Spacetrawler - Television Tropes & Idioms

Nogg: This is the bridge of the I.A. Star Banger. As you can see, you are now in outer-space.

Dustin: A spaceship in space. You aliens are just full of surprises, aren't you?

Spacetrawler is a science fiction webcomic by Christopher Baldwin, maker of Bruno and Little Dee.

Six humans from six continents get knocked out and abducted by a fish-like alien named Nogg. When they wake up aboard his ship, Nogg explains that he's shanghaied them into Interplanet Amity—a galactic activist group aiming to end the exploitation of the Eebs. It won't be easy: the Eebs are the only species capable of understanding and building the technology on which the entire galaxy depends, so attempting to liberate them will quite literally tick off every single government in the Galactic Organizational Body.

In spite of the odds, five of the humans agree to fight the good fight for their own reasons... and the sixth sort of tags along anyway.

Hilarity Ensues. As does some darker stuff.

You should start at the beginning

Provides examples of:

Acquired Poison Immunity: Dmitri is convinced that he can condition himself to be stun gun resistant... by repeatedly shooting himself with a stun gun. It works.
Alien Non-Interference Clause: The undoing of Nogg's Plan A. If the humans claim Earth's seat at the G.O.B., then Earth is no longer protected by the non-interference clause.
Always Need What You Gave Up: Yuri's therapist robot erases her memory of torture at Flineous's hand in order to bring her back to sanity. Not long afterwards, she runs into Flineous again, so the therapist is forced to restore Yuri's memories, causing her to revert to her scary, violent self.
Anticlimax: Kuu-Drahc is played up as a major antagonist and personal rival to Emily, culminating in the Combat by Champion scene described below. A random rockslide crushes Kuu-Drahc before the fight even begins. Even Emily is disappointed by this.
Action Girl: Emily is one from the get-go, while Yuri and Martina evolve into the role.
And I Must Scream: How Spacetrawlers are made.
Animal-Eared Headband: Yuri wears one, initially.
Animal Wrongs Group: Pierrot borders on a one-man version of this.
Arm Cannon: Emily has one of the arm-mounted wrist blaster types.
Artificial Limbs: Yuri now has ~~six~~ four of them.
Asshole Victim: Major spoiler
The Eebs. Back when they had free will, they were violent and capricious; their own laziness was all that kept them from oppressing other planets.
Badass Longcoat: Emily. She even wears it over her spacesuit.
- It even can turn into a hang glider, when necessary.
Berserk Button: Don't hurt animals around Pierrot. Don't talk about hurting animals near Pierrot. And don't try to force Pierrot to eat meat.
Beware the Nice Ones: Yuri seems sweet, but if you tick her off, she will mess you up. Just ask Flineous.
- Martina is morally conflicted about killing, even in self-defense—but she's not afraid to stun-gun her own captain to insure that No One Gets Left Behind.
Big Damn Heroes: Pierrot does this, capping it with a Big Damn Kiss. And it is EPIC.
Bio-Augmentation: In addition to having her limbs replaced with bionics, Yuri has a cat-like alien's ears and Eeb brain tissue grafted to her. The latter of which allows her to use telekinesis and understand Eeb technology.
Black Box: The spacetrawlers. How they work and how they're built are both carefully-guarded and politically volatile secrets.
- Pretty much everything else, too, though those aren't secret so much as just beyond everyone's understanding. The eebs build everything, and aren't very good at explaining how they work to others. Why learn how to build something when you can just order the nearest eeb to do it for you?
Blown Across the Room: Here, Pierrot is spacewalking and the recoil from a handgun sends him flying. In the comments below, Baldwin admits that he sacrificed realism for humor on that count.
Boldly Coming: Dmitri.
Dmitri: [regarding a bug-alien he slept with] Pheromones and ventral revealing outfits. Way hot.
