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I grew up in Moperville. Weird stuff happens here...
"easily the most perverted squeaky clean comic on the net."
—Tangents Reviews
El Goonish Shive is an Action Adventure Dramedy webcomic, written, drawn, inked and colored by Dan Shive. He has stated that all of the comic can be summed up in one of Elliot's quotes: " Because it sounds like one big awkward moment".
It's about a cast of characters and their relationships while in the middle of spellcasting, shapeshifting, gender-bending, and blatantly disregarding the laws of physics. Or, alternately, it's about a cast of characters who occasionally take time off from obsessing over their relationships to cast spells, change shape, and break the laws of physics. The gender-bending is pretty constant, though.
The series has a heavy focus on interpersonal relationships; it's easy to get so wrapped up in the characters' lives that you forget that an inter-dimensional Evil Overlord has been attempting to attack them since one of the first story arcs.
The cast includes:
- Elliot Daniel Dunkel, who starts off as an Ordinary High School Student (except for his study of "anime-style martial arts");
- Tedd Drew Verres, Elliot's best friend, pervert, and a part-time Mad Scientist specializing in Transformation Ray technology;
- Sarah Brown, Elliot's eventual girlfriend and often the Straight Man for the cast's weirdness;
- Nanase Kitsune, Tedd's cousin who starts off as Elliot's girlfriend/fellow martial artist and becomes one of the more conflicted characters in the cast after she steers him toward Sarah.
- Grace Sciuridae, a part-squirrel part-human part-alien Raised By Wolves shapeshifter;
- Ellen Danielle Dunkel, Elliot's Opposite Sex Clone, who was split off from Elliot by a combination of Involuntary Shapeshifting and magic items and now lives as his Half Identical Twin sister;
- Tiffany Susan Pompoms, Sarah's angry Straw Feminist friend who's forced to question her own prejudices, and deal with the event responsible for them;
- Justin Tolkiberry, Nanase's best friend, who pines for Elliot ever since he rescued him from bullies...
...and a host of secondary characters.
It has its own wiki, Shiveapedia, which is currently beginning to undergo some Wiki Magic.
Oh, and pay no attention to the art quality of the early strips. It gets better.
Dan Shive also created a short series DES Comics on Deviant Art, somehow related to EGS. On the one hand, in What do the Shadows Hide? Alex has Susan-Diane Fusion poster from EGS Backgrounds, so it must be on our side of the Fourth Wall. On the other hand, in #009 someone's palming off to Tori a Velocitoaster invented by Amanda.
Has a character sheet
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: Hints dropped at Ellen taking up drinking were later explained away because the creator didn't like the direction it would take.
- Academy Of Adventure: Two of them: Moperville North and South.
- Accidental Truth: Susan tells one of these about Justin being gay.
- Action Girl: Nanase and Ellen
- A God Am I: Big Bad Damien, who believes he was summoned to Earth to be the Messiah of the Chimera. The realization that he might actually be a simple lab experiment who thinks he is all of those things triggers his Villainous Breakdown.
- Alternate Universe: Several, usually with variant Tedds. The one where Ellen and Kaoli "met" got Uryuoms and seyunolu as accepted part of Human life for two centuries or so. But it still has Tedd.
- Anti Climax: Hedge is the King of this.
- Unfortunately, the school uniform subplot, one of the few subplots to actually receive a conclusion so far, suffers from this. In the commentary, Shive blames poor planning on the abrupt end, but insists the tone would have remained the same regardless.
- Anti Villain: Grace's brothers at first.
- Arc Fatigue: Utterly infamous for this. Storylines can go on for years in this comic, despite only taking place over a few days. Only about three months have passed despite the comic having been around since 2002.
- Arson Murder And Jaywalking: The Anime Style Martial Arts dojo is located in the same neighborhood as a strip club, cigarette store, adult bookshop, abortion clinic, and ice cream shop.
- Arthur Dent: Sarah.
- The Atoner: See for yourself. But he's still incorrigibly dramatic.
- Attractive Bent Gender: Pretty much whenever anyone is transformed, goes in both directions. Isn't getting custom designed by a maniac grand?
- Aura Vision: What makes bloodgrem an useful summon instead of merely obnoxious.
- Author Appeal: The copious amount of transformation. In-story, Tedd represents this aspect of him.
- Author Guest Spot: Dan's squirrel avatar, though only out of continuity.
- Badass Boast: "No one will care if I kill you."
- Badass Longcoat In the latest story arc, Abraham. And Tedd's dad, of all people.
- Badass Teacher: Endangering students of Mr. Raven is the sort of things insurance companies make a specific exclusion for. Even for wizards.
- Berserk Button: Quite a surprising number of times, for a relatively non-violent series.
- Beware The Nice Ones: Grace, who can shapeshift into any number of extremely lethal forms when provoked. And when she's reluctant or unable to enter close combat she just uses telekinesis instead.
- Bi The Way: Ellen. In general, changing straight people's sex wreaks havoc on their sexuality.
