General Protection Fault is a long-running webcomic by Jeffery T. Darlington. At its core it's about the workplace hijinks of the staff of GPF Software as they deal with clients, internal strife, would-be world conquerors, alternate dimensions, mad science, and spies.And that's not including the internal conflicts between the main characters:
Nick Wellington — The strip's main character. Lead Programmer, Geek's Geek, Mad Scientist
Ki Oshiro-Wellington — Chief DBA, Action Girl, Gamer Chick, Nick's long-time girlfriend and recent wife.
Jason "Fooker" Barker — Systems Administrator. Slacker, not-so-secretly a government agent
Sharon Murphy — Fooker's girlfriend and co-sys admin
Fred & Persephone — Sentient slime molds spawned from Fooker's garbage. Until recently, GPF's customer service operators.
The strip mixes geek humor with sci-fi elements (and occasional dips into the Cerebus Syndrome pool). A by-the-storyline index is available here.This Comic Contains Examples Of:
Annoying Younger Sibling — Ki's brother, Yoshi. It's implied that this is true of Lori, but she and Nick are never shown interacting.
Bald of Evil — F**k*r, much to the annoyance of his prime counterpart.
Beard of Evil — The nega-verse counterparts of Nick and Dwayne, based on the facial hair they wore in the Surreptitious Machinations arc before they were persuaded to shave it at the end.
Big Eater — Fooker, who has gotten banned from a few all-you-can-eat pizza places.
Bigger Bad: Pandemonium, to Empress Trudy and Nega-Nick.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing — Trudy is exceptionally polite and good natured around most people besides Ki and Fooker.
Brilliant, but Lazy — Fooker is able to do all his work for the day in only a fraction of the time, and spends the rest goofing off.
But Not Too Foreign — Ki and Yoshi, who have a Chinese mother and Japanese father. Ki's mother won a bet and got to give her a Chinese name, but Ki's father still commonly calls her "Kyoko-san".
Cat Fight — Ki and Trudy during the battle of New York. Also, Ki and Sharon when they're arguing about a project they're both working on.
Cerebus Syndrome — The comic has more serious storylines in the third year, and Surreptitious Machinations was the first with a truly dark tone GPF burns down and goes out of business, Fooker gets framed for murder, Nick takes a job away from Ki, and in the alternate future, Trudy takes over the world and the rest of the cast gets killed.
This can be to an extent credited as the trope namer, as it was in a post about GPF that Burns coined the term. Of course, this post was about how GPF was an example of this trope gone horribly wrong.
CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Nick nearly drowns in a flood arc in 2001, and Ki gives him CPR. Although "just fine" initially, he does end up sick, slightly subverting the trope.
Establishing Character Moment: After putting up a sickeningly sweet facade around Dwayne, Trudy shakes hands with Ki, who is not one of the people Trudy wants to fool. Ki asks if she just shook hands with the devil and Trudy responds that she has that effect on "inferior life forms." Shortly thereafter, she has a literalKick the Dog moment.
Nega-Nick executes Nega-Trish for her failure.
For Want of a Nail: Many of the Nega-verse counterparts in To Thine Own Self became different people from their primary universe counterparts as a result of a single event happening differently. The world goes on a different course because Nick and Ki decided to take over the world.
Nicole belongs to a law firm whose partners' first initials spell "S.U.E. E.M." During his attempts to find a lawyer to sue Fred for libel, Trent visits two firms whose names spell "S.U.C.K.E.R." and "D.E.A.D."
Future Me Scares Me — Trudy, after meeting Surreptitious Machinations' Empress Trudy.
Horrible Judge of Character — Nick trusts Trudy when most of the rest of the cast does not, but after realizing her true nature, decides to be less blindly trusting. Mr. Jones, one of GPF's clients, thinks that Fooker would be a good choice of a motivational speaker despite his Bunny-Ears Lawyer traits, thinks that Trudy was a good person who "fell in with the wrong crowd," and has a favorable impression of Trent.
Hypocritical Humor — Fooker tells Sharon to ignore her rival system administrators, but after they insult him, he tosses snowballs at them.
If I Can\'t Have You — Trudy to Nick, word for word, at the climax of Surreptitious Machinations arc. Also the whole point of Surreptitious Machinations, as Empress Trudy killed Nick in the alternate future.
Improbably High IQ — Yoshi has an IQ of over 200. Fred is an aversion, since his IQ is quite high at 139, he had hoped for 70 more points.
Kick the Son of a Bitch — Fred taking control of Trent's body, forcing him to sexually harass Sharon, go into a meeting with a client only wearing a tablecloth, and go outside and get arrested for indecent exposure would come off as much worse if Trent wasn't a jerk without any redeeming qualities.
Missed the Call — The spy agency Fooker works for was originally looking to recruit his brother (said brother does eventually land a spot in said agency).
Set Right What Once Went Wrong — The objective of Surreptitious Machinations appears to be this, but Todd points out in his confrontation with the Empress that the Bad Future was never meant to happen, and could only have happened with the interference of Future Trudy, who would not have existed otherwise.
Shoutout: In the climactic battle of Surreptitious Machinations, the news team reporting is WPET, with humans who are analogous to the dogs of KPET in Newshounds.
Suspiciously Specific Denial — Nick, regarding his offer for JCN. He's so shaken up he even denies it when he isn't even being directly asked about it.
Trust Building Blunder — Dwayne's decision to take several computer nerds on a team-building hike. He, being more of a businessman than a nerd, underestimates how badly suited his employees would be to it.
Wouldn't Hit a Girl — Fooker complains that "It's not fair. Guys should be allowed to hit girls in self defense," after recalling when Ki beat him up in their first meeting for making sexist remarks.
Your Princess is in Another Castle — After the GPF/UGA/resistance team captures Emperor Nicholas and his inner circle and frees Nick, the Grays' enemies attack.
is a long-running webcomic by Jeffery T. Darlington. At its core it's about the workplace hijinks of the staff of GPF Software as they deal with clients, internal strife, would-be world conquerors, alternate dimensions, mad science, and spies.And that's not including the internal conflicts between the main characters:
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