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"When Sandra's around, everything is wild...and glamorous!"
Marie (frothing Sandra fangirl)

Sandra on the Rocks is a webcomic written by Dave Lumsdon (aka Dave Zero1) and drawn by Remy "Eisu" Mokhtar. It originally started as filler strips in its parent comic, Ménage à 3 in December 2011, became a separate production on April 2, 2013, and ended on July 1, 2019. The lead character comes from Ménage à 3, but Sandra has a different artist and a somewhat different atmosphere; it's less a Slice of Life and more of a satire of the clichés of the modelling and computer games businesses. Also, while Ménage à 3 and its earlier Spin-Off Sticky Dilly Buns are set in Montreal, Canada, this comic is set in Paris, France, at least to begin with.

The title character, Sandra Arden, was originally a member of Ménage à 3's second-line cast, a booze-loving waitress and workmate of first-line character DiDi. In that comic, through a drunken accident, she found herself transported from Montreal to Brazil in the company of transgender model Senna — which is where this one starts. Unable to get home, Sandra becomes Senna's personal assistant, soon discovering that Senna is a boss from hell. Her salvation comes in the form of international fashion photographer Domenico Pedrazzini, who whimsically decides that her freckles make her interesting, declares that she will be his next great discovery, and ships her off to Paris to learn from his team of assistants.

Unfortunately, once there, Sandra not only discovers that Domenico is an unpredictable flake, but runs into further problems such as his PA, Tatiana Likhachyova, who quickly becomes insanely jealous of Domenico's interest in Sandra and determined to drive her off or destroy her. However, Sandra wants to stay, if only because she soon finds romance in Paris. Aside from the contest between Sandra's innocent luck, resilience, and unreliable gumption, and Tatiana's erratic attempts at evil, some of Sandra's modelling gigs get complicated, she finds specialised fame as a video games model, and a number of other characters enter the cast, many with their own Plot Threads.

Like the parent comic, this is constructed as a very traditional four-panel strip (the western equivalent of a Yonkoma); there are always four panels, or occasionally some double panels. Originally, they appeared online as a single row of four, but since a major Website redesign in early 2020, they have been posted in a 2x2 layout. (As the print collections have always been printed with this 2x2 format, any double panels are always located in positions 1 and 2 or 3 and 4.) Also, the great majority of strips end with some kind of comedy punchline, despite the fact that there is a continuing story.

The first page is here. Note that some other pages may be at least marginally NSFW; although Sandra lacks the explicit, sexualized nudity that characterized Ménage à 3 at times, it does feature some buttock-cleft and Side Boob glimpses, along with a little BDSM and some ... interesting ... lingerie.

The comic is now concluded. A backup can be found here.


Sandra on the Rocks contains examples of:

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    Tropes A-H 
  • Aborted Arc: When Alex and Marie first appear, it's made clear that she has an interest in upgrading their relationship from friendship to romantic/sexual, and this plot continues when Ingrid offers to help Marie catch Alex (while hoping to draw them into a threesome). However, Alex is dragged into Eloise and Nadine's schemes, Marie gets into modelling, and the idea just fades away.
  • All Women Are Lustful: It's a sex comedy, so pretty well everyone is lustful, or at least interested in or prone to goinking at least one other character. But the trope is at least played with, in that the women are certainly at least as cheerfully enthusiastic as the men, from the irresponsible drunk title character to the shy but very actively lesbian Lavali, the Casting Couch-wielding Eloise, and the energetically promiscuous Nadine.
  • Art Evolution: The comic actually underwent something of an art revolution in 2015, when the artist, by his own account, became bored and uncomfortable with the style he'd been making himself use, and switched to a looser approach (with some peculiarly long necks) which he enjoyed drawing more.
  • Artistic License – Education: The Paris-based English-language school attended by the younger characters is just vaguely weird in countless ways (the American-style atmosphere, the uncontrolled sexual activities of many of the pupils, the uniforms...), putting it more in line with American comedy comics and Japanese manga than anything you'd probably find in that city in reality.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: In a Print Bonus story, Eloise ultimately gets Pierre. While her machinations fail to destroy Sandra, she still manages to get something she wants out of it.
  • Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: This is a fanservice-heavy but not outright pornographic comic about the fashion world, so there are plenty of female characters wearing midriff-baring clothes, be it lingerie, swimsuits or crop tops worn for clubbing. The only female character that never wears such revealing outfits (except in her BDSM fantasies) is the straight-laced and sadistic Tatiana. The male characters, meanwhile, tend to wear full shirts, although the hunky Domenico opts for unbuttoned shirts instead, for a similar fanservice effect.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Domenico and Zoé are divorced, but there is still...chemistry...between them, sometimes requiring buckets of cold water.
  • "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Necessarily demonstrated by Sandra, in the painful elbow-to-gut form, when Gary is being Gary.
  • Beta Couple: The relationship between Alex and Marie is a background sub-plot, while Sandra's romances (mostly with Pierre) are a foreground concern. However, the trope is inverted in one important respect; Sandra and Pierre have a fairly straightforward relationship, whereas Alex and Marie have problems, mainly due to geeky adolescent inexperience — and there relationship probably shows up in more strips overall, as a result.
  • Big "NO!":
    • Tatiana invokes the short, intense version here upon seeing that Domenico has been "defeated" by Zoé.
    • Another, fairly minor but impassioned example is provided by Lavali in strip #258 (October 20, 2015; marginally NSFW), when Sandra insists on 'phoning a "Mysterious Hottie" on her behalf.