Brain Bleach: Yuri seem to give Dimitri reason to ask for some here. Or at least some... uncomfortable cleaning implements.
Brain in a Jar: Show up in the spacetrawler construction facility.
Briar Patching: Played straight for a few pages when Yuri's being "tortured" by the bounty hunters, before being subverted here.
Brick Joke: Russian tea cookies. Also kind of Nogg's promise to Martina, but that isn't really funny...
- Gurf's aptitude for fleet commanding. Mentioned by Gurf's mom in #88. Comes up again in #172, squeaking in at just under a year later. Not bad, eh?
Catch a Falling Star: Emily and Growp fall out a several-story window together; they both steal passing hover-bikes on the way down.
Cats Are Mean: Flienous the Rhilzzan, then Yuri.
Catgirl: Yuri starts off with costume ears, but eventually surgically implants real cat ears.
Centipede's Dilemma: Krep is great at multi-wielding laser guns... as long as he doesn't think too hard about what each of his tentacles is doing.
Combat by Champion: When Emily realizes that her side is outgunned in the space dogfight with the G.O.B., she goads Kuu-Drahc into halting the battle so the two of them can fight one-on-one and hand-to-hand.
Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Possibly more symbolic than literal, but Yuri's descent into PTSD is accompanied by her cyborg implants becoming less human and more monstrous.
Did You Get a New Haircut?: Some people take longer than others to notice Yuri's aforementioned transformation.
Don't Think. Feel: Martina's approach to space combat during the fight with the Bollycks.
The Dragon: The Affably Evil lizardlike bodyguard Growp.
Dumb Muscle: Gurf.
Nogg: He's kind of like a mascot, but can lift things.
Embarrassing Old Photo: Gurf's mom is armed with one of these.
Exact Eavesdropping: Deliberately employed, so that "prisoners" can think they're "escaping" when they're actually being set free.
Extreme Doormat: The Eebs.
- Also Qiyemps, due to being Actual Pacifists
Fake Weakness: Easy to pull off when one's torturer knows nothing of human physiology. "No! Dear God, don't make me eat chocolate! It burns!" Until they decide to start cutting off limbs instead...
Fantastic Racism: In the Spacetrawler universe, grounds for legally declaring a species non-sentient include lack of willpower and bad fashion sense. (On paper, at least. Political expediency seems to be the real reason: non-sentient species are easier to exploit.)
Faster-than-Light Travel: Spaceships travel at greased light speed, whose technobabble may be some of the silliest ever written.
A Fate Worse Than Death: What happens to the Eebs involved in spacetrawler construction.
Foregone Conclusion: In the framing story, Nogg says that Martina has died.
Framing Device: The entire story is being related by Nogg to Mr. Zorilla after the fact.
Gadgeteer Genius: The Eebs, good lord.
Genius Ditz: Gurf may act and sound like an idiot most of the time, but he has a hidden talent for space combat.
The Hedonist: Choan's a self-admitted one.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Major spoiler
The Eebs have no free will because, generations ago, they brain clamped themselves. They initially developed the technology to deal with criminals, then they expanded the definition of "criminal", then they started using the brain clamps to solve all their problems, until the entire species had been clamped.
Humanoid Aliens
Hyperspace Arsenal / Walking Armory: Emily.
I Lied
Flineous: ""Wait a second. How is that sporting ?"
Yuri: "It's not. I lied."
I'm Standing Right Here: King, here.
Intelligent Gerbil
Interspecies Romance:
- Shuar genuinely loves Dmitri; Dmitri doesn't care.
- Curn and Oohlooh.
It Tastes Like Feet: Dmitri points out that the coffee tastes like asteroids. After all, it was synthesized from space debris.
Just a Machine: The robots themselves admit as much.
Klingons Love Shakespeare: Dmitri licenses his recipe for Russian tea cookies. It becomes wildly popular on multiple planets, and Dmitri makes a fortune.
