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Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire is a webcomic started by Michael "Mookie" Terracciano in 2002. It follows the life and times of Dominic Deegan, a messianic yet pessimistic seer who travels about with Spark, his feline comic relief, and assorted companions. Originally a lighter strip based on puns and wordplay, it came down with an in-/famous case of Cerebus Syndrome, arguably starting with the "Visions of Doom" arc. Though some fans have bemoaned subsequent Moral Dissonance and the Flanderization of characters, Dominic Deegan has always maintained some level of its earlier whimsy.
The "Storm of Souls" story arc is a notable example of Dominic Deegan's Cerebus Syndrome. It deconstructs Order Versus Chaos while also providing expanded Character Development. Additionally, it featured multiple Heroic Sacrifices and someone being Killed Off For Real—though all were eventually reversed, resulting in a Battle Royale With Cheese that put future Heroic Sacrifices under threat of entering Narm territory.
Opinions are deeply and sometimes loudly divided about the quality of the comic, and the comic has a substantial Hatedom. For an illustration of the difference, consider this comic: from the intended viewpoint, cartoon slapstick violence. Creatively misinterpreted, a main character spurned by a trickster murdering him and a number of bystanders, which she has every right to do because she's a main character. As this is a polarizing subject, please allow the page to be somewhat neutral and refrain from making a Justifying Edit.
List of Major Arcs
Tropes used include:
- Action Mom: Miranda Deegan
- Added Alliterative Appeal: The author (or at least Spark) is prone to using these as an alternative form of wordplay.
- Aerith And Bob: The comic runs the gamut, from normal (Gregory Deegan) to the bizarre (Runcible Spoon).
- Just within the Orcs, we have Stonewater and Adrak Bulgak, though Stonewater is the literal translation for the Orcish word for ice.
- Aloof Big Brother: Jacob. As Gregory is the youngest of the three Deegan boys, Dominic sometimes comes off as this to Gregory.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Tons of it, though it's usually done for laughs. Theres a interpretation for almost all the characters. See Fanon.
- Animesque
- Annoying Arrows: Dominic gets an arrowhead embedded into his arm without even flinching. He sports a dressing that afternoon, and walks with a cane using that arm the following day.
- Anti Magic: Dex Garrit is a Resistant, meaning that no magic, harmful or helpful, can affect him directly.
- Ass Pull: To many, Siegfried's murderous racism just came out of nowhere. The argument goes that he would have treated Luna a whole lot worse if he were as racist as he was depicted later on in the comic.
- It can be argued that it was implied earlier in a not very obvious way, such as Siggy being repulsed by Luna's tusks because they make her look like an orc. Also, he's pronounced the word "orc" in bold and used it as an insult even before the racism was ramped up to much more obvious levels.
- Yes, but keep in mind, that sort of thing was evident in a lot of townspeople as well.
- Arc Fatigue: The Maltak arc. To the point where the forums have started a small scale meme replacing "Are They Still On Namek" with "Are They Still In Maltak".
- Arrow Catch: Melna pulls this off, to the shock and amazement of her companions in this strip.
- Art Evolution: After the first couple of years of improvements, the art quality stagnates. The only notable stylistic change recently is the addition of defined snouts for the Orcs.
- Art Shift: Occasionally, close-ups, especially of Dominic, will be given increased detail.
- The Atoner: Celesto has an... unusual view of how this trope works. Stunt plays it a bit straighter.
- Attack Hello: Luna admitted their first encounter with Jacob scared the hell out of her. Their (rather, his) last meeting together, well...
- Author Appeal: In his news posts, Mookie's often admitted his love for certain elements in the comic. Characters have spent entire strips focusing on food or drink that Mookie likes. Dominic's favorite food is Mavpel candy, an admitted Expy of one of Mookie's favorite candies.
- He's more recently admitted that he likes drawing muscular orc girls because, well, he likes muscular orc girls.
- Also, he is unapologetically a child of The Eighties.
- Author Avatar: Not Dominic, as you might have thought. Mookie has stated (in his third book) that Dominic's father Donovan is who he considers to be most like himself. Indeed, the two often behave similarly, and share a sense of humor.
- The confusion largely stems from the fact that, when he draws himself, Mookie's self-portrait is virtually identical to Dominic. This is partly due to a serious case of Only Six Faces.
- Bad Ass Decay: Jacob, who went from destroying five members of a death cult singlehandedly, to having his arse kicked by Huk Thak, The Shintula Chief, and Neilen, all fights were essentially ended with one move.
- This one is actually justified. Remember, Rillian sent him back to square one fairly early in the series- but after the death cult fight.
- Badass Normal: Rachel. Inverted somewhat with Dex, who has a rare condition that makes him immune to magic, and is thus one of the few surviving characters who can hold his own in a serious fight without magic.
- Battle Aura: Gregory's white magic gives him a pretty cool one. And occasionally gives one to his enemies.
- Battle Royale With Cheese: Used in Storm of Souls and Maltak.
- Beat Panel: A pun will frequently be followed by the victim staring at the "camera" with a sour expression.
- Behind The Black: One of the greater problems voiced about the plains of Maltak is a visibility of five meters. Characters in this vast, featureless wasteland run into each other by accident and don't hear conversations and see events until they enter the panel.
