventually find out in the next couple years even if it changes how it works, that it's pointless to hide. This has a side effect though of reactivating various old magical systems.
• Trans Tribulations:
  • Comparatively downplayed as they haven't encountered outright hostility. That said, while they're comfortable in their genderfluidity around their friends, he held off on telling their father because of his vague disapproval to Tedd's previous genderswapping.
  • When Diane comes to visit, Tedd (in female form) is worried about what she might think. They even think about swapping to male form before Diane arrives and the doorbell cuts off their train of thought.
  Tedd: Diane is just one girl I've never met who's going to be in my home and might judge me for being who I am!
  Grace: That's still scary, isn't it.
  Tedd: Like a dragon with a chainsaw.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Their alternate version in Ellen's universe, at least.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Susan. Until the school uniform arc, where Tedd and Susan became normal friends in a touching scene. Not that it prevented other "sissy slap fights" later.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: This is a possible result of dynamic morphs, which has happened many times to them.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Taking off their glasses usually elicited this reaction from the people nearby.
• Workaholic: Tedd sometimes gets obsessed with his experiments to the point of neglecting everything else. However, his friends and especially girlfriend make sure he doesn't overwork himself and do other things like relaxing.

Sarah

Sarah Brown

"I react to paranormal stuff in one of two ways: curiosity or sass. You hurt my eyes. You get sass."

Sarah was the third character introduced in the comic, a childhood friend of Elliot and by proxy Tedd, as well as Susan's best friend. She's sweet and Endearingly Dorky, but also can be more than a little mischievous. Sarah is the most "normal" one of the group without the flashy magical talents of her friends, something she's quietly jealous about. She attends Moperville North with Susan, Tedd, and Elliot.

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• Accidental Pervert: Has seen Tedd naked. Multiple times.
• A-Cup Angst: Sarah's about average by any objective criterion, but her big sister Carol and then associating with people who have the Most Common Superpower as a literal superpower apparently makes her feel a bit inadequate sometimes.
• Ambiguously Bi: There have been a few allusions and comments that point toward Sarah not being fully straight.
  • In "Squirrel Prophet," she imagines an aspect of herself as a sexy vampire intent on "seducing" her into building a vampire-themed deck for a Collectible Card Game tournament. Vampire Sarah even lampshades the double meaning of "seducing":
    Vampire Sarah: After all the time you've spent as a bisexual boy, you ain't exactly "straight" anymore, either.
    Sarah: Not that thought again.
  • In the NP arc "MV5," Sarah, reflecting on Grace's complete lack of body shame, goes moony-eyed and thinks, "She's amazing." When Ellen interrupts her train of thought, Sarah blurts out, "Baseball!", the same topic Nanase and Ellen had once claimed to each other they'd been thinking of while actually fantasizing about Grace.
  • The arc in general is full of her finding Ellen and Grace distractingly sexy for various reasons, enough that she actually pauses to assess her feelings. And comes out in denial, despite her consistently finding Grace very attractive. The Imagine Spot she has of Grace stripping naked in her form - complete with a more accentuated art style and seductive expression - speaks volumes.
  • Her counterpart from the "Grace-a-Monsters" NP story is in a relationship with that world's Diane.
  • A Q&A comic confirms that she is bisexual, preferring men, though it is a bit more complicated than that apparently.
• A Day in the Limelight: She gets a lot more focus in later arcs, and developed her own personal arc about being jealous of her friends with magic.
• Ascended Fangirl: She's apparently a fan of Harry Dresden, and picked up his snarky attitude to the supernatural nonsense she gets involved in. And eventually is given a magic mark.
• Badass Normal: Only normal person in the group, pretty much. Does surprisingly well.
• Blessed with Suck: Kind of. Pandora gave her a magic mark for a subtle but powerful ability, and pointed out that it's the kind of magic people kill over because of the secrets it can reveal. And THEN she goes on about how she'll need to use it a lot if she wants a chance of ever awakening, and that she has to keep it secret from Mr Verres.
• Can't Catch Up: To the magical cast or her very successful sister. Now that she has a Pandora-given mark and magical spell that lets her freeze time in a perfect simulation of her surroundings for information gathering, she's on her way there!
• Coming-Out Story: The NP arc "MV5" is this for Sarah. Although there have been hints in previous storylines that she's less than completely straight (see under Ambiguously Bi), this one sees her develop a strong attraction to both Grace and Ellen.
• Covert Pervert: She is almost as bad as Tedd himself on occasion.
  • Look at where Sarah imagines staring here.
• Deadpan Snarker: More so in the early days, but took a back seat to Susan when she showed up, though now she often serves as a foil for Susan.
  • She has reached Dresden Level Snark.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: She hit Jerry for attacking Susan; Dan admits it was needless, but still...
  • Did You Just Have Tea With Cthulhu/Pals with Jesus: After the events of Question Mark, she's on friendly terms with Pandora... although she doesn't know who she's actually dealing with. Technically closer to 'Did You Just Impress Cthulhu With Your Sheer Snark And Convince Cthulhu To Tutor You'.
• Empowered Badass Normal: She ends up with a Magic Mark that allows her to create a perfect simulation in her mind of the world around her for several miles. In this simulation she can switch between bodies freeze time and really do anything she wants, if she does nothing it becomes an OP secret gathering power.
• Go Through Me: Tried to defend a helpless Elliot from Hedge, but was smart enough to go for help when Hedge gave her the opportunity.
• Green-Eyed Monster: For a while, her begrudging Elliot's and Nanase's magic gets really bad — to the point where she imagines magic backlashing on Nanase (in a harmless but unflattering manner), accuses Elliot of being a showy jerk even though he has to use his magic at times so it doesn't get out of hand, and all but forbids him to use one particular magic form because it displeases her personally. She realizes this about herself though and tries her best to not actually show that envy.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Blonde, and she's willing to help whenever she can, deeply loyal to her friends, and empathetic enough to offer even an unstable, potentially dangerous Immortal comfort and encouragement.
• Hypocrite: She wants to break up with Elliot, but is upset when he decides to breaks up with her first.
• I Just Want to Be Special:
  • Envies the magical cast, especially Elliot for both his magical powers and his Most Common Superpower when he's in female form.
  • Gets to the point that she's willing to be Tedd's lab assistant in effort to gain said powers.
  • Later after finding out about Magic Marks she adds checking herself for one to her morning routine, and has a major Squee moment when she realizes that one has appeared.
• Jumped at the Call: She spent weeks checking herself every morning for a magic mark, and when she finally got one she immediately did everything she could to figure out what it did.
• Morality Pet: After a strange start, it's implied that she's becoming one to Pandora.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: She and Elliot, before they broke-up and before Sarah gained magical powers of her own.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Sometime before the comic started, Tedd turned Sarah into a Cat Girl as a joke... and couldn't turn her back, forcing her to miss school until the transformation naturally wore off. Despite being a large part of Sarah's initial animosity towards Tedd, that event has never been shown on panel.
  • Sarah and Tedd have apparently accidentally seen each other in their birthday suits. On multiple occasions.
• Not a Morning Person: Fond of sleeping late on weekends and occasionally shown to grouse and mutter about getting up early.
• Odd Friendship: With Pandora. One is about as average and ordinary a person as you can get whose main weapon is sass. The other is a powerful immortal who's lived countless centuries and was for a long time one of the series' primary villains. Yet in a short time the two became very close with Sarah being devastated when she heard about Pandora's reset and wanting to help Sarah awaken being one of Pandora's motivations to try and retain as much of herself as possible.
• Power Tattoo: One shows up on her back and is discovered during her routine morning check for magic marks, and it's in the shape of a "?"
• The Roleplayer: During the Magickal Cards tournament, Sarah is more interested in creating a narrative with her deck than just using the most powerful cards (although when she gets a really powerful card, she's torn until she comes up with a narrative that lets her use it). She goes on to play Sam, who shares her attitude enough to use it against her.
• Shipper on Deck: At times teams up with Grace to "play cupid" with other characters, notably setting up Ellen with Nanase and Justin with Luke.
• Sibling Rivalry: Sarah is very jealous of her big sister Carol; it appears to be a one-way rivalry based on what we've been shown so far.
• Squee: Does this when she finds out that Elliot's a superhero.
• Straight Man: Was this early in the comic but as more characters have gained development it becomes less prominent.
• Straw Feminist: See Deadpan Snarker
• Superpowerful Genetics: She has a bloodline affinity that is difficult to detect, but allows her to create a mental simulation.
• The Team Normal: The only member of the main cast without any sort of magical ability. It's a considerable source of angst for her, and only get worse as time goes on. This trope is finally (and spectacularly, complete with a Squee that can be heard from space) averted at the end of the Pandora's Box arc, when she gains a magic mark courtesy of Pandora.
• Threesome Subtext: With Tedd and Grace.
• Tsundere: In the beginning of the comic, she acted rather shrill. But she soon softened into the rather normal person she is now.
• Unfazed Everyman: She only felt uneasy about transforming herself, and that was mostly due to an earlier bad experience. How unfazed? This unfazed.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: This is a possible result of dynamic morphs, which has happened many times to her.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: At first glance her power mark is this. She can create a perfectly accurate simulation of her surroundings for several miles, but only in her head. All in all there doesn't seem to be any practical use other than having your very own sim world where you can make anything happen.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: But if you don't change anything, the perfectly accurate recreation can become very handy when you wish to gain information. If someone had a secret file in their house, you could go there in the simulation and read the file with no one being the wiser because you never went anywhere. It's also hinted that you can simulate people's personalities and reactions, get a sense of their powers, and similar. Then there's the fact that it speeds up her perception by a good bit, which if nothing else gives her more time to think. There is also the added bonus that if Sarah uses the power mark once or twice a day, the chances of eventually awakening are good... Oh, and 'Box' has promised to help Sarah awaken if constant use of the mark doesn't do the trick.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Starts to show hints of such tendencies in later comics. She's not even above shipping Elliot and Justin.

Grace

Grace T. Sciuridae

"This is one of those things I'm apathetic about that everyone else finds creepy, isn't it?"

Grace is a part-human, part-alien, part-squirrel shapeshifter who lives with Tedd and his father. Entire story arcs have been dedicated to her Dark and Troubled Past. Despite her history (and possibly being the most powerful character in the main cast), she maintains a positive, bubbly attitude and a strong belief in pacifism. She attends Moperville South with Ellen, Nanase, and Justin.

