"Because being the best at something terrible is very close to being decent at something good. Only easier."
—Jackie
Meaty Yogurt
is a Web Comic that ran from 2010 to 2017 and later Novelization by Ro Salariannote , who is also the author of YU+ME: dream and I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!.
The story centers around Jackie Monroe, who lives in the painfully dull town of Middleville and suffers from a serious case of Small Town Boredom. To make things worse, Middleville is under a curse as a result of being built on land stolen from an Indian tribe — anyone born there is destined to die there. Jackie hates the thought of being stuck in an ambition-less life and dying in her hometown, so she constantly attempts to make her life interesting, or as she puts it, "live a life someone would want to read a book about."
She's pretty lacking on follow-through, however. She is continually switching her college major, starting to write novels and screenplays that she doesn’t finish, and creating bands and art projects that never go anywhere. Her idol is Moira, an out-of-town musician and girlfriend of Saffron, Jackie's best friend. Moira has been homeless, gotten stabbed in the face, traveled the country, and is a brilliant guitar player, plus she doesn't have to deal with the Middleville curse. Jackie swings between idolizing her and hating being near her because it makes her feel awkward and useless. Overall, the story focuses on Jackie's attempts to accomplish her wacky and frequently shifting life goals.
The webcomic only went to eleven chapters before becoming an Orphaned Series; the first eight chapters were released as a book. Salarian stated there had been too much time since the delay for them to attempt a reboot or continue. They released a Novelization downloadable for free on their site in 2020 that tells the whole story. The novel tweaks some details about characters and expands on others, including backstory.
This webcomic and Novelization provides examples of:
- A Good Name for a Rock Band:
- Jackie names their band Sex Mime (they were almost named Boner Infection, but that's "a metal name, not punk.")
- All the stated winners of the Punk Rock Triathilon fit this trope: Ninja Abortion, Black Sinus, Electric Merkin, Knifecake, and The Majestic Dildos.
- Flash Paper Virgins is Moira's band.
- When complaining to Saffron about smoking and saying she won't take her to get an abortion of lobster babies, Jackie then says that Lobster Abortion would be a good punk band name.
- Battle of the Bands: The Punk Rock Triathlon, held by a record company. The winner gets a year of Manic Panic hair dye and the chance to record a demo CD. In the novelization it's $100 cash and $100 to Guitar Center.
- Brick Joke: Space aliens are credited first with eating library cards and later for blessing Moira with awesome guitar skills. Then much later they actually arrive long enough to apologise for not introducing themselves earlier, complement the blueness of our sky and promise to bring pizza next time.
- Calling Your Orgasms: The comic starts with Jackie having one of these, focused on her face while she and Tom are having a sexual encounter in the woods.
- Curse: The Middleville curse, according to Jackie's uncle Max. When white people drove the indigenous people off their land in the past, the Indians said that if the white people wanted the land so bad, they could have it forever. Thus, everyone born in the town will eventually die there; most people have no ambition to leave, but even if they leave temporarily and have ambitions to get out and find something else, they end up coming back somehow. Jackie wants to avoid this though she's seen people try and fail, including her friend Saffron and her uncle Max. It's revealed in the novelization that this is a lie from Max; many, many people have been born in Middlevale and then lived lives elsewhere. Including Saffron, who moves to New York City with Moira and Uncle Max, who died in a Texas prison.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Pages and characters are tinted in shades of a single color with various splashes of yellow to indicate how Jackie sees characters as being free of Middlevale or not from there. The world gets more red-toned as it slides into the past: blues are the modern era, royal purple are Jackie's college years, plum her high school years, middle school is magenta, and early elementary is raspberry red. The only character fully in black and white is Norma, when she's either interacting with Jackie or taking over her body.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: A closed door has two voices behind it talking about "trying to get it up" for the past hour, and using spit so it's not limp, before stroking upwards. Then it's revealed to be Saffron and Jackie, with Jackie trying to gel her hair into a mohawk.
- Fake First Kiss: Jackie does this with Tom on their first date at a club, hoping to upset her ex-boyfriend George. Instead George is grossed out at her making out with Tom, and the kiss is actually good — if very sloppy.
- Fauxreigner: It turns out that Slogar has been faking a Bosnian accent and the associated foreign origin for years, but is in fact a Middleville native.
- Flashback Effects: Scenes set in the past are redder tones of purple, and grow more bluish as they approach the present day. Also serves as a version of the Monochrome Past trope though things are purple tones, not black and white.
- Flowers of Romance: Tom shows up with a bouquet for Jackie on their first date at a club.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Used twice so far by Saffron when trying to motivate Jackie to follow through with ideas. These are not her real name; Jackie has gone by so many names that calling her by her "full name" is a matter of interpretation and Saffron is using false overly long names.Saffron: Jacqueline Henrietta Christopher Archibald Gaylord Monroe! YOU ARE GOING TO THIS PARTY!Saffron: Jacqueline Marie Lucifer Jameson Pinkey Conrad Monroe! You tell George right now that you will be there for as long as it takes to shoot!
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Moira's neat, subtle lip scar adds character to her face and establishes her as the cool, out-of-town badass. She apparently got it from being stabbed in the face by a junkie.
