Girls with Slingshots is a Mundane Fantastic webcomic by Danielle Corsetto about the lives of Hazel and Jamie, their talking cacti, and their friends. The strip takes a lot of its humor from switching the standard gender arrangement of common sex comedy tropes.The name appears to come from a rather strong drink, though the artist has offered an alternative explanation: she gets lots of requests to draw pictures girls with guns, but is so bad at drawing guns that she hast to settle for slingshots instead.It's connected to the Walkyverse by way of Candy's friendship with Davan of Something Positive and the mutual offspring of Sprinkles and Choo-Choo Bear, one of whom became the pet of Leslie from Shortpacked!.
A Date with Rosie Palms: Masturbation is treated as a casual, fact of life topic. Not that any of the characters are willing to discuss the topic with their mothers, which is the source of a Running Gag with Hazel's mom mistaking various toys as "back-massagers".
The Alcoholic: Hazel, a petite woman, is to the point of showing no signs of intoxication until her ninth beer. Played for Laughs, big time.
Hazel: I'm a high-functioning drunk, Clarice. You know that. Clarice: Yeah, but I've been counting bottles and you've crossed your faux-sober threshold. Hazel:Eight? Holy shit, I leveled up!
All Men Are Perverts: Jamie gets pretty much everything she wants from strange men, thanks to her endowments. When she covers them up, she is shocked that drinks suddenly cost more. Played creepily straight by every male customer of the porn store.
Tyler is already a pervert, despite not even having made it to puberty yet. Later, it's revealed that neither he nor his mother actually knows what sex is.
Brains and Bondage: Clarice, one of the more intelligent members of the cast, is a dominatrix. But she dreams of being a librarian.
Brick Joke: The wedding arc pulls obscure comments from earlier strips and turns them into punchlines. Jameson's remaining hair makes him look like a clown? His parents are clowns. Candy wanted to marry Jameson with as many things as possible made from baby seal leather just to offend Maureen the vegan? She replaces the wedding rings with "100% Baby Seal Leather" rings. The rest of the cast is not amused.
The Casanova: Zach, who is arguably a trope subversion as he considers the three hundred women whom he has serviced as a gift to the community. Prior to hooking up with Hazel, he gave virgins a good first time and helped service the elderly to make them feel loved again.
Cast of Snowflakes: A variety of female (and male) characters with simple but wildly varying body shapes and faces. Even when they dress up as each other for Halloween, it's still possible to tell which character is which.
Hazel: Cats only have two emotions — "feed me" and "fuck you."
Character Development: Chris started out as a compulsive exaggerator who was universally known for wearing an eye-patch, but becomes a solid recurring character. One strip also hangs a lampshade on this trope when no one recognizes Chris until he puts on his eye patch, which he no longer actually needs. He remarks that he knows what his only distinctive characteristic is. It turns out he has another one, but he works pretty hard to keep that one under wraps.
Contrived Coincidence: When Clarice goes to ask Hazel's mom for a job at the library, they're having a going away party for a librarian that is leaving her job. Lampshaded by Clarice and by the author in the Alt Text, where she just admits she couldn't think of something better to write.
Crossover: Davan attended Maureen and Jamison's wedding, and recently Sprinkles gave birth to Choo-Choo Bear's babies, one of whom went to Leslie and Robin.
A breakdown of the cats and their crossovers is included in this strip◊.
The Cutie: Jamie. Mimi makes a good case for herself too.
Double Standard/ Double Standard: Rape, Female on Male: Discussed and ultimately condemned. Even though Candy tried to rape Chris, Jamie seems horrified at the idea of him macing a girl. However, this was more a demonstration of the gut reaction many people would have; two strips later Jamie defends him from the possibility of Candy macing him, pointing out that it should only be used for self-defence, which makes her feelings clear. Meanwhile Hazel's (and initially Jameson's) reactions are more to do with their views on sex (way to miss the point, Hazel), though Hazel later pinpoints Candy as not a feminist but a straight-up misandrist.
Drunken Master: Hazel is an amazing writer when she's drunk. Her publisher even tells her straight-up that she doesn't have to read an article to know it's quality as long as she knows Hazel wrote it drunk.
Even the Girls Want Her: Jamie, who eventually decides that she wants the girls too. But only from the waist up.
