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  • Men Don't Cry: Angus thinks it's perfectly fine for a guy to cry over cartoons.
  • Metaphorgotten:
    • For example.
    • This one is even lampshaded.
    • In #4647, Claire's mom has sent her an ominous "I have something to tell you" text. Claire asks where this news is on a scale of "I took a pottery class" to "I have a terminal illness". Her mom responds with "Imagine I took a pottery class and my pottery became extremely famous and now I'm doing pottery full time under a nom de pot. Metaphorically speaking."
    • When Bubbles starts to compose out loud a character reference for Claire, the phrase "take a bullet for" quickly turns into a full-scale war plan about exactly how she would defend Claire's library from a ground assault.
    • When May is determined to mine the livestream of MommyMilkers and BurgerOni for all the revenue it's worth, Dale calls her for describing spreadsheets as "for nerds":
      May: When the fuckin' goose starts shitting out golden eggs, you don't say "wehh animal husbandry is for nerds", you put on your fuckin' farmer hat and get to suckin' dick behind the chicken coop!
      Dale: [pause] What?
      May: Sorry, I got too excited and lost control of the metaphor.
  • Military Salute: Jacques tends to make his characters do these whenever they take responsibility for anything.
  • Mistaken for Cheating: Dora finds Marten and Faye on the couch in their bedclothes hugging and jumps to the entirely wrong conclusion. The setup starts here.
  • Mistaken for Romance: Ayo turns up at her sister Yemisi's doorstep to tell her that she's flunked out of school and needs to stay with her. Hannelore, who is accompanying her, reluctantly lets her hold her hand for moral support. Yemisi opens the door, is greeted with the sight of them holding hands and smiling nervously at her and Ayo saying she has "big news", and guesses: "You…have a girlfriend?" Yemisi's roommate Willow then excitedly butts in, squealing over the supposed relationship.
  • Mister Seahorse: Randy is male, yet is drawn with a pouch, which he's used for his babies.
  • Mood Whiplash: Frequent. This comic has a habit of throwing in a punchline even into the most dramatic of moments (although there are exceptions).
  • Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: Two female fanfic writers, Tai and Marigold; Tai's stuff is apparently good (she writes a raved-about Harry Potter piece), Marigold's, not so much. After a near miss where lesbian Tai hits on straight Marigold, the latter seeks to make up for the awkwardness by posting a story to Tai wherein Hermione and Ginny "go all the way."
  • Mr. Exposition: Momo fills this role in regards to the history of AIs in the QC universe. Jeph clearly has some pretty clear ideas about the universe, and Momo is often used to share them with the audience.
  • Mundane Fantastic: The comic has sentient robots, minor superheroes, a main character who was raised on a space station, and at one point The Singularity happens and yet it's brushed off by nearly everyone.
"I AM MAKING MYSELF SOME CEREAL AND GODDAMN IF IT ISN'T GOING TO BE THE MOST DELICIOUS CEREAL IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND!"
  • Mundane Utility:
    • One of two possible explanations for caped superheroes who deliver food. A third explanation, speculated about in-universe, is that they are special superheroes whose specific power is delivering food.
    • More recently, a combat AI chassis strong enough to punch a Bradley AFV to shards is very helpful when moving furniture.
  • My Hair Came Out Green: Raven tries to bleach her hair blond to appeal to Sven, but instead it comes out "all orangey and gross", so she has to settle for dyeing it neon-pink.
  • My New Gift Is Lame: Zig-zagged when Claire, desperate for a job, starts working at Coffee of Doom as a barista. Faye and Bubbles get her a handmake chocolate cake from the Secret Bakery, with "Congrats Claire!" written on it in icing, and a picture of a coffee cup. However, Claire is already spiralling because her mother wasn't particularly impressed that she's only got a job as a barista, not as a librarian, so even though it's a nice-looking cake, her reaction is to burst into tears.
    Faye: [to Bubbles] Told ya we should have gone with buttercream.
  • My Sister Is Off-Limits: Many of the characters are protective of their families and loved ones: In Hanners Is Off Limits: "I see flashing lights, dudes in hard hats waving flags, and about three miles of caution tape. There's a big sign that says 'DETOUR - ANY OTHER FEMALE IN EXISTENCE'." Made funnier later when Hanners asks Sven out on a pretend date.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: There's a notable split between cutesy AI names and intimidating AI names. This isn't usually a good metric for judging personality, though.
    Faye: Does every AI in this friggin' town have a cutesy name?
    Bubbles: I do not find "Crushbot" or "Gyarados Skullfucker" to be particularly cutesy.