  • Big Word Shout: Zoé can be excitable sometimes, and notably executes a loud Say My Name at Eva here, having discovered that Eva has been running a long-term and effective campaign of evil. Eva just expects this of her, though, and isn't overly impressed.
  • Bisexual Love Triangle: The tangled lives of the cast include a few bisexual triangles, though real love may be rarer. A key example is the relationships between Sandra, Pierre, and whichever woman is attracting Sandra during her latest bender, but especially Cammi. As a comedy bonus, at one point, Alex finds himself torn between Eloise and Eloise disguised as a guy.
  • Bitch Slap: In a slightly old-fashioned comic about sometimes-bitchy interactions between fashion models and the like, the bitch slap is inevitably deployed from time to time.
  • Black Bra and Panties: Sandra sometimes wears this combination, but with no obviously seductive intent. The trope is used full-force for humor, however, with Tatiana, who, required at one point to remove her formal business suit, reveals (black) lingerie of quite startling kinkiness.
  • Body Paint shows up a couple of times:
  • Bookends: Pixietrix comics are often organised in 150-strip volumes, with the last strip in each containing at least a minor echo of the first:
  • Brick Joke: One of Sandra's early gigs in Paris involves playing video game mascot Mimsy Molar. She reunites with said character shortly after her return to Montréal.
  • Call-Back: This comic references a Brick Joke in Ménage à 3.
  • The Cameo: There are occasional appearances by characters who are normally based in Ménage à 3. In addition, Eisu may occasionally slip in characters from his other work. For example, this strip features a non-speaking appearance by Maureen from his own No Pink Ponies.
  • Celebrity Resemblance:
    • In a slightly odd in-universe example, Sandra is fortuitously discovered at a video game trade show when a live-action model is needed for a game heroine.
    • Marie, the teenage fan girl, bears a startling resemblance to cosplay model Marie-Claude Bourbonnais (minus her super powers), with the same spiky blonde hair and big eyes. However, Word of God says this is a total coincidence.
    • For a somewhat generic instance — Eisu openly acknowledges that Zoé's character design is inspired by a bunch of classic Statuesque Stunner supermodels.
  • Censor Suds: A fairly notable instance appears in the November 16, 2018 strip, when Zoé and Sandra share a bath (while conducting an argument).
  • Childhood Friends: Alex and Marie. It's pretty clear that Marie wouldn't mind if it grew into something more, but Alex isn't as quick to break out of the "platonic friend" mindset.
  • Cleavage Window: Present on some of the showier fashion outfits seen in the comic — notably on Zoé's clubbing outfit here. This may be a little unwise of her, given that she usually opts for "stylish", and this dress reminds us that she's got quite a bit of cleavage to show.
  • Closet Key:
    • Alex for Christophe (strongly hinted early on, and confirmed in a post-ending Print Bonus strip).
    • Cammi for Sandra, as it turns out at the very end.
  • Coitus Uninterruptus:
    • No, Cammi doesn't care that she's just been caught having sex with her boss' ex-husband by her boss, she just wants ten more minutes to finish up.
    • Much the same can be said of Eva, who is annoyed when Lukas invites himself in for a drink and small talk, while Armani is banging her.
      Eva: (while having sex) "Kinda busy here, Lukas. So either get in me or get out!"
    • Though to be fair, Lukas is at least consistent — he never shows much concern at being interrupted or observed while having sex himself.
  • Come Back to Bed, Honey: Inverted. For most of his appearances, Pierre seems like a faultless boyfriend...then Sandra reveals that she'd rather not spend the night with him because, being a baker, Pierre gets up early — way, way earlier than Sandra would like. Also, his early hours tire him out so much so that he drops asleep during sex.
  • Contrapposto Pose: This being a comic about fashion models, several of the characters can be identified as using this pose at different times. Notably, Zoé, as an experienced model and an assertive, confident character, is sometimes depicted adopting contrapposto automatically.
  • Cosplay: The crossover with Ménage à 3 involves some cosplay-related complications, though most of the specific events are shown in the other comic. After Sandra models as in-universe videogame heroine "Carmen Chamelia," she finds herself a geek idol, and uses Gary from the other comic as a consultant on geek culture. He explains cosplay to her, just as Tatiana is forming a weird plan of her own that involves making Sandra dress up in a white dominatrix outfit for a fictional shoot that Gary interprets as perfect Emma Frost cosplay. When Senna uploads the pictures from the shoot to Sandra's website, Alex and Marie also interpret them that way, rather than as bondage gear.
  • Crossover: As well as spinning off from Ménage à 3, this comic has crossed over with that one. The story in question was foreshadowed by a couple of strips in the parent comic, but really began with a double image of the same moment here and here. Subsequently, for a while, alternate strips from each would begin with a re-drawing of the last panel from the other — though either comic could be read on its own and still make sense. Then the plot threads diverged a little more, although they continued to run in parallel for a few more strips.
  • Darker and Edgier: Parodied here and in the surrounding storyline, in the treatment given to retooled in-universe videogame character "Carmen Chamelia". Sandra is not amused.
  • Dating Do-Si-Do: The web of relationships in the comic is more of a Love Dodecahedron, so see the notes on that trope, but occasionally things are more consecutive than concurrent, and they shake out to more or a do-si-do by the end of the comic's run.
  • Death Glare: Demonstrated by Zoé on an unfortunate paparazzi, to useful effect. She should be at a situational disadvantage, but her build helps, and perhaps she actually turns even her state of dress to her advantage somehow.