Everybody Knew Already: Subverted - with Jamie "discovering" that Thea and Angel aren't just "playing board games". Only to discover on her "proof" video that it wasn't Thea with Angel on the tape.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Candy. Candy Candy Candy. A rotten bitch to pretty much everyone, but she's an old friend of Jameson's, so they kind of have to put up with her when Jameson decides to bring her along. Then she pulled that stunt at Jameson's wedding, and Jameson woke up to the fact that "Hey wait, I don't really like Candy either." She and Clarice are still on friendly terms though.
Hazel starts to drift towards this territory occasionally, such as when she was threatening to drown all of the kittens just to get rid of them, leading Jamie to wonder "how are we friends?" However, she still seems to be in high standing with the rest of the cast.
Gag Boobs: Jamie. There's more to her than that, of course...
Hazel: ... But I asked twenty people the first word they thought of when they think of you, and all of them said "boobs". Even Your Mom, who added that the second word she thinks of is "boobs".
... and Clarice's here. The good one is dressed just as sexily as the evil one, only in white (Alt Text: "OF COURSE Clarice's angel would have a white corset"), and seems to be ganging up on Clarice with the evil one.
Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Hazel and Jamie have a bad habit of waking up unable to remember the night before. While the other female characters all drink, it is guaranteed that Hazel (and most likely Jamie) will go overboard.
Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Hazel has had to remind people of her hetero-ness more than once, especially in earlier strips when she isn't getting any.
Hopeless With Tech: One of Hazel's many bizarre cognitive gaps is that she doesn't understand the internet at all, especially social media. She seems to think Facebook is imaginary, forgets that email exists for months at a time, and doesn't realise that writing for a digital magazine means that people will be able to find, read and review her work online.
Hot Librarian: Averted in Clarice, who tells everyone that she's a librarian when in reality, she is a porn-store clerk moonlighting as a dominatrix. She eventually gets to realize her dream.
Hooker with a Heart of Gold: While not exactly a hooker (just a porn store clerk and dominatrix for hire), Clarice, since we see her longing for affection.
Mimi: Uh... If oral and fingering are things only lesbians do, then I feel really bad for you straight people. Hazel: Oh, wait... oh. Alt Text: This is that moment where Hazel goes 'How do I not have a billion ST Ds.'
I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Jamie. She even forgoes using a coat in the winter because she can't function without the attention.
Incompatible Orientation: Angel has trouble finding girls who aren't straight... Jim has trouble finding girls who are.
Jamie and Erin are mutually disinterested— Jamie isn't into girls sexually, Erin is just plain asexual. Their relationship gets kind of shaky when Jamie has to deal with sexual frustration, and neither one is into the obvious solution.
Informed Ability: According to everyone who sees her photos, Jamie is a really amazing photographer. However, the audience hardly sees any of her work and what little glimpse we get by way of the background of her gallery show appears to be nothing more than some pedestrian pictures of flowers -not exactly the stuff of solo gallery openings (though the fact the gallery showing Jamie's work is apparently out of touch with the rest of the art world and hasn't had an opening in decades might count as a lampshading of this trope).
Innocent Innuendo: Jamie assumes when Thea says she's going to clean Angel's carpet that she's talking about lesbian sex. Thea is actually cleaning the carpet in Angel's car from when she vomited the night before.
Innocently Insensitive: Hazel's not good with lesbians. Or remembering things that mean something to her boyfriend. She eventually gets called on this.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hazel mostly acts immature, selfish and mean. But when push comes to shove she's there for her friends (usually kicking and screaming about it).
Joisey: Various cities and towns in New Jersey are mentioned as being close by. It seems to take place in the New Brunswicknote Not the province area. When Hazel goes to the Big Applesauce she takes the train. The writer is probably a local.
Karma Houdini: Candy tried to rape Chris. Everyone's response? Get her a job as a dominatrix so that she has a healthy outlet.
She finally gets her comeuppance for everything—after her prank at the wedding, the entire group turned their backs on her. She hasn't appeared in the strip since...unless you count some stuttering steps toward redemption in crossover strips from Something Positive. She eventually reappeared, greatly alarming Jameson. The way he acted, you'd think he was the one she tried to rape (although it's possible the entire attempted date rape has entered Canon Discontinuity since none of the characters ever mention it even when mention other bad things Candy's done.
