Mason Williams, a.k.a. Tailsteak, is a Canadian Webcomic author best known for 1/0, an intensely metafictional story of creation, improvisational physics, philosophy, character development, and a Running Gag. Since the completion of that comic, he began publishing several other comics serialized on his personal website—these have been mostly placed on hold with the start of Leftover Soup. He is also an author of straight fiction, including a short novel titled bang: an apocalypse, and of at least two role-playing systems.
He is married to Amber M. Williams née Panyko, the artist behind Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures.
His personal website can be found here.
Works
Tropes
- Face of a Thug: Self-professed. He's also referred to it as his "resting murder face.""I'm the bald white guy who, even in broad daylight, looks like he's about to step out of a dark alley and shank you. I promise, I'm really friendly, my face just does that."
- I Like My X Like I Like My Y: Fans of Leftover Soup will remember seeing the cast page use this—which is appropriate, as tailsteak.com featured this list of characters from other webcomics some years earlier.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: What it feels like to be Superman.
- Parlor Games: The site includes a series of drawings based on playing 20 Questions with a coin.
- Self-Deprecation: Occasionally pokes fun at himself in the author's comments, such as in this one from Leftover Soup:" I'm not a racist - I'm a sexist, an ageist, a classist, an intellectualist, and a narcoticist! Those are all socially acceptable prejudices."
- Take a Third Option: One series of stories on the site features three characters: Lefty, Righty, and TQ. TQ stands for Tertium Quid, also known as this trope.