- Berserker Tears: Used fairly regularly, most notably by Sigfried in the War in Hell story arc.
- Blessed With Suck: Being a Resistant (immune to ALL magic) sounds cool, but remember that while they can't be hurt by magic, they can't be healed by magic either.
- Blood From The Mouth: Used in its most classic sense, as visual shorthand for a fatal injury.
- Body Horror: Celesto's Chaos magic has this in spades, especially in the deaths of Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis.
- Boobs Of Steel: The most-well-endowed protagonist female is Hot Amazon Rachel Hart.
- Break The Cutie: Inverted; Luna is introduced at the climax of her mother's year-long campaign of breaking her, and saved from suicide by Dominic. We learn more about the process in various flashbacks. Most of her character development revolves around the slow recovery of her sense of self-worth. Gregory is also somewhat subject to this trope, particularly in a couple of the later story arcs.
- Breather Episode: Rather, a breather story arc — the "Around the World" arc, to be precise.
- The Cavalry: The Doma have arrived. Oh, and the Shintula.
- Call A Rabbit A Smeerp: "Mavpel" candy, the sap of a mavpel tree allowed to solidify.
- Canon Sue: Several characters have mutated into this over the course of the comic, most strikingly Dominic Deegan himself and his lover Luna Travoria, who alternate between Canon Sue and Anti Sue.
- Character Development: Luna's has been the most significant in the strip. She's a woman who, in her first appearance, was about three seconds from hanging herself after getting turned down by Siegfried because of her tusks. Now, even getting told that she can never become pregnant doesn't get her down.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Rachel's face > magical steroids.
- Cheeky Mouth
- The Chessmaster: Dominic, especially during the Super-Greg arc. This is one of the reasons Dominic sometimes comes off as a Designated Hero. It's hard to come off as completely heroic when manipulating people, even if it's for the Greater Good and with the power of foresight.
- Chosen One: Observing Luna in the Maltak Arc could help in understanding why many people dislike the trope. Are you ready, class? She's been Chosen because of something that was done to her, giving her great powers that she hasn't had to work for. So far, so good. These powers are gracious: they work without any tension from making her master them, risk of going out of control, or cost to her. The vague elements/spirits/magics who Chose are keeping such a close eye on their investment that if we disqualify "hitting back," her count of independent acts during the arc may stand at 0. Even her mentor figure drugs her into having a vision without asking, and one of those magics taints her so that she's Not Herself during the heroics. Luna is a puppet. A potentially horrifying situation, and the comic might get some Emotional Torque out of the fact that being Chosen means not being asked if it dwelt on her reactions for more than three panels, total. The active characters in this plot are the unspecified, unpersonified and certainly uninteresting larger forces enacting an unknown master plan. The person under the bundle of power and Destiny has not been shown to matter.
- Even worse, this trope has already been handled better in the strip with Dominic being the chosen Champion of Balance.
- Christianity Is Catholic- There is only one true church and all of the Kingdom of Callan appears to fall under its banner. Like Dungeons And Dragons with racial religions.
- Contractual Immortality: Celesto,
Klo Tark, The Infernomancer. In the Infernomancer's case, this is literal as his contract with Karnak makes him immune to all wounds.
- Cept them giant holes in his face.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Serk Brakkis
- Crossing The Desert: The Maltak arc consists of trekking through a vast, featureless wasteland, in the daytime, without pack animals and with no more consumables than what the party can fit in one, ordinary-sized backpack per person, and they apparently keep their tents in those as well. (Bags of holding have been mentioned once—the wind kind of went out of this argument when one gag hinged on a character being able to turn on a torch.) They're also not taking care to cover their heads, and one character is in a dress. They do hire an experienced guide, but this guide is the same one who would've gone through and okayed all of that, and who built a stone fire ring miles upon miles from plant life.
- Crouching Moron Hidden Badass: Gregory
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Man on his deathbed finding the willpower to keep from dying... 'nuff said.
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: Dominic and Luna tend to share one of these at the denouement of each major story arc. (See here for one of the best examples.) As always with this trope, Your Mileage May Vary; this troper happens to have something of a sweet tooth for geek romance, and sees enough parallels in these characters to his own two long-term relationships that he still finds them heartwarming rather than Narmful or diabetes-flavored.
- Stunt, of all folks, gets one here.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: "I knew it!"
- Curb Stomp Battle: In this corner, Jacob Deegan, necromancer and mad scientist who's in the past slaughtered several of the Chosen, beat a spellwolf in single combat, and has been a serious antagonist throughout the comic. In this corner, is the Shintula Chief, whose son Jacob just brutally attacked. Jacob didn't stand a chance.
- Curse Cut Short: Subverted in this strip.
- Cursed With Awesome: Dominic has complained since the very first strip about the burdens of being a seer.
- It's not so much being a seer, it's that his gift of random visions (coupled with he and his family attacked right in their home by one of mom's old nemeses) which led him to focus on studying Second Sight. He wanted to help people with his gift; instead the comic opens In Medias Res with him being a fortune teller for a town of complete idiots.
