Despite how huge Elliot is, he can look really cute when he's embarrassed. See also his less than subtle attempt at trying to suss out if Clinton would be interested in him.
Also Hanners, Marigold, Claire, Emily, Willow, Clinton has his moments, even Bubbles has her moments...
Marten. Is he an easygoing Nice Guy who sometimes needs to speak up for himself, or is he cripplingly passive and unable to take agency in his life because of the influence of his domineering mother? While he's portrayed as perfectly accepting and amenable, Marten's social life has been damaged at times by his inability to take action for himself.
Marten again. Is he really a passive nice guy who just has issues with standing up for himself, or is he a "Nice Guy" who knows exactly what he is doing? Note that during his relationship with Dora, whenever the subject of his interest in Faye is brought up by Dora, he doesn't actively deny his feelings towards her, but rather downplays them, and most of the early strips about his and Faye's Belligerent Sexual Tension. While his friendliness to her is kind of genuine, it's still about 70% fuelled by his desire to eventually have Faye as a girlfriend.
Marten's mom herself, who can be read as an atypical but loving mother looking out for the best interests of her son, or an interfering, overprotective, and embarrassing figure who may have caused some of Marten's social problems. After Marten breaks up with Dora, Mrs. Reed comes to visit without giving notice, offers to kill Dora for Marten, remarks that Hannelore seems more normal than Marten let on, and goes to visit Dora during their dinner without telling him what she was doing. Depending on the reading, this could be signs of a fiercely protective mother with some embarrassing habits who wanted to make sure both sides of the relationship were okay, but she could also be read as intrusive, overprotective, and dishonest.
Corpse Witch, Faye's boss at the underground robot league. Her displeasure with Faye fixing up May can be seen a number of different ways. Some fans are somewhat sympathetic, seeing her as a boss cracking down on malfeasance. This is especially true as bringing in an outsider to an illegal business could theoretically put the whole operation at risk. Others see her as an example of Fantastic Racism, abusing her human employee. But most simply take her at face value as a simple Jerkass. Later, Corpse Witch was revealed to be more clearly malicious in nature, settling the issue of her character.
During her fundraiser and body shopping, May is constantly talked down to and her worries dismissed despite having the completely legitimate and admirable goal of leaving some money available for other AI in equally bad situations.
Marten appeared relatively unconcerned when Faye just told Angus about her issues after all the hoops she made Marten jump through from the start of the comic that also wrecked any chance of a relationship with her. He actually showed more of a reaction to the revelation that Faye hadn't told him what the secret menu was.
Clinton Augustus got his robot hand when a firecracker blew off his original hand when he was a kid. Claire doesn't feel too bad for him because he loves his new robot hand so much, and he even chooses not to wear a dermal covering on it to emphasize its nature.
A strip by the author dealing with Marigold's first date with Dale delivered a rather heavy-handed message that it's perfectly fine for women to have sex when they want, and that it doesn't make them a slut. Rather than having this revelation passed through revealing moments of characterization, it's simply delivered in a blunt single text bubble that feels a little like the author not the character is speaking.
Not surprising considering Jeph has personal experience with the issue, but Faye's struggles with alcoholism are fairly heavy-handed.
Renee’s “internet hookup” exists as a showcase of gross behavior, as he hits on Brun and asks about her ethnicity the next morning while Renee is there- even the commentary text just says “don’t be this guy”.
Some of the prevalence of LGBT issues can come across as this. This is addressed in this guest comic, where it shows that any anti-LGBT conflict would have to be caused by a straw character, since the main cast is so accepting by nature.
Part of this is also that Massachusetts is particularly LGBT-friendly, especially Northampton, the comic's implied setting.
This strip, where Sam buys a microphone and puts the saleman in her place for assuming that it's for a man. Jeph himself tweeted afterwards that he's not happy with the comic because it was "hamfisted and preachy."