- Bigger Stick
- Big No: Played with here.
- Bilingual Bonus: If you're willing to go here to translate Uryuomoco. A couple real examples with French and Japanese though.
- Biological Mash Up: Both magic user and lespuko-chimera can acquire and combine forms.
- Bishonen: Tedd isn't quite a classic bishie, but he is still both androgynous enough and attractive enough when he takes his glasses off to cause homophobic bully Tony to go into full-scale panic.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Uryuom reproduction is very... complicated....
- Black And White: Tedd and Grace play this computer game in the 2-28-02 and 3-01-02 strips.
- An entire side story dedicated just to this game.
- Blessed With Suck: Sure, Elliot and Ellen will get pretty sweet magic powers, but the Power Incontinence (especially embarrassing for Elliot) means that for a while, life will be just a little crap for them.
- Break The Cutie: Many times, especially Grace.
- Brick Joke: November 19th brings us what Shive is pretty sure is the furthest callback joke ever.
- Broken Masquerade: Pandora is now hellbent on causing this. Why? Does she need one, given that her
nickname middle name is Chaos?
- Also, it will let her son Adrian participate fully in society.
- Brought Down To Normal: Nanase, after "burning up" her magic in order to defeat Abraham. This is, however, temporary.
- Bully Hunter: Elliot Dunkel has fought bullies in the past to protect their victims, including both Justin and Tedd.
- Can Not Tell A Lie: Abraham.
- Cant Get In Trouble For Nuthin: Ellen, in her first separate appearance
- Calling Your Attacks: Elliot and Ellen do this on several occasions-in Gratuitous Japanese no less. Lampshaded when Elliot wanted a do-over after he forgot.
- Captain Ersatz:
Professor Snape Mr. Raven.
- Cat Girl: In various ways, ranging from the appropriately-named Catalina, to Ellen's online persona, to Grace's werecat form and the variants thereof to normal form of Nioi and Kaoli. Not to mention Elliot's catboy form....
- Cerebus Retcon: In spades. Dan's famous for this trope. Before this series developed Cerebus Syndrome, many hyper-zany elements were present in the story, and now that the series has taken a level in seriousness, Dan is having fun going back and deconstructing lots of the ridiculousness of the earlier strips.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The Painted Black arc was the turning point.
- Character Derailment: Sarah's feminism has all but faded away since Susan showed up.
- Character Development: One of the strong sides of EGS. It's rather chaotic and detail-saving, but profound.
- Chekhovs Gun: A lot of 'em. It got to the point that Shive redesigned a character with certain "suspicious" traits (such as an eyepatch) specifically so that nobody would sit around waiting for those to be explained.
- Chekhovs Gunman: Hedge, among others.
- Chekhovs Skill: Tedd sometimes glows. He doesn't seem to be aware of it and it happens when he thinks about Grace. Hasn't been explained yet.
- The Chris Carter Effect: Schedule Slip trouble + Dan Shive's love for Chekhovs Gun = we should probably give up on expecting getting answers to all of the questions.
- Cloning Blues: Played depressingly straight.
- Code Name: Grace originally didn't have a real name, but went by the code name 'Shade Tail'. 'Grace' was the name her Dr Sciuridae gave her, after the dead daughter who had been her gene-parent.
- Both for Grace and general Tail variants, Tail as the last name is not arbitrary, it's family name, since their Uryuom parent's name translates to Tail from Uryuomoco.
- Color Coded Multiplayer: When Nanase creates one shadow copy of herself, the copy is colored with one of the primary additive colors (red, green, or blue), while Nanase is colored with the corresponding primary subtractive color (cyan, magenta, or yellow, respectively). This actually makes sense from a scientific standpoint: The real Nanase is absorbing the color the fake one is producing.
- Coming Out Story: Justin's, related to Susan during Grace's party, though it had previously been shown without explanation. Nanase, on the other hand, comes out during the party, though by then everyone there that night except Tedd already knew. She's still only out to the people who were at the party, though.
- Congruent Memory
- Crazy Prepared: Mr. Verres' party chaperone presentation.
- Creepy Child: Chaos, while mindscrewing Mr. Verres and his team.
- Crouching Moron Hidden Badass: Grace. If you invoke her Omega form, destruction and violence ensues.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Tedd turning up at school wearing a vest (part of the girl's uniform) to show support for Susan's crusade against the uniforms. Despite being teased since a young age about his looks.
- Hell, Mr. Verres just got one. Taking down Abraham with an absurdly powerful lightning bolt.
- Raven got one before that, going from mysterious creep to Badass Teacher in just three words: "You are trespassing."
- Nanase transforming herself into a 4-winged angel, nearly killing herself in process and temporarily burning out her magical abilities. It's explicitly stated that it's her willingness to give her life to save Ellen's that allows her to learn the spell.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny - Lots. Even the new banner ad is hilarious. "Read or all these girls will cry!" "I won't." "Read or 80% of these girls will cry!"
