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It is kinda skin-crawly to think that, right now, some guy with "specialized tastes" might be getting, um, turned on by images of me all bound 'n gagged 'n distressed... or even, ick, you-know-what-ing to those images...! Brr...!
Y-You're not like that, right? R-RIGHT?! Tell me you're not... p-PLEASE! You seem r-REALLY NICE, okay?
Adam Warren's graphic novel series (five volumes as of this troping, with more on the way) starring a Damsel in Distress-prone heroine named "Empowered." Contains heavy deconstruction of the Super Hero genre, with healthy doses of bondage, Fanservice, and comedy.
The plot revolves around Empowered, a D-List Superheroine who, although she's essentially sweet-natured and means well, is generally incompetent and incapable at doing what she does. This is more down to the nature of her powers than her skill, however, which stem solely from the outrageously skin-tight super-costume that she wears (which she is less than happy about, as she also possesses numerous body-size issues); although immensely powerful, the catch is that it only works when it's in one piece - and as it's made from an extremely fragile material that tears easily, and can't be worn with anything over or under it, this means that Empowered is both (a) rarely in a position to benefit from it, and in fact spends most of her time being tied up by supervillains, a fact which has made her something of a laughing stock in the superhero community, and (b) either naked or near-naked a lot of the time. Not surprisingly, this has left Empowered with pretty much zero confidence in herself or her abilities. Character sheet can be found here.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- Aliens Made Them Do It (Parodied in a Show Within A Show Slash Fic Empowered reads about her teammates.)
- All Of The Other Reindeer (Empowered)
- Author Appeal (Bondage, ultra-technology, gratuitous labeling, Woobies, etc.)
- Badass Normal (Ninjette, Thug Boy. Most likely Maidman.)
- BFG (Thug Boy's 50-cal sniper rifle, although it gets destroyed during a fight.)
- Bilingual Bonus (Quite a few un-subtitled Japanese words and phrases)
- Bleached Underpants
- Blessed With Suck (A form-fitting supersuit isn't exactly ideal for someone insecure about her body. The fact that it almost always fails when most needed is pretty sucky, too.)
- Bottle Fairy (Ninjette)
- Bound And Gagged (Empowered, all the freaking time. See also Author Appeal.)
- Brand X (Lots of this: "YouToob," "Grant-a-Wish Foundation," you get the idea.)
- Broken Bird (Empowered, Ninjette, and Sistah Spooky)
- Buffy Speak (mainly from Emp in the Meta breaks - and occasionally in the main story as well.)
- But Not Too Foreign (Thug Boy claimed German and Italian ancestry to "balance" his more obvious Japanese heritage. This fails to impress one Nazi employer. It is unknown if this was just him trying to fast talk the villain.)
I'm all Axis power, baby!
- Capulet Counterpart (Thug Boy, before his Heel Face Turn.)
- Censor Box (mostly shows up on dialogue; also used to cover naughty bits a couple of times.)
- Cerebus Syndrome The first three volumes are mostly comedy, with occasionaly hints at more dramatic plot developments and backstories. Volume four goes all out, opening with Ninjette apparently dealing with PTSD.
- Character Development (Emp started the series as a neurotic mess. By volume four she's a... well, a neurotic mess, but less of one.)
- Clothes Make The Superman (Empowered)
- Clothing Damage (Empowered — see Weaksauce Weakness, below)
- Chekhovs Gun (The suit — which is a lot more powerful than it appears, is sapient, and had a weird glowy... something... appearing over it when Thugboy was cheering Emp up.)
- Chekhovs Skill (Emp's embarrassing and apparently useless parlor trick of turning her suit invisible is demonstrated in a one-off story from the first volume (she is not affected, cannot wear anything over or under it, and was trying to affect only her mask instead of everything but). Turns out it had a use after all, as mentioned below.)
- Then there's this gem from Volume 5: What's that? Your suit can copy the minds of people nearby? Golly gee, wonder if that is important to know. *Cue Colony Drop*
- Combat Pragmatist (Empowered demonstrates this quality in the introductory chapter of book four by explaining that throwing a car at someone is not as effective as ramming someone with that car at seventy miles per hour, as she demonstrates the technique's effectiveness on a supervillain.)