Lampshade Hanging: Mr. Zorilla calls out Nogg for the way his narrative jumps between plot threads willy-nilly, and for the gratuitous cliffhangers.
Laser-Guided Amnesia:
- The subterranean Mihrrgoots don't want the outside universe to know of their existence, so the few visitors they receive have to be mind-wiped before they leave.
- Yuri's second therapy-bot speeds up her therapy by erasing Yuri's traumatic memories. Apparently he kept backups of the information, because he was later able to restore these memories.
Latex Spacesuit
Laughing Mad: Yuri, with her psychotic persona.
Military Mashup Machine: The Purfin M-32, coolest all-terrain boat-jet ever.
Moment Killer: Pierrot manages to do it to himself, by taking a break from smooching with Emily to apologize for the love triangle that he just ended.
Mood Dissonance: The style is a colorful, classic "space-adventure"-look, but the world and events are rather darker.
Mood Whiplash: Frequently.
No One Gets Left Behind: The humans mostly feel this way. Nogg thinks this attitude will get them all killed.
No Transhumanism Allowed: Cyborg prosthesis is treated as normal, though not apparently common. But when Choan asks Yuri about her bioaugmentation, Nogg's indignant response suggests that bioaugmentation isn't well-regarded by some folks.
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Growp's thoughts on Emily. It's his twisted way of saying that he loves her.
Patriotic Fervor: Dustin.
Dustin: Long live the Australian federal constitutional monarchy under a parliamentary democracy!
Planet of Hats: The Eebs are a species of telekinetic gadgeteers with zero willpower. (Major spoilers)
Eventually justified—Eebs are artificially brain-clamped at birth, which completely destroys their willpower.
The Tornites all have terrible fashion sense. It's implied that the Bollycks are all violent and ill-tempered.
Playful Hacker: Yuri.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: How spacetrawlers work, and the real reason why details on their construction are so carefully guarded.
Press Ganged: Nogg's recruitment drive.
Psychic Powers: Eebs have telekinesis (as does Yuri after having one's brain tissue implanted), though they pass out and risk dying.
"Plus it's boring."
Raised by Wolves: Or coyotes, in Emily's case. As a result, coyotes are the only creature she feels any kinship towards, and she prefers a loner's life.
Recursive Creators: The Mihrrgoots mastered nanotechnology by building robots, who built smaller robots, who built even smaller robots...
Restraining Bolt: Brain clamps, capable of robbing the clampee's free will and reducing any psychic powers they may have.
Sarcastic Devotee: Krep has nothing but disdain for everyone around him, but he's 100% committed to the cause.
Shoot Out the Lock: "Hmm. No luck. That always works in movies."
Slave Liberation
Slave Race: The Eebs.
Slap-Slap-Kiss: Emily and Pierrot.
Space Opera
Static Stun Gun
Stupid Sacrifice: Played for laughs when Gurf intercepts a laser blast to protect Emily. Emily then points out that it was a stun-ray, and that the now-unconscious Gurf is the heaviest member of their squad.
Take a Third Option: Emily in her fight against Growp.
Taking the Bullet
There Are No Therapists: Zig-zagged. Nogg does have a Therapy-bot for his crew, but it's terrible at the job. Later, Martina recognizes that the crew needs a good therapist, so she replaces Therapy-bot with Bartender-bot.
Toilet Humor: The potty-bot.
Too Dumb to Live: Dustin. Trust in the authorities can be taken too far.
Transhuman: Yuri.
Translator Microbes: A brain-implanted language chip.
Trash Talk: Emily, but that should hardly come as a surprise given her You Fight like a Cow antics with Growp.
Vodka Drunkenski: Dmitri.
Weapons Grade Vocabulary: A "Grwfl-grwfl" joke is so hilarious that, upon its first telling, it killed off an entire species.
Worthy Opponent: Emily becomes one for Growp. That's why he fell in love with her.
You Fight like a Cow: Every fight between Emily and Growp involves much back-and-forth quipping.

Skin Horse

Sci Fi Webcomics

Spiddrelli

troperville

tools

toys

Provides examples of: