Add together one cozy little sea town, one ordinary high school student, one not-so-ordinary talking Chao, a giant pencil, really bad jokes, and an endless war against the forces of primal creation:
It's Shadow Chao Adventures, a pencil-and-paper comic by RedSavant. Originally a spinoff/fancomic of Sonic the Hedgehog, it's since branched off into jokes about Azeroth, Halo, and many other subjects. In more recent strips, the strip's overarching plot has taken a much more dramatic turn (for one, there is an overarching plot now) with the introduction of the Border, the Carbon Sea, and the implications of being fictional.
In-universe, Carbon is fluid Phlebotinum. Only two elements can bind it to any other shape: wood, to make it solid and contain it, and words, to reshape it. Everything fictional — characters and settings — are made of Carbon, and everything fictional is bound by words. The more words, and the higher quality of words, a construct is given determine its strength, stability and freedom within the work. Established fictional works are like islands floating in the Carbon Sea — the reservoir of all creative energy in the universe. Because Carbon is inherently unstable, though, and always seeks to rejoin the Sea, Carbon is very dangerous to fictional constructs; the comic's main plot details Matt and Shadow's attempts to stem the Eldritch Carbon Abominations trying to destroy their home.
This series provides examples of:
- Author Avatar: Quite literally. Both a literal example and a subversion (which is still technically a literal example): Matt is a fictional version of the author, or started as one, and The Author is the Avatar (wartime General and basically god) of the comic, though he doesn't usually reflect the will of "Big Matt".
- Aborted Arc: Several, when a planned joke isn't funny enough or when a plot element proves too difficult to draw.
- Only Six Faces: Grievously evident; there aren't that many hairstyles either.
