History YMMV / Endtown

* TrueArtIsAngsty: The creator appears to have come to this conclusion over the run of the comic, slowly removing the comedy elements and any measure of cheer and upping the darkness quotient over the latter half of the comic's near-decade run. He even went so far as to write a small essay on the subject as part of his attempted justifications for [[spoiler:the removal of Holly Hollister]] during one of his Patreon bonus emails.

* AcceptableTargets: Telemarketers, since Sarah was one prior to the apocalypse.

* AbortedArc: Major reason why Aaron is often accused of making things up as he goes along, contrary to his insistence that the entire comic is scripted in advance. One of the more egregious examples is Kirbee discovering a growing plant on the window of Eden colony, setting up a possible plotline of nature returning in a desolate, post-apocalyptic world...only to swiftly abandon this when the "multiverse travel" plotline kicks in.
** Prior to it's debut, Pigs Arc was described by Aaron as Dottie and Walt teaming up to investigate the disappearance of pig citizens, a plotline which Aaron seems to have abandoned early on in it's development.

* AuthorAppeal:
** Visually, Gustine and Maude (Aaron Neathery is known to like [[BigBeautifulWoman "large"]] women).
** Personality-wise, [[ThePollyanna Kirbee]] and, one gets the impression, [[TheIdealist Holly Hollister]], at least once upon a time.
** As a whole, Aaron Marx, a character that Aaron Neathery has previously included in many loosely-connected works and who seems to be assembled out of parts of his favourite literary and TV show characters (such as [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]] and [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Tom Bombadil]]).

* ContinuityLockout: Inevitably happened.

* DarkerAndEdgier: It started out as a somewhat dark adventure dramedy, and over time it slowly dropped the comedy and then even some of the adventure elements. It's gotten to the point where the word "Grimdark" has been brought into play in the fandom.

* IdiotBall: Wally is strangely okay with the woman he was trying to rescue from what he thought was certain death shutting herself away inside a giant radar reflector in the middle of a massive featureless plain, considering he just learned a few days ago that the Topsiders now have access to disintegrator-armed aircraft. Doubly stupid considering he's a ''military engineer''.
** Chief of Endtown's police, Grout, was struck by this the hardest during the Pigs arc. Previously, he was shown as ineffective, but well-meaning chief who did what he could to maintain peace. Come the Pigs arc epilogue, and as police realize that some of the Endtown's citizens are practicing cannibalism, Grout immediately assumes the worst and concludes that a majority of citizens are in on it (despite having ''no'' solid proof to back up his fears), and when one of his officers (a pig named Moffat) insists on bringing the perpetrators to justice...he simply claims that "justice has become a poison", and opts to do absolutely ''nothing.'' He essentially told someone whose kind was hunted and butchered for meat to just deal with it.
* IKnewIt: Many people theorized that Denise, the unpleasantly smug pig lawyer from the Pig arc was somehow involved in the murder of pig citizens. [[spoiler:Come the arc's climax they were ultimately proven right, as Denise is revealed to be the butcher.]]

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands:
** Marx is pretty much a walking plot-solution-device. He ate an explosion like candy.
** The Dittos seem to be becoming this, going from camouflage device to universal [[{{Nanomachines}} utility fog]].
** Kirbee's tongue, which came out of nowhere to solve a problem and hasn't been seen since.

* {{Retcon}}: Seems to happen quite frequently, perhaps more frequently than most webcomics.
** A lot of the stuff from the early arcs of the comic, before the "soft reboot" and move to [=GoComics=]:
*** Cooper's detachable head
*** The Topsiders being concerned with genetic purity rather than humanity
*** Endtown's Security Rats being naked
*** Plantlife still existing within the Great Waste
** Post "reboot":
*** Wally being from outside the Great Waste (and indeed, the mutant population being aware of things outside the Great Waste)
*** Doc being Holly's stepdad, when before he was "like a father" at most
*** Holly having been married once, when she is repeatedly referred to as "Miss Hollister" early in the comic. This however could actually be explained if not outright justified by people either not knowing (Due to her husband not making it long past the apocalypse) or knowing, but wanting to not approach that subject. Then again, [[http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2011/05/09 one example]] comes from the person later written as being her closest remaining and most trusted family member (this also counts for the previous point; "Miss Hollister" is an excessively formal way to refer to your supposed stepdaughter in what is effectively a private moment)
*** Holly having trouble letting go of the past, when her previous characterization demonstrated the exact opposite
*** Holly's capability topside. She proved herself surprisingly able during the Rocket caper, including taking monsters in stride, saving Wally's life on at least one occasion and being the first one to lay a fist on Flask, only for the narrative to switch to treating her like she'd never been above ground, post-war, during the Unity arc and beyond.
*** Wally and Holly's relationship having been a thing for five months, as stated during the Milk Trial, compared to having been a thing for two years, as stated during the Flashback Arc (which takes place no longer than a few weeks after the Milk Trial). This appears to have been done to make Holly not revealing more details of her past to Wally somehow unforgivable, but the end result for a lot of people was to make it seem even more unbelievable that they would break up, especially after Unity.
*** While initially claiming that Holly is still alive in the dream bubble at the end of Ship arc, [[https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/29194018/#29310429 Aaron has eventually confirmed her demise in a Patreon email]], listing her among all the characters who died up to the end of The Pig arc. Given that Wally & co. had earlier stumbled upon several identical dream bubbles filled with dried up corpses, however, many readers already assumed this would be her fate, even when Aaron initially said otherwise. Then again, Aaron's emails have a reputation for unreliable information and flip-flopping, and Holly or someone like her has just recently made an appearance in the comic...
*** There being a sufficient number of contemporary, parallel Endtowns that Marx could reach "down the line" to one in a really strange reality where Leonardo [=DaVinci=] had his own brand of chewing gum, to there only being one world with an Endtown, in the middle of a long streak of dead worlds killed by resource wars.
*** [[http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2011/3/16 The surface zones being totally cleaned out]] vs [[http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2017/05/22 foraging suddenly being viable again for unexplained reasons]]. This appears to have been dropped in order to allow the Pig Arc's plot to be a viable thing.
*** The supplemental vitamin cake Endtown citizens eat was recently retconned to being ''protein'' cake, though there's speculation among the fandom that that might be a one-off mistake on the writer's part, as a mostly-bean diet would require vitamin supplements but not protein supplements.
*** The Security rats have morphed over time into an alien side-society that see themselves as completely separate to the main Endtown population, whereas once upon a time they were tightly-integrated enough with the townspeople that some people were on a first-name basis with them and one even hired himself out to Maurice as a temporary condiment.
*** It seems [[https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/26282331/#q26282487 Neathery is now actively altering previously posted pages in order to fit the narrative that is established much later]] as some people have noticed, which contradicts his statements that the comic is planned and scripted way in advance.
*** As of [[https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2020/01/10 this page,]] Aaron now established that the mutants' lifespan is drastically altered to match that of the species they mutated into, which readers seem to have an issue with due to the fact that some of the characters in the setting should've been dead long before the story even began, or should have passed away halfway through the story, or show signs of aging. One example being Holly; being a house mouse mutant she should've died after 2 or 3 years, when she was still around and kicking ''5 years'' after she mutated.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
** It is implied by Jim and Sarah that it's a good thing that there's still greenery around, far away, otherwise the planet would only have about thirty years worth of air left. However, not only does most oxygen come from the ocean, but math indicates that if you eliminated the planet's oxygen production you'd still have hundreds of years of breathable air left, potentially thousands with a reduced post-apocalyptic population.
** Fan math shows that there's absolutely no way the foraging activities previously shown in the comic could make even a slight dent in the amount of food required for 7,000+ Endtown residents, let alone lead to a multi-year stockpile.