Winslow had the misfortune to be the target of a series of strips trying to make a point about privilege when he got a new humanoid chassis to replace his iPod with stub limbs. This despite it being years after Momo upgraded and about half a day of enjoying being able to pick himself up when he fell. It's mitigated a bit by the fact that May is treated as being also in the wrong for dumping all over Winslow for one moment of insensitivity, but the whole series of exchanges still sorely lacks subtlety.
Arc Fatigue: Due to the large cast with attention being given to almost everyone, some arcs spotlighting characters may feel like they take up too much focus.
The parade of saccharine strips focusing solely on Claire and Marten after their Relationship Upgrade garnered opinions that some valid plotlines were being Left Hanging in the meantime or otherwise going Out of Focus.
For roughly a year the comic bounced between Faye and Bubbles' issues with Corpse Witch, and slice-of-life comics featuring Brun and Renee, with the latter segments being disliked for focusing on two side characters at the expense of the rest of the cast.
One year largely focused on shipping Faye and Bubbles, which diverted the focus.
Ass Pull: Many readers feel this way about Marten's suddenly deciding to open his own coffee shop in Cubetown, despite having absolutely no resources, aptitude or relevant experience.
Faye and/or Dora. There's a large contingent of the fans that love pretty much everything Faye does and still seems to hate Dora for "stealing" Marten from her, and will basically call for anything up to and including her death or being written out of the strip for evils such as not trusting Marten. Meanwhile, a rather smaller group would point out that if your boyfriend had lived for months with a girl he was hung up on, the girl was the one who said it wasn't going to happen but continued to live there, and when it came time for you to move in with said boyfriend he actually argued for allowing his old flame to keep living there, you might just have a right to some trust issues.
Marigold, with fans either considering her to be The Woobie who provides witty references to geek culture, or a festering ball of Wangst whose sole purpose is Pandering to the Base.
Tai. Some fans simply see her as a free-spirited and independent young woman whose bluntness is simply because she likes to speak her mind, as well as a great relationship partner for Dora. Other fans consider her to be an unrepentant jerkass, who despite being Marten's friend, never felt to hide her clear attraction to Dora while they were together, and did everything she could to hook up with Dora without regarding the feelings of anyone else.
Marten, depending on whether you find him to be too apologetic and generally passive or not.
Claire. Is she an extraneous cast member in a crowded comic who doesn't bring anything new and is designed to pander to the audience, or is she a good personality and another positive way for Jacques to introduce more LBGT characters into 'mainstream' web comics? She is now in a relationship with Marten, which has the two sides claiming that she's being pushed so hard to pander to the base, or that she's just being treated as her own character respectively. As noted below under Creator's Pet, this attitude among her detractors only deepened with the start of the Cubetown plot-arc.
Tilly, when they were introduced as an overzealous personal assistant to Hannelore. Some found them Adorkable. Others found them pushy and obnoxious, continuing to push their presence when it had been made clear they weren't wanted. However, once it became clear they were being used by Hannelore's mother and just following orders, opinions calmed down.
Willow. Is she a goofy, fun-loving person who is generally well-meaning? Or is she an annoyance whose toxic positivity gets grating quickly in the face of characters who respond more reasonably to issues in their life? Particularly notable after she finally was told that her actions come off as heavily flirtatious to people. After a single page of worry and realizing she's been misleading people, she's immediately over it in the next page.
Liz. A socially-broken screwup, or a misunderstood genius? Not helping matters was her continued insistence on getting drunk and repeated sexual harassment, particularly when her character design made her look like a child.
Ayomide. After a reasonable introduction, readers fell into two camps. Either she was a dumbass constantly screwing up who persistently needed validation and understanding despite all her issues being her own fault, or she was a highly-relatable college dropout who deserved sympathy. Being introduced shortly after Liz, the similarities in their plotlines and personalities made their inevitable meeting dreaded by some, with their interactions consisting of the two bringing out each other's worst qualities while simultaneously trying to get better.
Strip 1135 features Dora, Tai, and Marten with random mustaches for Cinco de Mayo. Jeph alluded to it on Twitter and forgot to mention it in the daily commentary, so many people had no clue what was up with that.