- Crowning Momentof Heartwarming Many.
- Curse Cut Short: Agent Wolf is such a.
- Cute Little Fangs In the person of Catalina Bobcat. Also Grace in her squirrel form.
- Damsel In Distress During the "Painted Black" arc, Grace becomes one when she's captured while infiltrating Damien's base... at least until Damien makes her really, really mad.
- Actually, Elliot, due to his self gender-bending abilities, temporarily becomes a damsel in distress as well, if only to escape.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Magics apparently drain user at various rates. Overkill spell may overtax even well-trained wizard.
- Daydream Surprise: Here, with hints, and far more emphatically here.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mr. Raven, sometimes Susan and Mr. Verres.
- Default Setting Syndrome: Newspaper arc "Dan in the MUD".
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Susan.
- Didn't See That Coming: Anybody who forgets he's fighting a wizard after having to overcome his spells just to get there deserves to be spammed by exploding crows on the spot.
- Didnt Think This Through: Abraham. Almost everything he did at all.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Abraham's diplomatic efforts. He doesn't tongue-slip, but still manages to annoy one more hell out of Adrian Raven with every phrase, starting from the second.
- Dysfunctional Family: Not only Tedd's mom is gone to Europe, but when Nanase's mom asked about her sister, the answer sounds much like Pandora-Chaos at her worst.
- Doing In The Scientist Recent development turned to the wizards. Though it's not like magic and inner demons weren't called in the first three months. Look! It's a demonic duck of some sort!
- Only partially though. It's still hard science manipulating that magic.
- Or rather science, magic and shapeshifting are all mixed up.
- Dramatic Wind: Susan is particularly good at it. Tedd too as of late.
- May be justified, since Susan was initiated along with Nanase in the French Noodle Incident.
- Dramatic Thunder: Happens whenever Nanase's mother says something emphatic. Played seriously the first time, and then for laughs in one of the Q & A comics.
- Dream Sequence: An entire Story Arc of them, each revealing something personal about one of the main characters.
- Dropped Glasses: ...revealing that the character doesn't really need them.
- Eagleland: The Government isn't that bad. Even MIB. But tourists...
- Education Mama: Nanase's mother.
- Eleventh Hour Superpower: Three times. One is justified in expansion, other is justified in previous development and the last one was built up in more than two years so that it was bound to appear and could not be anything less than Summon "Oh Crap".
- Epiphany Therapy Lampshaded. Tedd gets over his homophobia long enough to kiss GraceGuy, but Grace is quick to point out that just recognizing he has a hangup isn't enough to instantly make it go away.
- Embarrassing First Name: Tiffany Susan Pompoms.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: Tedd Drew Verres isn't such a bad name, but he makes a big deal out of it. Middle Names are Always Fun!
- Everything's Nuttier With Squirrels: Well, duh◊.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
Even pitch-black evil guy Even Magus won't help Chaos ruin Verres to just to kill Abraham ... just to punish Raven for being a disobedient son.
- Everythings Smellier With Skunks: Nope. And and two seyunolu girls are part-skunk. No, really. Just look at those tails. Also, the name is a giveaway, too.
- Evil Laugh and Psychotic Smirk: Both played to the hilt with Raven though he could just be being creepy and weird.
- Evil Overlord: Lord Tedd, though Nioi insinuates that he's nothing of the sort.
- Evil Twin: When she's first introduced, Ellen tries to be one of these for Elliot in an effort to give herself some sense of identity. She turns out to be spectacularly bad at it.
- Exposition Party: Gets its own arc, the longest in the series.
- Expy: Grace definitely has nothing in common with Squirrel Girl... oops. On the other hand, "cat girl"-to-"squirrel girl" substitution doesn't leave many options anyway.
- Fan Service: This filler is the most over the top example of it.
- Let us not forget this one, which is the first bit of Fan Service Shive gave us (as well as what he claims is "the first and last violation of the 'No Cleavage' part of Sarah's contract").
- Fan Nickname: Several, mostly relating to bent gender forms. Man Nanase is Manase, for instance.
- Also an authorial nickname for Assistant Director Liefeld. Author's notes refer to him as "Muscles McMuscles."
- Fear Leads To Anger: The first panel of this strip.
- Female Gaze: Guinea's transformation provokes some... reaction from both Ellen and female trooper (agent Cranium?).
- Fetish Fuel: While not played up for fetish reasons, there are people out there who consider shape changing and gender changing a turn on. And that's only the beginning of it.
- First Girl Wins: Elliot and Sarah, Tedd and Grace (that we know of anyway), Ellen and Nanase, if you count Ellen's "birth" as taking Sarah out of the picture.
- Flight: Nanase, in two different ways: wings in her fairy form, and magical levitation in normal form. Actually three ways: She has wings in her One Winged Angel (or whatever you call it) form. Also, Grace - levitation, though only in Omega form, Nioi - magic, Vlad - wings plus levitation, and the Elves - magic again.