- Another example: Dex Garrett. He's a resistant, a 1/200,000 condition which is completely immune to magic (good and bad). It also makes it very difficult for him to find stable work, because employers have to pay heavy taxes and rifle through ridiculous amounts of paperwork to hire one.
- Cute Little Fangs: Inverted with Luna's, though in-verse it's considered a hideous deformity.
- Dark Action Girl: Snowsong and Hirek.
- Darker And Edgier: Spoofed with Dominic's favorite comic being Ret Conned into the character "discovering" he's half demon ... much to Dominic's dismay.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Rilian, the first necromancer, is basically a walking skeleton. In the Around the World arc, he masquerades as a fat jolly necromancer named Brian. This is said to be what he used to be like before the problems of the world and the weight of centuries made him bitter and unpleasently pragmatic.
- The Nakta and the Akta are all about this.
- Deal With The Devil: Infernomancers
- Death By Materialism: Amelia
- Death Is Cheap: Death is always dramatic, as the trope requires, but doesn't ever seem to stick for major characters. Unless your soul gets destroyed, in which case you're pretty much fucked. This could be a result of the comic spending so much time in dreams and mindscapes. Also, Necromancers as a general rule tend to come back when they die, so you have to make sure they're really dead.
- Death Is Dramatic: Always, even when it's a Disney Death.
- Deliberately Monochrome: When the strips are released in print collections, colorized strips are made gray scale. As Mookie notes in the 4th collection, "Color printing is expensive. Very expensive."
- Depraved Bisexual: Szark, Celesto. Szark even comes out as gay rather than bi after his Heel Face Turn. This facet of Celesto's character seems to have been abandoned.
- Determinator: Dex Garrett
- Designated Hero: Dominic has some, ah, interesting methods at his disposal. And for that matter, some rather dubious motives at times.
- All of Luna's contributions to the salvation of Maltak were accidental, as she was manipulated by higher powers the entire time. That doesn't stop her from taking the credit.
- Did Not Do The Research: On all kinds of subjects, even trivial ones; this is how, for example, a wooden door gets cracked like glass or clay by a dagger stuck in it.
- Discretion Shot: Various, including Shadow Discretion Shot.
- Dis Continuity Nod: Quilt, the necromantic golem; before he was given a name, forum regulars named him "Patches." Quilt himself rejected it, saying it made him sound like a dog.
- Disproportionate Retribution: As stated above, the fireball strip, although it was already established that Luna's fireball spell is more of a prank than a dangerous weapon.
- Both in and out of universe with Celesto's murders of Serk Brakkis and Brett Taggerty.
- According to Celesto, Amelia's death.
- Draco In Leather Pants: Lord Siegfried "Siggy" Damaske.
- Writer Revolt: Siegfried's development and involvement in The War in Hell and Shadow of Siegfried arcs.
- Dropped A Bridge On Him: Whom Mookie destroys, he first makes racist. This first came to light when Siggy, a dark-but-troubled knight, was revealed to be a serial murderer and lyncher of Orcs in order to make him killable. Then Jacob, a necromancer with an established dispassionate attitude towards everything but his work, started spouting supremacist propaganda and was killed off two strips later. It didn't take. Jacob's back from the dead, but appears to have had an epiphany of some sort when he actually found out the secrets of the dead he was after were...not what he expected.
- Drop What You Are Doing: Upon harsh shocks, things get dropped.
- Easily Forgiven: Dominic and Co. forgive Szark, Snowsong, and Barnet rather quickly after their respective Heel Face Turns. Of course, each has its own mitigating circumstances.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Vilrath, despite technically never appearing in the comic, enjoys quite a fan following, as does Caylen Bren.
- And the snarkers love young Warlord Damaske and the nameless dwarf who punched Dominic in the nuts.
- Epileptic Trees: This troper has seen some pretty out there theories and Wild Mass Guessing on the forums in the past.
- Evil Costume Switch: Siegfried and Jayden each get one from Karnak.
- Evil Counterpart: Celesto is Dominic's. He even has a goatee!
- Evil Eye / Death Glare: Miranda Deegan's willpower-eroding, thought-derailing gaze, which has a range of half a mile and can strike targets around corners.
- Evil Is Sexy: Many lowcut bustiers and skintight outfits for the female villains in particular, but men get their share as well. Most notable in Amelia Travoria, Helixa, and briefly, Jayden.
- Exasperated Perp: Dominic combines this with a Journey To The Center Of The Mind during an interrogation with Barnet Travoria. It comes back to bite him.
- Exposition Beam: Dominic does this often.
Dominic Deegan: See the truth!
- Eye Scream: The Infernomancer, whose eyes are wounds that will never heal as a result of a deal with Karnak. That is, until he became a Cosmic Horror.
- Fail Polish: Luna's tusks have become noticeably less, er, protrusive, over the years.
- Fan Nickname: Before being given an official name, Quilt was called 'Patches' by the fandom.
- Some call The InfernoMancer... TIM?
- Snarkers have their own set of nicknames for most of their favorite minor characters, including Warlord Mustache, Punchy McStonefist, and Outrage Chief, while Celesto earned the moniker "Collateral Damage Man" during the battle in Lynn's Brook.