- Hot Librarian: Subverted. Tom the librarian, Jackie's boyfriend, is both a guy and amazingly mediocre with lots of zits, but Jackie thinks he's extremely cute and great in bed.
- How We Got Here: Jackie's memory of talking to her Uncle Max is the setup for her obsession with leaving her hometown.
- I Come in Peace: The Sxlzfyrks offer of friendship and promise to return to Earth later with pizza and beer puts them pretty strongly in the "peaceful" category.
- Important Haircut: Mocked when Jackie attempts to go punk for a battle of the bands by getting a mohawk. She hates that she did it.
- Jealous Romantic Witness: Moira wanted her ex-boyfriend George to be upset at seeing her with Tom by thinking she's gotten over him, and does a Fake First Kiss. Subverted as George thinks it's awkward her making out with Tom (whom he calls "Colonel Pizza Face") and leaves.
- Logic Bomb: Saffron promises to date a man hitting on her if he first learns to respect her lesbianism. She later describes this as a relationship paradox.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Tom and Jackie have sex — well, third base — in the woods. She misplaces her shirt behind a large rock and when she finds it, an animal has peed on it to her disgust.
- Named After Somebody Famous: ZigZagged. Jackie's birth name is Marilyn Monroe. She stopped answering to her name as a child, after her Uncle Max told her she'd never get anywhere with a secondhand name. However, she's actually named after her grandmother.
- Nerds Are Virgins: Subverted. Jackie assumes that Tom is a virgin on their first night together, based on his nerdy appearance and messy, nerd-hobby filled room, and thinks he wasn't expecting to get laid that night; when he says he's never done that sort of thing before and she invokes this, he clarifies that he means a one-night stand. She is a virgin, however, and stops him before they fully have sex that night, though they do go to third base. It's not until six years into their relationship that they have sex for the first time.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Jackie never seems to notice how many truly strange things happen in and around Middleville.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Jackie. She went by Zoozoobella as a child after rejecting her first name of Marilyn (since it sounded like Marilyn Monroe), then Carmen/Carmilla in high school, then finally Jackie, which appears to be her new legal name. However her family still calls her Marilyn.
- Orwellian Retcon: Moira's facial scar was originally located on her eye. It was moved to her lip because Salarian felt that a scarred eye was too reminiscent of Sadako from their prior comic, YU+ME: dream . Artwork featuring Moira on already published pages was later altered to reflect this change.
- Power-Up Full Color Change:
- Used symbolically with Moira — when Jackie hears Flash Paper Virgins play and realizes how cool Moira is as an out of towner, her vision of Moira changes from purple (like the rest of the world around her) to a warm gold.
- Used in reverse when Jackie is remembering meeting George, her high school boyfriend; she thought he was from somewhere else and initially sees him in yellow, but when he explains he just moved from another side of town, the yellow fades away into the tones all around her already.
- Pun-Based Title: "Meaty Yogurt" is a play on the word "mediocre." This is clarified in the novelization as Jackie mishearing Slogar calling their music as a punk band mediocre and in the print book as something Salarian did as she thought "mediocre" would be too easy for critics.
- Raised by Grandparents: Moira, briefly; she was taken in by her dad's parents after her parents died when her father killed her mother and then himself. She ran away because they were conservative Christians.
- The Runaway: Moira left her grandparents' home because they were conservative Christians; she opted homelessness over staying with them.
- Splash of Color:
- Used to indicate people who are either not from Middleville or want to badly leave, including Jackie's many fantasies of leaving. Moira appears yellow against the otherwise purple world, as do the Sxlzfyrks aliens. Jackie and Uncle Max's glasses are yellow-tinted to indicate their desire to escape the town and its curse, which are also seen on Jackie's high school boyfriend George. The yellow is later clarified to indicate people who have been affected by the Sxlzfyrks aliens, which include Jackie and Moira.
- Used in reverse for Norma, Jackie's split off self; she is in black and white which puts her in stark contrast with the rest of the purple-hued world.
- The Stoner: Jackie's former roommate and high school friend Shanna is almost never seen without being some form of high. Jackie had no idea at first; George had to explain the "incense" smell on Jackie was in fact weed smoke.
- Take That!: When Saffron reads about the Punk Rock Triathlon in the newspaper, she argues that Jackie isn't seriously entering a contest that "thinks Green Day is the epitome of punk rock.".
The Novelization Adaptation separately provides examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Norma narrates the prologue and Chapter Zero in the novelization, whereas she didn't show up in the comic until Jackie attempted to become a photographer.
- Adaptational Gender Identity: Saffron is transgender in the novelization.
- Adaptation Deviation: Jackie's attempt at a punk band and the Battle of the Bands is told in the prologue and narrated by Norma instead of Chapter Three, "Sex Mime."
- Adaptation Expansion: Along with the full story being told and chapters moved around, additional chapters are added to the novelization that didn't make it into the original comic such as Jackie, Tom, Moira, and Saffron playing a drinking version of Truth or Dare on the Fourth of July.
- Adaptation Name Change: In the novelization, Jackie's stoner friend Shanna is renamed Kayla.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Rather than dying in a fire he set with a cigarette, Jackie's Uncle Max dies in a mental hospital. Which is still a lie, as he died in a Texas prison after committing serial murders.