- Foreshadowing: Tends to get lampshaded a lot. What is left is usually cryptic or already blatantly obvious.
- What's seen here translated with this. "Death. It Is Time For The End Of Man. This Master of Fire Shall Inherit The Earth. My Very Presence Eats Away At Your Flesh" Other than the two bizarre words in the end, it's pretty creepy.
- Fourth Wall Mail Slot: The Q&A strips.
- Freak Lab Accident: What the Goo originally was before a Cerebus Retcon turned it into an attempt by Lord Tedd to kill this universe's Tedd.
- Freudian Excuse: Most of the cast have really screwy home lives.
- Functional Magic: Nioi is a powerful sorceress, as is Nanase. Nanase in particular uses it very often and quite openly at times.
- Fun Personified: Grace is usually defined as "bubbly".
- Furry Fandom: A segment of the fanbase. Hasn't come up as much in recent years.
- Gas Leak Coverup: And a mysterious stalker from the mysterious girl's past. But not a crazy wizard attack. Not at all.
- And Mr.Verres already contemplated using swamp gas as a random coverup.
- Gender Bender: The entire cast, at least once. They even did this as a theme for a party.
- Girl Posse: The Libby Diane and her hangers-on Lucy and Rhoda. At least that's how it seems at first....
- Good Angel Bad Angel: Susan's Curiosity and Logic; they end up agreeing, to her chagrin. Later, Susan's Nature and Nurture; they do not agree, and Nurture ends up gagging Nature.
- Graceful Loser: Principal Verrukt pushes in all the wrong directions, but doesn't mind when he's repelled. At least if it's not about murals.
- G Rated Drug: Involves a Cat Girl with catnip.
- Grammar Nazi: Mr. Raven is presented and referenced as one, and his Hitler Forelock does not help his case at all.
- Half Human Hybrids: Grace and her brothers, Nioi, Mr. Raven.
- Half Identical Twins: Elliot and Ellen, though they're not actually twins.
- Heel Face Turn: Ellen, though the whole Evil Twin thing was mostly caused by her thinking she was going to disappear in a month.
- Also, once Damien was no longer around to control them, Grace's brothers surrendered peacefully and now live comfortably in a new government facility.
- He Got Better:
Sarah: He's not your cousin! He was a cat because... his ex- girlfriend was mad at him!
Hedge: What?
Sarah: Yeah! His ex is a crazy red-headed macho witch woman! She got mad, and turned him into a cat! ...he got better...
Hedge: Not buying it.
- Hero With An F In Good: As well as F in enchantment. And the same in strategy. Abraham. He thought he's a good guy there, but...
- Herr Doctor: Doctor Germahn.
- Hidden Depths: It's easier to name aversions.
- High School: Two of them of the cross-town rivalry variety, complete with uniforms, bizarre teachers, odd mascots, and most of the other associated tropes. Half the cast attends Moperville North and the other half goes to Moperville South.
- Homage: The demonic duck looks very similar to a major character in Goats, the comic strip by Jonathan Rosenberg.
- Hot Amazon: Elliot has no problem dating Nanase, a black belt who's the only student at their dojo who's a better fighter than him.
- Hyper Awareness: Information gathering is Hedge's strong side. Maybe he's no Sherlock Holmes, but he grasps any clue present, like occasional slips of Elliot knowing Grace or Grace being in a relationship.
- Diane also displayed this ability when determining that Ellen and Grace were new to Moperville South. She was even wearing a Sherlock Holmes outfit for one panel.
- Hyperspace Mallet: As with everything else in the series, though, an attempt at a logical explanation for when, where, and why it can and can't appear is provided.
- At least Susan and Abe did summon actual weapons out of thin air.
- I Gave My Word: Abraham really does not want to kill Ellen Dunkel, but his oath was too inclusive, so... and he's quite happy to be pushed into what sounds like a legitimate loophole.
- I Have No: Susan has no cousin or sister. Mrs. Kitsune has no sister. And it's clearly unsafe to argue with either one about the accuracy of these statements.
- I Just Shot Marvin In The Face: Sarah is scared of Shape Shifting and holds a grudge against Tedd after his "just joking around" with supposedly "not charged" TF gun.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: the TFG
- Incompatible Orientation: Times three.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Technically, Magus apparently was behind the v-five Elliot incident and tries to manipulate Ellen within some plot that sounds quite dubious. And is not very good at this. But he's in desperate straits, which isn't even his own fault (unlike Abe's case). And he's still reluctant to kill a guy who stands in his way even when pushed hard to do this.
- Infodump: Shive is really thorough when it comes to describing the capabilities of Tedd's technology, the mechanics of alien and hybrid genetics, and more recently, magic. Anything left for the readers to guess about is practically guaranteed to be a Chekhovs Gun.
- Informed Ability: Susan's magical powers, which are seen exactly once and then rarely mentioned afterwards. Susan later explains that Nanase's powers are of a different order than hers ("Awakened" vs. "Dreaming") without going into detail.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Grace, for a while, although she just learns to avoid squicking people more than anything.