- Fan Hater: To the extreme. John Solomon's line was that anyone who would defend Dominic Deegan was a morally bankrupt retard and so their arguments were automatically invalidated. The snarkers are more "tolerant", only describing fans as rather dull and a tad creepy.
- Fanon: Many anti-fans, especially the Playground Snarkers, devote more attention to extensive Alternate Character Interpretations than to the actual canon. There exists an entire "Encylopedia Dominica" cataloging their Fanon. Some examples: When a halfling is smitten by a main character right after meeting her, they claim that the halfling was Brain Washed by a "Deegandrug" that her body releases into the air—and that it is not a neurotoxin, as the enslavement's speed is affected by body mass. Non Mammal Mammaries led to the coining of the "nipple fairies," then speculation about their life cycle and effects on civilization. A Cosmic Horror consisting of a writhing mass of tentacles around a giant eye was instantly declared the cutest thing ever, named Snuggles (Full name Sn'gl'euth'u McCornia the Third, AKA Sightless McHuggingtons), and explained as being a childlike being who just wants hugs.
- Fantastic Racism: Racism is rampant in the kingdom of Callan, specifically towards Orcs. It really came to a head with the Orc War. Callanians and Semashi don't seem to get along easily, either.
- Fantasy Contraception: Protection Scrolls; refusing to use one when he slept with Luna, then chewing her out when she talked him into using it, was one of Serk Brakkis's many Kick The Dog moments.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Previously the comic featured knights, wizards, dryads, werewolves, undead, slimes, orks, dragons etc., but ever since the Dominic's and Luna's 'round-the-world trip story arc, this trope has gone into overdrive, with the author showing a ton of new races, i.e. merfolk, sea monsters, hobgolins, halflings, dwarves, mongrelfolk and whatnot in rapid appearance.
- Faux Action Girl: Snowsong
- Filler: The Vacation arc was all filler. The year-long Maltak arc probably took longer than it needed to.
- Final Speech: Siggy gets one.
- Flanderization: Szark's crush on Dominic. Siggy's racism. Quilt's stupidity. Dominic's ability to plan ahead. Luna's bids for independence. Dex's timing for Big Damn Hero moments, heck, pretty much everyone.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Danika gets pretty emotional over Dex's mortal wounds, but not much is made over the death of her friend Alicia.
- Freudian Excuse: Often precedes a Heel Face Turn, most notably with Snowsong and the Oracle Hunter.
- Fun With Foreign Languages: Donovan Deegan speaks comically bad orcish. Also a direct Homage to the Monty Python "Naughty Hungarian Phrasebook" sketch. It's eventually revealed he's doing it on purpose.
- Gender Bender: Male misogynist Stunt was subjected to a (very brief) gender bender in the Wild Edge territories story arc, before being turned into a half dozen other critters, and eventually changed back.
- Genius Bonus: In the form of knock-knock joke
- Also, there is a professor at Miranda Deegan's academy named 'Runcible Spoon', a nonsense phrase from the Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat.
- Genre Savvy: Donovan, though it's not always appreciated.
- Get Out Of Jail Free Card: No Heel Face Turn is complete without one (lampshaded at least once, by Celesto regarding Amelia's brutal murder vs Szark's redemption, but even still...)
- Glass Cannon: Neilen, once he becomes linked to the brittle soil of Maltak.
- Goldfish Poop Gang: Stunt and Bumper, for the first few arcs.
- Good People Have Good Sex: Donovan and Miranda Deegan
- Good Scars Evil Scars: Nimmel, a good-natured graduate of the School of Arcane Arts is introduced with a scar encompassing his right eye and a good chunk of flesh around it, which was deliberately made to look as nasty as possible. He'd gotten the scar from an attack on the school, and his telling the attacker where to find Miranda, which ended the attack, is seen as cowardice by him. As he gains prominence, his scar looks a bit better, and Luna gets him to see that he saved his classmates' lives by telling the attacker, and he shouldn't think himself a coward for it.
- Green Rocks: Illusion spells, good for trapping all-powerful foes and calming friends by faking your death at their hands!
- Groin Attack: "There's no need for — *BAM*"
- Hard Head: Rachel Hart. "I break things with my face."
- Hatedom: A large part of the comic's readership. An unusual case, as the 'Hatedom' is divided into several camps, based around several different forums. The 'Snarkers', as they usually call themselves, range from friendly to brutal. In either case, "If you don't like it, then don't read it" arguments will get turned around to "If you don't like us complaining, then don't read the forums," and "We snark because we care."
- Head Tiltingly Kinky: Hobgoblin mating season sex. Surprisingly, it is safe for work.
- The Heart: Early on, both Gregory and Luna fulfill this role for Dominic.
- Hollywood Homely: Aside from the tusks, Luna is really not a bad-looking girl, (as far as you can tell) yet everyone acts as though she's thoroughly hideous.
- It's only because of the tusks that anyone has ever called her ugly. Recall Siggy's first reaction to seeing her before she took off her veil.
- Part of this is explained by the fact that most people that reacted in such a way were the idiot villagers who were also unkind to Greg for being a cripple or racist against orcs, like Siggy.