---

• Action Girl: Hell. Freaking. Yes. Just because Grace is a big ball of Moe in no way stops her from kicking ass when she gets going.
• Ambiguously Brown: Grace's gene-mother was unambiguously African-American, but Grace's features are rather more mixed (particularly her long straight hair), probably because of the admixture of other genes (including those not even of this world). Word of God is that he doesn't have any plans to clarify further and intends to keep it ambiguous.
  Nanase: What... ethnicity is Grace, exactly?
  Tedd: Mixed. Very, very mixed.
• Anti-Regeneration: Her claws in Omega form have a venom that counteracts Healing Factors.
• Badass Adorable: Grace is a cheerful girl whose cute in all her main forms, and she's so powerful that Shive has to jump though narrative hoops to prevent her from having a Story-Breaker Power.
• The Berserker: When well and truly pissed off, she defaults to her Super-Soldier conditioning and morphs into this, ferociously and relentlessly attacking whatever's causing her stress until it's completely obliterated. The climax of Painted Black is essentially Grace entering a literally Unstoppable Rage against Damien after the latter threatens her friends one too many times.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • She doesn't like to fight, but if her friends are threatened, you're dead meat. Her vehemence on this subject is enough to worry three uber-powerful anime-style martial artists.
  • Her zombie survival strategy is simply "give me a claymore and stand back as I kill things."
• Big Eater: Fueling her superhero-caliber powers requires lots of calories, apparently.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: Grace's antennae give her enhanced awareness of her surroundings, letting her "feel" things without seeing them. It mostly helps with her shapeshifting, but can cause Sensory Overload in a crowd.
• Break the Cutie: Being confronted with her past throughout the Painted Black arc was not kind to her emotional state. She's recovering gradually, but is visibly shown to still be struggling with residual issues long afterwards.
• Breast Expansion: As a shapeshifter, altering her chest size is no big deal, and she discusses with Greg whether it would be a good idea to just go completely flat during fights. Greg is too uncomfortable with the conversation to give her an answer, and next time she's fighting, her chest is still at its normal size. She later admits she alters her bust just to mess with the boys at the comics shop.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Is very ditzy and eccentric and has little idea of proper social norms, however, she is very smart and capable of stuff like programming the TF Gun.
• Cain and Abel: Defining her physical relationship with Damien is... complicated, but their dynamic closely resembles that of an older brother and younger sister, making him the Cain to her Abel. Ironically, Grace was initially created to kill Damien.
• Cannot Convey Sarcasm: The combination of her naivety, bubbliness, and Ditzy Genius moments sometimes makes it hard for people to tell whether she's being sarcastic or genuinely suggesting something.
• Cast from Stamina: Early on, tapping into her powers exhausted Grace quickly to the point of falling unconscious when she overworked herself. Training under Greg's tutelage has greatly improved her stamina, but she still struggles to match the endurance of fighters with more training (like Ellen).
• Chivalrous Pervert: Of a sort. Grace is perfectly capable about frankly discussing aspects of shapeshifting that make even Tedd uncomfortable.
• Collector of Forms: Grace gains new forms that she can access and even mix-and-match together anytime she's transformed by an outside force. Thanks to the TF Gun, she has enough varied human forms that she can alter her body in pretty much any way she wants and could make a decent facsimile of anyone's face with enough concentration (or help from her antennae) without needing their specific form.
• Combo Platter Powers: Complete control over her physical form, telekinesis, and talking to animals. Some of her combat forms add immunity to fire and Super-Strength to the deal.
• Composite Character:
  • In-universe, she's a composite of the Super-Soldier Shade Tail that the scientists were intending to create as well as the original Grace Sciuridae who had her DNA swapped in for the intended human donor by Dr. Sciuridae.
  • From a meta sense, Grace is a composite of two characters from the earliest drafts of EGS. Originally, Grace was the name of Sarah's cynical best friend, but wasn't developed much since she had little to do in the Painted Black arc. Shade Tail was at the time a separate character and needed a civilian identity, so Dan reused Grace's name and some of her appearance. Funnily enough, the original Grace eventually evolved into Susan.
• Cuddle Bug: Graces loves to hug her friends and will frequently help a friend in a sad mood with a quick warm hug.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She was created as a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb in a laboratory, then was forced to watch as Damien slaughtered pretty much everybody she knew before abducting her. After spending years enduring God knows what hardships under his guardianship, she spent some time homeless and on the run before finally finding the Verres household and a place to live.
• Dead Guy Junior: Dr. Sciuridae named her Grace after his own deceased daughter, who's one of Grace's genetic mothers.
• Ditzy Genius: What can you say about a brilliant but unworldly girl who mops herself into corners?
  "Mopping is Tricky!"
• Emergent Human: Although she was never quite a blank slate, her proper education was abruptly cut short, leaving her with No Social Skills and some rather major gaps in her history knowledge.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Three of her four female friends have shown that they find her incredibly attractive.
• Flanderization: Her bubbly innocent side was gradually cranked up while her role in the story was reduced until she appeared to be little more than a Plucky Comic Relief character. Later arcs revealed she was putting up a bubbly front to cover some serious inner conflicts.
• Forgot About Her Powers: An unfortunate example occurs during the Death Sentence arc. Grace convinced Mr. Raven that she would be able to fly out of the boar's way if it turned violent. When it actually does start charging at her, she panics, tries to run, and trips, forcing Raven to shoot it.
• Flight, Strength, Heart: Her powerset includes Super-Strength, Super-Speed, flight, telekineses, Voluntary Shapeshifting, super-math, immunity to fire, a photographic memory... and talking to animals.
• Gamer Chick: She takes very quickly to the video games on Tedd's computer, and is frequently seen playing a Nintendo DS to pass time. Several EGS:NP strips and storylines center around her playing various video games, or starring in a story that parodies a video game.
• Genki Girl: Sometimes, but especially in the absence of angst.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Grace has a stuffed squirrel, hedgehog, guinea pig, and bat that represent her and her siblings.
• Good with Numbers: Apparently it's part of her Uryuom heritage, as they've evolved to be good with math so they can correctly proportion themselves when shapeshifting. As she says in this comic:
  Grace: Is this one of my [...] powers? Like being super good at math? The cube root of 857.375 is 9.5! KA-BLAMMO!
• Hair Antennae: They're literally antennae used as a focus for her telekinesis and to communicate with animals. They also help her sense faces and such in order to help her shapeshifting abilities.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Thanks to an alien race with a very strange breeding mechanism, she's technically a first-generation One Quarter human hybrid. And all four parents are different species. She's most comfortable in part-squirrel shape and takes it whenever she's in private at home. Although she tends to be in full human form; not because she prefers it, but because of three reasons:
  • Human furniture isn't made with tails in mind (see for yourself),
  • Her antennae come with additional senses that are convenient to "turn off" at times.
  • Clothes on fur feels weird.
• Hidden Depths: It's been implied that Grace's bubbly, innocent exterior is a facade she maintains to repress the horrors in her past. And it's been plainly stated that one never knows when she's genuinely bubbly and when she uses bubbles to mess with people for fun.
• Hourglass Hottie: In one panel, demonstrating her rather blase attitude towards transformation and body types.
  Grace: Today feels like a "hippy" day.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: She had shades of this at first but quickly let go of this, and once she did start a normal school life with Ellen, Nanase, and Justin, she actually found it a little restrictive. A later arc reveals that she wants to be free to be transformed om public.
• Immune to Fire: Given to her to counter Damien's Playing with Fire abilities.
• Informed Species: Her half-squirrel form doesn't really look anything like a squirrel aside from the tail, with Cute Little Fangs and giant pointy ears that aren't at all squirrel-like. Lampshaded in this comic.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: At least until she's clued in to exactly the sort of impression she's been giving. Then it doesn't take her long to turn into a Calculating Fanservice Girl, at least as far as Tedd is concerned. She hangs a lampshade on her tendency sometimes.
  Grace: This is one of those things I'm apathetic about that everyone else finds creepy, isn't it?
• Innocently Insensitive: Accidentally suggests Sam, a trans man, is a Bearded Lady. Given that the moment was shown in a flashback and she apparently understands what transgender means now, presumably Sam explained the issue to her. She later realizes how her knowing at all might be causing him stress.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Not only does she wish she could tell Sam about Sarah and Tedd, and vice-versa, but she's developed a strong desire to be able to be her hybrid form in public that even she wasn't fully aware of.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: She was created specifically to defeat Damien. It worked, but the emotional fallout wasn't exactly healthy for Grace.
• Lightning Bruiser: When she really tries and is more or less in her natural form, she moves too fast even for experienced martial artists to track. She fights much like a rubber cannonball with claws.
• Magical Girlfriend: Grace is literally everything Tedd has wished for in a girl and more.
• Martial Pacifist: She's developing into one as she tries to reconcile her pacifist nature with the unfortunate fact that, sometimes, there really is no peaceful way to resolve a situation. She's also taking martial arts lessons to learn how to subdue an opponent while inflicting the bare minimum of harm.
• Meaningful Name: Her last name is the Latin word for the family squirrels belong to.
• Mind over Matter: She has telekinetic powers, which first manifest to fight off a mugger. They're stronger in her Legion forms, which is a problem early on since she has trouble controlling the latter.
• Mundane Utility: She often uses her incredible shapeshifting powers to play around with change blindness at work. Oh, and a side benefit of her transforming is that she doesn't have any body hair.
• Nice Girl: An extremely kind, pleasant, cheerful, and empathetic person. A common refrain from her friends is "[X] is one of the nicest people I know, and I know Grace."
• Not Blood Siblings: Approaches this from the opposite direction as normal here, where she claims Mr. Verres as an adoptive father despite already dating his son/daughter.
• Not Quite Flight: Approximating flight is one application of her telekinesis.
• Omniglot: As part of her Uryuom heritage, she can pick up any language in a matter of seconds.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: She's a were-squirrel.
• Partial Transformation: Her status as a Uryuom/lespuko seyunolu lets her "mix and match" forms, combining aspects of different forms into various new forms.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: In part, she still is a bit naive (she apparently doesn't know about Santa Claus); in part, she likes to play this even when she isn't.
• Power Copying: Any shapeshifting effect used on her automatically gets added to her roster of selectable forms. This is another power she inherits from the Uryuom, who use it to better assimilate among alien cultures. Notably, wizard Power Copying doesn't work on her.
• Raised in a Lab: Grace is a classic example - a genetically-engineered human/alien/squirrel hybrid created by a shady corporate lab. She was supposed to be trained into a badass Shapeshifting assassin that is prophesised to Kill the God, but proved not to have the temperment for it. What happened next is... complicated. Enough said, by the time she actually made good her escape, it wasn't really a laboratory anymore, and she is still only slowly learning to pick up on the cues and references of normal society.
• Secret-Keeper: Is currently the only character In-Universe, save for Pandora, who might not remember it after her "refresh", who knows about Sam's gender identity and magic mark.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Grace is exclusively devoted to Tedd (regardless of whatever gender or form the latter is currently in) and has been basically since the moment she started living at his house. The feeling's very much mutual.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She takes on this archetype as she becomes less naïve about sex and nudity, such as teasing Tedd with her former innocence and casually pointing out she and Raven could legally have sex.
• Shipper on Deck: At times teams up with Sarah to "play cupid" with other characters, notably setting up Ellen with Nanase and Justin with Luke.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Her Omniglot abilities extend to non-linguistic purposes, including talking to animals.
• Stepford Smiler: Type 1. Her cheerful, bubbly exterior is partially (though not entirely) a way of pushing away the insecurities and emotional trauma brought on by her troubled past. Jerry gently reprimands her about that sort of behavior during the Hammerchlorians arc, reminding her that bottling up negative emotions is only guaranteed to go poorly in the end.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: Many of Grace's friends have either hinted or internally admitted attraction to her, but none of them pursue it since they know she's only interested in Tedd.
• Super-Soldier: Created to kill Damien.
• The Tease: Oh, yes. And uses her innate empathic ability, brains, and dedication to know Tedd's tastes better than Tedd knows himself.
• That Came Out Wrong: Sometimes just doesn't realize the possible implications of what she's saying. Cue flustering her teacher^note For context, he doesn't want to take a minor with him on a potentially dangerous excursion to a boar-infested forest:
  Grace: I'm eighteen! I'm a major!
  Raven: As though that makes you an adult.
  Grace: *enthusiastically* Legally, it does. You can do all sorts of stuff with me!
  Raven: You shouldn't say it like—
• Unskilled, but Strong: It has been acknowledged in-universe that her two only real options in a fight are "Talk opponent down" and "Tear opponent to freaking shreds". A running subplot since Painted Black has been the ongoing efforts of the rest of the cast to rectify this. This seems to be a major part of her behaviour patterns.
  Grace: ...I am not horrible at volleyball!
  Ellen: Grace, you either dive for cover or launch the ball into orbit.
  Grace: That's how I deal with most of my problems.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: To a degree notable In-Universe. She starts out with human, squirrel, and human/squirrel forms, but can gain new forms with the transformation gun. Furthermore, after being hit with the gun for the first time, her flawed shapeshifting is perfected, and she gains the ability to not only (effectively) alter her mass, but to mix and match different forms into "Legion" forms. Over the summer, Tedd uses the gun to give her countless new human forms with minor variations; by combining them in a variety of ways, she can approximate pretty much any form. Not only could she pass as pretty much any human on the planet if she's careful, but she can alter her body on the fly, such as shrinking her chest (big boobs are annoying in combat), increasing her muscles (obvious benefits, though her telekinesis will be more useful once she practices), and just adjust other features because she feels like it (apparently she once turned herself into an Hourglass Hottie because it felt like a "hippy" day).
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Is this in all things including nudity.
• Willfully Weak: Tends to hold back from bringing the full brunt of her powers to the fore on the fear that she'll lose control and hurt somebody by accident. This trope ironically gets worse for Grace after she finally taps into her full potential while fighting Damien, as the experience of doing so scars her so badly she actually cuts herself off from her magic entirely for a while. Boxing Lessons for Superman with Greg eventually manages to ease some of her mental limitations.

