If I don't do exactly as they say, as they wish...
They become totally... completely... harmless.
— Monica
Wapsi Square is a "slice of supernatural life" webcomic by Paul Taylor, who describes it as "An attempt to combine the cute and tha macabre." It follows the life of Monica Villareal, a busty anthropologist from Minneapolis, as she discovers that it isn't her that's crazy, but rather the world around her.The comic started out as a simple slice of life comedy, but eventually grew into a much more complicated story with the introduction of an Aztec deity, three indestructible golems, and a massive, time-spanning plot to save the world. Despite the shift, it still finds time to explore the personal lives of the characters, but with a bit of a supernatural twist.Has a character sheet.Wapsi Square proves examples of the following:
Adventure Archaeologist: Monica's grandfather was one of these. Monica herself, on the other hand would claim to be an archaeologist of the far more mundane variety. She spends most of her time either in a library, or analyzing things for the museum, and she doesn't do field work. However, that being said, she still did manage to help bring down a smuggling ring in the process of acquiring an artifact.
All Myths Are True: At least the Aztec, Greek and Egyptian myths have made a fair showing so far, and Bud may actually be ancient Greek based on how her accent sounds to modern ears.
Alternate History: Jin has lived through numerous of these because of the Groundhog Day Loop, the most recent of which apparently ended in a blind panic at the Calendar Machine site and a gruesome death for Monica, and may have something to do with Jin's refusal to let herself be too friendly with the rest of the crew, particularly Shelly.
Ash Face: Bud once found herself caught in a massive fiery explosion, and came out with one of these.
A Simple Plan: The tendency for simple plans to go horrible wrong is lampshaded in this strip. Said simple plan results in being shot at and bringing down a group of smugglers in Cairo.
Author Appeal: Paul Taylor seems to have a thing for big and/or strong, sexually aggressive women. All male/female relationships shown have the female as the more powerful or aggressive partner. This sounds like the Paul talking...
Came Back Wrong: The destruction of the Calendar Machine seems to have utterly broken Jin's mind; although she seemed reasonably sane up to that point, she's explicitly referred to as schizophrenic at least once after.
Cerebus Syndrome: Changing from a slice-of-life comedy, to a save-the-world drama; dropping over half its supporting cast in the process, and leaving multiple unresolved subplots.
Cool Gate: The portal cloth is interesting on its own, but it really becomes a cool gate when it is attached to Shelly. If you enter it, you come out the other cloth, but you have to be able to teleport on your own to use it. It still does have its uses though.
Cool Pet: Bud and Brandi tamed a creature that could have inspired the Kraken. They named him Stinky.
Cosmic Retcon: An in-universe Reset Button that resets time back to the same point. The next reset is due in 2012.
Demoted to Extra: Notice the fairly small overlap between the site's current cast page and the one above? In the slice-of-life years, Tina was a moving prop, Katherine was just a weird Drop-In Character, and Tep was such a joke that he wasn't added to the cast page at the time until after the Heather arc, when she'd been there for months already; essentially, Monica and Shelly are the only two left of the original cast. Even Shelly hadn't been very prominent among Monica's friends until the Heather arc and her Important Haircut boosted her popularity.
Embarrassing Old Photo: There's a scene early on where Monica is embarrassed by a bunch of her teenage photos where she's wearing nerdy glasses and hair. Later on she shows one to her friends and they think it's cute.
Falling Into His Arms: Happens to Monica after a biking accident here. However, in this case, it is purely comedy, and it is not played for romance in any way.
Flat Earth Atheist: explicitly averted by Monica, who considers all the weird things and people around her to be phenomena that science just hasn't studied yet.
Groundhog Day Loop: Everyone but Jin has been unknowingly trapped in one of these, due to a malfunctioning Mayan calendar machine for at least eighty-one thousand years.Jin is trapped as well, but she knows what's happening and appears to be going somewhat mad from it.
More recently, Shelly has been shown to be stuck in a much stranger version of this trope.
Ground Shattering Landing: Bud once tried to roller skate down the stairs. She is indestructible. You can imagine the rest.
Hands On Approach: The first meeting between Shelly and Justin occurred off-screen when he invoked this trope on the receiving instruction end in her kickboxing class. Eventually, she figured out that he wasn't as inept as he acted.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Jin to Monica's grandfather, with the added twist that if she didn't let him go, Monica would never exist to be the focal point of the ritual to destroy the calendar machine. Made substantially worse by the fact that he was the love of her life and she's had to let him go every time she relives the cycle.