* WriterOnBoard:
** One could be forgiven for hearing the characters Al and Cooper speaking in Aaron Neathery's voice when they give their opinions on politics at the end of the Milk Trial arc. Cooper, notably, had previously been a one-off joke character with a detachable head (now retconned) and comes across as having been retooled specifically for the role of mouthpiece.
** Every time we hear a character waxing poetic about people being "thoughts that think themselves"/"dreams that dream themselves", it's hard not to get the impression they're acting as outlets for the author's own personal philosophy.

* IdiotPlot: The "Pig Arc". Characters known to be incompetent become utter fools while previously intelligent characters have a game of Idiot Volleyball, all in service of advancing the plot to a particular conclusion. Dottie Proctor, an experienced street reporter previously smart enough to work out the plot behind the Milk Trial arc from first principles, is hit hardest by this, forced into a role that makes her feel more like a strawman caricature of a naive college student activist in order to act as a plot trigger while unaccountably failing to show the slightest interest in the big mystery of the pig disappearances. Her case is especially jarring because the Pig arc was originally described by Aaron as "Dottie investigates the pig disappearances".

* RelationshipWritingFumble:
** Despite the author positioning it as a purer affection than [[spoiler:Wally and Holly's relationship, it's not hard to see Kirbee's affection for Wally as basically a case of naive hero worship for saving her life, and Wally's for Kirbee as nothing but a major case of comfort-seeking with a "safe" and non-threatening woman due to his current partner having become difficult for him to handle.]]
** Holly and [[spoiler:Lyn]]. According to WordOfGod, they were supposed to be deeply and passionately in love, which figured into Holly's decision to [[spoiler:stay behind on the ship to live out a fantasy life with a fake Lyn]]. Meanwhile what we saw in the actual comic arguably looked like a strained, argumentative and somewhat distant relationship between two characters with absolutely zero chemistry.
** Walt's and Portia's relationship can be arguably this, as there's very little buildup to it, and on several occasions it comes off as if Portia merely uses Walt as a hired muscle. She even guilt-trips him to take her to attend [[spoiler:Foxworthy's execution, as she thinks (at the time) that he is responsible for her brother's murder.]] At times it seemed like she cared ''far'' more about her dead brother than she did about Walt, causing some readers to jokingly comment how [[SiblingIncest there was probably more than just sibling love between them.]]

* ShockingSwerve: Starting with [[spoiler:the exit of Holly Hollister from the strip (by the creator's own claim, he didn't want his readers to "get complacent")]] and continuing randomly through the Pig Arc with many a death; one might get the impression it's all in an effort to duplicate the gut-punch that was the sudden death of [[EnsembleDarkhorse Allie Alvarez]] during the Milk Trial but the end result seems to have been a deepening of the general TooBleakStoppedCaring surrounding the strip.

** Aaron Marx. On one hand, he's provided SugarWiki/FunnyMoments, at least one SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome, and some interesting new premises. On the other hand, he exhibits several Mary Sue traits, including his [[DeusExMachina sudden appearance]] from AnotherDimension, and [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness softens the sci-fi considerably]]. Some readers think he made the comic better than ever; others got ready to leave after too much of him.

* DarkerAndEdgier: It started out as a somewhat dark adventure dramedy, and over time it slowly dropped the comedy and then even some of the adventure elements. It's gotten to the point where the word "Grimdark" has been brought into play in the fandom. See DarknessInducedAudienceApathy, below.
* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy:
** The "bleak setting" variation. It's gotten so bad by the author's own admission (he wasn't intending to create a "black-comedy version of ''Film/{{Threads}}''", as he refers to it) that he introduced a character partially intended to counteract it, which arguably just made things worse as said character, a gullible, air-headed optimist, emphasized the bleakness by making things seem so bad that only a fool would stay positive.
** The "Holly's Flashback" arc. By the midpoint Holly had already been exposed to [[TraumaCongaLine so much trauma]] (not to mention twin incidents that felt like they should have been the climax of the flashback) that fans had become numb to the follow-on traumas and many of them later expressed opinions that the flashback had outstayed its welcome. Then the apocalypse happened again.
** The "Pig Arc". Characters like Jacob and Dottie get derailed into completely different personalities while other characters get killed off one by one. All while Endtown seems to become more cynically bleak and incompetent over solving the pig butcherings. The result mostly drew sighs of exasperated frustration and comments of "Remember when this comic was enjoyable?"