- And then, since this is Empowered, the resulting crash takes her out of the fight, encases her in seat belt bondage, AND gives her Jerk Ass teammates time to wake up and take all the credit.
- Complete Monster (In a world of Card Carrying Villains, Willy Pete stands out. A younger Thug Boy of all people also gets a minor version of this treatment at times in the later books, as he was part of a Human Supremacist movement that killed supers several years before meeting Emp.)
- Contagious Powers (Literally, several superheroes got their powers from alien STDs)
- Continuity Creep (It all started with a few 'throwaway' comics which 'grew'.)
- Corner Of Woe (Ninja videogames — Serious Business.)
- Cosplay (Empowered's latest known day job was cosplaying as... Empowered)
- Costume Inertia (Emp's "sexy librarian" disguise; inverted with Thug Boy's "Spartan 3000" henchman's uniform.)
- Crouching Moron Hidden Badass ( Empowered — or Empowered's suit — of all people, at the end of book 3, sprouting wings and atomizing a group of particularly vile assassins. One-handed. With a damaged suit.)
- If the above does not count for Emp, the beatdown she unleashed on a Not So Different Rogue Cape at the end of book 4 certainly does.
- Even earlier than both of those examples was her effortless rescue of Thugboy in Vol. 1, which was pretty much foreshadowing the above incidents.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: Many.
Thugboy: I will not stand idly by and allow a world-class derrière to remain uncommented-upon. That's just how I roll, son.
- "Elephants, Cups and Canoes" in Vol. 4, which pushes unusual euphemisms to new,visual heights. "He's gone rogue!" "Aieee! Me canoe be swampin'!"]]. [[Filth It's very wrong, but this editor fell about laughing.
- The doctor's nametag from the same volume.
- The bit where Thugboy talks about working for a Nazi supervillain. "Yeah, sure I'm half-Japanese, but I'm also one-quarter Italian and one-quarter German! I'm All Axis Power baby!"
- Cursed With Awesome (One of the suit's side effects that Emp "worries" about is — it supercharges her orgasms and libido. Gee, what a burden.)
- Cute Little Fangs (whenever a character's feeling especially determined or cocky)
- Dating Catwoman (Empowered and Thug Boy)
- Deal With The Devil (Sistah Spooky's origin: she made a deal for "supernatural hotness" and accidentally gained mystic powers out of the deal.)
- Depraved Bisexual (What Willy Pete does to
the Witless Minions anyone he can get his hands on (although supers, being more durable, last longer) isn't pretty.)
- Determinator (This is how Emp's friends see her, if you can believe it.)
- Hey, think for a second — would you keep going in her position? Hell no. Anyone with any sanity and her issues would have incinerated the suit long ago and gone back to a superpower-free, clothing-undamaged lifestyle. What keeps her going (day after day, as opposed to during any one outing) is anyone's guess, but it CANNOT BE STOPPED.
- Another case is where Thugboy had to basically shred her suit himself to keep her from donning it when she was very ill.
- As of Volume 4, I concur. DAMN.
Empowered: I do this stupid job because I'm ████ing Driven to do it!
Empowered: Unlike You, ████, I do this stupid, Stupid job because—
- Distressed Damsel (Empowered, despite her best efforts.)
- Ninjette also plays this trope bone chillingly straight in Volume 4 vs the Ninja assassin squad sent to cut her limbs off and take her back home so she can be a brood mare. Although she did manage to kill or mortally wound most of the attackers before the last two blindsided her.
- Drunken Master (Ninjette)
- Ecchi (It's manga-styled and
hugely suggestive alright, skirts the decency line as closely as it dares.)
- Suggestive?
- I suppose, in the way that you can consider lots of heavy breathing and moaning and shouting "We're having sex!" while you show them having sex with all the good parts covered up is suggestive of people having sex.
- Eldritch Abomination (The Caged Demonwolf, violator of worlds)
- Empathic Weapon (Emp's hypermembrane is apparently a sapient being. Also, it's been suggested that her body issues are what keep the suit so fragile, which produces gratuitous nudity and augments her body issues, which obviously doesn't lead anywhere good.)
- Everythings Better With Princesses (So, so subverted with Ninjette. Her family wants her back to have kids and seem perfectly fine with making her an armless, legless, brood mare for the rest of her life in order to keep her at home.)