    Sam: Wait, you know Miss Skullbleeper? She's my English teacher!
    • The AI head of security at Cubetown is named "Evanescent Incinerator". As it quickly turns out, the owner of the name is actually an incompetent and very unscary screwup.
      Evan: Please don't ask about the name. It was randomly generated. People just call me Evan.
  • Narrative Backpedaling: When Momo asks Marten how he and Pintsize met, Marten starts to tell her about when he applied for an AnthroPC companion. When the story suddenly veers into pornographic territory, it cuts back to Momo and Marten looking disgustedly at an impish Pintsize. Marten then tells her how the application process actually happened.
  • Never Lend to a Friend: In a moment of desperation, Marigold insists that Momo owes her a favour because she paid for Momo's new chassis. This goes down extremely badly, because Momo interprets it as "guilt-trip[ping] me over a debt I am already repaying".
  • Nice Guy: Dale plays by Mook Chivalry in video games (which most people avoid) and gives May a second chance.
    Jeph Comment: Dale is too nice for his own good.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Faye is disturbed by the changes Dora has made to Coffee of Doom, in the interests of making it a kinder and nicer place. As a direct result of Dora trying to reassure her, Faye almost falls off the wagon.
    Dora: Change can be good! Look what's come from you leaving the shop. You've got sober, you've got a job that utilizes your skills, you're helping a giant muscular Robo-Valkyrie make her way in the world...
    Faye: Whoa, you're right. I haven't thought about havin' a drink for, like, a while.
    Dora: See? Good for you!
    Faye: [seething] Not good for me! Now I'm aware of it and I want one!
  • The Nicknamer: Faye invents (often insulting) nicknames for most of her friends:
    • Marten is "Assbutt" or "Marty" (his mother's pet name for him, which he considers embarrassingly childish).
    • Dora is "Spookypants" or "Spookybutt" (less so since she toned down her gothy tendencies).
    • Sven is "Smarmosaurus".
    • Hannelore is "Hanners" (which is soon adopted by all the cast and which Hannelore seems to like).
    • Marigold is "Mar-Bear" (again, she seems to have no objections).
    • Raven is "Ray-Ray" or "our savant" (a reference to her Genius Ditz characteristics).
    • Penelope, who would prefer to be called by her full name, thank you very much, is "Penny" or "Pen-Pen".
    • Angus is "Argument Guy", long before Faye ever finds out his real name.
    • Bubbles is "Bubs", but only because she completely ruled out "Miss Bubbles", "Palkyrie" and "Large Metal Friend".
  • No Antagonist: Being primarily a Slice of Life Romantic Comedy, there are no evil or antagonistic characters in this comic. The conflicts mainly come from relationship problems. At least until we and Faye meet Corpse Witch, the manager of the semi-illegal AI fighting arena, who crosses into flat-out villain territory with her treatment of Bubbles.
  • No Bisexuals: Averted. Initially, and for a long time, Dora was the only one, but then Faye, who had only ever gone out with men, fell in love with Bubbles the female robot, and then Elliot and Clinton, both of whom had previously been attracted mostly to women, fell for each other.
  • No Social Skills:
    • Hannelore is neurotic and quite at sea socially. She even has trouble with basics such as smiling. She was raised by a clinically Mad Scientist and a Bad Boss on a space station, and her psychological issues were much more severe when she was young.
    • However, Marigold has been worse. At the strip's high point of drama, when Marten and Claire had just got together and Faye, depressed at the break-up of her most solid relationship, had got drunk at work and been fired by her best friend, Marigold was completely oblivious to all the goings-on:
      Hannelore: ... So Marten and Claire are dating and Dora fired Faye from the coffee shop and Faye drank too much and went to the hospital and I got her a bear!
      Marigold: [reading a manga] Uh-huh.
      Hannelore: [annoyed] Are you even listening to me?
      Marigold: 'Course I am.
      Hannelore: Then repeat back what I just said.
      Marigold: Marten got fired from the coffee shop and Claire is dating Dora and Faye got attacked by a bear and had to go to hospital.
  • Nobody Poops: Inverted; bodily functions of all types are part and parcel of the characters' daily lives, and are frequently plumbed for Toilet Humour. Hannelore's introduction was when Marten drunkenly mistook the women's restroom at the local bar for the men's, leading him to do his business in a sink and note that he thought the urinal was rather odd-looking when Hanners mentioned it.
  • Not a Date:
    • Hannelore goes out with Sven just to see what dates are like. Nothing romantic or sexual is expected to happen, and it doesn't.
    • Tai follows Marigold back to her apartment on what Tai thinks at first is a date, until she offers to kiss Marigold.
  • Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Marigold has convinced herself that Dale is a jerk. He isn't; she was way into World of Warcraft when they first met, and he mentioned he was in the Alliance, so she, being in the Horde, slammed the door in his face. He then started a Friendly Rivalry with her, but she took it the wrong way, and now assumes he's a jerk. It's at the point she'd rather assume he's stuck her with a bill than wait for him to come out of the bathroom.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Parodied when Willow meets Marten. Pintsize recognises her as a friend of Yemisi and calls her "The one whose ass she ate?" Willow introduces herself to Marten and comments that she's not into anilingus. Marten says he isn't either:
    Willow: We have so much in common! It's like we're destined to be friends!
    Marten: [eye roll] Truly, the universe works in mysterious ways.
    • Taken even further when they proceed to the coffee shop:
      Willow: We just met! I accidentally flew a drone into his head, and then it turned out his robot buddy is a client of my roommate's, and then we all bonded over not being into eatin' butts.
      Claire: [puzzled] What?
      Pintsize: Hey! Don't lump me into the anti-anilingus group!
  • The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: Hanners is checking some bookkeeping for her Corrupt Corporate Executive mother, trying to find the source of an error. Faye asks her what will happen to the employee who made the mistake once he's found, and Hanners replies that he'll be fired.
    Faye: That's not so-
    Hanners: Out of a cannon, into a volcano.
    Faye: Oh.
  • Not What It Looks Like: Elliot walks in on Brun crowding up against Clinton and mistakes it for an intimate moment when actually, she was just sniffing his deodorant.
  • No, You: When Yay asks Roko if she thinks they're immature, she replies categorically in the affirmative. Yay doesn't exactly deal with it well.
    Yay: No, you are overcompensating for your lack of social experience! Also you are stupid, and smell weird!
    Roko: Okay, I'm actually glad you woke me up for this, it's pretty funny.
  • Number of the Beast: Strip #666, complete with Black/Death Metal references.
    [Dora and Faye are both dressed in black outfits and wearing corpse paint]
    Dora: ALL HAIL OUR DARK LORD AND MASTER!
    Faye: DRIPPING FLESHY BLOODGORE FESTERS IN YOUR GAPING WOUNDS! DEMONS N' STUFF! GRAAAAR!
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Many fans suspect ditzy Raven is doing just this, especially since she returned to school to get a degree in Physics.
  • Obviously Not Fine: When Roko has a dissociative episode so bad that she has a Thousand-Yard Stare and her speech bubbles are askew, she tries to pass it off as low blood sugar. She's a robot.
    Beepatrice: Wait, whose blood?
  • Obvious Object Could Be Anything: Faye argues at one point that a large envelope could contain a collapsible pony.
  • Ocular Gushers: Momo. Presumably synthesized in a similar way to the Anime Sweat Drop.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • Marigold and Hannelore. One's shy, sullen, and a complete slob, the other's a perky, hyperactive clean freak with OCD. They've become the best of friends.
    • May and Dale, a nice pizza-delivery guy and an abrasive AI on parole from jail. They bring out the best in each other somehow.
  • An Odd Place to Sleep: Brun of has been known to fall asleep in odd locations. She claimed that "Anything's a bedroom if you sleep there," and once fell asleep curled up on top of a robot.
  • Oh, Crap!: Marten's face in this strip when he thinks that Claire is about to break up with him.
  • Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!:
    • Marigold hits Fanfiction Dot Net in Jeph's Tumblr, and discovers Slash Fic pairing her with both Hannelore and Pintsize. She's clearly squicked out by this.
    • Inverted here. After Claire appears on her mother's VTube show, and heartily congratulates her on her online celebrity status, Aurelia warns her that she has "a very, um, active and imaginative fan art community". However, Claire is positively giddy at the prospect of her character getting her own fanfic.
    • And here, played straight and inverted. "Mommymilkers" (Aurelia) cheerfully reads some slashfic (written, as it turns out, by Pintsize) about her and "Burger Oni" (Marigold), who is utterly horrified by it, particularly when she learns that her lactose intolerance is a plot point — involving Mommymilkers having "Toiletmorph" powers...
      Marigold: WHOEVER WROTE THIS FIC SHOULD BE IN JAIL
  • Old School Introductory Rap:
    • Played for Black Comedy in Hannelore's recurring nightmares of a homicidal rapping penis.
      Hannelore: "My name is DJ Phalliz and I'm here to say / Kill your friends, kill them with a knife"
    • Beeps does a rap when inviting Roko to a girls' night out.