  • Delicious Distraction: Sandra hits Pierre's bakery to distract herself after a rough week, and Nadine regards Pierre's croissants as a good way to celebrate distracting Eloise from a jealous rage.
  • Description Cut: In strip #258 (October 20, 2015; marginally NSFW because of the punchline), Aaina reassures Lavali that Eva might well be thinking of her at that very moment. Cut to Eva in mid (heterosexual) coitus.
  • Dramatic Unmask: More or less parodied when Sandra takes off the mascot head she's been obliged to wear at a video game trade show, and two significant onlookers realise that she resembles video game character "Carmen Chamelia". (And one of them has just said "And it's not like there is a suitable replacement nearby"...)
  • Dynamic Entry: Zoé seems to have a taste for dramatic entrances, and notably takes out a door here, following through with a Big Word Shout. However, this tends to look less impressive when a cynical opponent is calmly expecting it.
  • Easily Forgiven: When Zoé takes her and the others to an expensive fashion boutique to make amends for what she did to Lavali, and then asks if this is acceptable, Lavali happily agrees — though the offer of new clothes from a place where she could never normally afford to shop evidently has a lot to do with that.
  • Easter Bunny: Sandra is wearing a rabbit costume — possibly an Easter Bunny outfit, though that tradition is more or less unknown in France — when she first enters Pierre's boulangerie.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect:
  • Enemy Mine: A three-sided conflict brews up over Gary during his crossover visit from Ménage à 3, from about strip #66 (late September 2013) onwards, involving Sandra, Senna, and Tatiana. Such fights tend to involve a lot of (unstable) temporary alliances.
  • Everyone Is Bi: Well, not everyone — for example, Domenico seems to be rampantly heterosexual, and a brief experiment tells Marie that she's entirely straight, while Lavali is entirely gay — but quite a few characters are openly bi, and by the end of the comic's run, several (including the title character) who seemed to be solidly straight when the story started have discovered strong bisexual tendencies.
  • Experimented in College: Along with any incidents in the past or recent history of the main cast (see the characters page), we have the nameless extra in this strip...
  • Expy: Sandra and Didi's restaurant employer is obviously Hooters-inspired, while Dark Matter Games is essentially Ubisoft.
  • Face Framed in Shadow: Used in the introduction of Sandra's possibly-mysterious enemy.
  • Facepalm:
  • Fanservice: All of the major characters are more or less good-looking, and the plot and context provide plenty of opportunities for some of them to get down to underwear.
  • Fanservice Extra: Nameless attractive women show up periodically in the beds of the sexually highly successful Domenico and Cammi. Given that this is a comedy about modelling, and far from shy about a little fanservice, it can be expected to show a little attractive flesh in the background at other times too.
  • Fanservice Model: This is a very Fanservice-laden webcomic that takes place in the fashion industry, with the characters mostly wearing these kind of outfits as part of their job. The protagonist, Sandra, is initially shy to wear them, but she eventually gets used to them.
  • Fanservice with a Smile: Appears in slightly variant form, when Sandra (an ex-waitress) acts as a "booth babe" at a series of trade conventions (some of which happen to be connected with the food industry) as part of her training.
  • Fee Fi Faux Pas: Gary's always-reliable social ineptitude produces a full-on faux pas.
  • Foreign Cuss Word: When Lavali breaks up with her girlfriend Claire, they sling a couple of French insults at each other that might have endangered the strip's PG-13 rating if they'd been translated.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Domenico's agency fits this pattern, albeit a little loosely:
    • Domenico himself is sanguine; extroverted, emotional, charming, talkative, eccentric, undisciplined, emotionally unstable, and frivolous.
    • Zoé is choleric; extroverted, a hard worker, strong-willed, practical, passionate, hot-tempered, rude, harsh, and insensitive.
    • Cammi is melancholic; introverted, emotional, perfectionist, but a little emotionally distant. However, she is the worst fit of the four because her emotions (including a snarky sense of humor) make her less rigid, conservative, or organized than a classic melancholic.
    • Tatiana is phlegmatic; introverted, seemingly calm and unemotional, an excellent assistant, and (sometimes) too yielding. However, she lacks the classic phlegmatic's compassion and truly submissive nature (except in relation to Domenico).
    • Technically, Fabien is a member of the agency, but his role seems to be strictly part-time, and he isn't seen enough for the reader to identify his personality traits. Sandra herself is technically also an employee of the agency, but as the chief protagonist of the story and a new arrival who is being acted on by the others, she stands outside the group.
  • Geek:
    • Alex and Marie, two teenage fans who Sandra acquires when she blunders into the videogames world, function as the comic's baseline geek presence. Their blog may play a significant part in the rapid growth of Sandra's online popularity.
    • Gary, in a guest appearance from/crossover with Ménage à 3, is also quintessentially geeky, and serves as Sandra's consultant on geekdom.
  • Generic Cuteness: Widespread in this comic — not entirely surprisingly, given that it centers on the modelling business, but extending way beyond the model characters. For example:
    • Sandra is treated as an ugly little peasant by Senna, Tatiana, and her model coaches, despite being a very cute young woman. That being said, these people are in a business where freckles alone are usually considered a deal-breaker.
    • Tatiana, a seemingly innocuous and unassuming PA who is largely ignored by her photographer boss, can wear a minuscule miniskirt with complete effectiveness.
    • Cammi, the agency's driver, looks like she ought to be one of its models. Her total self-confidence helps, but she has plenty to be confident about. Sandra and Lavali are awestruck by her butt.
    • Meanwhile, Alex and Marie, a pair of geeks with no evident connection to the fashion business (until Marie is recruited by Zoé), are just adorable. Even Lavali, an office assistant at a games company who lacks the glamor and confidence of most of the cast, only needs a well-chosen dress and a few minutes with a stylist to be able to go out clubbing with three models without looking out of place.
    • The phenomenon is somewhat lampshaded when the dazzlingly cute blonde Ingrid announces that she is "far too plain-looking" to follow her mother and sisters into the modeling business, to the confusion of Marie and Sandra.
  • Give Geeks a Chance: At least somewhat implicit in Marie's view of Alex and especially in Sandra's view of Gary. However, neither relationship has yet fully developed, and both guys are big ol' dorks.
  • The Glomp: Lavali executes a rather sedate glomp onto her brother Alex, marked as such with an Unsound Effect, when she needs comfort after a break-up.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Tatiana plans to drive Sandra away by an intensive regime of humiliation. However, the intense and sometimes humiliating training regime which Sandra undergoes (largely courtesy of Zoé, in fact) does apparently help turn her into a competent model.
  • Good Angel, Bad Angel: Sandra's good angel looks understandably irritated at having to fly round the room waving signs to remind her of important stuff. Her bad angel is presumably sitting back and watching the fun.
  • Ground Pound: Zoé pulls one off. In fact, she deliberately detaches from her parachute webbing early just to do so! Complete with "Thoom", Speed Stripes, a Three-Point Landing Ground Punch, and a sand spraying radially away from the point of impact. She knows how to make an entrance!
  • The Grunting Orgasm: Pierre's first time with Sandra produces some fairly restrained but audible moans of "Oh Sandra". What neither of them know, unfortunately, is that they have witnesses at that moment — and Eloise isn't going to take this scene well.
  • Hero of Another Story: Gary, who shows up briefly as support and potential romantic interest for Sandra, is more usually the primary protagonist of Ménage à 3.
  • Hollywood Game Design: "Dark Matter Games" may be at least a borderline case:
    • Certainly, their chief designer seems to be rather flaky, and readers don't see a very large staff in their Paris office, considering that they appear to be a major games company. However, some staff members could simply be off-screen, and some elements of the depiction, notably the faintly sinister chief executive, can be considered deliberate parodies of the trope.
    • It is, though, pretty obvious that the creators haven't the slightest idea what happens during a MoCap session. Of course, there probably wouldn't be as much room for comedy if they did the research.

    Tropes I-P 
  • IKEA Erotica: An intentional parody example appears in one strip (#267, marginally NSFW). Marie, who doesn't know how lesbian sex works since she's totally straight (but who has declared herself lesbian in order to get closer to Sandra, who she thought was thus inclined) has an IKEA-ish train of thought when a girl asks her out.
  • Incompatible Orientation:
    • Aaina, one of the girls Sandra and Lavali meet at a lesbian bar, is very attracted to Sandra, and asks Lavali if she's single. Lavali's own attraction to Aaina combined with Aaina giving her Puppy-Dog Eyes leaves her unable to break the bad news that Sandra is not only taken but straight, and she settles for the technical truth of "she does not have a girlfriend". Aaina is delighted, and continues to pursue Sandra, while Sandra remains entirely oblivious to the whole thing.
    • Cammi also falls for Sandra. Things get complicated there when it becomes apparent that Sandra not only gets more flexible, but may return the feeling, when she gets drunk.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: A couple of borderline cases, stretching definitions of "sympathetic":
    • Tatiana's frothing rage at Sandra makes her pretty ridiculous. However, she still manages to make Sandra's life hard at times.
    • Tristan's attempts to recreate the "Carmen Chamelia" videogame franchise in line with his personal artistic vision rapidly collapse in the face of Sandra's impromptu popular revolution.
  • Innocent Innuendo: Multi-player games offer wonderful new opportunities for this trope to kick in, as Alex and Marie demonstrate here.
  • Instant Sedation: The old-fashioned "chloroform rag" trick evidently works just fine in this setting.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Few readers sympathised much with Senna when Gary was a bit careless of her feelings, or even when he accidentally dumped her. However, when he made a joke of the latter incident, some felt that he deserved the slapped face this earned him.
  • Karma: It's noticeable that characters in this comic sometimes get what's coming to them, for good or ill, rather more promptly or reliably than was the case in the parent comic. It may not be true karma, but it's a slightly more conventional, "karma"-prone sort of comedy storytelling.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • An early and spectacular example (actually in the strips inherited from Ménage à 3): After sending Sandra on a string of difficult and pointless errands, Senna gets hers when Domenico decides that he wants Sandra to model for him instead. "Karma" then drives the point home when he puts Senna in a female dog costume.
    • Later, when she returns for the Ménage à 3 crossover plotline, Senna is quick to assume (wrongly) that Sandra's modelling career has failed, and looks forward to seeing where Sandra is now living, so she can gloat. That sets her up for humiliation without anyone else having to help.
    • There's also Tatiana's smart idea of burning all Sandra's old clothes as part of her campaign to drive Sandra away. When Sandra does then decide to leave, she has literally nothing to wear to the airport, and Tatiana ends up stripping down to her underwear and lending Sandra her own clothes. To add to her humiliation, Sandra then decides to stay anyway.
    • And then, later, Tatiana is ordered to find Sandra an apartment for herself, and purposely selects a hovel -- ahem, an apartment that she describes as "rustic," just to make Sandra suffer. This promptly earns its own retribution when Domenico orders her to move in with Sandra.
    • Tristan's public disdain for girls playing videogames earns him the ire of Marie and Sandra (the former is ready to "mess him up" while the latter grabs the mike), and thus leads to the audience turning against him. This soon leads his boss to decide to dump Tristan's ideas for the game he's just developed.
  • The Last Horse Crosses The Finish Line: Referenced by Cammi when Sandra finally figures out she has a crush on her.
  • Legacy Character: Sandra models as in-setting video game character "Carmen Chamelia", who, it turns out, she adored and idolised fourteen years ago. Note: Carmen is described in the comic as a "legacy character", but it's not entirely clear whether she fits the strict TV Tropes definition of the term, or whether she's simply a Continuity Reboot of the old character.
  • Leg Cling: Sandra executes a brief, unprompted leg cling on Cammi here. Sandra is finding moving furniture with Tatiana hard work, and is insanely happy to see the muscular, competent Cammi.
  • Lighter and Softer: When compared to Ménage à 3. By and large, Karma runs far more effectively in this comic than in its parent series; you can more or less rest assured that characters who are Jerkasses in this comic will end up paying for their actions. Also, while this comic has its share of antagonists, most of them are very straightforward in what they do.
  • Lingerie Scene: As a trainee model, Sandra gets a few of these. She also manages to inflict one on Tatiana.
  • Look Behind You: Cammi uses a variant of this standard ploy, with a large dose of Distracted by the Sexy, on Aaina here.
  • Love Dodecahedron: Things get a bit Soap Opera after a while. Sandra and Pierre come to form a fairly straightforward couple, but Eloise (who already dislikes Sandra) also fancies Pierre (while being a relationship with Nadine), and Senna flirts with him briefly. Senna was in a brief relationship with Gary at the time, and Sandra also considered Gary as a prospect. Cammi, who has a casual on-off relationship with Domenico, fancies Sandra enough to try to seduce her, while Tatiana fancies Domenico from a distance. Domenico mostly works through a long series of casual flings, though, apart from brief and hostile scenes of Destructo-Nookie with his ex-wife Zoé. Elsewhere, Alex has a teenage fan infatuation with Sandra, while Marie wants him — but he's Oblivious to Love there. And their schoolmate Christophe rather fancies Marie, though she keeps turning him down; Christophe also notices an unexpected bisexual impulse in himself toward Alex...
  • Love Triangle: Various three-person relationship patterns develop for varying periods of time. Notably, Christophe seems to be attracted to both Marie and Alex, and Ingrid is apparently plotting to get both of them into bed simultaneously.
  • Luminescent Blush: A fairly common feature of the art. A few examples:
  • The Many Deaths of You: Parodied in the "Carmen Chamelia" game trailer shown at the videogames convention, which evidently shows Carmen dying in multiple gruesome ways, though readers don't see them. Seeing this causes Sandra to voice her concerns to game designer Tristan; he dismisses them (and insults female gamers in the process), leading Sandra to hijack the presentation.
    Sandra: Who here thinks Chamelia should be about changing powers instead of being a snuff film?
  • Method Acting: invoked Lightly satirized. Marie is actually a very sweet person, honestly.
  • Mistaken For Bi: Alex and Marie's post-workout exhaustion combined with their video game trash talk has one listener get the impression that not only are the two of them getting it on (not that Marie would mind), but that Alex regularly has sex with guys as well.
  • Most Gamers Are Male: Tristan, creator of the new "Carmen Chamelia" game seems to think so, to the annoyance of female gamer Marie, who is in the audience; others who see the video footage evidently agree.
  • Motion Capture: Depicted for comic effect, e.g. here.
  • Mugging the Monster: A passing random mook chooses to snatch the fancy necklace which Aaina has just given to Sandra and run off. It would have been enough of a mistake that he does this in front of Cammi, who has her bike close by, but this is also the thing that causes Aaina to reveal her Hidden Depths. Cammi ends up looking quite worried at what Aaina wants to do to the guy, once she has his face pinned to a wall.
  • Naked Freak-Out: Happens a lot to Sandra, Marie, and Lavali whenever they get naked due to them all being Reluctant Fanservice Girls. One example occurs when Marie and Lavali go Skinny Dipping in public, and there's a whole arc when Domenico kidnaps Sandra and Lavali and takes them to a desert island without clothes to get rid of Sandra's body modesty.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Nudity and near-nudity are a recurrent source of humor in this comic, while simultaneously also being a source of (scenery censored) Fanservice. Zoé and Cammi have no detectable nudity taboos, and jokes with them come from their willingness to get naked in "inappropriate" situations if necessary while refusing to look worried about it, whereas Sandra still has some body modesty (unless she's drunk, in which case all bets are off), and the comedy with her comes from her attempts to prove that she's capable of handling the requirements of a modelling career.
  • Names Given to Computers: It's a rather non-standard example, but Tatiana calls her tablet computer "Yuliya". That actually looks like the most intimate relationship in her life, in fact.
  • Nerds Are Sexy: The hopeless Gary shows up in a crossover with Ménage à 3 as Senna's toyboy, as she finds him physically attractive; after he then gives Senna some instruction in geek lore, she begins to find him at least potentially somewhat interesting.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Eva's plan to seduce Lavali in order to get at Zoé would have been a total failure right out of the gate: Lavali finds Eva so attractive that she can't get find the courage to actually call her number. However, Sandra and Aaina tag-team Lavali in order to take the number from her by force and call it for her, thinking they're doing her a favor.
  • Non Sequitur: Gary, out of his depth and almost literally torn between two women, erupts with "To Belgium!" And then he does actually take the two women off to Brussels, for reasons that turn out to be relevant to the original situation.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • After getting completely falling-down-drunk, Sandra somehow managed to get a motorcycle and a bear stuck in a tree.
    • A bonus PDF comic also refers cryptically to "the infamous 'Spaghetti Monday' incident", which apparently ended one of Sandra's past relationships.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Domenico listens to Zoé ranting about Sandra's faults (not taking her job seriously, doing as she pleases, defying authority), then comments with a laugh, "It reminds me of a certain headstrong model I used to be married to." She suffers a Luminescent Blush at this. He further teases, "Just think of her as the daughter you never had." Zoé's response? A Face Palm and "I hate you."
  • Odd Couple: The second strip of volume 2 sets up this trope, as Sandra and Tatiana are obliged to share an apartment.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Tristan gets a moment when he realizes he just insulted all the female members of the audience at a videogame show — and again when the president of the company calls during Sandra's "revolution".
    • Tatiana gets one when she sees that Sandra's website counter is suddenly over 1.5 million views, when previously it was at just one. (This is probably a result of Marie's actions following Sandra's "revolution" at the videogame show, but Tatiana wouldn't know about any of that at the time.)
  • Ojou Ringlets: Rather curiously, Sandra wears this style in the sequence beginning here. It's probably just meant to be coincidence — there's no reason to believe that her stylist is aiming for a Japanese look — but Gary is around, and has recently been teaching Sandra about manga, so this could have an in-universe explanation.
  • One Degree of Separation: Aside from any coincidences inherited from Ménage à 3, notably Gary sharing an apartment with Sandra's old workmate DiDi, this comic has Gary and Senna, visiting from Canada (during a crossover sequence), walk into the same computer games shop as Sandra, at the exact same time. Also, Pierre turns out to be the cousin (and crush) of Sandra's sworn enemy Eloise.
  • One-Steve Limit: Somewhat averted by the presence of a Sandra and a Senna. However, this comic doesn't suffer as badly as its parent, as Sonya from over there hasn't made any guest appearances yet.
  • Operation: Jealousy: Sandra tries to use Aaina as her fake lesbian lover as a way to regain Cammi’s interest after Cammi has taken up with Ingrid. This is rather petty of her, as she can only act on her lesbian attraction to Cammi when she's drunk, and she's supposedly faithful to Pierre anyway, while Aaina has a genuine crush on her and is likely to end up hurt by this.
  • Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: It's revealed in flashback that Lavali has done a really terrible job of keeping her lesbianism secret from her parents. Aside from the fact that she's in an amazingly Transparent Closet, these flashbacks also suggest that she has a very impressive dating history.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Eva's evil scheming proves quite effective, but depends on her targets not communicating well; if they talked to each other properly, they could join up the dots and guess what she's up to in time to block her.
  • Priceless Ming Vase: The trope archetype is briefly invoked here.

    Tropes Q-Z 
  • Recurring Extra: The mother and her daughter who periodically show up to embarrass Sandra; see Running Gag, below. Note that they've even shown up in Ménage à 3 (here) and Sticky Dilly Buns (here), despite them being set on a different continent.
  • Relationship Sabotage: Eloise wants to break up the relationship between Sandra and Pierre, who she wants for herself. Her methods get distinctly over-complicated, mostly because she also wants to destroy Sandra completely, for various reasons.
  • Running Gag:
    • The same mother and young daughter repeatedly walk past Sandra after something particularly embarrassing happens to her, with the little girl pointing and commenting, and the mother trying to usher her past as quickly as possible.
    • People are forever pointing out how hilariously archaic Sandra's Website, as built by Tatiana, is — largely for a reason which Sandra herself picks up first.
      Eloise: Seventeen million hits on sandraarden.com!? Who is she!? AND WHO STILL USES A WEB COUNTER!?
  • Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Sandra's platonic friendship with Gary invokes this trope in a slightly unusual way; Sandra respects and needs Gary for his savviness in the geek world, and energetically pushes him into pursuing a career in videogames (and into Domenico's drinks cabinet).
  • Say My Name: Zoé demonstrates the trope in Big Word Shout form here, having discovered that Eva has been running a long-term and effective campaign against her. Eva, who appears to have got the hang of the sneaky villain business lately, isn't overly impressed.
  • Scenery Censor: The comic walks a fine line between maintaining a "no nudity" rule to keep advertising revenues up, and plots involving fashion models changing, skinny-dipping, and quite overt sexual situations, As a result, it often employs finely-judged scenery censorship. For example:
  • Screw T His Im Outta Here: A more serious example involves Sandra finding out the hard way that, still being a trainee, she really should know better than questioning her mentors so soon. When Zoé calls out Sandra for her unprofessional behavior on a girls' night out that goes off the rails, Sandra replies by questioning Zoé's strict rules and openly doubting she needs them or her guidance... and that's the point when Zoé decides she's had enough and flies Sandra back to Montreal.
  • Sex Comedy: While the characters seem less obsessed with sex than those in the parent comic, sexual themes are often part of Sandra's comedy. For example, Sandra herself fantasizes about Pierre and Gary (simultaneously), Tatiana has a kinky unrequited desire for Domenico, Domenico and Zoé can't keep their hands off each other, Alex and Marie are going through a will-they won't-they teenage phase, and Lavali turns out to be living in the world's most Transparent Closet.
  • Sex Goddess:
  • Sexiness Score: Lavali considers Eva to be so hot that she makes "perfect 10's weep tears of despair from the knowledge they'll never be as hot as her".
  • Sexy Shirt Switch: A low-key lesbian version; when Alex finds his sister Lavali in the kitchen with another girl one morning, Lavali claims that they had been up all night "working on a project". However, it promptly turns out that the other girl is wearing one of Lavali's shirts — probably Alex's first big clue about Lavali's orientation.
  • Ship Tease:
    • There was a hint of teasing possible shippers (who did indeed then manifest on the comics' boards) when Sandra was interacting with Gary during the crossover with Ménage à 3 — despite Sandra's developing relationship with Pierre. Then Gary went back to Montreal. Still, this plot strand may resurface one day.
    • Something on the lines of this trope may also be involved in the interactions between Marie and Alex — though that's really more of a simple, minor Will They or Won't They?.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Shower Scene: An occasional feature of the comic. A couple of instances to note...
  • Skinny Dipping: When Sandra gets drunk in a fancy Parisian nightclub with its own pool, skinny dipping ensues — soon involving virtually everyone present.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: Domenico and Zoé. They yell at each other for no more than ten seconds before pouncing on one another, making out, and starting to strip each other's clothes off with complete disregard for the fact that there are people watching.
  • Slapstick: The comic is prone to occasional moments of comedy violence; often at slapstick levels that would be dangerous in reality — as, for example, when Tatiana yanks Sandra out of the top bunk.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Sandra gets to watch as her childhood favorite character, "Carmen Chamelia," slides all the way down to the cynicism end as a part of a Darker and Edgier makeover. She does not take this well.
  • Slumber Party: Aaina throws a small slumber party for Lavali and Sandra, in the hopes of getting closer to the latter.
  • Snark-to-Snark Combat: The comic is usually fairly light on snark, but Zoé for one has a definite edge, and sometimes meets her match...
  • Sneeze Cut: The comic shows its recurrent manga influence in this strip, by manifesting this trope when Aaina alludes to the existence of her twin Aania.
  • Soap Wheel: A plotting technique that shows up increasingly as the story develops into something of a Soap Opera. For example, in volume 2, Sandra has both fashion and videogame modelling careers to develop, is sharing an apartment with Tatiana, and is starting a relationship with Pierre; Eloise wants to crush Sandra, and Nadine may help or restrain her; Marie has a possible relationship with Alex and a possible modelling career; both of them have friends, rivals, and admirers at their school to deal with; and Lavali's sexuality emerges as a theme. The focus of the strip thus jumps periodically from character to character and location to location.
  • Speech-Bubble Censoring: Used along with the scenery version here and here.
  • Springtime for Hitler: Senna attempts to sabotage Sandra's career by uploading pictures of her in unfashionable bondage-style lingerie to her modelling website, in order to destroy her credibility. Senna doesn't realise, however, that said lingerie makes Sandra look like Emma Frost of the X-Men, which appeals spectacularly to Sandra's now-growing nerd fanbase.
  • Squee:
  • Stern Teacher: Zoé, an experienced model assigned to help train Sandra in the profession, on rather short notice, decides that she has to adopt the tough approach. (Tatiana, on the other hand, is being nasty for its own sake, albeit with this as an excuse.) At times, she steers close to Deadpan Snarker status when dealing with Sandra:
    Zoé: Do you have my cell number?
    Sandra: No...
    Zoé: Good.
    • When Domenico tries to steer Sandra away from Zoé's plans for her "training and development," though, Zoé does step in to defend her charge and tell him off. Then things go all Slap-Slap-Kiss, and Domenico ends up "sexed into submission" by Zoé.
  • Stripping Snag: When Sandra walks into Pierre's shop wearing nothing but a bedsheet, to prove a point, it gets caught in the door to dramatic effect. (Coitus ensues, in a good way.)
  • Strip Poker: Parodied with Sandra's invention of Strip Nintendoland.
  • Stripperiffic: Various (more or less justified) instances:
    • The costumes which Tatiana wears in her fantasies, and presumably sometimes in her private life, are doubtless appropriate for their purpose — but that makes them pretty stripperific.
    • The swimsuits that Senna models in an early scene are definitely better adapted for flaunting it than for swimming, though that could be classed as Truth in Television for high-fashion swimwear.
    • Sandra's "Carmen Chamelia" costume requires double-sided tape to keep it on her boobs.
    • Adrienne and Adrianne's idea of appropriate clubbing costumes look like they require special engineering and a lot of depilation.
  • Super-Deformed: The comic occasionally shows its manga influences by featuring "chibi" versions of its cast in fantastical or very comedic panels — as here, for example.
  • Teamwork Seduction: Eloise and Nadine pull a particularly complicated and confusing seduction scheme on Alex, just to keep him off-balance and incapable of advising Sandra on geek culture. It’s a Zany Scheme that doesn’t really go anywhere because other stuff happens, though Alex does end up in bed with both of them (in multiple guises).
  • Tempting Fate:
  • Toplessness from the Back: Seen from time to time as the strip preserves a teasing, just SFW approach. The male version also shows up occasionally, sometimes with a hint of buttock cleft.
  • Translation Convention: The linguistic situation in this comic is a little uncertain. It might seem that most of the characters would usually speak French; after all, it's set in Paris, and Sandra herself is a Canadian from Montreal who would be expected to speak that language. (The cast are an international bunch, though; for example, Domenico is Italian, Senna is Brazilian, and Tatiana seems to be Russian or Ukrainian.) But the rule seems to be that they usually speak English among themselves (a good number of jokes are English puns), with the use of other languages, including French, indicated by <translation brackets>.
  • Translation Punctuation: Foreign languages being represented in English (see Translation Convention, above) is usually indicated by “inequality mark” <brackets>.
  • Unknown Rival: The comic has its share of rivalries, many of which remain undeclared, ramping up the comedy.
    • Sandra is dating Pierre, but her brief platonic acquaintanceship with Gary did leave her wondering if he could be a romantic prospect, setting up a possible rivalry there, which the men aren't fully aware of.
    • At one point, Cammi has her eye on Sandra, leading to a brief period of hidden rivalry (Sandra and Pierre being completely unaware of her intentions) before Cammi comes on to Sandra and the latter (eventually) remembers Pierre and announces that she has a boyfriend. Cammi backs down gracefully at that point. It's possible that she hasn't given up altogether, though (and it wouldn't be out of character for her to offer to include Pierre in some arrangement either).
    • Professionally, Eloise has sworn vengeance on Sandra for "stealing" her place at the computer games show and then building a lot of success on that basis. She has also walked in on Sandra having sex with Pierre, who she has had a crush on since childhood. However, Sandra has quite likely forgotten that Eloise even exists, and is certainly unaware of her hostility. After all, the original incident was entirely accidental, and the two haven't had any interaction since then.
  • Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Cammi falls for the straight-identifying Sandra, but honorably backs down when it becomes clear that Sandra can only return the feeling when she gets seriously drunk. However, when Sandra subsequently sees Cammi out on a date with Ingrid, she becomes seriously jealous.
  • The Unreveal:
    • Sandra was curious about Cammi's looks without her sunglasses. When she took a bath, Sandra took Cammi's offering to jump in with her showering. It turned out Cammi was wearing her black swimming goggles.
    • The mystery about Cammi's eyes allows the trope to be somewhat subverted in the final strip, in which Cammi's eyes are revealed.
  • Unsound Effect:
  • Viral Marketing: Invoked in-universe. A videogame company president sees a live stream going viral because of Sandra's actions, and realises that the publicity could let them sell millions of what the crowd wants, if they exploit it correctly.
  • The V-J Day Kiss: Visually echoed in Sandra's goodbye to Gary (complete with a gender reversal, and the strip appeared on February 14th). The artist has said that the reference wasn't deliberate, but admits to being familiar with the original photograph.
  • Wall of Blather: When Lavali (for reasons of her own) gets Sandra to talk at length about her work, the details that Sandra offloads are unimportant to the plot, so this trope shows up.
  • What Beautiful Eyes!: In the final strip, Sandra says this to Cammi upon taking her sunglasses off.
  • What Did I Do Last Night?: Surprisingly, given Sandra's record with the booze, she maybe suffers less from this trope than does Gary.
  • When Life Gives You Lemons...: invoked Zoé is ready to sack Sandra for hijacking the Carmen Chamelia presentation, but when Lavali shows up and asks when Sandra can model for the designers reworking Carmen's looks, Zoé realizes there may be a way to make something of the situation. This doesn't stop her from commenting on Sandra's "insanely dumb luck."
  • Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Sandra decides to take Lavali out to pick up girls to help her get over her breakup, and asks Cammi for directions to the trendiest gay bar in the city. However, she forgot to specify that she was looking for a lesbian bar, and ended up getting this. Lavali, who never really wanted to go out in the first place, isn't too happy, but the heterosexual (until further notice) Sandra is delighted.
    Sandra: OMG! They serve sushi on naked men? That is literally two of my favorite things!
  • Wicked Cultured: When Senna reappears in the comic in the course of the crossover with Ménage à 3, she turns out to be a high-culture snob with no interest in anything as crass as geek culture. Quite how this fits with, for example, her very specific taste in soft drinks is a bit unclear.
  • Win Back the Crowd: An in-universe variation; after Tristan's public insult to girl gamers, Sandra seizes the mike and gets the audience re-enthused and on her side. The ensuing livestream video quickly goes from merely viral to "bubonic", and the videogame company president realizes this can sell millions of games.
  • Working with the Ex: It is revealed that Domenico and Zoé used to be married. However, it turns out that they are rather weird (mostly) Amicable Exes most of the time (despite Zoé's last line in that strip, and her Luminescent Blush). Things can get weird when they get into screaming arguments, though; these may transform into passionate make-out sessions, and then into competitive sex (last one standing wins).
  • Workout Fanservice: A minor all-female version, with a joke.
  • Zany Scheme: Many of the characters are prone to following through on dubious ideas...
    • ...But one instance is notable. Eloise wants to attack Sandra, deduces that Sandra must have an adviser on geek matters, and spots Alex in some pictures. Nadine identifies Alex's school uniform, but they don't know who he is. So, to help Eloise to get at Sandra through Alex, Nadine persuades her rich father to make a donation to the school so that she and Eloise can enlist there as pupils, supposedly so that they can refresh their educations — under pseudonyms, with Eloise disguised as a boy. Nadine then sets to work seducing every male at the school as an interrogation technique.
    • Linked to the above, but also a shorter-term example in itself: When Eloise tells Nadine to keep Alex distracted in their apartment for a couple of hours, Nadine's solution features a lot of screaming, feigning sexual innocence, throwing Alex's clothes out of the window, dressing him up as a girl, and blackmailing him into helping with her homework. She seems to favor zany schemes, partly for fun and partly out of vanity over her own cleverness.


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