** "Narrative Red Pills": More or less the 4chan-local fandom's equivalent of DarkerAndEdgier, used to point out occasions on which author has obviously taken something that was originally meant to be light-hearted and tried to make it serious, often just resulting in {{Narm}} or worsening the DarknessInducedAudienceApathy. Derived from the author himself using the term to promise some manner of dark revelations regarding the true nature of certain things once the story returned to Endtown, not too far in time from the similarly dark and very sudden alterations to Holly Hollister's character arc, which were treated with no small amount of skepticism and derision in certain corners of the fanbase.

* ShockingSwerve: Starting with [[spoiler:the exit of Holly Hollister from the strip (by the creator's own claim, he didn't want his readers to "get complacent")]] and continuing randomly through the Pig Arc with many a death; one might get the impression it's all in an effort to duplicate the gut-punch that was the sudden death of [[EnsembleDarkhorse Allie Alvarez]] during the Milk Trial but the end result seems to have been a deepening of the general DarknessInducedAudienceApathy surrounding the strip.

* ArchivePanic: Well over a thousand strips and sill going (albeit more slowly).

* AbortedArc: Major reason why Aaron is often accused of making things up as he goes along, contrary to his insistence that the entire comic is scripted in advance. One of the more egregious examples is Kirbee discovering a growing plant on the window of Eden colony, setting up a possible plotline of nature returning in a post-apocalyptic setting...only to swiftly abandon this when the "multiverse travel" plotline kicks in.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Allie Alvarez the alligator and Jim the ex-Topsider raccoon. Their popularity transcends their [[spoiler:moral status]].

* TheScrappy:
** Aaron Marx, due to his personality, behavior, and Mary Sue traits.
** To a lesser extent, Kirbee, due to her over-peppy demeanour combined with her glaring lack of intellect, a common sentiment that she doesn't measure up to the character she blatantly replaced, and perhaps some resentment due to being seen as the "enabler" whose accidental creation made it possible for her predecessor to be removed from the comic.

** Kirbee and Holly Hollister, split between fans of either due to the love triangle with Wally. Holly fans tend to find Kirbee bland and forced, Kirbee fans see Holly as a bad person due to [[spoiler:her increasing insanity]]. Aaron Neathery himself seems to love Kirbee and view her as being a ray of hope in the darkness of the strip's setting, while expressing disbelief that anyone could find Holly inspiring, despite the latter character expressing some of the strip's most positive messages and being a shut-in who forced herself to rejoin humanity via sheer willpower.
*** On the other hand, maybe Aaron is thinking of Holly pre-mutation? Her husband Lyn had moral misgiving about what he was doing at APEX, while sha was like "Don't worry, the money's great!"

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Allie Alvarez the alligator and Jim the ex-Topsider raccoon. Their popularity transcends their [[spoiler:mortal status]].

** Really it's all over the place in this comic, there's a great deal of BodyHorror, for one. The mutation that occurs when you're conscious into a monstrous Mutt being a prime example.

** Holly's backstory, with her [[spoiler:giving birth to a fish mutant that dies, and her husband transforming into a Mutt, all while society crumbles around them]].

* TheChrisCarterEffect: Complaints of this nature suggest this may be part of the reason behind the continuing Patreon exodus. It doesn't help that Aaron Neathery has become somewhat infamous for answering said complaints with "Trust me" or "It'll all make sense later", or that the Holly's Flashback arc was capped with a ShaggyDogStory ending that was so informatively empty that many have assumed it was just a way for Neathery to rid himself of a character he'd come to dislike.