- Insulted Awake: Ellen did this to Susan once.
- Interspecies Romance: Tedd and Grace; Ellen @ Second Life and Archie; the demonic duck also admits to preferring human women. Isn't done obliviously, as at least psychophysiology matters even with shapeshifting seyunolu.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: Ellen was accidentally created in an attempt to undo an involuntary transformation and sneezing sometimes causes her to fire a transformation beam from her hand, turning her target - herself, if she has good manners - into the Pheromone-spewing, Female Variant Five. More recently Ellen and Elliot both have to use their Gender Bender powers or risk losing control over them. Elliot has it worse, since he can only transform himself and has to do it multiple times per day.) Neither of them is happy about this, but Ellen had more of a BSOD than Elliot did when she realized just how much worse he had it.
- I Sense A Disturbance In The Force: Adrian Raven admitted having ability to measure magical power without devices, which all but confirms a common wild guess on who his "random favourites" are.
- Jaw Drop
- Kamehame Hadoken: As a practitioner of "anime-style martial arts", it's no big surprise that Elliot (and Ellen who "inherited" his abilities) uses a variety that emits short-range force blast. He need to have free hands to do it.
- The Khan: "SKIRRRRT!"
- Kicked Upstairs: Mr. Verres winds up in a position created just for him when his boss decides that it's best that he not be directly involved with the frequent cases involving his son and niece, and keep away a cover-up specialist from the limelight (the last part seems to be about to backfire).
- Knight Of Cerebus: Damien. It's sort of a subversion as Dan killed off Damien because he didn't want his comic to develop Cerebus Syndrome. It did anyway, just with seriousness developing within the characters' personal demons rather than fantastical conflict.
- Knight Templar Abraham.
- Kudzu Plot: Alongside Schedule Slip - two nasty tastes that really don't go together.
- Lampshade Hanging: Mr. Verres' recent transformation into the newest Mr Exposition.
- Laughing Mad: Ellen, when she's first created and thinks she's going to die.
- The Leisure Suit Larry: T.C., aka "The Playah".
- A Light In The Distance: "What is..." THWACK!
- Loads And Loads Of Characters
- Look Behind You ("Is that a demonic duck of some sort?" Subverted — there really is a demonic duck except during the strike. Or vacations.)
- Love Is In The Air: The super-pheromones of the Variant Five settings. "Male, female, gay, straight... female variant #5 cares not."
- Mad Scientist: Tedd, Lord Tedd, Dr. Germahn, Amanda.
- Magic Pants: At first, it's averted; shapeshifters apparently ruin a lot of shirts, and Grace, the biggest shapeshifter, has absolutely no nudity taboo. Later, the trope is brought in, with textile technology from a race of alien shapeshifters.]]
- Mama Bear: Knowing that Adrian Raven is half-human and half-immortal, Abraham managed to draw only one conclusion, and mostly wrong one. The prospect of facing said immortal's reaction after he'd beaten her child within a hair's breadth of death somehow escaped his attention in all this haste... Isn't it surprising — where all those heavy boots flying toward his butt came from? And it's still not enough for her.
Pandora-Chaos: Also? He hurt my son.
- Man I Feel Like A Woman: It's implied that Tedd does this on occasion, although other characters have been known to.
- Mandys Law Of Anime Gender Bending: The Sister arcs, Grace's "brother", Vlad. Note that the Transformation Ray itself has built-in time limits, which no one's ever even waited for; these cases are by other means.
- Manipulative Bitch: Nanase's mother, as shown in this comic.
- Pandora would also qualify.
- Man Shaped Hole: Damien and Adrian Raven both made big holes part in the window and part in the wall by being blasted through. Both survived this and flying one story down to the ground after, both being tougher than normal humans.
- Meaningful Name: Assistant Director Liefeld is rather overmuscled.
- Nanase's last name is Kitsune and she ends up called her magical clone Fox.
- Also, Grace's last name, Sciuridae, is the scientific name for various species of squirrel.
- Meganekko: Chika, the newly introduced colleague and sane partner of Amanda.
- The Messiah: Grace.
- MIB (Mr. Verres)
- The Mind Is A Plaything Of The Body: About halfway. Gender Benders face the consequences of the new hormonal status and reactions on pheromones, whether they are comfortable with this or not. But Shape Shifting does not turn the subject mentally in a cat, guinea or squirrel. On the other hand, both innate and artificial Shape Shifting have some safeguards.
- Mind Screw: Lots of it. When done intentionally, usually involves attempts to project the normal family tree onto Ellen's case in several (equally disturbing) ways.
- Minored In Ass Kicking (Mr. Raven, though this is more of a Crouching Creeper Hidden Badass)
- Mix And Match Critters / Hybrid Monster: Uryuoms' eggs work this way, thus Here There Be Chimerae. And then, part-lespuko chimerae.