LOLCats: Hazel's "special" cat is shown to think in LOLspeak.
Magic Realism: Rule of Fun often brings this into effect, such as with the laser tag game that makes your clothes disappear. The presence of talking house plants presents a Running Gag as cast members are seen conversing with the plants for the first time. They're always very relieved to find out they're not the only ones that have been hearing the plants talk.
Nerds Are Virgins: Played straight with Joshua, who until Clarice admits never being in a relationship before.
Never Bareheaded: Jameson is never seen without his bandana. When the girls decide to find out what's underneath it, they find another bandana. Maureen even says he wears it to bed and during sex. When they finally do get it off of him, they find out he's hiding an embarrassing balding pattern.
Oh Crap: The reaction of pretty much everyone (in-universe and outside) of Hazels reaction here.
One of the Boys: Hazel, to the point where she hangs out with the guys during the bachelor party and is repeatedly mentioned as actually being the guy in her relationship (including shallowness and refusal to think about the "future" beyond lovemaking).
Pink Elephants: The mysterious flask from the wedding produces this.
Jamie: What the hell was in that flask? Hazel: I dunno. Sammy said it was "special alcohol." Jamie: Sammy? Hazel: Yeah, Sammy the one-eyed talking platypus. Jamie: WHAT THE HELL WAS IN THAT FLASK?
Poisonous Friend: Candy, to Jameson. She tells herself that her vitriolic attempts to sabotage his relationship with Maureen are just harmless pranks that Maureen is too sensitive to appreciate, until finally she pushes Jameson to the breaking point at the wedding.
Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Hazel doesn't like dressing in "girly" clothes. She panics when Jamie takes her lingerie shopping - in her own words, she doesn't wear lingerie, she wears underwear.
Also, Robyn from All New Issues is apparently Hazel's cousin.
Ship Sinking: Hammered home when Angel not only screws someone else behind Thea's back, but tells Thea they were never in a real relationship to begin with. Ouch.
Shout-Out: Possibly unintentional, but both of Thea's romantic interests have had the same name as a character from RENT.
Technical Virgin: Jamie, despite having several dates that had "happy endings," has never gone all the way. She seems to believe as long as she has an intact hymen she counts as one since she had (implied disastrous) sex with her girlfriend Erin before she left for England but mentioned later when Hazel had an STD scare that she was still a virgin.
The Talk: Hazel and Clairce give it to not only Tyler but also his mother when they discover neither knows where babies come from.
Token Minority Couple: A story arc built around subverting Type B: the two lesbians in the regular cast finally meet, with a long buildup to their first date...only to find that they have nothing in common. They do have a lengthy friendship with benefits, though.
Several different characters have had their moments, Angel's belief that lesbians cannot give each other STDs probably qualifies.
Hazel. Really, without her mom and her friends to run damage control on her constant poor decisions she may very well have been dead by now. She certainly would have been broke, jobless and homeless.
The Unfair Sex: Avoided with the crisis in Hazel and Zach's relationship, in which Hazel is clearly portrayed as being mostly to blame.
And it was discussed earlier when giving advice toDogged Nice Guy Jim about lavishing attention on a woman prior to dating, particularly the last panel.
Unnecessary Makeover: In-Universe. Maureen, after sex-toy-purveyor Clarice questions her ability to be sexy. Somewhat averted as the makeover doesn't take, and it is specifically stated that the makeover took away what made her sexy in the first place.
Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Hazel's at least close, especially early on. She often crosses the line from Deadpan Snarker into just plain being a jerk, and she's also pretty selfish, and this usually appears for the sake of a punchline. However, on other occasions she shows that she's a fairly decent person. This seems to have come to a head, in-universe, with Hazel's immaturity pushing Zach into breaking up with her.
Unusual Euphemism: Angel and Thea playing board games in the back room.
Where The Hell Is Springfield?: Invoked by Word of God in a January 2012 blog post. The town it takes place in is based on Corsetto's home town in West Virginia, but it's in a state that allows gay marriage; speculation has put it in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland, or (Corsetto's preference) just an unnamed mid-Atlantic mystery state.
is a Mundane Fantastic webcomic by Danielle Corsetto about the lives of Hazel and Jamie, their talking cacti, and their friends. The strip takes a lot of its humor from switching the standard gender arrangement of common sex comedy tropes.The name appears to come from a rather strong drink
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