      Beeps: Well my name's Beepy Boopz and I'm here to say, Roko needs to cut loose in a major way
      Roko: Okay okay just please stop rapping
  • Older Than They Look: Amir is thirty-five but looks like he's in his mid-twenties. He claims "good genes".
  • Ominous Mundanity: Invoked for laughs when Moray is showing Claire and Marten around Cubetown. She tells them about the industrial, commercial and residential quadrants, and Claire innocently asks what the fourth quadrant is like—after all, if there are quadrants, they must be four of them. Moray replies ominously "WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THE FOURTH QUADRANT."
    Claire: Wh-why?
    Moray: [glumly] Because nobody can agree on what to do with it, and it always turns into a big argument.
    Marten: Giant ballpit.
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: Hannelore and the space station A.I. stay up all night tracking a weather pattern. The station burned out a few processor banks trying to trace it back, and its holographic avatar displays this.
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • When Marigold is introduced, her first words are "Damnit Angus, I told you I have a raid!". Sure enough, it is later revealed that recurring character Angus is her roommate. Dora even says "I thought she said your name earlier!" as if there was only one person named Angus in the world.
    • And, of course, literally, since there's only one Steve in the cast.
    • Averted with Claire. Back in her goth days, Dora knew a Claire who would check Cosette for curses since every place she worked before Coffee of Doom either went out of business or was about to, mostly due to illegal actions on the owners' parts. Shown here.
  • Only Sane Man:
    • Bubbles, to a considerable extent. She cuts a jarring figure in some ways, since her main problem appears to be a form of PTSD resulting from truly horrifying events which resulted in her military service being terminated, and subsequently a considerable section of her memories being erased. She has this under control, though, and generally seems a controlled and balanced figure.
    • Amanda, Faye’s sister, appears to consider herself the “sane sister” despite the evidence - failing her classes and transferring her major from pre-med to modern dance.
  • Open Relationship Failure: Faye and Sven become Friends with Benefits with the understanding that they aren't romantically involved or sexually exclusive. Nonetheless, when Sven sleeps with someone else, their friends treat him like a cheater and Faye stops seeing him at all.
  • "Open!" Says Me: When Bubbles hears Claire cry out in the other room, she promptly springs into action and proceeds to "breach the room". After realizing there was no danger, she promises to refine her "Claire Threat Evaluation Protocol".
    Martin: The door...
  • Orwellian Retcon:
    • There was an early strip in which the word "rape" was replaced with "hump". Apparently, someone managed to explain to Jeph that being shy and submissive is not the same as wanting to be sexually assaulted by a random barista.
    • When Dora makes fun of Raven for apparently styling her hair with Crisco, Raven objects that she'd never use Crisco because of "cute vegan boys." When someone pointed out to Jeph, or he found himself upon checking, that Crisco not only is vegan, but came about as a vegetarian substitute for animal tallow, Jeph changed the word to "lard."
  • Out of Focus: An omnipresent case in the comic, especially as time goes on. Once-major characters, subject to huge character arcs, often vanish at the end of them, so that Jeph can write a new character (characters like Marigold, Claire and Bubbles receive a ton of focus after their introductions). In other cases, Jeph simply stops using characters for a chunk of time.
    • Steve; once a major character, he'd all but disappeared for a year, leading many readers to e-mail Jacques asking about his whereabouts, leading in turn to a Lampshade Hanging strip and a request from the cartoonist to stop asking. The worry was he'd been Put on a Bus. It wasn't the first time, either; early in the strip he disappeared for nearly a hundred pages. Then again, it is Webcomic Time... He returned a few months after a Lampshade Hanging, having had some rather interesting adventures while he was gone. He then slipped into the background again, only to return in another strip, titled "You Needed To Know".
    • Angus McPhee also qualifies, though this is arguably justified by Faye's and Sven's frenemies-with-benefits relationship. He then started appearing as a semi-regular again, then finally became a regular character, while Sven slipped into the background somewhat. However, he soon was written out, moving away and ending his relationship with Faye.
    • Raven has fallen into this as well. She was once a major recurring character and the butt of numerous jokes. Eventually, however, she was completely overshadowed by others and was written out. She often goes months or years between appearances now (between strip 1510 and 1939). The occasional appearance has been limited at best.
    • Deathmøle returned in strip 1985 but has faded into nonexistence since then.
    • Marigold came into the strip as "Angus's Roommate", and very quickly became Jeph's favorite character to draw — she soon gained a ton of focus, got a huge Character Arc based around her social anxiety and various personal issues, then finally entered a relationship with Dale. At the completion of this Arc... the character largely-vanished, appearing now only once every month or so. She's still around, but her day in the sun is over (newer characters like Claire and Bubbles now receive more focus).