Nanase

Nanase Kitsune (狐七瀬, Kitsune Nanase)

"It's hard to look bad-ass when you're using fairy powers."

Nanase is Tedd's cousin. Martial artist, magic user, all-around badass. Coming from an extremely strict and traditional household, she tends to over-think the potential problems until she makes a mountain out of a mole hill. Still, it's hard to find anyone less hard-working or dedicated than she is. She attends Moperville South with Ellen, Grace, and Justin.

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• Academic Athlete: Nanase is an all-star student getting straight A+s while also excelling at martial arts and gym. For an example, look at the background of this comic. Granted, she does have magical Super-Strength backing her up, but she's still more than capable athletically when her access to magic is cut off.
• The Ace: Discussed in-universe by Tedd.
  Tedd: She's athletic, smart, trilingual, can kick the ass of anyone who messes with her, is theoretically good looking enough that most people are nice to her by default (I wouldn't know because she's my cousin) and when she's not burned out, she's an insanely potent magic user.
• Action Girl: Apart from Grace and Super!Elliot, Nanase is by far the strongest out of the main cast, due to both her physical and magical prowess. As of the end of Sister II, she temporarily burnt out her magic, but is still a very strong fighter without it.
• All Lesbians Want Kids: ...someday. Not that it would be a really big problem given that her cousin developed a TF Gun.
• Always Someone Better: To Tedd, who admits in a moment of weakness during the Hair arc that he's jealous of her for a variety of reasons (her intelligence, Dude Magnet status, and martial arts skills, among others), but nothing more than the fact that Nanase has incredible raw magical talent while Tedd... doesn't. There's also tension between her and Sarah for many of the same reasons, with the added caveat that Nanase used to date Elliot.
• Amazonian Beauty: Downplayed. She has noticeably larger biceps than other females, but Dan wants to avoid drawing her as overly muscular.
• Bad "Bad Acting": One NP strip reveals that she cannot act to save her life.
• Big Eater: Capable of eating entire meals in mere minutes. She's noted to become highly irritable on an empty stomach.
• Broken Ace: Tedd's description of her under The Ace is only some of the things Nanase is good at, and all of it seems to come to her practically effortlessly. On the other side of the coin, though, she deals with serious self-confidence and honesty issues brought on by her mother's less-than-stellar parenting, and her initial attempts at proving her self-worth and becoming independent really only succeed in pushing away and hurting the people around her (Ellen especially). After Sister II, she starts to rectify the "Broken" part, ironically as part and parcel of temporarily losing access to her magical powers.
• Brought Down to Normal: During Sister II, she seriously overuses her magic power while trying to save Ellen from Abraham, and ends up "burned out" for several months. She regains her powers while taking on Not-Tengu only to immediately burn them out again thanks to making use of her Guardian form to fight him, though that time it only lasts a day.
• Brought Down to Badass: Even without her magic powers, she's still the top student at the dojo (a question of skill), and she can still bench press 160 pounds (she was pushing well over 200 when she had her magic). She didn't have any powers during the height of her "Meddling Teenager" adventures with Ellen and it's implied that she didn't have any problem kicking ass.
• But Not Too White: Dan has darkened her skin color as of the Pandora's Box arc, more accurately reflecting her Japanese heritage.
• Colour Failure: She goes all white upon learning Ellen knows she's the one who picked her outfit for Grace's party.
• Combo Platter Powers: She has an extremely varied cadre of spells at her disposal. Some examples include levitation, illusion-making, summoning clones, minor cosmetic shapeshifting, a strength boost, altering her clothes, and her Guardian form. Even her most famous spell, the fairy doll, has its own combo-platter of flight, enhanced punches, creating glitter, and using marbles as a Crystal Ball. This is tied into her apparently being a princess by the standards of the griffins' world.
• Cool Big Sis: Maybe not to the cast as a whole, but Akiko sure seems to think so.
• Covert Pervert: She covers her eyes when Grace goes nude at the party, but is obviously peeking through her fingers. Ellen's sly, knowing grin makes it clear that Nanase isn't fooling her.
• Cute Bruiser: A five foot four girl who can bench press 160 lbs — and complains about it because she used to be able to press 200.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Assuming her Angel-form is this. While in it, Nanase's a Flying Brick who can outfight the seemingly-unstoppable Abraham without even trying. Making use of it, though, ensures losing access to her magic for at least a day, potentially much longer if she's already weak beforehand.
• Declaration of Protection: She starts with trying to keep Ellen sane. Later her desire to save Ellen gives her a new spell.
• Destroying a Punching Bag: She destroys a punching bag at the Anime Style Martial Arts dojo while working through the stress of losing a fight with Grace's brothers and being attracted to Ellen.
• Effortless Amazonian Lift: Can shove around couches unassisted when asked for it.
• Embarrassing Superpower: Downplayed in the "Sisters II" arc. While the new spells she's getting (a spell to let her sense how many people are looking at her, a spell to let her swap out the clothes she's wearing with another set, and a semi-autonomous "decoy summon") are not particularly embarrassing in and of themselves, she's a bit unsettled to note that all her new spells seem designed for someone who needs to hide things and sneak around.
• Everybody Knew Already: By the time she actually comes out to her friends, Tedd is the only one who doesn't know.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Starts out having red hair, which turns black as a symptom of her burnout at the end of Sister II. Subsequent arcs see her learning to accept herself as a person in the light of the loss of her magical abilities. After regaining her powers (and red hair) during the climax of the New Year's Eve arc, she settles on a mix of red and black, symbolizing her character growth. Although by the time of "Title Pending", she's back to her old undyed hairstyle.
• Famed In-Story: She and Ellen are minor celebrities due to them solving a lot of local Sooby-Doo style mysteries.
• Fiery Redhead: Formerly, for both parts of the trope. Nanase was much more Hot-Blooded before she burnt herself out dealing with Abraham. The resulting Character Development coincided with her hair turning black. She's gained her magic since then, as well as her natural hair color, but she still seems a bit more mellow than she was.
• Flying Brick: One of her first spells allowed her to fly, and she's also superhumanly strong and tough thanks to magic strengthening her physical body. Guardian form cranks these traits up to eleven, albeit at a cost.
• Freudian Excuse: Her overbearing mother is the reason for her closeted behavior (even though this is somewhat of an Informed Attribute).
• Gayngst: Clueless about her own orientation until Ellen acted as her Closet Key, she promptly dove headfirst back into the closet because she feared her mother's reaction. She gets over it when it turns out her mother isn't so much upset as dismissive of what she sees as just a phase.
• The Gift: Several characters comment on Nanase having a lot of inborn magical potential, even aside from her martial arts training under Greg focusing her abilities to be harnessed easier. Being the niece of Noriko Verres, who Not-Tengu describes as one of the most powerful wizards in the modern world, may or may not have something to do with it. Tara's Aura Vision labelling her as "royalty" lends further credence to there being something special about Nanase.
• Godzilla Threshold: Her "Guardian Form" seems to be specifically built for this trope. It makes her a Lightning Bruiser Flying Brick with enhanced combat skills, but she can only enter it if someone's in immediate peril and it guarantees burnout for at least a day (potentially much longer if she's already low on power).
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: After nearly dying because of Abraham, she decides she doesn't want to die living a lie and decides to be as honest as she can be. This includes being open about her homosexuality, wearing the clothes she like and not lying to those close to her about as many things as possible without divulging government secrets or breaking The Masquerade.
• Incompatible Orientation: With Elliot, though she was unaware of it at the time.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Not normally, but she gets consistently weird about how Ashley doesn't seem very impressed by her or her powers. As she's The Ace when it comes to combat ability, magic, and even physical attractiveness (going by Tedd's analysis at least), in addition to being a Nice Guy, being ignored probably isn't something she's used to. Becomes a bit of a vicious loop, as her efforts to impress give Ashley the impression Nanase is flirting with her, causing her to awkwardly change the subject or move on, further reinforcing Nanase's insecurity.
• Invisible Introvert: Zigzagged. Nanase Kitsune is introduced as a confident, sexy fighter, and later a powerful magic user. But at home, she is reserved and closeted due to her overbearing mother's expectations. This reflects in her magic: due to magic in this universe giving a person spells based on their desires, Nanase mostly gets spells centered around stealth and deception, such as agility, minor shapeshifting, and creating decoys of herself. She starts to feel unsettled by this in "Sister II", due to her new relationship with Ellen, and after nearly dying in the climax of that arc to protect Ellen, she gains a Guardian Angel spell, after which she decides to be more open with her mother.
• Irony: She and Justin share the role of the Straight Man, and both of them happen to be the only member of the cast who aren't even remotely attracted to the opposite sex.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Nanase is both the most skilled martial artist and the most powerful magic user of the cast because her magical power stems directly from the physical and spiritual discipline cultivated by her martial arts, and her magic provides her with superhuman combat abilities while also boosting her raw physical strength.
• Lightning Bruiser: Angel-form, in addition to being steel tough, flies very fast.
• Lipstick Lesbian: She is a Girly Girl and very Feminine.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Before dating Elliot and eventually becoming an Official Couple with Ellen, she used to date quite a lot of guys. Enough to get a reputation, as one of her exes brings up.
• Meaningful Name: Kitsune are Japanese werefox tricksters. She nicknames her summoned double "Fox".
• Me's a Crowd:
  • One of her lesser-used spells summons a rainbow-coloured bunch of clones of her. They're good for a distraction, but they evaporate if they touch anything.
  • She can create a duplicate of herself that runs on her subconscious.
• Most Common Superpower: Tedd has suggested that her magic power is giving her larger breasts than she should have considering her athleticism.
• Mundane Utility: In addition to her Utility Magic spells, she's also been seen using her fairy doll for basic communication, and her "Fox" clone form for cleaning and chores. Post magic's "not-change", maintaining Fox splits her concentration between the two bodies, making it much harder to use her to multi-task.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: As Lampshaded by the B-Side Comics, her muscles look normal, and yet she is super strong. This is at least partially due to magic giving her a boost.
• Personality Powers: A big problem for her for a while, as non-wizard magic users tend to receive spells that reflect their inner natures- so thanks to her secretiveness, she ends up constantly receiving spells that are mostly designed for trickery, stealth, and deception.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Inverted. Nanase's hair went black from losing her magic.
• Power Loss Makes You Strong: Temporarily losing her magic powers is the crux of most of Nanase's Character Development from that point on. It also doesn't slow her down much when fighting crime with Ellen.
• Power-Strain Blackout: Burning out her magic for the first time by activating her Guardian form nearly kills her, since she was already bottomed-out on magic power at the time.
• Pragmatic Hero: Even after talking Abraham out of trying to kill Ellen, she treats him as a threat until the proper authorities arrive.
• Really Gets Around: Dated nearly every boy in school hoping to find at least one she was attracted to. Makes for some awkward moments now.
  Gerald: I should have known you'd run out of men in the school eventually.
• Royal Blood: According to Tara's Aura Vision, she simply radiates royalty. Tara is surprised that Nanase doesn't introduce herself as "princess" or any other royal title.
• Rule-Abiding Rebel: A "big act of defiance?," sure. She didn't expect her mother to take it so well. invoked
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Can be distinguished from the other characters by her red hair and green eyes.
• Straight Man: Between Elliot's boy-scout tendencies, Grace's perkiness, Ellen's impulsivity, Sarah's excitability, Susan's seriousness, and, well, Tedd, she tends to split this role with Justin.
  • Temporarily averted during the Playing with Dolls arc, where she succumbs to the temptations of Tedd's basement, asks her a "four breasts" watch and a "tall" watch and is the least serious of the three.
• Strong Family Resemblance: When their hair style matches, Nanase and Tedd look uncannily similar. It is later confirmed that they both look like Noriko, Tedd's mother. Word of God declared that, when Nanase glares, the resemblance with her own mother comes to surface.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Even more so than Elliot, and also trains as a magic user separately.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Nanase is part of a long line of powerful mages through her mother.
• Teleporter's Visualization Clause: She can only create fairy dolls in places she's been to before. She also can't create them if she isn't picturing what the person she's trying to link with currently looks like. She never figured out the second part by herself, and it caused her a lot of grief until Ashley casually suggested that was the reason.
• Themed Harem: Apparently, before Elliot, she tended to date guys whose names began with 'G'.
  Nanase: It's a coincidence!
• Trademark Favorite Food: Nanase loves pizza.
• Transparent Closet: Many a joke was made (mainly by Justin) about Nanase being a closeted lesbian before it was made official.
• Utility Magic: Many of her spells are like this. She has a fairy doll spell that lets her keep an eye on her real body, a spell that lets her know exactly how many eyes are looking at her, and a spell that lets her alter her hair style, length and color (with the implication that it might evolve into being able to modify other parts of her body). Ironically, she's disappointed in most of these, but Justin and Sarah think the hair spell is awesome. She's also able to use the hair spell to quickly create new fairy dolls, since if the hair is different enough she makes a new one instead of inhabiting an old one.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: She's thrilled to learn that her magic powers may be the cause for her large bust size.

