MOTIVATION!
"Since the comic starts at the beginning of my life, there isn’t actually much I can tell you without giving away the story. I will tell you, though (as long as you promise not to tell anyone else), that there’s aliens, monsters, superheroes, rogue robots, pineapples, and a goat or two."
— 9 ,in the about page
Serious Emotional Disturbances is a webcomic written by 9 Bridges. It follows the story of the main character (also named 9) through his life from early childhood onwards, showing his raising and his gradual formation of his team of heroes, bent on staving off evil. He wants to be a superhero, you see.
Called SED by the fandom, and has a strong (if small) forum community.
Serious Emotional Disturbances provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Except in this case, it's his grandmother...
- Arguably, his biological mother also falls under this, albeit of the 'neglectful' type. Leaving 9 and his brother Skitzo with his abusive, over-zealous grandmother? Yeah...
- Action Girl: Robin, very much. They first find out what her powers are when she jump-kicks Chuckles, Fort, and 9 at(presumably) the speed of sound.
- Anime Hair: 9(the character), most recently, seems to be going for this.
- Art Evolution: The author, 9, makes this intentional. His plan is that the art should grow up with the characters.
- As You Know: Lampshaded by Chuckles, after the most recent time-skip, when 9 presents his 'how we got here' report.
- Ax-Crazy: Jon.
- The Big Guy: Fort.
- Calling Your Attacks: Parodied recently. Stan calls out the name of his bankai. "Roar, Lucymaru!" indeed.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Chuckles. Oh so very much.
- Code Name: Everyone has one, basically. Chuckles is Screwdriver Boy, Robin is the Speed Demon, Pip is Sonic, Fort is Brick, and Mittens is... Mittens.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The markings on the character's faces show their base personalities: blue is good, red is angry, orange is quirky, purple is mysterious.
- Demonic Invaders: The ghosts. Bonus points for establishing that most of them do, indeed, come from hell.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: They met with Satan once. except his name was Stan. And he was more or less a good guy, if a bit lazy/living in his mother's basement.
- For Science!: Oft-invoked, especially among the fan community.
- Heel–Face Turn: Implied to be happening to Slop, after a recent fight with 9.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: 9 and Chuckles. Lampshaded. Celine Dion was involved.
- Invisible to Normals: Gnomes are needed to make the ghosts(and Robin) 'real'.
- The Hero: everyone, but especially 9.
-
Nightmare Fuel: This. - Omnicidal Maniac: Jon.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Lawn gnomes make them real. Take a moment to take that in.
- Parental Abandonment: Sort of. 9's parents send he and his brother, Skitzo, to live with his evil!grandmother.
- Rule of Cool: 9 has a bat that can, apparently, send ghosts back to hell. For no explained reason(especially considering when we last saw them, they didn't have their ghost-hunting license). And it is AWESOME.
- Excused as this was just introduced...
- Running Gag: Glorf, The Lasagna Monster
- And the bus driver.
- And the lawn gnomes!
- And the bus driver.
- Shout-Out: 9's most loved phrase, 'For science!', is a shout out to Mythbusters. His pre-epic speech is also a shout out to... something.
- The Speechless: Fort. Well. He DOES speak in emoticons.
- Split Personality: and they don't like him much.
- Took a Level in Badass: Pretty much everyone, though notably 9 and Chuckles. 9, for his pre-time-skip training, apparently limitless stamina, and general epicness. Chuckles for evolving from just that guy on the team, to badass sharpshooter.