- Extraordinarily Empowered Girl (Empowered?)
- Eyescream (The
rather squickish threats grotesque murders preferred by Willy Pete.)
- Ninjette's fight at the end of book 3 also deserves special mention. The fact that her assailants were wearing masks did not prevent this troper from severely squicking out.
- Mind***'s brother removed her eyes so she would have to use her powers to see
- Fan Disservice (Sex scene? Cool. Sex scene where the pillow talk is her begging him to lie to her by telling her she is not a "super-loser"? Urm.)
- Fanservice (Let it be known that, in a comic that is all about the fanservice, "Schrodinger's Catgirl" still manages to stand out.)
- Faux Action Girl (Empowered, although she does have her moments.)
- Fetish Fuel for bondage obviously. Often lampshaded by the meta comments of Emp at the beginning of each chapter.
- Also several in-universe examples - see Costume Inertia for examples that turn on both Emp and Thugboy.
- Fetish Retardant (Getting tied up in serious situations makes bondage a SERIOUS turn-off for Emp and Thugboy)
- Finagles Law
- Foe Yay (parodied in another Show Within A Show Slash Fic, this one about Empowered and Sistah Spooky)
- Freudian Excuse (Sistah Spooky has serious issues with blonde girls like Emp)
- Fun With Acronyms (see below)
- Godiva Hair (Something has to cover the naughty bits when the suit gets wrecked...)
- Good People Have Good Sex (Emp and Thug Boy, a lot)
- Gratuitous Japanese (Complete with Kanji)
- For that matter, Ninjette's very name counts; she was born and raised in New Jersey and is as white as the driven snow, but her parents named her "Kozue Kaburagi" to try and make up for three Americanized generations back in Japan.
- Hadaka Apron (Is a sign things are going well for Emp and Thug Boy.)
- Handsome Lech (Major Havoc)
- Hartman Hips (Bootylicious Emp has curves above and below.)
- Heel Face Turn (Thug Boy, Ninjette)
- Heroic Sacrifice (Mindf███)
- Highly Visible Ninja (Ninjette)
- How Do I Shot Web (Guess who.)
- Ho Yay (Ninjette towards Empowered. And Three-Drink Bisexual Emp towards Ninjette, or Maternal Instinct Emp towards Ninjette. Also, Sistah Spooky and Mind***, though those two actually HAD been together.)
- Most blatant example yet is when Emp is kidnapped by a brother/sister team. The sister strips her, though that's par for the course there. When she gawks at her paipan
 , gropes her boobs, slaps Emp on the arse, climbs into the trunk with her (to make sure she doesn't get out. Suuure), then starts caressing her and says that she's her favourite, we're heading straight past Les Yay and on to Les Could It Be Any More Obvious.
- Hot Librarian
- Humiliation Conga (And the dance goes on, and on...)
- I Have You Now My Pretty (This happens to Emp all the time. Lampshaded with the "unwritten rules" that keep villains from going "too far.")
- The Imp (The Caged Demonwolf post-sealing)
- Jerk Ass (Most of her team, and indeed, most of superheroes. Maidman, Cyndablock, and Mindf███ are notable exceptions.)
- Jerk Jock (Major Havoc - just Major Havoc)
- Jive Turkey (Major Havoc, dawg.)
- Jumped At The Call (Emp)
- Knight Of Cerebus (Willy Pete)
- Large Ham (This troper thinks the Caged Demonwolf would sound exactly like O'Malley.)
- Lets Get Dangerous (Once or twice a volume, Empowered will take down impressive threats single-handedly.)
- The Libby (Sistah Spooky)
- Spooky's Back Story (and consequent Freudian Excuse) also has her being cruelly tormented by blonde, voluptuous Libbies whilst herself a child, hence the chip on her shoulder regarding Emp.
- Littlest Cancer Patient (He always wanted to be a supervillain... and guess who gets sent to him by the local 'Make A Wish' analog.)
- Made Of Plasticine (The super-suit is more like Made Of Soap Bubbles And Spiderwebs.)
- Mc Ninja (Ninjette and her clan of ninja from New Jersey.)
- Meta Guy (Empowered regularly breaks the fourth wall when she appears in the title pages of stories; Ninjette and Thug Boy lampshade this when they appear and have no idea who she's talking to.)