Justin

Justin Tolkiberry

"Well, some people told me it was "totally gay", but that's not exactly what I was going for."

Justin is an amiable, level-headed comic shop clerk and Nanase's best friend. Since Elliot is also the one who introduced him to Nanase and the rest of the main cast by extension, Justin feels a huge debt of gratitude and an unrequited crush towards him. He also suffers from a seemingly irresistible compulsion to mess with long hair, though he is bothered by the stereotype. He attends Moperville South with Grace, Nanase, and Ellen.

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• All Love Is Unrequited: Regarding Elliot, due to Incompatible Orientation.
• Berserk Button: NEVER mention Melissa or Noah to him, especially if it's about forgiving her.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sense a pattern here? Justin's Anime-style martial arts prowess may not be up to Nanase's or Elliot's level (yet), but push his amiability too far and you'll quickly discover he's still got Supernatural Martial Arts.
• Can't Catch Up: Justin may feel inadequate compared to Nanase, Grace, and Ellen, but later proves he can be quite badass when the situation requires it.
• Coming-Out Story: Was outed to the whole town by his former best friend Melissa (or more accurately, her sister) and still holds a grudge against her for it. Overlaps with Forced Out of the Closet as it wasn't his choice.
• Dislikes the New Guy: Initially towards Grace, because his first few meetings with her all take place in extremely difficult and dangerous situations, but he soon has to acknowledge that those weren't exactly caused by Grace, and that she was an important factor in dissolving them.
• Famed In-Story: After he defeats a fire creature, he becomes very famous in universe, though the main consequences were mostly directly after said event. After a while, it peters out, but it comes up again when Luke seeks him out for it.
• The Gadfly: When he isn't angsting about anything, Justin takes great pleasure in messing around with pretty much everyone around him.
• Gayngst: After he was outed, he lost his best friend and was ostracized/bullied by most of his classmates. He implies to Susan that he was considering commiting suicide. He felt completely alone until he met Elliot and Nanase.
• Gentle Giant: One of the tallest members of the main cast, but as mentioned, prefers not resorting to violence.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Though it's not without justification, he becomes... irritable toward anything related to Melissa, including her current pseudo-boyfriend Noah and even Elliot telling him that Melissa's actions were more misguided than he thinks. He gets over it later.
• Heroic Build: When he takes off his shirt for Luke, it's revealed that he's absolutely ripped.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Not all the time, but when he has a casual fantasy about Tedd of all people, he notes "I have got to get a boyfriend."
• Hypocrite: He was devastated by people gossiping about him being gay, but unapologetically gossips about Grace's powers with Luke, even after she tells him to stop.
• Incompatible Orientation: With Elliot. Ironically enough, Elliot's Clark Kenting form may have this for Justin, while the reverse is true normally.
• Irony:
  • When Justin was outed, Melissa was herself betrayed in exactly the same way he thinks she betrayed him.
  • In a more meta angle, he and Nanase share the role of the Straight Man, and both of them happen to be the only member of the cast who aren't even remotely attracted to the opposite sex.
• It's All About Me: Elliot gets transformed into a girl? Justin is offended because he isn't attracted to female Elliot. Elliot and Sarah have a romantic moment? Justin has to interrupt it because he's jealous. Elliot compliments him on his Attractive Bent-Gender? Justin goes into a bout of angst because Elliot just won't find him attractive when he's a guy. He gets over a lot of this when he grows out of his crush on Elliot.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Justin tries to reason with the fire monster, but when it attacks, he instantly switches from amiable to badass.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: As a result of Anime-Style Martial Arts training, Justin can use magic in conjunction with martial arts in combat.
• Meaningful Name: A fan of The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, who happens to have a surname that combines Tolkien and Roddenberry.
• Moral Myopia: Has this for a good while regarding Melissa - it's true that she made a terrible mistake and hurt him terribly, but he took this further than she deserved. He gets better, though.
• Oblivious to Love: Completely fails to notice that Luke is interested in him. In fairness, Luke was also looking for info on Grace, but he still missed some very obvious signs. He never realized George's crush on him, either.
• The One Guy: The only member of the main cast who wholly identifies as male. Lampshaded here.
• Out of Focus: Beats out Sarah as the member of the main eight who gets the least spotlight, with the exception of the Birthday party arc involving his admitting his love for Elliot; the New Old Flames storyline appears to be his Day in the Limelight.
• Power Tattoo: There was one on his back that he was unaware of. It's hinted that this may be why his blows had more impact than when he was training in the dojo. He lost it — but apparently not the perks it gave him — when Pandora Awakened him. This caused some confusion, as Justin didn't know he had a mark or that he was Awakened, while Luke knew he could sense if people have marks, but hadn't learned to recognize the difference between someone who has a mark and someone who had a mark before Awakening.
• Proud to Be a Geek: An unabashed sci-fi and fantasy fan who works in a comics store? Of course he's this!
• Rescue Romance: With Elliot, kinda.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He correctly points out that George is much more hostile towards Elliot than to any of Justin's female friends, only he thinks it's because the girls are "[his] friends [George] want[s] to sleep with". Actually, the friend George would like to sleep with is Justin.
• Secret-Keeper: He knows what the main cast is up to and refuses to share details after George started putting things together. Not only that, Justin knows the identity of the mysterious cloaked figure and hasn't told anyone in the main cast. Given his history, is this any surprise?
• Ship Tease: In "Squirrel Prophet" he was spending time with Luke. Of course, Grace is the first to see the potential.
• Straight Gay: From his long list of attributes (including fantasy-geek and martial artist) the only parts of his character that give the impression that he's gay are his pierced ear and love of long hair, and he stops really wearing the piercing after a while, not having gotten the reaction he was hoping for. This backfires on him during Squirrel Prophet when Luke assumes that he's straight.
• Straight Man: Between Elliot's boy-scout tendencies, Grace's perkiness, Ellen's impulsivity, Sarah's excitability, Susan's seriousness, and, well, Tedd, he tends to split this role with Nanase. Averted after he starts dating Luke and actively messes with everyone's head for his own enjoyment.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Though he's not nearly as powerful as Nanase or Elliot, he can enhance his martial arts with fiery punches thanks to the spell given by his magic mark.
• Took a Level in Badass: Justin, after entire arcs of being one of the only main characters not showing wonderful toys or superpowers other than his illusion exercises, knocks back a flame golem with his bare fists then kicks it over a hundred feet into a river. May have something to do with his new — though quickly gone — Power Tattoo as his blows have a lot more power than they did training at the dojo.
• Trans Equals Gay: Discussed and averted. After switching sexes at Grace's birthday party, he discusses how much easier it would be if he were a woman — he wouldn't have to deal with homophobia, and he might actually have had a shot with Elliot. Ultimately though, being a woman just feels wrong to him.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Ellen gave him a stink eye and vicious chewing-out after he snapped at Elliot for even daring to look at things from Melissa's perspective — she makes it clear that while his grudge is understandable, snapping at his friends when they only have his best interests at heart is unacceptable.
  • Then there's his Yoda t-shirt that basically says that while he had a right to be disappointed in Melissa, he was taking the whole thing a bit to far.

Susan

Tiffany Susan Pompoms

"This change of heart does not include a desire to be touched."

The group's resident cynic, Susan (as she prefers to be called) was introduced in the comic as Sarah's man-hating best friend who would often give Elliot and Tedd grief. Interacting with the rest of the cast (and exploring her own history) has improved her opinion of the male gender to a strong degree, but she still maintains a high level of snark. She lives with her mother in a three-story house, works in a video store, and is the founder of Moperville North's Feminist Club.