Knee-capping: In a March 2011 comic there's a distant flashback that shows Jin, before she became part of the Chimera, being shot through the back of the knee with an arrow. Squick.
Kraken And Leviathan: Bud and Brandi have a pet named Stinky who seems to be the Kraken.
Laser Hallway: A one shot gag shows that apparently there are a few lasers involved in the museum's security system.
Literal Cliff Hanger: One sequence has Shelly hanging from the edge of a billboard.Luckily the long fall is only an illusion. She will land on a rooftop not visible due to the angle.
Mayincatec: Aztec and Mayan mythology. Possibly subverted by Jin, who has impersonated deities common to both pantheons and may have had some contact with Egypt and Greece as well, through Phix.
Mayfly December Romance: Can definitely apply to any relationship between an immortal or extremely long-lived being with a regular human, such as Jin and Alan or Phix and Monica's boss.
Metal Detector Checkpoint: Monica has a bit of a problem with the metal detector at the airport. She made sure she had nothing metal on her person only to set off the detector with the underwire in her bra.
Ms. Fanservice: Monica and the Golem Girls (especially in their first appearance). Nearly every female character gets a turn at least once. Done very tastefully, especially for webcomics, and not too often.
Only Smart People May Pass: Subverted with the question Phix, the keeper of the Bibliothiki, asks Monica and Shelly.
Ontological Mystery: Tina, who has only news clippings to remember her life with. She was a psychiatrist and the daughter of a drug lord, as well as a close friend of Jin's. She remembers none of this.
Our Demons Are Different: although they can be pretty nasty, they are frequently not actually evil.
Out of Focus: Everyone. The original cast was Monica, Amanda, Shelly, Jacquelyn, Owen, Darin, and Dietl, and this was the core cast for years, with even the relatively early additions Tina and Tepoz not making the cast page until long after their introduction. Only the first three are even on the current cast page, and Amanda mostly because of her role as the original Foil.
Playing Sick: This comic has Dietzel recommending that Monica do this.
Priceless Paperweight: The trope is discussed in this strip when Brandi mentions that the portal cloth they just acquired wouldn't make a very good table cloth.
Rump Roast: Monica's rejection of her inner demon Doubt sets Doubt's ass on fire. Doubt eventually finds a way to get her own back on Monica. Nose flicks!
Secret Test of Character: Never used straight, but the golem girls once mistook something for one. Another time, Bud pretended to mistake Monica's actions for a secret test of character.
Phix's riddle. She always asks the same riddle to which *any* answer is technically correct, because the answer chosen always reveal an important aspect of the person who answers it.
Sequential Symptom Syndrome: Twoconsecutive strips involve a doctor telling Heather about a specific symptom of a concussion, and Shelly experiencing that symptom off screen.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Jin comes home from Mexico to find out that despite the destruction of the calendar machine, she can never regain her mortality.
Symbol Swearing: The strip managed to find a way to subvert this trope. What looks like just slightly unusual symbol swearing here is actually a language known by very few people that becomes a plot point later on.
Undead Tax Exemption: Bud and Brandi are able to acquire modern birth certificates and social security numbers despite being immortal clay golems who predate most known civilizations. However, it is made believable in that it was done by Jin, who has been playing political manipulator in multiple countries for over a thousand years, and probably has more than enough contacts to make someone exist (or cease to exist).
Vicious Cycle: The calendar machine puts the world through cycle after cycle, resetting time every time it hits 2012. Jin retains her knowledge through all cycles, and has seen over 80,000 years worth of this cycle.
Weirdness Magnet: Justin mentions to Shelly that he is this and invokes I Just Want to Be Normal, implying she's not the first supernatural girl attracted to him.
He later goes into Too Much Information territory by mentioning his werewolf ex who liked to be tied to the bed so she could have sex with him while transforming.
Wham Episode: Shelly finding an old power source... made of plutonium. Within a few frames, she DIES of radiation poisoning. She gets better... sort of.
"World of Cardboard" Speech: Bud, being the most destructive of the three golem girls, has worried about this on a regular basis.
You Can't Go Home Again: Jin, to Tina. They had apparently once been close friends until Tina's death in the same accident that Monica's family thought was attempted suicide; the "new" Tina has only what she (i.e. her demons) could gather from the news about her identity to remember her old life by.
You Have to Believe Me: Despite her years of living a life that she knows would make anyone think she's crazy if she revealed any of it, she blurts out to Justin that she's a Sphinx without actually doing anything to prove it, like transforming into a huge lion-bodied mythical being. Predictably, he reacts badly.
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