- The Caged Demonwolf breaks the wall at the end of Volume One, filling us in on the story's aftermath.
- Thug Boy gets in on the act later on when he gives us a "tour" of Empowered's sleeping habits.
- Lampshaded when we find out Thug Boy is talking to his average mook friend. Also lampshaded in a later story, when what seems to be the Caged Demonwolf going meta is actually him talking to Emp's powersuit.
- Moe (Empowered)
- Mooks (Thug Boy's old gang, the "Witless Minions," who stole from the villains they worked for.)
- Most Common Superpower (Averted with Ninjette, very present on Empowered and Sistah Spooky. Ninjette even lampshades this, saying that she cannot join a hero team becase she don't have a "nice, big rack".)
- Ms Fan Service (Emp is arguably a Deconstruction, Ocelotina is an in-universe example)
- New Powers As The Plot Demands (Emp hasn't quite figured out how her suit works. Outright lampshaded towards the end of the 4th book — Emp discovers her suit can let her cling to things and she's as shocked as the people watching.)
- Nightmare Fuel Unleaded (Willy Pete, a man-turned-fire elemental, whose entire gig so far is forcing people to give him
oral optical sex — reminder: his entire body is made of supernaturally hot fire. ("Willy Pete" is military slang for white phosphorus.) In the latest book it turns out he likes to eat superheroes and supervillains, because normal human flesh incinerates the second it gets close to his mouth. Gah.)
- What is optical sex you ask? Being literally skullfucked to death via the eye socket. BY A MAN ON FIRE.
- Oh, and by the way, he doesn't need to eat, he's just that sick.
- Ninja (Ninjette, obviously.)
- Nipple And Dimed
- Noodle Incident (Several storylines were (presumably temporarily) cut from the books, moved between books, etc. These are brought up during the meta-pages, with the characters warning each other not to talk about that stuff yet cause it wasn't in this book. Notable examples are Thug Boy cosplaying (particularly bad because the author didn't have time to remove reference to it from the back of one of the books), Thug Boy wearing Empowered's suit, etc etc. There's also the question as to why Emp's extremely skintight suit doesn't show any camel toe, this was lampshade hung in Book 3 and by the end of Book 4 still hasn't been explained.)
- No Respect
Girl QUEEN (One would think Empowered saving her teammates' hides more than once would earn her a little less outright abuse)
- Not So Harmless (Empowered. Beneath the low self esteem and Weaksauce Weakness, Emp went to college and is frightfully intelligent (and almost Genre Savvy). For example, knowing that if you drive an armored car into a villain at 70 MPH instead of throwing it at him at around 5 MPH (at best), it does a LOT more damage. A more specific example occurs in book 4, where Emp turns her suit invisible, making the Big Bad think she's naked and helpless, just to get close enough to him to confirm his identity and curb stomp him.)
- An in-world expleme the Superhomies think Willy Pete is just some d-list nobody but that's only because he likes to keep a low profile and go after mooks and d-list villains, wend the 10 man team is send to get him (for a PR boost) he whips them all out with ease in a matter of seconds by using a blast of flames so powerful it's like hitting them with a nuke
- Not So Different (Empowered and dWARf!/Fleshmaster)
- Only Sane Man (The Caged Demonwolf, Molester of Worlds. That an Eldritch Abomination that habitually describes himself thus gets to be the Only Sane Man in the cast tells you everything about this comic you needed to know in one sentence.)
- Ooh Me Accents Slipping (In her civilian guise, Emp affects a patently false Southern drawl.)
- OT3 (The series keeps dancing on the edge of making the three main characters (Emp, Thugboy, and Ninjette) into an outright threesome. Emp is a 2 drink Bisexual who hits on Ninjette when drunk, Ninjette is barely able to hide her attraction to Thugboy ("Aieee! Me canoe be swampin"!). Not sure if Ninjette has ever shown any attraction to Emp or Thugboy to Ninjette, but it wouldn't take much prompting. Anyone's guess if this ends up as a love triangle or a menage a troi... but the Demonwolf definitely has an opinion on how it SHOULD BE.)
- Peek A Boo (Flat out abused.)
- Pettanko (Ninjette.)
- Pirate (Advanced Restraint Research.)
- Plot Driven Breakdown (It is easier to list the times when Emp's Hypermembrane does work correctly.)