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• Action Girl: Not as much so as, say, Grace or Nanase, but Susan's the only member of the main cast who's at all proficient with a weapon, and she actually ends up being the deciding factor in the abomination fight during her and Nanase's trips to France.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She has (at least at first) a distinctly cynical attitude which leads her to habitually set herself apart from most people. In fact, her using her middle name and (again, at first) dying her hair dark blue are a part of her rejection of the Everyone Loves Blondes template.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: A rare male case.
• Better as Friends: Finds she's that with Justin.
• Birthday Hater: It's on New Year's Day, and she reasons that celebrations will still be going on with or without her, whether her mother spoils her or not.
• Broken Bird: On several levels. As a little kid, she walked in on her dad cheating on her mom, which, combined with some unhelpful parenting from her mother, led to her hating her blonde hair and first name as well as caused her to hate men initially. Then she hit her Cynicism Catalyst on the trip to France where she was forced to kill an aberration. Her emotional state is bad enough that she went through an angst-induced Awakening just because she found out that the hammers were created as a practical joke by an Immortal. Over the course of the comic, she slowly heals thanks to her growing friendship with the rest of the cast.
• Children Forced to Kill: She was forced to kill the French Abomination in self-defense after her and Nanase's battle against it went horribly wrong. Susan was, at most, fourteen at the time, and the experience still obviously haunts her to this day.
• Colour Failure: Upon learning Diane does cheerleading, Susan is so shocked at someone who looks like her doing that that she goes all white.
• Covert Pervert: She actually considered Catalina kissing Elliot sexy. Later, when thinking of what scenarios and people she finds sexy, she finds both sexy Elliot and sexy Catalina sexy, especially when together, though she has no interest in actually doing sexy things with either of them.
• Crazy-Prepared: She had Tedd scan her into the TF gun as a backup in case someone transforms her permanently and there's no other way of fixing it.
  Nanase: You let Tedd make a clone form of you!?
  Susan: After New Year's? Of course I did. You haven't?
  Nanase: Well, yeah, but I'm his "ugly cousin!"
  • And then she had Tedd zap Grace with her clone form (which adds that form to those Grace can assume from that point on) so that her form can be scanned back off Grace if anything happens to the files on the gun.
• Crush Blush: She's become increasingly prone to these towards Elliot, now that he and Sarah have broken up.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sometimes and again. Lampshaded here.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: In the beginning, she was aloof and snarky but eventually, she opened up and is more cheerful.
• Does Not Like Men: At first, having been led by her mother to believe that her father couldn't resist cheating on her because All Men Are Perverts. She finds herself befriending three males, noting that even the one actual pervert is still likable, and finally abandons this mindset after realizing that transforming into a boy at Grace's birthday party hasn't stripped her of her free will despite having heightened urges.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": She hates being called Tiffany, partially because it makes her sound like a Dumb Blonde, but also because her father named her. Rejecting her name actually blocked her from having a name-based affinity, since "Tiffany Pompoms" should normally be the exact type of name to end up with cheerleading spells.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Early comics gave Susan a free pass to clobber men with magical hammers as long as she was defending women (or Tedd, who may be just that girly). Justified later when the creator of the hammers explicitly says that they were designed to be a "painful but harmless" way for women to retaliate against inappropriate comments.
• Dude Magnet: Despite her aloofness / later social awkwardness, a lot of guys are attracted to her, e. g. Elliot, Tom, Matt and, when she's transformed into a male, Justin. Then there are the occasional female admirers.
• Dye Hard: In-universe. She dyes her naturally blonde hair to a dark blue color. Until her angst-induced awakening that caused dramatically to her hair to be naturally dark blue. Later turns out to be more complicated of that, as previously unknown to her, her hair has started storing excess magic, which manifests as the blue color. When tapped into it, it turns back into her natural Blonde until it recharges.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: She originally had pulled-back hair and an exposed midriff, but this was changed starting in late 2004. She was also on the shorter side originally, being around the same height as Sarah and Tedd, but a magically-assisted growth spurt shot her up to being one of the tallest characters in the main cast.
• Embarrassing First Name: She much prefers "Susan", thank you very much. She thinks that "Tiffany Pompoms" sounds too much like a "stereotypical cheerleader."
• Embarrassing Last Name: "Pompoms" evokes the stereotype of the cheerleader, which she hates. Apparently she tries to forget that she even has that surname.
• Expository Hair Style Change: She originally wore her hair pulled back when she was characterized as a Straw Feminist Ice Queen. When she started her Character Development, she switched to the bangs she still has now to represent her being more open and accepting.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Catalina for sure. Also acknowledged in this (noncanon) sidestory, when Ashley briefly fantasizes about her. In general, Susan seems to attract a lot of admirers from both sexes, much to her chagrin as she is asexual and Hates Being Touched
  Hanma: Seriously, what is it with people and Susan?
  Liz: I'm hoping to get to know her in college.
• Everyone Can See It: With Elliot. Not only do each of the main characters have at least some inkling of it, but the in-universe fandom for their movie review show ships them.
• Fag Hag: She's close friends with Justin and even admits that she likes him because he will never feel any sexual attraction for her.
• Famed In-Story: Has minor renown due to a review show with Elliot, and a significant reputation as the Hammer Queen.
• Fanon Discontinuity: invoked In-universe. Susan has strong opinions about the Star Trek films.
• Forbidden Fruit: Notes that any attraction to Justin she had was likely the result of knowing that Incompatible Orientation made sure that it would never happen. She also tends to evoke this reaction from others herself, given just how many people are interested in her despite her lack of desire to date anyone.
• Freak Out: In a seemingly mind-boggling — though understandable in context — case of overreaction. When she was told that she just didn't get an old joke.
• Freudian Excuse: Caught her father with an undressed woman who was not her mother.
• Hates Being Touched:
  • Very much.
    Tensaided: ...I know it's not personal, but you could at least wait until I'm not looking to break out the hand sanitizer.
    Susan: I've never had to call in sick.
    Tensaided: As you were.
  • She's working on it, though.
  • Sarah knows it's a big deal with Susan wants to hug her instead of the other way around.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: It's a physical box, but she can summon magical copies of the contents from anywhere.
• Hyperspace Mallet: Her weapon of choice. Even after the artifact that powered the hammers disappears, she gains her own summonable stun hammer as a spell.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Her eyes are a pale blue, as seen in this colorized sketchbook entry. It matches her closed emotions and logic-based demeanour.
• Incompatible Orientation: First with Justin, later with Catalina. She later tries to rationalize her interest towards Justin as being attracted to someone who wouldn't be attracted to her.
• Insistent Terminology: It's never that she "likes" or "has a crush on" Elliot; she always says "attracted to", as she considers it nothing but primitive instincts.
• Ironic Name: "Tiffany Pompoms" really doesn't fit her. Which is why she goes by "Susan".
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: She acknowledges that she's attracted to Elliot, but she has still decided to encourage his relationship with Ashley because she knows she isn't emotionally ready for a relationship yet, is not sure she will ever be, and doesn't want to make Elliot put his life on hold while she sorts out her own issues.
• Long-Lost Relative: Besides Diane, she’s related to Raven through her father.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She may be cold, at least at first, but she does care about her friends.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: In a nice subvertion, since she's not as Genki Girl or Cloud Cuckoolander as the general examples, but Elliot admits she's a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman who's fun to be with, challenge him and introduces him to cool new things.
• Middle Name Basis: Her first name is "Tiffany", but she goes by her middle name of Susan because she thinks Tiffany sounds too much like a stereotypical cheerleader's name, but also because her absent and adulterous father chose her first name.
• Mistaken for Gay: Fairly often, given how outspoken a feminist she is. It's generally insulting, but an unfortunate case occurred when Catalina tried asking her out.
• Moment of Weakness:
  • Panicked the first time she saw Nanase use her Fairy Doll spell and, in the process of getting help, blurted out to the others the personal issues they had been talking about.
  • When asked for a date by a guy, Susan marvellously freaked out: waving her hands, spitting out a bunch of lame excuses to ultimately run away.
• Mundane Utility: She uses "Nase," her semi-autonomous fairy companion, for basically everything, from fetching soda to having an extra pair of eyes.
• Neat Freak: Set phasers to sanitize. And get your ugly butt off her kitchen counter.
• Obsessed Are the Listmakers: Made a lengthy list of ways to avoid accidentally seducing Elliot.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Her hair becomes naturally dark blue/black after awakening. We later learn that it's become a sort of hidden external reservoir of power she can draw on instinctively, turning her hair blonde in the process.
• Power Tattoo: The Venus symbol on her back is a magical mark.
• Proud to Be a Geek: Do you know she likes Star Trek very much?
• Real Women Never Wear Dresses: In-universe; she considers skirts nothing more than men's easy visual access to women's panties, and when a uniform code was enforced on Moperville North, she went with the male's uniform so she could keep wearing pants. The only skirt she'd even consider wearing is that of the original Star Trek women's uniform, and even then only so Elliot (and only Elliot) could tease her about it for their web reviews. It's probably a sign of major character development that she is willing to use Vanellope Von Schweetz as an online avatar. though the image of Susan wearing Vanellope's miniskirt attracted surprisingly little commentary from the fanbase.
• Ship Tease:
  • She gets some with a lot of characters, including Ellen (when she got zapped with her V5 beam), Catalina (who actually asked her out), Justin (who she made out with when they were both gender-flipped), Matt Cohen (who also asked her out), and even Elliot.
  • Elliot eventually becomes involved in a relationship with Ashley, and Susan is okay with this. As a result, Elliot is now in the same category as Justin in her mind: attractive, but unavailable. She's now free to work out whether or not she will ever want romantic relationships without any distractions.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Susan's motive to be attracted to Elliot and, let's admit it, Elliot is the best candidate for Susan's love interest. Elliot would never think in hurting her, take advantage of her sexually until they're both ready and they're more compatible than they both thought at first. Even, Elliot's Chronic Hero Syndrome could be the perfect treatment for Susan's Broken Bird situation.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Started out as one to Tedd. By the time the Sister 2 arc ends, they have decidedly moved into Vitriolic Best Buds territory, complete with sissy slap fights.
• The Smart Girl: While maybe not quite in the same way Tedd is, Susan is clearly one of the smartest of the main group due to her attention to details, deductive reasoning, and her tendency to be The Spock. This is further highlighted when the group is discussing their college prospects. Everyone seems to be going to Moperville University, though Elliot assumes Susan will be going somewhere better. It turns out she's staying in Moperville because her lower GPA is playing a factor. Her bad grades aren't because she's Brilliant, but Lazy, but because she's so busy with school club activties, the movie review show, and her job. Basically, she's stretching herself too thin to focus on schoolwork and greater goals.
• Spock Speak: Luckily Sarah can translate her to a shorter, simple sentence.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Elliot realizes he's attracted to Susan after dreaming of her dressed up as Counselor Troi. Take a guess at what shows up on Susan's list of ways to avoid accidentally seducing Elliot.
• Straw Feminist: At first, due to her (Very) Freudian Excuse. Word of God says that she was initially supposed to say things that Dan could disprove. She gets Character Development and grows out of the man hating, flag waving, sycophantic, poster girl for female empowerment part. That is, she went from Straw Feminist to regular feminist.
• Stepford Snarker: She presents herself as snarky and aloof (although she does defrost a bit over time). However, the audience discovers that she's a bit of a mess under that sarcastic shell. The first formative moment we see is her walking in on her father having sex with a woman who wasn't her mother, and then demanding that she lie about it. While this left her with some issues with men, it wasn't as damaging as the time she was manipulated into killing a monster that was once human and still looked the part.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Looks a lot like Diane, which is implied to be in part because of magic's flair for the dramatic. She also looks not unlike her ancestor Raven, and he apparently strongly resembles Susan's father.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Needed to unwind badly. After admitting her problems and going through a few seances of angst-dialysis, she began to learn how to laugh aloud and drop non-acidic jokes. The sugar side is best portrayed by the fairy doll from Nanase that acts on her subconscious.
• Summon to Hand: Any of the items stored in her Summon Chest.
• Superpowerful Genetics: She has a bloodline affinity for summoning magic weapons.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: She has no interest in dating Elliot, which is why she made a list of ways to avoid accidentally seducing him.
  Justin: ...how does one "accidentally" dress up as Counselor Troi?
  Susan: Costume parties exist.
• These Hands Have Killed: The major reason she's no longer a Wide-Eyed Idealist.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Staring down at a humanoid being she's just beheaded going into tenth grade; this is juxtaposed with the similar, albeit softer, face she makes thinking back to the event, unnervingly similar to her default expression...
• Tsundere: Shaping up to be a Type A now that she's developed a crush on Elliot.
• Uneven Hybrid: Is part Immortal.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Tedd. And with Nanase (back from the trip to France).
• Wholesome Crossdresser: To make a point regarding School Uniforms. She does start off believing Real Women Never Wear Dresses, and still hates the idea of skirts in and of themselves.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Before meeting the aberration. Literally so — her eyes change into her current half-droopy state when she looks down at his corpse, and while she still has wide eyes quite often, they do tend towards the "half-droopy." After the encounter of a weird kind with Jerry leading to Freak Out, though, she now tends to having wide open eyes as often as not.

Ellen

Ellen Danielle Dunkel

"That crazed look could have meant any number of things!"

Elliot's more outgoing Opposite-Sex Clone created through magic. She's considerably more worldly than Elliot thanks to a lifetime of memories from an alternate dimension, and she's loud, brash, and opinionated as a result. She inherited Elliot's magical aptitude, although most of her spells revolved around "spreading her curse", originally by turning her targets into sexy women although she's since gained other zappy spells. She attends Moperville South with Grace, Justin, and Nanase.

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• Berserk Button: Mentioning her origins as a clone, or anything involving her origin as a clone. Thanks to her Divergent Character Evolution, she has successfully established herself as a person separate from her brother/father/"mother" Elliot. And, until they talked it out some, she had extremely volatile reactions when talking to Tedd.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Do NOT mock Grace in Ellen's presence; the resulting death glare alone was enough to stun two other girls into silence.
  • Even Justin was not safe from her wrath after he upset her brother.
  • Vlad should consider himself lucky Ellen didn't kill him after he nearly killed Nanase.
• Big Sister Instinct
  • Towards Elliot whenever he's feeling down.
  • Elliot's Chronic Hero Syndrome pales before Ellen's behaviour. She's very uninhibited and shows extreme protectiveness toward everyone close to her.
• Brought Down to Normal: By copying Nanase's Angel spell, she's powerless for at least a day. And blonde.
• Brutal Honesty: She calls Elliot out on his motives behind his failed relationship with Sarah.
• Conflict Ball: Off and on; demonstrated best when completely apropos of nothing she cornered Tedd and started yelling at him about wanting to help Nanase, revealing that she has seriously conflicted feelings about Tedd. Also implied to be related to having a young soul that has never been reincarnated.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Ellen is more in touch with her "perverted" side than Elliot is, but she's no more likely to take advantage of anyone.
• Clone Angst: Played straight at first when she believed she only had a month to live, but mostly subverted in the long run where she largely, but not entirely, adjusts to the reality that she is a magically-created female duplicate of Elliot. She does still have a few hang-ups, such as her very confusing opinion of Tedd thanks to her "fake" memories from Elliot and other Ellen of them being friends but also the day they met for real being the worst day of her life. As of Who Is Ellen, over a year after her creation, she still has conflicting feelings over it, such as having Elliot's memories of playing tabletop RPGs with Tedd and Sarah, but never having actually played it in her own right, which causes her to impulsively purchase a tabletop RPG set.
• Closet Key: For Nanase. Nanase originally thought that Ellen produced enhanced pheromones, which is why she was able to accept being attracted to her. But then she finds out that Ellen either only had them very briefly or more likely never at all, forcing Nanase to realise that she's a lesbian.
• Deadpan Snarker: Only second to Susan in the main cast. Most of her snark is directed at Elliot.
  Elliot: I AM HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER!
  Ellen: I'm (yawns) pretty sure you've got competition for that title.
  Elliot: I dreamed about a girl who's a friend who isn't my girlfriend!
  Ellen: You're a teenager who had a naughty dream. Truly you are an abomination.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She started with the memories of Elliot. After fully expecting to die in a month and then getting over the identity problem she embraced "live today" attitude.
• Demonic Possession: She is a victim of this by Sirleck.
• Divergent Character Evolution: She starts out as a duplicate of Elliot, but partially because of her own desire to not just be his clone, she makes an effort to be different from him. It's gotten to the point that Dan himself would rather her just be Elliot's ''natural'' twin sister. Interestingly, in some ways she has more in common with the early depictions of Elliot than Elliot does, which makes her an odd case of a Decomposite Character.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: In an odd way she's this to Nanase being a female version of Elliot who she only broke up with because she was a lesbian not because she didn't like him.
• Dressed to Kill: When she tries to act as Elliot's Evil Twin.
• Duplicate Divergence: She starts out as an exact copy of Elliot in her memories and behaviour, but quickly becomes her own character, partially because of her own desire to not just be a clone of Elliot. The magical nose boop and another life's worth of memories probably helped.
• Evil Twin: Tries to be one during her initial Clone Angst crisis, but doesn't really manage to pull it off.
• Expendable Clone: Felt like one long after the other characters had accepted her as a person in her own right. Subverted, as she went on to become a major character.
• Famed In-Story: She and Nanase are minor celebrities due to them solving a lot of local Sooby-Doo style mysteries.
• Fighting from the Inside: Does this a few times when Sirleck is possessing her, culminating in her keeping him from possessing Magus. It's apparently possible because of her nature as a being born of magic.
• First Law of Gender Bending: Both her current status, and that she can inflict it on others. Deconstructed when Magus points out that the circumstances regarding her birth forced her to stay female so as not to inconvenience Elliot, and might only be saying that she's fine with being female because she had no choice but to accept it. When asked, Ellen denies this, strongly stating that she's happy being female. She even points out that, with the Personality Powers nature of magic, if she really wanted to be male, she'd have gotten spells for it after awakening.
• The Gadfly: She likes messing with people for the hell of it. Mostly with Elliot.
• Gender Bender: Averted, at least from a certain point of view. She is, technically, the only member of the main eight to have never spent any time as the opposite gender on-panel.
• Genki Girl: Not as much as Grace, but she definitely has her moments.
• Half Identical Twin: According to her cover story (she's actually a clone.)
• Hot-Blooded: She shares Elliot's hot temper but exhibits less control over it.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Her typical approach to Elliot ("You're like me if I were being directed by George Lucas.") Elliot actually gets more upset when she doesn't tease him because he feels guilty she got created (and stuck as a girl) in the first place.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: She said it to Tedd when he offered to study Nanase.
• Informed Attribute: Is said to be more introspective than Elliot, but aside from immediately after she came into existence, she isn't shown to do much introspection. Mostly, she just makes assumptions based on Elliot's memories while at the same time insisting that others do not refer to those when interacting with her. If anything, her hot head and bigger hubris make her seem less reflected.
• Insistent Terminology: Played with. When talking to most people, she insists that she didn't exist until the second Elliot touched the Diamond, and gets offended when Tedd makes assumptions about her based on what Elliot would do in a situation. When talking to Elliot, on the other hand, they both act more like they were once the same person, now split in two. "We loved Sarah," "We outgrew our bully of bullies phase," etcetera.
• Jumping the Gender Barrier: As someone on the WMG page put it, Ellen's problems derive more from not being Elliot than being female, which she doesn't seem to mind terribly.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: As a result of Anime-Style Martial Arts training, Ellen can use magic in conjunction with martial arts in combat.
• Like Brother and Sister: She mentions how quickly she got over not being with Sarah. The fact that she considered Sarah a sister was why.
• Meaningful Echo: Elliot explains that he took her creation in stride because his only thoughts were "She's family. Help her." Ellen later repeats the same words to Susan while encouraging her to meet her half-sister Diane.
• Most Common Superpower: Her body is based on "Female Variant #5" (designed by Tedd), so she's probably the best endowed of the cast. And since that is her default form, the "Female Variant #5" modification gets applied again on top of it whenever she zaps herself.
• Mundane Utility: As a side effect of being a living example of FV5, she doesn't have to shave her legs. Or possibly anywhere else, but that part was left intentionally vague.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Ellen inherited copies of Elliot's power as of the time of her birth, including his talent for sensing things. It comes in handy when the Goo returns and Ellen has to save Sarah from a surprise attack that could have been lethal.
• No Bisexuals: In denial, perhaps to show solidarity with Nanase and perhaps because of an incident in her dream life, though she has also claimed that that she feels squicked by the way her admitted attraction to men was artificially grafted onto her personality by the transformation gun. Later on, it's averted, with her actually doing the research. She's bisexual homoromantic.
• Official Couple: With Nanase. It has become even more official after the arc Sister II.
• Opposite-Sex Clone: Of Elliot, although she has diverged quite significantly from him.
• Poke the Poodle: After she was first created, she tried to be Elliot's Evil Twin, but failed miserably.
• Projectile Spell: Most of her spells are beam-based because she was created by an accident with a transformation gun.
• Power Dyes Your Hair:
  • Inverted when she has a magical burnout from copying Nanase's Guardian form. Her hair is turned blonde for the burnout's duration.
  • Her natural hair colour is changed to green after she's exposed to the Dewitchery Diamond exploding. She dyes it brown to avoid raising suspicion out in public.
• Sibling Rivalry: Ellen lives to tease Elliot — but god help anyone who actually hurts his feelings.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: She got it in ready form from Elliot, with some extra power on account of being a magical creature.
• Tangled Family Tree: As seen here, it's... complicated. And that isn't even close to some of the fans' ideas. Here◊ is her family tree. She was created magically instead of being born and can be thought of as having up to four mothers: one of which is also her twin brother, and father, two are mother figures and the fourth is her mother due to being her twin brother/father's mother. By the same logic, she has up to three fathers: one because he's a husband figure to one of her mother figures, one due to her biological relationship to her twin brother, and one due to being her twin brother/father's father. Also, by the same logic, she is dating her aunt, but that is only because of the biological relationship she has with one of Ellen's father figures, so it probably doesn't count. And Magus seems to be another father, since he deliberately manipulated events that directly led to Ellen's creation. This is actually a plot point: apparently, the way her family tree is constructed is integral to Magus regaining his body.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Compared to Elliot. Ellen is by no means a bad person (her attempts at being the Evil Twin didn't work out very well), but even though she was created as a duplicate of the female Elliot, she is notably more insensitive and self-centered than he is. The reason for the change in personality can probably partially be blamed on the traumatic circumstances of her creation, partially on alter-Ellen's dream life, and partially on an intentional desire to make herself distinct from her "twin brother."
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Being born from magic made her able to resist Sirleck's control.
• Utility Magic: One of her first spells is a flashlight beam from her hand. She thinks it's awesome.
• Verbal Tic: Has picked up/inherited "Za?" from Elliot.
• Winged Humanoid: The form that she briefly takes after the Dewitchery Diamond is destroyed appears to have wings.
• Younger Than They Look: Chronologically, she is less than a year old. Biologically, she is 17. Where it gets complicated is that in terms of memories and life experience, she has both Elliot's 17 years and around 18 years of alter-Ellen's dream life.

Diane

Diane

^{Click here to see her post-Sister 3 arc look.}

"Elementary, my dear Lucy."

The Queen Bee of Moperville South. She is often seen with Lucy and Rhoda, the latter of whom she is quite protective. She and Susan share an uncanny resemblance in both appearance and personality, the full ramifications of the relationship between the two only becoming clear much later in the comic.

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• Action Girl: According to Tara's Aura Vision, she has the potential to become a vampire hunter, implying she shares Susan's affinity for conjured weapons. This makes sense since they are revealed to be relatives. Diane is Raven's daughter and Susan is Raven's descendant. Even without that, she's quite fit from cheerleading, able to pull off some impressive flips.
• All Love Is Unrequited: For some reason, when Diane takes a serious interest in someone (outside her Gold Digger tendencies), it's usually someone who's not available to her — her sister's friend Rick, Nanase (who's with Ellen and initially has a great dislike of Diane), and Elliot (who's dating Sarah, then Ashley, and is also weirded out by Diane looking like Susan). Eventually subverted when she hits it off with Lucy.
• Alpha Bitch: Was portrayed like this early on, where her first appearance involved trying to get Nanase to sit with her at lunch so they could lure boys over to spend money on them, but then...
• Ambiguously Bi: Apparently has an If It's You, It's Okay thing towards Nanase, and is in a relationship with Sarah in an AU NP storyline. She then has The Big Damn Kiss with Lucy in the "Legend of Diane" story, and kisses her again after they talk after that kiss. She also seems to find genderbent Elliot attractive.
• Armored Closet Gay: Before the "Legend of Diane" storyline, she was rather in denial about any attraction to women that she had, framing any attraction to Nanase as an If It's You, It's Okay thing because of how she was both very feminine and very masculine with her athleticism at the same time.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Does this unintentionally when talking to Susan, who has just said that while she admits that she can find women sexy, she doesn't want to do "things" with them. Diane then asks if that's different from how she feels about men, causing Susan to realize that it isn't.
  • In the "Legend of Diane" storyline, she gives one to Lucy, asking why she kept going on double-dates with her when she knew of the reputation that they were getting as sluts.
• Ascended Extra: Started out as a minor mean girl and antagonist for Nanase and the other Moperville South characters but years of character development have brought her into closer relationship with the rest of the core characters and bumped her up to being part of the main cast culminating in being the starring character of her own arc.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Gives one to Lucy in the "Legend of Diane" storyline.
• Big Sister Instinct: Diane tries being mad at Noah for telling Lucy that Mr. Raven is Diane's biological father without her consent, but when she actually encounters him again all she can blurt out is how she's worried that he's not eating well. She even hits "Big Sister Mode: 100%" when she finds out she's a month older than him.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: It's implied here that she shares her father's ability to "taste" magical potential through her ears.
• Break the Haughty: She was quite traumatized after "Sister III" and to make it worse the next day she overheard what everyone at school says about her behind her back.
• Character Development: Gained a lot of depth from her initial portrayal as an Alpha Bitch, and when she realizes it, she decides she needs alcohol.
• Closet Geek: Got so exited about meeting the griffins that she dragged her friends to see Warcraft 2016, she's also at least familiar with popular fantasy like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.
• Compelling Voice: She has an innate talent for this kind of magic, which she's been using subconsciously such as when challenging the rumors that her and Lucy were sluts. It doesn't actually control people's minds, but it makes people more likely to pay attention to her and makes her more convincing when she lies (or as Tedd puts it, gives her a Charisma bonus). She still thinks it's a creepy power.
• Covert Pervert: She blushes very heavily when people start transforming each other with a wand at Elliot's party. Additionally, when it's proposed that anyone who misuses the wand has their spell turned back on them as punishment, she votes in favor while admitting internally that she'd otherwise be tempted to misuse it herself.
• Daddy's Girl: As a child, at least, she looked up to her father enough that she did a paper on it, since she couldn't just use him and her mom, and he's the exception to the "boys are jerks" viewpoint that she expresses.
• Day in the Limelight: During the "Family Tree" storyline, she played a much larger role than usual. This continues in the "Legend of Diane" storyline.
• Didn't See That Coming: Denying the rumors about her untrue Really Gets Around reputation was meant to sow suspicion among the liars who claimed to have done it with her, which would then extend to the rumors of Lucy by extension. She didn't expect people to start coming out and admitting that they did lie right then and there, and even admit to things not related to the whole mess, like one girl admitting that she kept the fact that she wasn't a virgin a secret from her friend, who calls a lot of girls sluts.
• The Ditz: Averted. She can certainly act the part, and she's incredibly shallow, but she's quite sharp and observant.
• Does Not Like Men: Not to Susan's (pre-character development) extent, but she does assume men are jerks until proven otherwise.
  • This may be the reason why she is fixated on Elliot, who she overheard being described as very passive.
  • When younger she thought the boys in her class were all jerks and told them as much.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: She's the Queen Bee of her group (and probably her whole school), the only blonde of her Girl Posse and has a reputation of having had several boyfriends for Gold Digger reasons. Another inversion of Susan, who was a natural blonde but refused to fuel the stereotype.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Cuts her hair to chin-length after the events of Sister III, particularly learning that Raven is her biological father. In an Imagine Spot, her younger self (who has the same hairstyle) characterizes doing so as a form of Emotional Regression to deal with the trauma she experienced during the arc.
• Freudian Excuse: This strip hints (and this strip pretty much confirms) that some of her behavior was the result of getting a crush on her sister's gay friend when she was younger and not taking the rejection well. Diane later calls herself out on the fact that this wasn't really a good excuse for her behaviour at all.
• Girl Posse: Lucy, Rhoda. Lucy fades into the background for a while, and she treats Rhoda more like a daughter, so she doesn't quite count in later comics.
• Gold Digger: Shamelessly, at least after her Motive Decay. Originally she wanted to find the "right guy", but after failing so many times, the right guy became a kind, compassionate, rich guy who will obey her every whim.
  Rhoda: What if you just fall in love with someone someday and they fall in love with you?
  Diane: That's adorable.
  • Upon realizing she was developing out of it, she's shocked to the point of wanting to drink. She finally lets go of this before asking Lucy out on a date.
• Happily Adopted: If her relationship with her sister Rhea is any guide. A later flashback strip shows that she's also close to her adoptive father, or at least was, and planned to invoke this by adopting at least two kids when she got older, in addition to having at least two the normal way. Though meeting her biological father causes her some angst as to why he didn't know about her and why her biological mother gave her away.
• Heroic Bastard: Raven was almost certainly not married to her mother.
• Heteronormative Crusader: She's not actively homophobic, but her heartlessly pragmatic approach to boys (they're for buying things) means that she has little use for gay boys (they won't buy her things, and will scare off boys who would). She's still amicable with her sister's gay friends and has no problem hanging out with Nanase and Ellen even after they've been outed.
  • She's also a Secret Secret-Keeper for Rhoda about her relationship with Catalina, and this strip implies, with it later being confirmed, that her earlier behavior might have been because she had an Incompatible Orientation crush on her sister's gay friend Rick, and not really getting over it, and she realizes that how she treated Justin was wrong and apologizes.
• Humiliation Conga: After changing looks after what happened in the mall, she gets to overhear how people perceive her:
  Shonen Girl: Whoever saved that girl was selfless and cool.
  Curly Curls Girl: And that's not Diane? I don't know her really well...
  Shonen Girl: Who would want to?
• Identical Stranger: Distinguishable from Susan only by personality, fashion sense, and the fact that Susan is slightly taller later on.^note  and considering Susan had a slight growth spurt due to her magical awakening... They have the same face, the same build, the same voice, the same natural hair color, and they were apparently born only 20 minutes apart on New Year's. The subtext with her similarities to Susan is even more blatant after the time skip: both girls have shown an interest in Elliot at the same time, although for drastically different reasons. While Susan has developed her friendship with Elliot by bonding over common interests, Diane apparently sees him as something to be used. During the Tengu arc, someone with magically-obtained knowledge on the subject has apparently confirmed (to the audience, at least) that the two are in fact identical twins separated at birth, or at least related in some other way. Justin's even suggested the theory that magic's flair for the dramatic increased their resemblance to each other. It's later revealed that they're both descended from Raven, Diane more recently.
• If It's You, It's Okay: It was a running gag that she feels this way towards Nanase. For a somewhat realistic take on the trope, it turns out that Nanase was actually a Closet Key for Diane.
• Important Haircut: Gets one during the epilogue of the Changes arc, after the events at the mall. She's still mulling over the exact reasons she got it, and the reactions from others - both in-universe and out - have been mixed.
• In the Blood: Her father is Adrian, an elf, making Diane one-quarter Immortal herself. This trait is cited as the reason behind her Vampire Hunter potential.
• Incompatible Orientation: Apparently she had a crush on her sister's gay friend, and didn't take learning that he was gay well.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Realising that she may be developing real feelings for Elliot and wanting to have a real, romantic relationship make her want to screw the rules and drink alcohol.
• Jerkass Realization: When a few people talk about her after she cut her hair and they don't realize that she's there, she is shocked by the things that they say, like that she's a selfish slut.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Comes off as frosty and dismissive at first brush, but her protective nature towards Rhoda goes a way towards establishing that she's not all bad. Later events show repeatedly that there really is a kind person under Diane's crusty exterior- she's just really bad at showing it.
• Long-Lost Relative: To both Susan, her great times something niece, and Raven her father.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: She has several Pet the Dog moments, including comforting Rhoda and Grace when they were upset. Also, it turns out she secretly idolizes Nanase, implying there was more to her actions during her first appearance than she let on.
• Mama Bear: She punches out a reporter trying to get Rhoda to interview for a men's magazine.
• Motive Decay: As her imaginary younger version explains to her, this is how she ended up dating so many guys. While it started out as an attempt to find the perfect guy (for both her and Lucy), failure after failure resulted in her becoming jaded and she only continued dating out of habit and have boys spend money for her, especially after realizing that they were a little young to be thinking that way and that their dates weren't looking for anything so serious. At least, until she latched on the idea of Elliot being the perfect guy.
• Neat Freak: "OK, you had both better have clean hands!" Another coincidence with Susan?
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Puts on the act of a Dumb Blonde because it attracts guys and because it's easier than getting any work done. She's actually quite smart (and borderline conniving) when she wants to be, and even the very academically-capable Nanase thinks highly of her intelligence.
• Oblivious Adoption: Didn't realize that she and Rhea were adopted until she was six, and explains that she "didn't know how ethnicity worked" and just assumed sisters naturally had different skin colors.
• Obliviously Superpowered: Diane had no idea about her Compelling Voice until Tedd sensed her accidentally using it and explained it to her. She also doesn't know about some of her half-elf traits, like the pointy ears she grows when resisting spells.
• Personality Powers: Being able to grab people's attention and influence their descions is a pretty fitting power for a Lovable Alpha Bitch. Although, she is a nice enough person that she doesn't want to actually control people's minds and of course can't actually make people think or do things they wouldn't want to.
• Pointy Ears: When exposed to a burst of magic from an enchanted mirror in Tedd's basement, her ears become noticeably pointy, likely as a result of her being 1/4 Immortal, especially given Raven's comments on how Elf ears react to magic. They also seem to trigger based on emotion, since they appear when she tackles Noah and again when she hits Big Sister Mode while interrogating him.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Susan and Diane have almost diametrically opposed personalities. Diane is extroverted, impulsive, emotionally open, popular, and has a reputation for getting around. Susan is introverted, logic-driven, emotionally repressed, nerdy, and hasn't ever been on a date. Although they also have a lot in common, including their observational skills and deadpan humour.
• Prone to Tears: The Party reveals that there's actually quite a bit of empathy underneath her crabby exterior. Such as openly crying when Justin explained his desire to have a guy think he's attractive, and learning of Tedd's mother leaving due to his perceived lack of magic.
• Really Gets Around: It's revealed in The Legend of Diane that she has a reputation for sleeping around at Moperville South despite still being a virgin. Ironically, she wasn't aware of this despite being one of the most observant characters in the series. She doesn't take it well.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Knows about Rhoda's relationship with Catalina, but Rhoda hasn't admitted it to her yet.
• Selective Obliviousness: While an expert at analyzing others, as mentioned under Sherlock Scan regarding her ability to tell that Ellen and Grace are new students, once she enters the equation, things get significantly more difficult for her, at least on a conscious level. She even completely missed the rumors that were popping up about her and Lucy, despite Lucy rightly pointing out that she should have noticed that there were negative rumors about them as a result of all the dates that they go on (if not as widespread/negative as they apparently are), and Lucy's feelings for her. She actually has to imagine a second her to get the job done. She doesn't even realize that she's subconsciously emulated her younger version's hair and clothing style out of nostalgia for her pre-Motive Decay self until it's pointed out to her.
• Sherlock Scan: Can immediately tell that Ellen and Grace are new students. In doing so, she gives a quick Shout-Out to the trope namer.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Like the other girls in her posse, Diane is named after a famous sitcom character. Her namesake is Diane Chambers from Cheers.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Her and Lucy's double dates started out as this before Motive Decay started to set in upon realizing that their dates were just trying to enjoy things. Her interest in Elliot in the present is a sign that it's popping up again.
• Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: In the 2017-12-20 strip, When she realizes that Jerry will be in serious trouble if she gets hurt, she uses this to extort information out of him.
  Jerry: Well... I have a theory, but she probably wouldn't want me to...
  Diane: Gonna go hug vampires.
• Superpowerful Genetics: She has a bloodline affinity for summoning magic weapons.
• Supernatural Sensitivity: Like Raven, she can "taste" magic with her ears, or at least can when they briefly turn pointy at Tedd's party.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Basically her reaction to the "truth-session" she inadvertently started.
• Talking to Themself: Mentally manifests a version of herself as she was when she was twelve for some self-inspection in "The Legend of Diane".
• Teen Genius: In addition to the points mentioned above under Obfuscating Stupidity, Lucy makes a comment that hints that Diane has been tested and shown to have a genius-level IQ.
• Tsundere:
  • Trying to play at this. She's failing horribly.
  • She's genuinely this to her adoptive sister Rhea. After Not Tengu's defeat breaks the spell on all the party guests, she warns Nanase that she won't forgive her if she messes with Rhea's memory, because she loves her. Then she warns Nanase that telling Rhea that she loves her is equally unforgivable.
• Trauma Button: She reacts poorly to the knowledge she has a charisma-boosting spell, which she compares to mind-control, just like what the Arc Villain of Family Tree used on her loved ones and almost got her with.
• Uneven Hybrid: Is part-Immortal, courtesy of her biological father Raven.
• Vampire Hunter: According to both Tara and the spider-vampire, she has the potential to become one were she to ever awaken, but isn't anywhere near that point. Later events reveal that vampire-slaying magic is In the Blood for descendants of Pandora, which Diane is.
• Weirdness Censor: She sees someone who looks exactly like her with blue hair... and doesn't even notice. When it's pointed out, she does admit there is some similarity, but doesn't see it as enough to get worked up over. Although given that she deduces that Susan is her sister later based in part on that observation, it's likely that was denial talking.