- Morality Pet: Lord Tedd looks almost normal and even rather nice when he looks for Nioi, as opposed to most other scenes with him, while Nioi is convinced he's not that bad and it's all only corrupting influence of General Shade Tail.
- Most Common Superpower: Ellen literally has this as a superpower.
- Mr Exposition: Dr. Germahn and Amanda during the Q&A segments, Tedd when he explains the TF/TG gun.
- Ms Fanservice: In just about every one of her appearances, Amanda ends up transforming, usually shrinking or turning into a Half Human Hybrid. This is Fanservice for a particular segment of EGS's fanbase.
- Mysterious Parent: Tedd's Mother, Susan's Father.
- Actually, Susan's father has been shown to be an adulterer, but god knows where Tedd's Mom fits in. She does have something to do with Lord Tedd's evilness in that universe though.
- Diane and Susan might count as Mysterious Siblings.
- Mysterious Past: What the hell happened in France, anyway?
- Nakama: Although the two members that are actually family have virtually no interaction with each other.
- Names To Run Away From Really Fast: Pandora Chaos Raven. "Refer to me as one or as all. I WILL live up to the name."
- Could be major Narm as well, but you should still probably run away from it.
- Necessarily Evil: Abraham.
- Negative Continuity: Some of the EGS:NP storylines. Like this one.
- Never Live It Down: Abraham "But You Screw Up One Enchantment..." Every properly trained wizard has heard of him.
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: Abraham and his great idea to make Dewitchery Diamond. What he needed was to remove or suppress lycanthropy of one guy. What he did is a Booby Trap for unaware shapeshifters and users of cosmetic magic, with side effects that in turn suffer several other side effects in such a way that whatever problem caused its activation spreads. And it's nigh indestructible, so all this fun never ends.
- Nightmare Fuel (Chaos' manifestation on the physical plane will give you chills with her first appearance. When unfocused her image will haunt your nightmares forever. Which makes the revelation that she's the mother of a grumpy old history teacher all the more shocking.)
- No Bisexuals (The strip has a rather... unusual take on sexual attraction and gender identity, which led to vast, multi-site flamewars on whether it was doing the GLBT contingent, and bisexuals especially, a disservice.)
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: "Now Now, Mr. Raven, I know you just think of me as a ''lowly'' intern with a '''remarkable''' resemblance to Zach Braff..."
- Noodle Implements: Ninjas, japanese bath houses, and hamsters. Lots of hamsters.
- Noodle Incident: Two if you're just counting the main cast, whatever happened in France (and how exactly French speaking immortals are related to this) and the series of events that led to Sarah becoming a Catgirl.
- No Infantile Amnesia: Ellen, via her "Second Life."
- The Nudifier: Dr. Germahn once invented a potion that caused your sweat to dissolve clothes.
- Odd Friendship: Susan and Tedd
- Offscreen Crash: More like an offscreen explosion.
- One Gender Race: While some Uryuoms living on Earth adopt gender roles, they really are ambisexual; any two Uryuoms can form an egg together, which can then be 'fertilized' with any available DNA sources.
- Only Six Faces: Maybe not six, but it's here and is only aggravated by the "shapeshifting into some similar form" theme. However, he got better.
- Opaque Lenses: Tedd's glasses.
- Open Minded Parent The Dunkels, whose idea of punishment is rather more relaxed than Mrs. Kitsune's.
- Opposite Sex Clone: Ellen.
- Our Elves Are Better: Elves are what you get when you breed humans and immortals (read: small-g gods) together, with all the power that implies. Raven happens to be one, which is why he's been teaching so long.
- Subverted though, since elves are bound to similar rules as immortals, being disallowed from directly interfering with mortals when magic is not involved.
- Owl Be Damned: "READ or the owl will eat you." Later reused with a real big owl in Goonmanji. Also, a Running Gag with Hedge.
- Painful Transformation: It's one of the problems with being a chimera; part of Grace's design was to counter it. Depends on specific forms: an attempt to transform from living genetic salad of six kinds of beings -to-human is nearly lethal, boy-to-catboy is rather painful, but does not incapacitate, and human-to-human Gender Bender is "wait, why i move so strange?.. Oh!". Though it may be partially because Project Lycanthrope seyunolu were not just made by eggs but also tinkered with.
- Paper Thin Disguise: Parodied; aliens and supernatural beings avoid detection by wearing T-shirts with phrases like "Human" and "You Can't See Me," respectively.
- To be fair, Shive said that he did the "You can't see me" to help drive the point that they were invisible to the reader. In the comic, they actually WERE invisible.
- Aliens? What aliens?
- Parental Abandonment: Mr. Verres is often away from home on government business, and the former Mrs. Verres is in Europe somewhere. Meanwhile, Mr. Pompoms has only been seen in Susan's memories, and significantly, his face is always obscured. Finally, all of Grace's parents are dead; her human gene-mother actually having died before she was conceived, her Uryuom father being murdered by Damien, and her other two parents being non-sentient lab animals which presumably would not have survived.)