    • Even Marten falls victim to this for an extended period starting around the beginning of 2016. He goes for more than a year with no storyline of his own and only periodically pops in to react to what's happening to everyone else before disappearing again.
  • Paid-for Family: Referenced - Hanners once admits that she's secretly worried that the rest of the cast are just skilled actors paid by her (ludicrously wealthy) parents to give her the illusion of a normal life.
    Faye: Well, if we WERE, we wouldn't be allowed to admit it, so there's not much point in worrying about it, is there?
  • Painting the Medium:
  • Parody Sue: Dave, the ex-boyfriend of one of Steve's girlfriends, is ridiculously perfect, from studying to be a doctor to "help the children" to avoiding telling his girlfriend he was going to church because he didn't want to force his spiritual beliefs onto her. He's also a major milquetoast; that plus feeling inadequate in comparison to him is why Mina broke up with him.
    Steve: Next you'll be telling me he donates all his money to charities and spends twenty hours a week feeding the homeless.
    Mina: Only fifteen. He's gotta sleep some time.
  • Pardon My Klingon: "ASDF" and "QWERTY" are offensive robot profanities, the latter so much so that it shocked Winslow and even Pintsize into silence.
  • Pass the Popcorn: Penelope breaks out the popcorn while Dora and Faye get into a spat about Faye sleeping with Sven.
  • The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password to get into the underground robot fighting ring is...
    Faye: "1 2 3 4 5 6 7." And your password system sucks.
    Bubbles: I have made management aware of this on multiple occasions.
  • Performance Anxiety: Marten suffers from it. Especially when, on the occasion of his father's remarriage, he's called upon to give an impromptu speech, which quickly descends into Inane Blabbering.
    Marten: ANYWAY. Ma-marriage! Yes! Marriage yes. Good job marriage. Good dads. Yes. Thanks.
  • Perky Goth: Formerly Dora, although Dora and Raven each abandoned the goth look a long time ago now.
    Dora: [listening to music] Why do I suddenly want to dance around giggling like an idiot while a smiling man in a white suit throws confetti at me?
    Faye: That feeling is what we non-goths call "happiness". This record is its most condensed form. It is like a crack-rock of pure joy!
  • Persona Non Grata: SOMETHING happened to make Pintsize no longer welcome in Canada.
  • The Pig-Pen: Nat rarely showers; her body odor is frequently commented on. The comic's cast page even describes her as "VERY crusty" whereas Amir is "somewhat crusty".
  • Pizza Boy Special Delivery:
    • Subverted here. When Dale delivers her a pizza, Hannelore hasn't enough money to provide a tip. She nervously offers "something else" and insists he come in (despite him telling her it's unnecessary), but it turns out she was just inviting him to share the pizza with her and Marigold and chat for a while. (Of course, anyone familiar with Hannelore's character would never expect her to play the trope straight anyway.)
      Dale: Whew. I was afraid you were gonna offer to bone me.
      Hannelore: (horrified) EWW! People DO that?!
    • Many strips later, May questions Dale about this, but he insists it only happens in pornos. After a probing stare from her he admits he did get propositioned once, but didn't go through with it.
      May: Coward.
      Dale: (angrily) I'm not a coward. I just took stock of my life up to that moment and decided I wasn't the kind of guy who'd trade sex for pizza.
      Marigold: (holding a slice of pizza) Explain last night, then.
  • Plot Tumor: Robots and AI have always been part of the strip, but they were mainly used for one-off jokes and Funny Background Events for the first several years, while the more serious long term stories were about mundane human relationships. Then the number of important AI characters and AI-centered subplots gradually increased, to the point where at times the robot subplots eclipse the human ones.
  • Porn Stash: Marten's is Played for Drama. Dora insists that he tell her about the contents and steals his laptop to go through it when he refuses. Marten understandably is infuriated about Dora invading his privacy on a whim and being unable to take no for an answer. This becomes the primary catalyst for their break-up.
  • Put on a Bus:
    • According to Word of God, the following characters have been permanently written out of the strip: "Sarah, Ellen, Nat, any chance at happiness for Marten." There are other cases where this is averted, as some characters will disappear for extended periods of time only to reappear hundreds of strips later, like Hannelore and Winslow.
    • Marten himself was slowly building up to this after he started his relationshop with Claire (example here.) due to Jeph no longer knowing what to do with him, it was later averted after the Cubetown Arc, when suddenly having Marten in an entirely different setting made him easy to write for.

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