Pintsize tries to invoke one for strip 1337, but it mostly falls flat. Later, this fancy dress incident occurs, which seems like it must be a BLAM, except they still have the suits in the next comic...and then this happens.
The guest drawn strips very rarely have anything to do with what is currently going on in the main strips and the characters in them even more rarely actually fit the personalities of their main strip counterparts.
The 666th strip, which is a 'spontaneous metal interlude' that the characters acknowledge, only to go right back to normal in the next page.
The "hell ass balls" couch, where Pintsize mechanized the couch and caused it to go haywire. It's completely back to normal afterwards.
The Little Hats Saga, which featured Marigold and Hannelore suddenly hypnotized by tiny hats. It came out of nowhere and is never referenced again.
Broken Base: While Claire herself is a Base-Breaking Character, her relationship with Marten has led to a divide that has even separated those who liked her:
On one side, you have those who think it's an excellent and bold move to put the main character into a relationship with her as an actual character and her transgender nature being incidental. As he says, he likes her and she likes him, which is an important message.
There are those dislike Claire altogether, and also those who don't like her specifically because she's trans.
There's also her relation with Clinton. Because she's more often than not the instigator of their Sibling Rivalry moments, some fans see her less as a half of said Sibling Rivalry and more as a Big Sister Bully. Her actions during the "Mommy Milkers" arc didn't help.
Catharsis Factor: Corpse Witch's punishment, has her violently, painfully elctrocuted multiple times and sent to prison, after it seemed that she'd get away with her years of abuse to Bubbles.
Creator's Pet: Claire has been labeled this following her being hired as The Librarian (and universally acclaimed savior) of Cubetown, and the plotline depicting it pretty much taking over the entire comic.
Every appearance of Yelling Bird features a buffet of inappropriate jokes, harsh language, and illogical insults, which allows it to wrap around to being humorous again. This is a representative example.
Mrs. Aurelia Augustus (Claire and Clinton's mom). Plays professional-level 5-string bass, dates guys half her age, and makes kick-ass pancakes. The heck is her story?
We find out later that she's an extremely popular video game streamer, with a subscription base of over 40K. It's so popular that Marigold is a moderator of her streams.
The line often gets blurred between a fan nickname being adopted in-universe by the characters and in-universe nicknames being picked up as second nature by the fans. "Hanners" is probably the most commonly-used one both in and out of the comic.
"Twinksize" being used to refer to Pintsize after he switched to the standard AI body used by the other A.I.s in the cast, after having been the last holdout in his original Anthro-PC body.
"Emiloli" for Elizabeth, due to her character design looking like a younger version of the Emily, who had long ago been Put on a Bus.
Foe Yay Shipping: Dale & Marigold over their Serious BusinessWorld of Warcraft rivalry. Dale acts like a boy teasing a girl he likes, and Marigold is in the role of the too-haughty girl who dismisses him for completely superficial reasons that seem all too likely to collapse someday. Unsurprisingly, given that they are somewhat self-awarely acting out anime tropes, They eventually hook up over their shared love of video games and anime.
In the strip where Faye is freaking out about her Love Epiphany regarding Bubbles and wants Marten's advice, and he asks her to wait until he's finished shelving books, Faye starts vibrating. The title of the strip is "440Hz". 440Hz is standard concert pitch. Faye is vibrating because, for the first time in her life, she's actually perfectly in tune.
Not to mention this! Jeph mentioned in the book commentary for the above strip that it's not the kind of joke he would make now.
Jeph has had issues with depression and alcoholism for a while now, but it became most visible when the above-mentioned Creator Breakdown happened. This makes it very uncomfortable when:
Any strip features characters drinking heavily to forget their troubles, or depression in general. Especially when the introverted, socially-awkward Marigold began drinking as part of opening up to her new friends — something Jacques later admitted he himself did as a part of his alcoholism. The "you should drink and open up more!" moral (made stronger when the only non-drinker was the shut-in weirdo with no friends) became really ugly in retrospect.