- Peeka Boo: Due to Grace's views on casual nudity, and a lack of Magic Pants.
- Personality Powers: In this 'verse magic development is based on "who you are and what you're doing".
- Pet Homosexual: Justin, the only gay male in the cast.
- Playing With Fire: Damien...he is a demon, after all.
- Playing With Syringes: Project Lycanthrope.
- Poisonous Friend: Nioi acts on the assumption that Lord Tedd would be better off without his personal Blood Knight. In turn, General Shade Tail has low opinion of Nioi.
- Post Historical Trauma: Done self-consciously for Grace's first day at school. Subverted when it turns out to be not about World War Two as such, but related personal experience.
- Power Glows: Mostly subverted. The glow is optional and only used to indicate that said person is using his/her powers. This is the case with Nanase's fairy doll, and by Word Of God, with Elliot's and Nanase's martial art skills.
- Prescience Is Predictable
- Psychoactive Powers: When someone makes Grace explode (metaphorically), something is going to explode (literally).
- Raised By Wolves: Grace.
- Ravens And Crows: Murder Shroud. The best Goth spell ever.
- The Rant: The commentaries on the recent comics, which may explain a plot point, a technique used, or Dan's opinion on Scrubs and Family Guy's different styles of Indulgent Fantasy Segue.
- They may also (unintentionally) explain Schedule Slip, as in more rant = less art.
- Reinventing The Telephone: Nanase's Fairy Form.
- Replacement Goldfish: Grace; Dr Sciuridae replaced the original gene sample that was to be used for Shade Tail with one from his daughter, after she was killed in a car accident.
- Right Hand Cat: For an Evil Lady. Also, Susan and Jeremy.
- Running Gag: The Demonic Duck, Elliot and Ellen saying "Za?")
- "Either I'm a narcissist, or I'm just that girly." Either way, that was a disturbing revelation Tedd.
- Ellen being the daughter of Elliot and Tedd. Elliot's the mom because Ellen came from him and Tedd's the dad because he made it happen. Turned serious with this here strip.
- "READ or the owl will eat you."
- Saying Too Much: "An Endless Barrel Of Exposition" spilled it again.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Mr. Verres, on occasion.
- Schedule Slip: Part of the reason arcs seem to take forever.
- Schoolgirl Lesbians: Ellen and Nanase, and apparently Catalina
- Scrub: What a scrub.
- Security Blanket: Susan's Star Trek T-shirts. Tedd's glasses.
- Self Disposing Villain: Damien. Though it's sort of justified for Villainous Breakdown of someone who was batshit insane to begin with.
- Self Fulfilling Prophecy: Damien was created with the intent of fulfilling a prophecy.
- Shape Shifting: Lots.
- Shapeshifter Default Form: Artificial transformations are temporary, in normal conditions new forms expire and the subject snaps back. A chimera may keep other forms for a good while, but is born in hybrid form. Birth forms appear to be the most "natural" i.e comfortable, but Grace appears to have no problem remaining in her human form (plus antenna) for long periods.
- Shipper On Deck: Sarah, with Nanase and Ellen. Interesting because she's essentially returning the favor: Nanase helped Elliot get together with her.
- Shout Out: Lots.
- Show Within A Show: The Lucky Bunny Bounty Show. Sarah also draws comics — something about a squirrel-boy character named Dan.
- Sherlock Scan: Diane does it while
lampshaded cap-and-piped. So much for being introduced as The Libby two and half years of real time earlier.
- Shoo Out The Clowns: If they can't be milked for drama, they're gone.
- Single Target Sexuality: While admitting that she does like other people, Grace is pretty much a Teddsexual. This was even pointed out in universe. With huge clues to the reasons before it's fully revealed.
- Sinister Silhouettes: About half the cast was introduced this way.
- Skimpy Holiday Dress: Ellen tried to wear one in a filler strip but her mom thought she would catch cold.
- Sliding Scale Of Fourth Wall Hardness: The early strips had No Fourth Wall. As the years progressed, any mention of the author or even fourth wall breaks in general were dropped and are now relegated to the newspaper and filler strips, which are out of canon.
- Some Kind Of Force Field: "Standard lockdown procedure". For schools that have a wizard teacher, that is.
- Sorcerer's Apprentice: Abraham, of course.
- Spotlight Stealing Squad: Nanase and Ellen have kicked pretty much the rest of the cast out of the spotlight. They even had the most screentime in Painted Black, Grace's backstory arc.
- Straw Feminist: Susan's mother, who instilled it into her daughter. Susan is a Deconstruction of this, as her stereotypical views on men were influenced by an event where she walked in on her father having an affair. It turns out she doesn't actually hate her father for this, but was simply trying to excuse his actions by believing that he couldn't help it because he was male (a notion that her mother helped to reinforce). Eventually she realizes that people just make stupid mistakes, no matter what their gender.
