.MDA is a loose follow-up to Blood is Mine, confirmed by the author to take place in the same universe a few years later. The style varies between pixel art comics (as mentioned above) and manga-esque digitally rendered drawings, depending on the location in-universe, both heavily supplimented by text.
Due to the nature of this comic, beware of unmarked spoilers, and trope names that spoil aspects of the comic.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Acid Attack: The corpse worms in Plaire's dreams use an acid that affects meat and stone very differently.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: The exit from the Drowning Dungeon area is a long church hallway with an advancing flesh wall as the boss representing Plaire's father.
- Alien Sky: The sky in Plaire's nightmare is all yellow and writhing◊ as an Eldritch Abomination is trying to break it from behind. Later on, it's revealed that this is just a tinted magical barrier protecting the place from the Primordial Chaos of the horde of almost-deities surrounding it, like a snowglobe with the castle within.
- Anachronism Stew: Plaire finds a soda machine in the dungeon, which promptly gets lampshaded.
- Arc Words:
- "I have a right to know."
- "The First Lie"
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Plaire's house causes recurring nightmares, may or may not kill her in the dream, and didn't come with a washer or dryer despite what was advertised. The house may actually have a laundry room hidden by a Perception Filter after all, as well as a porch light, backyard, and possibly an entire second floor/attic.
- Art Shift: The comic uses sprite art◊ for regular scenes and digital drawings◊ during the recurring nightmare. In between, it may use either.
- Barrier Warrior: Cici has been able to create glowing shields to protect herself and Plaire in the dream.
- Benevolent A.I.: Seemingly, Plaire's local bus system, ChariotMT (nicknamed Cherry).
- Body Horror: The monsters have a disturbingly visceral appearance, furthened by their gruesome and/or freakish anatomy.
- Cannot Tell a Lie: Inverted. The tradesman statue can only tell lies. He/It is extremely helpful nonetheless.
- Chest Monster: The dungeon has mimics disguised as chests, which drop a key upon death.
- Combat Pragmatist: Plaire is but a girl with no implied fighting experience, nightly trapped in a fantasy castle full of monsters. By the second night she's already resorted to stuffing a potato in a sock to fight with, baiting enemies to fight each other, and dodging every direct confrontation she can.
- Confusing Multiple Negatives: Used to illustrate Plaire's Mind Screw over the Perception Filter on her back door.There's no back door not there.There is not no back door.
- Continuity Nod: Readers of Blood is Mine should have no trouble recognizing whom this statue◊ depicts, as well as many references to characters and items.
- Dungeon Crawling: At night Plaire becomes Trapped in Another World, which follows the rules of a videogame dungeon and is implied to hold answers to the mystery she is facing.
- Evil Doppelgänger: Reverse Plaire, a shadowy version of the protagonist whose only goal is to kill her. Also called Nega-Plaire, Anti-Plaire, Plaire 2, Not!Plaire...
- Flying Saucer: Marlow's accomplice form is an UFO, or a "foo fighter" back from the times when they were associated with enemy spycraft rather than aliens.
- Genre Savvy: Plaire with her extensive knowledge of videogame mechanics.
- Genre Shift: During the day, Plaire lives a very down to earth, modern life with a sprinkling of sci-fi. At night her story becomes an isekai horror. Even the art style shifts.
- Go for the Eye: An advice from Cici regarding sharks, that later came into use in ...well, a slightly different situation.
- Hard Light: Cici's dream form can create weapons and shields that look like made of light, but act as sharp solids.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Plaire has a few unusual properties in the dream, but none of them are immediately obvious to her and require some (rather painful) testing.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Playing certain videogames before sleeping seems capable of granting Plaire bonus powers to use in dungeon.
- Interactive Comic: Like Blood is Mine, the actions of the protagonist are based on readers' comments.
- Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: As per the staple of video games, any keys brought can open standard locks in the dream and disappear in a puff of smoke once used.
- It's Up to You: Plaire is the only "protagonist" of dream dungeon, seemingly by virtue of owning the "spooky house". Even when her friend can enter along her, they take form of "accomplice" who can merely support but not do most stuff themselves. Bad things happen if people try to enter the dungeon without her.
- Kaizo Trap: Plaire ran into one at the end of floor 2, apparently not because of the dungeon layout itself.
- Kill It with Fire: One of the most useful weapons in the dream thus far has been a torch.
- Macrogame: Anything wrapped in the DO NOT RESET tape stays in its place when the dungeon resets.
- Made of Indestructium: The inside of the spooky house cannot be damaged by any normal means.
- Mana Potion: Color-coded yellow, restores mana fully but has some side effects preventing its use ad infinitum.
- Meaningful Name:
- Plaire Stevens' name is hypothesized to be a form of Player Seven.
- Addersfield, the terrible town where Plaire grew up.
- Ninelives, where Plaire moved in, references her Resurrective Immortality in the dream.
- MegaCorp: Mondol Group, who are steadily taking over Plaire's new town. Not the largest or most sinister corporation to have sprung up in-universe, but they're still growing.
- Mole Monster: The tube monsters traverse through the cracks in dungeon walls to emerge from unexpected places, and for extra horror, announce their presence with ominous Arc Words chanting even when not seen.
- Morphic Resonance: After they get morphed into their 'mon forms in the dream, Kate retains her jacket and hairstyle, and Cici her eyepatch.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Tradesmen normally are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, so something must be horribly wrong to have prompted the one in the dream to give intel for free.
- Perception Filter: Seemingly the case with the spooky house, as seen here
- Playing with Fire:
- Fuse Hendricks and his pyrokinetic ability get discussed in the story.
- This is Kate's power in the dream, although she has only been able to light her hands on fire so far.
- Plaire has managed to copy her power as well, but she was limited the other way - by being able to create only big blasts of fire, nothing less.
- Power Copying: The dream ring allows Plaire to copy powers of one of her allies.
- Race Against the Clock: The heart counter represents how many days left Plaire has before the unthinkable happens.
- Required Secondary Powers: Playing Drillga indeed made Plaire immune to explosions. It did not, however, protect her from the fall damage afterwards.
- Resurrective Immortality: Even after dying brutally in the dream world, Plaire wakes up in the exact same place and the exact same situation the following night to try again. Not exact same place anymore now since she had found various checkpoints, and she has finite lives based on a partially explained mechanic.
- Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: The reader suggestions manifest in-universe as The Choir, percieved by its host as Hearing Voices.
- Stylistic Suck: Cici's drawing of the xanthous is shown as black-and-white doodles◊
- Technicolor Fire: In the dream all fire in the Drowned Dungeon area is green, apperantly referencing the power of survival. Later flames come is grey, blue, red, etc.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Every night Plaire dreams of starting over in the same fantasy dungeon. If she dies, she simply wakes up in the morning, to fall asleep that night and start all over again. She learns from each death and gradually makes it farther each night.
- The 'Verse: The same as Blood is Mine, roughly three years after its events, which are referenced in the story.
- Wingding Eyes: Yolk!Cici has one eye always like that, turning into different emojis reflecting her mood. So far we have seen:
- Boat◊ - swimming
- Lab flask◊ - experimenting
- Magnifying glass◊ - investigating
- Question mark◊ - curious
- Shield◊ - protective
- Smiley face◊ - happy
- Sword◊ - attacking
- Boat
- You Wake Up in a Room: Your bed, but not your room. Played with, as it isn't the audience's introduction to Plaire, but it is the audience and Plaire's introduction to the other world.