Any time Jacques angrily defends Dora in a newspost after forum-goers rip on her for having mental issues. Anyone who has little sympathy for someone with that amount of angst isn't going to come across well to a writer who often writes his own angst into his characters as a way of dealing with them.
When Jeph announced that he and his wife had gotten divorced. This can make all the breakups the characters go through seem much worse.
In the last panel of this comic, Dora lays out some very simple rules for the newly-hired Hannelore and Cosette: "Don't show up drunk or high and try not to fuck up too much and you'll be fine." Just over a thousand strips later, Faye shows up drunk and is, indeed, not fine.
Any strip that makes jokes out a drunk Faye or even just shows her drunk are a lot more difficult to enjoy after seeing Strip 2881,where Faye nearly drinks herself to death.
A combat droid appeared in earlier comics, with the joke being that he had a very difficult time adapting to civilian life. Then Bubbles is introduced as a combat AI who is struggling with PTSD and is unable to adapt to civilian life despite being helped by "greater minds" than Faye.
When Ellen asks if Dora's gay in comic 222, Dora responds that she doesn't "go for the butch girls". Cue her next significant partner: Tai, commonly described as a "tiny butch one".
The conversation in comic 1300. Dora jokes that she thought Marten might want to break up with her and date "a girl with a penis." Marten eventually dates Claire, a trans woman.
In comic 2216, after Marten trains the new library interns including his future girlfriend Claire, Tai brings up the idea of hooking up with interns and Marten insists that he had no such intention. In the next comic Faye mischievously asks him "So which one are you gonna bang?", prompting the exasperated response, "Why is everybody assuming I'm gonna bang one of 'em?!" The author's rant for it is "Totally poking fun at everybody who assumes Marten is gonna hook up with one of the interns." Well, guess what the author does anyway?
On Faye's relationships:
In number 211, a guest comic by Stirling, Faye wonders if instead of trying to date Marten, "Maybe [...] I should find some man, woman, or dare I say robot, to be with." Whereupon she rejects an overture from Pintsize, saying "Once you go Mac, you never go back." It's just a silly and out-of-canon joke, but thousands of strips later she ends up dating Bubbles who's both a woman and a robot.
In comic 2262, Angus jokes to his then-girlfriend Faye "I'm just saying, if you gotta break up with me, at least leave me for a girl." To which Pintsize adds, "Leave him for a robot! A GIRL robot!" Well, later on Faye breaks up with Angus and subsequently meets Bubbles. Then comes comic 3075, in which May ends her advice to Faye about getting through to Bubbles by saying "And if you two eventually bone down, I want pics of her outta her armor." These things also come to pass.
In comic 2768, Marten wonders if Sven is not merely an asshole, but an EVIL PSYCHIC ASSHOLE. The comic's title is "Marvel's Newest Villain". After this comic came the Marvel superhero series Jessica Jones (2015), featuring the villain Kilgrave who is an evil psychic asshole.
Faye. Jeph comments on this in a newspost within the first couple hundred strips: he specifically says that she really isn't fat, but she has a bad body image, partly because everyone she hangs out with is skinny.
Hannelore and Marigold currently, despite - and possibly because of - Jeph himself saying that said pairing is not, was not and never will be happening. Then again, when has Canon ever stopped the shippers? Note that they haven't exactly flirted or anything- they've just hung out and played their personality types off of each other. Lampshaded in Marten's comment at the end of this strip.
When Marten tells Claire that he and Dora dated, she goes "Luckyyyyy". It's not entirely clear to the audience if she's talking about Dora being lucky for having Marten, or Marten being lucky for getting Dora.
Faye and Bubbles strong friendship is seen through this lens by several character, including Claire,May,Clinton., and a visiting psychology PHD, who engages in some leading Social Engineering. During that time, Bubbles has an increasingly obvious crush on Faye, but Faye firmly feels that they are Just Friends. They eventually do transition into a romantic relationship.