- Hollywood Tactics: Men, half of you will charge in to fight the enemy hand-to-hand! The other half will then take up their bows and fire into the melee! But remember: don't kill anyone!
- Hospital Hottie: Nurse Pam, particularly during the Hello, Nurse! arc.
- Hot Amazon: Rachel Hart
- Hot Librarian: Pam Chayler. Well, hot nurse, but the trope still applies.
- Hot Scientist: Cassafinn Sunderliss
- Hot Teacher: Dominic, apparently.
- Hurricane Of Puns: Lots of them. Sometimes one-sided, sometimes a volley between two characters, and sometimes the entire on-panel cast will join in.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Most, if not all, of the hurricaned puns, at a bare minimum, make people rolls their eyes. In other cases...
- I Always Wanted To Say That
- I Am Not Right Handed: Szark
- I Got Better Dex, though a reason as to why could still emerge.
- Happens to Reinholdt during the climax of the Maltak arc, though not without a price.
- Similarly, when Luna is stabbed with the Hukthak, her injury disappears as soon as it's pulled out, but it too comes with a price: She can never have children.
- I Just Knew: Constantly, especially in Maltak. Huk Thak once pulls this off three distinct times in a single 8-panel strip.
- I Know Youre In There Somewhere Fight: Dominic's mindscape battle with Szark.
- Ice Cream Koan: "Crying is like puking for the soul."
- If I Can't Have You: Karnak's motive for attacking Miranda.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The Rhazgala are apparently such good archers that they can fire volleys into the air into a melee with such accuracy as to only score non-lethal hits, a pretty much impossible feat in real life.
- In The End You Are On Your Own: Despite all the others who undertake the quest with him, Dominic usually fights the Big Bad alone.
- Despite leading the entire Shintula tribe to the Bikta camp, Thuen Gor is the only one who does any fighting.
- Informed Ability: Reinholdt is supposedly trained in "Wasteland Survival", and yet clearly has no idea what he's doing. This is most likely because the author Did Not Do The Research.
- Insistent Terminology: Inverted. Brett Taggerty called Gregory a faggot and Rachel a dyke at about every opportunity. Neither, especially Rachel, would put up with his crap.
- It Has Been An Honor: Siegfried's Final Speech.
- Its Raining Men: Or in this case, souls.
- Jerkass: Lord Siegfried Damaske, Stunt.
- Jerk Jock: Brett Taggerty and the majority of the Baccdair Brawlers fit this trope perfectly. Dex Garrit and Rachel Hart are the only athletes who don't.
- Jumping The Shark: Depending on who you ask, the comic has already jumped long ago—but those who say it has are divided over the exact point, citing a specific story arc or even a specific comic strip that they found to be one Wall Banger too many.
- Jumping Off The Slippery Slope: A certain elemental goes from a womanising scumbag to a insane mass of death earth attempting to kill one of the main characters. Then again, it was less "jumping" and more "shoved by Jacob".
- Karmic Death: Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis, from Celesto's point of view, anyway.
- Kick The Dog: Often invoked to prevent the protagonists from looking too gray. Unless a villain is immediately painted as sympathetic and merely confused, expect some detail to turn up that justifies doing horrible things to them.
- Also, among the first things we see Siegfried do are beat Dominic to a pulp for not giving him the prediction he wanted, and then beating Gregory, a crippled kid, with his own walking stick. Of course, he does Pet The Dog a couple times later on.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Celesto Morgan's merciless exploding of Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis. Merciless, but executed on an Asshole Victim extraordinaire both times.
- Killed Off For Real: Klo Tark's second death seems to have stuck.
- Letting Her Hair Down: Nurse Pam
- Light Is Not Good: While the Akta isn't bad, being a force for life and healing, its most powerful practitioner, the Bikta spirit father, is a fanatical asshole.
- Like You Would Really Do It: Due to Word Of God, this now extends to pretty much every important character.
- For a specific example, Luna's dying. Yeah, right.
- And lo and behold, she's alive, while techically dead for a few strips, everyone predicted she'd be brought back.
- Love At First Sight: Usually averted, but played straight with Hansi and Kiya.
- Lower Deck Episode: Occasionally, we're treated to an arc without our main characters: Hello, Nurse! and Built to Resist omitted Dominic and Luna in favor of Gregory, and Two Thief featured only a small cameo from Dominic.
- Mad Scientist: Jacob Deegan the necromancer.
- Made Of Iron: Rachel "I Break Things With My Face" Hart
- Magitek / Functional Magic: What starts out as a pseudo-medieval fantasy world turns out to be a world with advanced arcane laboratories, magical electric guitars, heavy metal bands ... and, apparently, spandex.
- Makeover Montage: Rachel Hart makes it happen.
- Mama Bear: Go ahead and piss off Miranda Deegan. See what happens.
- Manipulative Bastard: Dominic gets dangerously close to being one during the Super-Greg arc. He's far from the worst example though.
- Manly Tears: All over the place.
- Mary Sue: One of the criticisms most often levied against the strip is that the protagonists are all Mary Sues.
- The Masochism Tango: Dom and Luna.
- Meaningful Name: Donovan's orcish name, for one. For two, Stonewater. For three, Huk Thak. For four, Rocky the golem.
- Memetic Badass: Scarf, Dominic's scarf.
- Warlord Damaske and the dwarven groin-puncher, among the Snarkers.
- Memetic Mutation: Among anti-fans, Dominic Deegan is referred to as "Lord Dominus," an amoral overlord who uses his second sight to control all of his friends and loved ones.
- "Curse you Runcible Spoon!"
- Messianic Archetype: Luna has become this in the newest arc, becoming essentially the Jesus of the orcs. She sprouts plant life wherever she walks, can pull water from nowhere, and is literally powered by the gods of Maltak. Near the end of the arc, she dies and is promptly resurrected.
- Klo Tark died for your sins. Twice.
- A Million Is A Statistic: At the end of the Maltak Arc, much is made of Luna's personal sacrifices, but no mention is made of the heavy casualties of the Big Bikta Battle.
- Mind Rape: Siegfried hijacks a lunar divination between Dominic and Milov to do this, displaying his fate since the War in Hell and his past affair with Lady Jayden in order to force Milov into having a Heroic BSOD.
- Moral Dissonance: More than a few instances of this occurs throughout the comic. Sometimes it gets called on by other characters, sometimes not.
- More Than Mind Control: Karnak's control of Szark.
- Murder The Hypotenuse: Karnak's attempted way of dealing with the love triangle between him, Miranda, and Donovan.
- My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels: Donovan's attempts at speaking orcish. Its on purpose.
- Narm: Klo Tark's second death and also Siegfried's death
- Nerd: Dominic was a huge nerd as a kid. So is Prento Fallin, one of Dominic's students. Mookie proudly proclaims he is one in real life.
- Never Live It Down: There's a hatedom, it's what it does. Orc rape! Supergreg!
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: Several examples, including:
- A twofer Nice Job Breaking It Hero, involving Gregory and Brett Taggerty. First, a wasted Brett punches out Pamela, whom Gregory has a crush on, and dares him to fight back using his white magic. Gregory erupts into a geyser of white fire. Oops. The resulting tidal wave of White Magic heals everyone in the hospital...with the unintended side effect of powering up Brett and the rest of his Slaughterball team, and sobers them up, too. Oops.
- Overlapping with Oh Crap: The Infernomancer's response when Dominic tells him the demon lord he was supposedly bound to serve didn't have control over him: "Now I get to kill you the way I've always wanted to — slowly!"
- Something the Shintula Chieftain is experiencing right now in the form of Luna's Chosen One status, which would never have happened if he hadn't cursed the Callanians with the affliction that would lead Luna to being born with 'Tusk-Mouth' in the first place.
- Nice Job Fixing It Villain
- Noble Demon: Averted. Word Of God is that incarnations of evil are actually evil for once.
- Noble Savage: Orcs.
- Non Lethal Warfare: They're beating us up with their arrow volleys! The idealism is adorable. Apparently the idea is the orcs were shooting to wound but...well, Arrow Volleys Do Not Work That Way.
- Almost immediately averted when the other side's leader uses nature magic to upgrade his troops' weapons with spikes. Then the archers start shooting to kill.
- Oblivious Younger Sibling: Gregory refuses to believe that his big brother Jacob is at all evil... until Jacob admits he tried to kill him.
- Obviously Evil: A common accusation leveled at the series is that every antagonist that doesn't do a Heel Face Turn and embrace Dominic and his Nakama within the course of a Story Arc will devolve into this.
- Made worse when Mookie revealed he had received a standing ovation during a comic convention panel on writing dynamic villains. This only served to make the hatedom even more critical of his works.
- Your Milage May Vary, I suppose. Dominic's "Bastard Watch" contains three very popular characters in the series, all of whom have had Character Development in one direction or another as the series has continued.
- Offhand Backhand: With plants
- Oh Crap: The Shintula Chief tells Luna to choose her words carefully...She does indeed.
- And the Shintula gives Jacob a good one here.
- Only Six Faces: Lampshaded here. There are other occasions where it's clear that Mookie is aware of it. Dex Garrit and Dominic Deegan look alike because they share similar hair. The mystery and dramatic reveal of the Oracle Hunter's identity was only able to keep the reader guessing because of this trope.
- Omniscient Morality License
- Open The Iris: They're anime style characters. The sizes of their irises/pupils change with their emotions.
- Out Of Focus: Given the comic's large character base and varied locations, it's not uncommon for the focus to change drastically from arc to arc. Supporting characters like Milov and Jayden will sometimes disappear for arcs at a time, and even main characters like Dominic and Luna will occasionally take an arc off.
- Paint It Black: The Nakta does this to Luna's hair.
- Papa Wolf: Though not as rabid as Miranda, when you're around Donovan, it's really not a good idea to screw with Dominic or Gregory.
- The Paragon: Dominic and Luna's goal in the Maltak arc. Whether they succeed or not is up to you.
- Pardon My Klingon: Ilka Tuk Tak, as well as "Kegak," which seems to be more of a direct insult.
- This strip gets funnier if you imagine the phrase means "motherfucker", although anything with fuck in it is probably broad enough for the number of places "Ilka Tuk Tak" get's used.
- Later comics give us "kiak", "fak", "uruk", and "thok".
- Parent Ex Machina: Miranda, somewhat exceptional in that the main character is (ostensibly) no longer a child. Actually lampshaded at one point when Miranda refers to herself as "Mama ex Machina"...or at least tries to, but can't get the wording right and eventually settles for, "I'm his mother, and I'm going to fix everything."
- Pet Homosexual: Szark. Oh, Szark.
- Pet The Dog: Jacob resurrecting Luna. "Don't say I've never done anything for this family."
- Pimped Out Dress: Amelia's dresses
- Planet Of Hats: In this case, Tribe of Hairstyles. Every tribe in Maltak is given their own adjective.
- Poke In The Third Eye
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Siegfried, Siegfried's father and Brett Taggerty come to mind
- Porn Stash: You never guess WHOSE porn stash it's referring to...
- Pretty In Mink: One of Amelia's dresses. Miranda's mother had a fur muff.
- Protagonist Centered Morality: One of the more common complaints leveled against the series. It goes without saying that Your Mileage May Vary.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Dominic gets one after banishing a demon overlord with his mind.
- Put On A Bus: Szark and Snowsong are sent to the "Aberthast Cathedral" to await their Heel Face Turn.
- At the conclusion of the Maltak arc, Reinholdt is put on a mountain.
- Rape As Comedy / Rape Is OK When It Is Female On Male: Here.
- Rape Is Love: Melna was raped by Stonewater (as a child!) to save her life, but after meeting him again some years later, she discovers, to her alarm, that she is attracted to him now. On further rumination, Melna loves what Stonewater has come to stand for... which is not that surprising given Stonewater tried to model himself after Melna's father, horrible traumatization aside.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Dominic's father, Donovan, is the Trope Namer.
- Red Right Hand: Jacob Deegan has (had?) one skeletal hand.
- Red Shirt: A lot of these guys are lost in Built to Resist. They don't call Celesto 'Collateral Damage Man' for nothing.
- Red Shirt Army: The Rhazgala clan, in the final battle of March Across Maltak.
- Redemption In The Rain: Played straight, almost to the point of being Anvilicious, in Maltak.
- Rule Of Cool: Mookie is known to invoke continuity errors or unexplained events for the sake of coolness. For example: why does Melna's hammer have lightning coming from it when she kills the Doma chief? Because "it's pretty f*cking metal."
- Rule Of Funny: Apparently, this is why bards do anything.
- Including spending two decades intentionally misspeaking orcish!
- Sadist Teacher, subverted. During his tenure as a teacher, Dominic gained a reputation of being a hardass before the first day of class even began. He admits that Second Sight (the course he was teaching) would be hard, as there is a lot of history and heavy reading involved. Despite this, he has a positive relationship with his students, and vice versa.
- Scapegoat Creator: The some of the harsher snarkers don't just go after the webcomic—they go after Mookie himself. Some of the things said on the classic "snarkers" forum (ironically the once-official Dominic Deegan forum) get downright nasty.
- Scarf Of Ass Kicking: Dominic's never without his scarf, not even in psychic battles.
- Screw Destiny: At the end of the Maltak arc, Melna tells fate to kiss her ass. A few comics later, Kiya steals her line.
- Screw The Rules I Have Money: Serk Brakkis
- Scry Vs Scry: Dominic and Celesto, several times.
- Sensible Heroes Skimpy Villains: The female villains tend to dress a LOT sexier than female protagonists.
- Shout Out: A few visual references to Guilty Gear, among others.
- Shut Up And Save Me: The Trope Namer, here.
- Smug Snake: Serk Brakkis
- Snark Bait: And how. Discounting the current thread, there are 1294 pages, averaging slightly less than 30 posts a page. Most of the major forums are now dominated by people who are in it just for the snark.
- Snarky Non Human Sidekick: Spark
- Sophisticated As Hell: Dominic and Luna, during their vacation after meeting a dragon:
Luna's narration: Dominic and I, having just been in the presence of such a majestic creature, reacted the way any pair of intellectuals would have...
(Dominic and Luna stare at each other)
Dominic and Luna: (bouncing up and down) DRAGONDRAGONOHMYGODDRAGONOHGODOHWOWDRAGONDRAGON!
- Strange Minds Think Alike: In the first story arc, both Sigfried and Spark use the phrase, "In my defense, it had tusks" to describe Luna (which Dominic catches right away when Spark says it). The two instances occur several days apart. Subverted in the second case, as it turns out Spark wasn't referring to Luna, but to a sea monster that also had tusks.
- Strawman Political: Heavily abused, to the point of being Anvilicious more often than not. If you don't embrace multiculturalism and tolerance, not only are you a idiotic bigot incapable of reading or thinking for yourself, but you're also just plain evil, going to die, and going to Hell.
- Superhero Episode: Super-Greg
- Suspiciously Idle Knights: The knights on Serk's take during Scarlatti's duel with Sturtz.
- Talk To The Fist: The only thing stopping this from being a Click Hello moment is that there's no guns in this world. But it's still awesome.
- Ted Baxter: "Look, ball-for-brains, just use your vision to tell me how awesome I am.
- That Night Felt Like Months This early strip, among other times.
- This Is Something He's Got To Do Himself: Chief Thuen Gor orders his men to stay back while he fights the Bikta Chief alone.
- To Hell And Back
- Tonight Someone Dies: Done with the "Fated Fatal" Dominic goes through early in the War in Hell story arc, which he says means someone he knows will die, and there's nothing he can do about it.
- Took A Level In Badass: Luna's taken a few over the course of the strip. Starting with this exchange: When the hell did *Luna* gain self-confidence?!
- Trademark Favorite Food: Dom's "Mapvel Candies". Also, Spark really loves fish. But he is, after all, a cat. And, uh...yeah.
- Unfortunate Implications: Accusations are a dime a dozen, but the biggest furor is about the Blizzardian Orcs. Not only are the Orcs completely unable to save their own people, relying instead on Dominic to save them, but he does so by engineering a battle amongst the orcs where there were plenty of casualties. The cost of the battle was not brought up afterward.
- Unpleasable Fanbase: Although there are plenty of legitimate objections to raise, sometimes the critics and snarkers get a little too into it.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Constantly.
- Unusual Euphemism: Dominic's term for large breasts is "lower back problems." Luna also wrote about her crush on Siegfried in her journal, and makes mention of his "great big sword".
- Utopia Justifies The Means: Raf Maliksh and Celesto.
- Vigilante Execution: Celesto does this to Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis, and almost to Barnet Travoria.
- Villain Decay: Jacob Deegan went from being one of the most insanely powerful people in the comic to being easily defeated by Chief Thuen Gor.
- Violation Of Common Sense: "I think we should stop trying to rob someone who can see the future."
- Wall Banger:
- Super-Greg! This storyline is the ultimate example of the different ways to view the comic. Picture a confrontation with an overwhelming villain, weeks of dramatic build-up, and several cast members in mortal danger. The frail healer turns into Superman, spandex, catchprase, pose and all, and saves everyone in a huge cartoon blast-out. Some fans went along with it and had a lot of silly fun. Some fans crawled over every inch of it, looking for a lick of sense, until they were twisted into the original snarkers.
- The Rape Is Love scenario from the War in Hell arc (due to the misogyny of orc culture, Stonewater had to rape Melna to save her from being outright killed as her mother had just been) is an oft-cited reason for hating the comic by members of the Hatedom.
- Dominic's own mindscape superhero form.
- Luna taking all the credit for saving Maltak, despite being perhaps the least competent character in the arc, while suggested she is the catalyst for all of it happening, the fact that one of the main reasons that Dom and crew went after the Spirit Father was that she was incapitated Damsel In Distress style does not help.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Neilen's channeling of Maltak's dead earth gave him crazy elemental powers... and made him as brittle as the soil itself.
- Welcome Back Traitor: Dominic's childhood friend Szark turns on the protagonist due to demonic influence. Once the demons are dealt with, he's back on Dominic's side.
- Well Intentioned Extremist: Celesto Morgan, who first wanted to cleanse the world with Chaos after deciding the people in it were all assholes, and who now says he's trying to save the world from The Infernomancer while incidentally destroying Lynn's Brook, which he calls "a small price to pay."
- What The Hell Hero: Invoked (and promptly dismissed) on occasion—except for Pam at the end of the Snowsong arc. She actually called out Gregory and Dominic for their actions and punished them for it. The fact that this almost never happens with any of the other characters made that instance rather refreshing.
- Huk Thak invokes this at the climax of the Maltak arc, but is dismissed by Reinholdt, of all people.
- White Magic: White magic can manifest in white mages in the form of light, or in more exceptional mages, (e.g. Gregory) white fire.
- Who Wants To Be A Superhero: Gregory's alter-ego Super-Greg, and Dominic's childhood love for The Adventures of Mighty Man.
- Who Wants To Live Forever: The Aliak
- Worf Effect: Jacob Deegan, who previously annihilated a group of Chosen in a Curb Stomp Battle, is killed by Chief Thuen Gor.
- Xanatos Gambit / Xanatos Roulette: Dominic uses his Second Sight to pull off Gambits that would be Roulettes for anyone else. Other characters comment on it, but they're not being Genre Savvy. Dominic likes to do The Reveal when his plans have come to fruition—or is occasionally forced to reveal his intentions when one of his plans goes awry. It's the major source of friction in his relationship with Luna (who spent most of her life getting abusively manipulated by her mother and sister).
- Some of the villains like to pull gambits of their own, leading to insane Thirty Xanatos Pileups in at least two story arcs.
- Yin Yang Bomb: Luna in the current story arc. Also a case of Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil.
- Earlier, there was Dominic as the Avatar Of Balance in the "Storm of Souls" arc. It seems to be a recurring theme in the comic.
- You Know What You Did: Neilen attempts to pull this on Dominic and Luna. It fails miserably.
- Your Mileage May Vary: There's fans and haters of every stripe. Among webcomic authors, Phil Fogilo, Tim Buckley, and Brian Clevinger enjoy the comic. On the other hand, John Solomon has so much venom for Dominic Deegan that he's made his own bitter parody series, Dominic Durgan.
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