- Stepford Smiler: Every member of the main cast except Elliot, Sarah, and Susan. Susan went the other direction and became emotionless.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero and Species Surname: 'Sciuridae' is the formal name for the family which includes squirrels; the Greek translates as 'Shade Tail', which was also Grace's Code Name, though it was not in reference to Dr. Sciuridae.
- Straight Gay: Justin.
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: Any straight Gender Bender becomes bisexual for the duration. A certain male-to-female setting - which can also be used on women - will, for 48 hours, make you extremely attractive, even to people who normally don't like girls. Not to mention the Stupid Sexy Flanders overtones of Gender Benders in the first place. Even without gender-bending, Tedd is constantly getting this; Justin once joked that he shouldn't worry about gay men being attracted to him.
- Subordinate Excuse: Nioi to Lord Tedd.
- Super Soldier: Grace's brothers and Grace herself; the older chimeras were meant to be super-assassins, while Grace was created specifically to fight Damien.
- Sure Why Not: Dan recently declared a fan-made timeline to be canon.
- The Talk: Susan has to explain to Grace why nudity is awkward. Before that, others tried and failed.
- Talking To The Dead: An Unknown Would-be Avenger aka Mysterious Cloaked Figure.
- Take That: Or "Does This Remind You... Of Anything?". See also "George Lucas: Take That — And Back!", "Vampire sparkling: what exactly is a big Fetish Retardant" and "An Evil Monkey American!"
- Tastes Like Diabetes: Susan began physically choking after Eliot and Sarah started flirting in the same room as her.
- The Tease: They found each other...
- Tempting Fate: Grace and Raven knew it's not good. Abraham didn't.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted with this. Read the title if you don't get it. Also see the text message sent here.
- There Can Be Only One: Possibly subverted; while Lord Tedd is supposedly out to kill the "weak Tedds," Nioi insisted that he was misunderstood, and it is clear from various hints that he has a Freudian Excuse lurking in the shadows. Unfortunately due to Brother Chuck and Kudzu Plot, we'll probably never find out why.
- Too Much Information: Sometimes, even asking a rhetorical question around a summoned creature does this.
- Too Spicy For Yog Sothoth: In the off-continuity Goonmanji arc main cast pisses off the evil cursed Reality Warper game by being far too perverted and accustomed to the Mad Science to treat whatever it does to them as something more than Fetish Fuel at best and petty annoyance at worst.
- Transformation Comic: One of the definitive examples.
- Transformation Ray: The key plot device of the series.
- Tropes For Dummies: This book.
- Twin Threesome Fantasy : Nanase likes Ellen, but since girl-Elliot is identical to Ellen, Hilarity Ensues when Nanase sees them (more or less) tickle-fighting.
- Two Gamers On A Couch: The NP stories are starting to show shades of this.
- Tyke Bomb: Grace, although it didn't work very well.
- Unsound Effect: Not all that frequent, but notably including Sensory Overload when Nanase saw Ellen and female Elliot tickle-fighting in their underwear.
- Vain Sorceress: Nioi is an innocent version — she played with cosmetic use of shapeshifting magic, changing her skin color and making herself slightly younger when she touched Dewitchery Diamond. Oops. Which may be related to her rather obvious crush on Lord Tedd.
- Villain On A Bus: Lord Tedd.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: There are several "natural" shapeshifters, the TF gun, the TF belt, etc.
- Wall Banger: Ellen and a specific aspect of her second life, to some. Ellen again, with how she acts to Elliot, for others. Neither of these opinions is widely held in the fanbase, and you'd be hard pressed to find a fan who agrees with both.
- But then, she was "vFive-d" time and again, Nanase was the one who pulled her from under that table, and as she pointed out herself, neither line of her memories was conducive to EGS' normal aproach taking over. Of course, she also was impressed by Hedge and Guinea...
- Webcomic Time (Seven years of EGS equals about a month of in-comic time. The Birthday Party was a particularly jarring example; a year of EGS was one day of in-comic time. This makes Ellen's character and Nanase coming out slightly odd.)
- Weird Trade Union: The demonic duck belongs to the Distraction Union. And he doesn't like "scabs".
- Wham Episode: "Painted Black."
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong: "Surely Nothing Bad Can Come from This". Right?
- What Measure Is A Me
- Willfully Weak: Mr. Raven is half immortal and very powerful — but not allowed to interfere with mortal events. Mostly. Unless you're stupid enough to press his Berserk Button.
- Wizard Duel: Magus vs. Terra's duel appears to be either sparring or a non-lethal quarrel. Abraham vs. Raven, with spells and weapons both.
- Wondrous Ladies Room: Averted, Lampshaded, and flat-out abused.
- The Woobie: Tedd, Grace, Susan, Justin and Rhoda are prime examples. Especially Grace.
- Word Salad Title: lampshaded here.
- X-Ray Vision: Tedd's glasses used to have an x-ray feature. And Grace suggested a version that would remove the wearer's clothing. Innocent Fanservice Girl indeed.
- You Watch Too Much X: Tedd, wake up.
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