When Roko Basilisk has a dream featuring the ghosts of her old and new bodies, the ghosts start to make out with each other and Roko looks startled and kind of thrilled—and then Melon wakes her up. Roko doesn't really remember the dream but comments to Yay "I also feel like I woke up right before it got to the really good part."
Steve is basically Marten's only male friend, as the bulk of his relationships are with women. This leads to moments where the two hang out to be easily lampooned, such as Steve drunkenly confessing his love to Marten or saying they should buy a boat together.
Informed Wrongness: When Sven sleeps with someone else and then says he was never dishonest with Faye, everyone acts like he cheated on her in a committed relationship and is a huge monster. But Sven is absolutely right... he was upfront with Faye about who he was and what he was likely to do, and she was the one who insisted they weren't really in a relationship and that it was purely sexual, resisting all his attempts to make it something more. Faye wanted all the benefits of a monogamous relationship without any of the responsibilities (including the emotional responsibilities), but Sven is still berated like he was at fault for not treating it like a real relationship.
Yelling Bird's "And then they [all] fucked!" (from this guest comic) is popular on image boards like Funnyjunk or Imgur, as a response to posts containing romance or flirtation.
Photoshops of "You and Me" (and the phrase "You're beautiful" in its own right) thanks to Marten's bland expression.
"Raisins." In one comic, Brun stated that she'd never had raisins because they were too poor. The use of such a cheap, sweet, and shelf-stable food gained criticism for how out of touch it made Jeph seem, especially as the scene was set in a bakery where many more expensive, uncommon ingredients could have been used. Whenever characters later came into wealth or a better lifestyle expect to see comments about them being able to afford "All the raisins they can eat."
"Haha, okay." Marten's blase response to an emotional moment from Faye mixed with his bland facial expression led to multiple edits of previous pages putting "Haha, okay." as the final reply to other emotional moments from the comic.
A drunk Liz's greeting to Evannote to wit, "TITTIES" is rapidly becoming popular on sites like Imgur, as a reaction to Fanservice-y cosplay or art posts.
Misaimed Fandom: You can tell that readers really weren't supposed to identify with Corpse Witch. Initially, her passive-aggressive personality was seen by many as appropriate for the setting and it was refreshing to see someone with authority put Faye in her place. Her sudden descent into over the top villainy and smugness can be seen as Jeph realizing that many readers were siding with Corpse Witch and needed to give more blatant, obvious reasons for her being the unlikable villain of the arc.
Moe: Hannelore is Marten's neurotic but well-meaning neighbor. She has a number of disorders that make a normal life difficult at times, but she always tries her best.
The forums are sporadically abuzz with shippers for "Fayten" (Faye + Marten) or "Svaye" (Sven + Faye), and members smacking down the use of portmanteau names. However, "HanTai" for the gleefully liberated lesbian Tai and the OCD, extremely straight, easily squicked Hannelore (who Tai has an obvious crush on) is damn near universal for obvious reasons, even for people who find the idea ridiculous. Jeph dismisses it as stupid, and has (due to the Hantai meme), banned Shipmanteaus from the forums. Not that this has stopped anybody, of course.
The Crack Ship Marigold/Pintsize acquired the name... wait for it... Pint-o-Gold.
Discussed by the Thanksgiving Turkeys here, as they suggest "MariDale" or "Daligold" for Dale + Marigold, and give the other current Official Couples "Fangus" (Faye + Angus), "Tora" (Tai + Dora) and "Willelope" (Will + Penelope). Then "Bloodsize" for Pintsize and Blood Lord...
May's suggestion that Marigold make branded sex toys became this after a tweet resurfaced, where Jeph revealed that Marigold's V-Tuber avatar looks like a child, who is, presumably, meant to be Really 700 Years Old
Willow offers Ayomide a blanket that is covered in ketchup stains. They're so prominent that it's easy to be focused solely on them when Ayo is actually using the blanket.