- Power Gives You Wings
- Power Incontinence (Poor Mindf███ can't speak outside of telepathy (which has the side effect of leaking brutal honesty with every sentence), and has to avoid crowds as all the excess thoughts cause headaches.)
- Power Perversion Potential (Lampshaded when Emp even admits she uses her suit for this.)
- Punctuated Pounding
- Real Men Wear Pink (He may wear a dress and high stiletto heels, but everyone's heard of the goddamn Maidman.)
- Rebellious Princess (Ninjette)
- Samus Is A Girl (Mindf███)
- Say It With Hearts
- Save The Villain (A couple times)
- Sealed Evil In A Can (The Caged Demonwolf)
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness (With made-up words, no less, leading to...)
- Shlubb And Klump English (Yes, Imperial Pimpotron Alpha could give Marcus a run for his money.)
- Sick Sad World
- Ship Tease (Ninjette and the Maidman)
- Shout Out (Dr. Big McLargeHuge)
- Slash Fic (In-canon, even. Emp reads two of her male teammates slash about them. They're delighted.)
- Smug Super (Most of the other superheroes we meet are little more than overpowered and overgrown high school bullies deeply in love with their own superpowers.)
- Soaperizing
- Something Else Also Rises (Male and Female versions used at once: one chapter is called Elephants, Cups and Canoes.)
- Springtime For Hitler (Emp tries to give the sexist males in the Superhomies a taste of their own objectification by introducing them to yaoi doujinshi of themselves. When they find out it's written by girls, it's taken as a compliment.)
- Spy Catsuit (Empowered, for the short time it actually stays on her)
- Steven Ulysses Perhero (Elissa Megan Powers)
- Stripperiffic (Emp describes her own costume as "Painted-on Slutwear," and it was voted most "Sluttastic and Do-Me-Riffic". Consequently, she is not happy about it in the least.)
- Sweat Drop
- Talking Your Way Out (Emp manages this on a few occasions)
- There Are No Therapists (Emp starts out a blatantly neurotic mess, and the more the supporting cast is developed the clearer it is that she is not alone.)
- This Is Gonna Suck
- Training From Hell (Well, more of a Workout Session From Hell, but still...)
- Troubled But Cute (ThugBoy, and how)
- UST (Between Ninjette and ThugBoy for certain, and it is difficult to rule out the thing between Ninjette and Empowered as something wholly in the Caged Demonwolf's perverted mind)
- Vain Sorceress (Sistah Spooky)
- Vaporwear (Nothing can be worn over or under the suit. Including Pubic Hair. The fact that it doesn't show off her nipples or "camel toe" is a Running Gag Noodle Incident in the series.)
- Villains Out Shopping (Subverted when we see a group of ninja hacking a body into pieces (per the client's request) whilst one ninja is monitoring and idly browsing the web in the next room.)
"85. -hack- 86. -slice-"
"I'm telling you,Opera is the ideal choice for a ninja's web browser."
"87. -schinck- 88. -gchonk-"
- Visual Innuendo (More common for males, curiously enough, with Thugboy as the primary target. Notice his gun on the cover of the first volume.)
- Wall Jump (Ninjette — 'cause, you know, Ninja.)
- Weaksauce Weakness (Empowered's supersuit gives her powers — unless it's ripped or damaged. Which always happens. Good thing it can regenerate.)
- Whedon Thyndrome (King Tyrant Lizard)
- Wholesome Crossdresser (Maidman. Notable for being among the few heroes, save for Emp herself, who isn't a complete Jerk Ass)
- The Woobie (Empowered)
- World Of Cardboard Speech (During her Crowning Moment Of Awesome—see "Crouching Moron Hidden Badass" above)
- Earlier on, Syndablock gets one when he explains that his power causes nothing but collateral damage (he has elemental command of masonry and stonework). Being one of the few decent heroes, he's extremely reluctant to use his ability unless the villain's already wrecked everything around him.
- Writer Revolt (Empowered evolved from a series of bondage art commissions Warren was doing; he subverted the job by developing the characters he was using, and things snowballed.)
- Xtreme Kool Letterz (dWARf!, and yes, the exclamation point is part of his name)
- Yaoi Fangirl (Empowered)
- Yuri Fanboy (Demonwolf)
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