Ashley

Ashley

"What am I, the Devil?! Why am I so good at thinking up disproportionate magic revenge?!"

Ashley was introduced in the Identity story arc as a fan of Elliot's review show and Elliot himself. She's a perennial Nice Girl almost to a fault. She has a fondness for magic, transformation in particular. She enjoys writing transformation-based stories rooted in ironic punishments for those she believes deserves it. She has a dislike of labels, but if no other option is available she'd choose bisexual.

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• Anime Hair: Not as noticeable in her first few appearances, but played straighter as she's become a regular. She has six strands of hair that poke straight out and fall at perfect 90 degree angles and any time she loses her hairband, the strands of hair fall down too. It's not really clear how they're held up like that, but it is related to her ponytail.
• Audience Surrogate: Ashley has more personality of her own than the typical example, but before getting entangled in the main cast and learning she's also a wizard, she basically was a just a normal girl more-or-less unaware of magic's existence, with an interest in reading transformation stories, putting her experiences more in line with that of the EGS readership than most of the main cast, who started out knowing that magic was a thing and what it could do, or only became interested in transformation-shenanigans after being exposed to them. Part of her character arc is grappling with realizing that what she once thought of as harmless fantasy now actually is possible, and thus have actual consequences (especially once she gains Kevin).
• Bad Liar: While she points out that Elliot only has her word to go on on this for now, her first appearances were transparent Tsundere reactions towards Elliot as a concept, while alone no less, that made her attraction blatantly obvious even before her Crush Blush started showing. Not to mention blurting out that Elliot's Gender Bender situation makes him more attractive to her. If nothing else, she's very bad at lying to herself.
• Break the Cutie: Is notably less perky after Magus possesses Elliot. It's later shown that she's feeling some angst over her normal fantasies because of the potential to actually do them in real life with Kevin.
• Casual Kink: While she's not explicit about it, she very quickly makes it known she's into the idea of being shrunken as she has an Imagine Spot about being shrunken, asks if there's a shrinking spell during a party, and outright told Elliot she'd like it if she was a fairy in his hands all the while with a blush on her face.
• Characterization Marches On: She comes across as a Tsundere in her first appearances, unlike the straightforward Nice Girl she'd become. Shive admitted that he tweaked her personality after he decided to give her a bigger role than he'd originally intended.
• Covert Pervert: She likes that Elliot can transform into a girl because it reminds her of her favorite manga, Ranma ½. And later we get a hint of another fetish she may have.
  • A later comic makes it clear she is, possibly, as perverted as Tedd! But...her central goodness means she won't DO anything with it.
  • An Imagine Spot regarding her idea of Sarah's powers is rather telling as well.
  • As is her reaction when learning aboutNanase's "duplicate" spell.
• Crush Blush: "I don't have a crush on you."
  • Crosses into a Luminescent Blush quite often, as a result of Elliot saying something to get her a bit hot under the collar.
• Cute Bookworm: Obsessively, apparently.
  Liz: Just stay away from the book store.
  Ashley: Why would I need to stay away from the book store books are great they're full of paper and have words in them. (Liz gives her a silent Death Glare. Over the phone.) Okay yes'm I'll avoid the book store.
• The Cutie: She definitely has this in mind for herself when it comes to her date with Elliot
• Death Glare: She gives a particularly mean one when she notices Tom tricking Susan. Now in color!
• Designated Driver: She used to be invited to parties back when she lived in California just to make coffee and herd drunk kids, because she didn't drink.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She's good at thinking up these, usually with some kind of ironic twist... but she's far too much of a Nice Girl to ever actually do them, so they only appear in fantasy sequences or snippets from her written stories. This doesn't stop her from feeling guilty about having those thoughts and fantasies to begin with, though.
• Expressive Hair: Her spiky hair things will occasionally bend or flop to match her expression. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes not so much.
• Genki Girl: She has very big emotions, her face being very expressive.
• Greater Need Than Mine: Despite finally having a chance to talk with Elliot, she had to remind herself that she'd been going to warn him about her ex Tom manipulating Susan.
• I Know Madden Kombat: Shows off her soccer skills by kicking a ball to help Cheerleadra fight/distract the griffin here.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: This comic shows that although Ashley has an incredible desire to be able to transform others for reasons ranging from ironic punishment to personal growth to doing it just for giggles or a sexual thrill, that she is so good and pure not even Pandora can empower her, since Ashley instinctually knows using such powers in such a fashion is inherently wrong, and therefore will never actually use the spell, since as is said later, magic wants to be used. This kind of conflict between potential spell affinities and other aspects of a person's personality are not that unusual, but what is, and what strikes Pandora, is how easily she can sense that transformation affinity despite that goodness preventing her from actually giving Ashley a mark for it.
• Karmic Transformation: She's a huge fan of the trope and enjoys writing stories in which people turn into what they are against.
  • This causes her some angst after she gets Kevin, because she's worried that her fantasies are wrong, especially since she could potentially do some of that stuff.
  • Veers towards Disproportionate Retribution (or at least the fantasy of it), because her Imagine Spot concerning transforming Sarah in an embarrassing way is based on nothing but her personal mistrust towards Sarah because the latter is Elliot's ex.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Is obviously not a fan of keeping the events of her second date secret from Liz.
• Logical Latecomer: Unlike the members of the main cast who have been around since the start of the comic's run, Ashley isn't used to the constant stream of magic hijinks and monster attacks that has suddenly become part of her life. As such she tends to do things like break down crying after being kidnapped or struggle not to freak out after being transformed involuntarily when many of the other characters would just shrug and get ready for the next disaster.
• Love Confession: Tells Elliot she likes him here.
• Magikarp Power: As of the un-change, her magic levels are no higher than those of the average Muggle, which means it will take a lot of time and effort for her to Awaken. But as a wizard, once she does Awaken she will be able to learn other's spells in addition to those she is granted by the Will of Magic, giving her a much higher potential power level than most of the cast, who are stuck with Will-Of-Magic granted spells.
• Ms. Imagination: Far less of a Cloudcuckoolander than the usual examples of this trope, and really she seems more ashamed of this part of herself than anything... but she's prone to lapse into rather detailed and dramatic Fantasy Sequences if something excites her or turns her on.
• Nice Girl: So incredibly pure and good that it actually makes Nanase suspicious.
• No Name Given: It took multiple appearances in the comic for Ashley to finally get a name. For a while, it was a bit of a Running Joke in The Rant for Dan to berate himself for not writing a situation where someone said "Ponytail Girl's" name out loud early on. He's finally rectified it.
• Our Mages Are Different: She is a wizard, albeit a weak one.
• Perky Goth: With her emotional attitude, friendship with Liz, and attire in this picture, it can be assumed that she is this.
• Power Perversion Potential: One of the Patreon Pinups features her straddling Elliot and calling him while he's shape-shifted in his Cheerleadra form, in which his phone and its functionality - including vibrating alerts - become a part of him. Dan even mentions in a comment that the only thing keeping this scene from being canon is that they haven't had an in-story opportunity to do it yet.
• Running Gag: Anytime something weird happens, she gets asked if she has any questions, to which she answers yes... and she doesn't actually ask any questions about it out of politness.
• Secret-Keeper: She not only caught Elliot shape-shifting, but she volunteered to be his lookout.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: She was introduced as a total goodie-two-shoes type character, even to the point of ignoring her curiosity and not asking Ellen and Nanase any questions about magic on the grounds that, "I'm not going to pry. We've only just met. And I trust you'll volunteer anything I might need to know." This makes Nanase suspicious, but nothing comes of it as Ashley is exactly as nice as she presents herself.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Happens twice in "So a Date At the Mall". While everyone is suggesting reasons for Andrea's erractic movements, she asks if Andrea just has a bad sense of direction. Later on, Nanase is trying to contact Elliot with her fairy doll, but it hasn't been working all night. Ashley wonders if it's because Elliot isn't currently Elliot. Both of these are completely correct.
• Superpowerful Genetics: A potential subversion. She's a wizard, which means she should be descended from immortals, and likely has at least one wizard parent or other relative. Probably, anyway. Arthur seems to think that her wizard-hood is entirely the result of being near the Dewitchery Diamond when it exploded, and not from anything about her family tree.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: She's obviously kidding herself when she says she doesn't have a crush on Elliot.
• The Teetotaler: She doesn't drink alcohol, and suspects she got invited to other parties full of unsupervised teenagers drinking alcohol to be the designated sober person.
• Touched by Vorlons: Arthur believes that her wizard-hood, despite her average at best power, is a result of her being near the Dewitchery Diamond when it exploded. Either it made her a wizard entirely, or she's a kind of wizard that has gone unnoticed until now, and energy released just woke it up.
• Trans Chaser: Her favorite Manga is Ranma ½, and while she already had an interest in Elliot earlier, she crushes on him really hard after witnessing his transformation into a girl.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: After learning about Nanase's duplicate spell, Ashley immediately thinks about cloning herself and having both herself and her clone suggestively offer to watch a movie with Elliot.
• Unfazed Everyman: While she's surprised, she doesn't react negatively to Elliot accidentally shapeshifting in front of her, and in fact offers to help him stay under the radar.
• Wrong Context Magic: Despite her wizardhood, she has unusually low magic power, and unprecedented anomaly to the magic community.

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