Faye and Bubbles, despite hundreds of strips developing their relationship, felt more mandated than organic to some readers. Their relationship for a significant amount of time was purely platonic, and Faye had fairly firmly established herself to be heterosexual. Their transition from good friends to bed-breaking sex occurred in just a few ships. While later strips had Faye confronting past decisions and personality traits that may have been signaling that she was bisexual, it can come out of left field. It didn't help that it was preceded by other characters pushing the ship, including a psych major and Faye's sister overtly trying to push Faye into the relationship, while Faye was oblivious to the subtext and talked about a friend she valued and wanted to help get past trauma.
Clinton and Elliot. Somehow they went from both crushing on an oblivious Brun to becoming boyfriends. While Elliot was established as bisexual, Clinton was not. Much like Evie trying to force Faye to see Bubbles in a romantic light, Claire did something similar, which may have people thinking Clinton was coerced into a relationship.
Strawman Has a Point: Marten gets mad at Claire for her criticism of him when he's only trying to share an interesting anecdote. But like she says, what he said does sound a bit like indie snobbery.
And there's the masterful use of beat panels at the end of strip 1642. If you need the strip beginning the chain of events leading up to it, start reading from strip 1628 onwards.
The entire Love Confession sequence between Station and Hannelore (starting here and ending here).
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Corpse Witch. She's introduced as a jerkass running an illegal operation and while she's certainly not nice, part of the reason she was compelling is that everything that she did or said was grounded in some kind of reasoning, often being Pragmatic Villainy or even Informed Wrongness. Then suddenly all nuance goes out the window and she essentially becomes an out-and-out supervillain who is motivated pretty much by her own evilness.
Some fans feel this about the Bubbles and Corpse Witch saga. A chance to explore the problems of PTSD and misunderstandings between humans and A.I.s post-Singularity (not to mention Faye's hotheadedness once again causing her trouble) are tossed away with an almost literal Deus ex Machina character popping up out of nowhere to help Bubbles and the revelation that Corpse Witch is straight-up two-dimensionally evil.
Marigold's rise to being an exceptionally-wealthy Virtual Youtuber all occurs offscreen, which means there's no explanation of why, how, or when she started. By the time the reader finds out she's famous, any development and significant struggle Marigold may have had was left by the wayside.
Hannelore. You just want to hug her, except that would only distress her more. Her childhood carves her Woobie status in stone. Apparently she spent a lot of her childhood freaking out, sedated, and completely crippled by her neuroses. Seems to be coping better nowadays, though.
Marigold started to go beyond merely woobie-riffic and into outright tragic on a level that would make Faye jealous.
Angus: You shouldn't like a guy just because he's nice to you. Marigold: Why not? Angus: Well, I mean, what if he's only doing it so he can get in your pants? Marigold: I'd settle for that.
Angus: Jesus, Marigold, are you trying to GUILT-TRIP me into making out with you? Marigold: What? No, no! I just - no! I'm sorry! *Beat Panel* Would... would that work?
But in the end, it turns out that Marigold can bulldoze through her problems to a happy solution, in her clumsy way.Lucky Dale.
As the strip has its source of humor and drama from cruelty to characters, everybody has both their moments as the Butt-Monkey and as the Woobie. Marten specially, before he and Dora got their break. As Jeph put it on the author's comment on this Marten-and-Dora-are-Woobies strip: "Awww! Poor Dora. Poor Marten. Poor Mieville, not getting petted by poor Dora."
And then in this strip, we see that, despite anything seen around the whammy strip 500, Faye still loves Marten platonically, and the mere thought of him moving scares her to death. You know you want to hug her.
Elizabeth Appleboom is in many ways a horrible person due to her arrogance and lack of social skills, but readers and people in-setting who put up with her for a few minutes discover that her Friendless Background and Inferiority Superiority Complex make her much more sad then monstrous — and breaking out of that mindset is a long job for her.
at trying to suss out if Clinton would be interested in him.