Arc Words / Webcomics

Arc Words in Webcomics.

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• All Night Laundry: "What kind of maggot grows in the corpse of a day?" The first time Bina travels to the past, she finds these words written on the door of Josephine's office upon her return. The "corpse of a day" means that an entire day has been erased from existence, and the "maggot" is the Eldritch Abomination that caused it. When the Botfly is finally defeated and the paradox is destroying the time loop Bina is in, she sees that same door and writes these words on it.
  Twelve: One who lost. I'd always wondered where that question came from.
• Crow Cillers: "Are we safe?"
• Darken: The Worm Lord is Rising!
• Divine Bells: Ga-bi's introductory words are "In a place of camellias drenched in red, I will be there...where it begins".
• In Dresden Codak, the poem "At twilight's end, the shadows crossed..." first shows up in Zhuangzi and is then seen inscribed in some ruins in The Heart of the Giant. It seems to be about worlds being replaced, as well as reality-dream confusion, quite possibly tying into the Department of Opposition's denial of the entire Hob storyline.
• Everything is Fine: “Everything is fine”, and later on “There’s no going back.”
• The fantasy comic Gaia is described on its About page to be a story about "[...] the answer to Lilith's simple, meek, world-shattering question: 'Will you come along?'".
• Guilded Age: "You don't have to see eye to eye to stand shoulder to shoulder."
• The robots in Gunnerkrigg Court seem to respond to every mention of a woman by the name of Jeanne with "She died and we did nothing." This was cleared up much later when it was revealed that she was used as a sacrifice in order to "fortify the Annan Waters." Diego (the robots' creator)'s final words on his deathbed were along those lines:
  "She was...all alone. Waiting...when she died. And I did nothing."
  • Ironically it wasn't even her who they killed. It was the forest-dweller (the "traitor") who she'd fallen madly in love with. She simply remained there, slowly turning into a murderous ghost.
    • Yeah, but that makes it all rather worse. The narration implies that the magic rooted her to the spot and she stood there, unable to move. Diego went about his life in the castle for days as she starved to death.
  • Also, in response to inquiries as to the method of the construction of the Court, everyone replies, "It grew from the seed bismuth."
• Homestuck has a lot of words and phrases that repeat regularly, most of which are simply Running Gags, but any time the word "ascend" or some variation on it appears, you know what's going on is both important and probably awesome. "Mobius Double Reacharound" and "Make her pay" also qualify as minor examples.
  • "He is already here." Used initially to refer to Jack Noir, but later becomes synonymous with Lord English.
  • "The Ultimate Riddle" shows up quite a bit as well.
  • Throughout the fifth act, the word "scratch" showed up quite a bit until we finally found out what it is: a Reset Button for the universe, and integral to the plot.
    • It even gets lampshaded in a predictably frustrated way by Karkat.
  CG: THE SCRATCH WILL REBOOT YOUR SESSION. YOUR WHOLE UNIVERSE ACTUALLY. SO SOMEWHERE IN THIS DREADFUL ABYSS, THAT NEW SESSION WILL START UP IN ITS OWN INCIPISPHERE, FROM SCRATCH.
  CG: LOOK AT THAT, ANOTHER PUN BECAUSE OF USING THAT FUCKING WORD EVERY OTHER SENTENCE! KILL ME NOW.
  • "Luck doesn't actually matter" is another minor example, as it is central to Vriska and Terezi's arc in Act 5 Act 2.
    • This idea returns when Terezi from the (doomed?) GAME OVER timeline tells John that he won't need luck right before dying because they make their own; while not exactly the phrase, it could very well be what it was building towards.
  • "Years in the future... but not many."
  • Count the number of times the words "Ascend", "Descend", "Rise Up", "Wake Up", and "Enter" appear in page titles.
  • The oft-repeated question, "What will you do?" may also count. It mainly functions as a Shout-Out to the text adventure games that inspired Homestuck, but it also underlines the comic's themes of futility and uselessness (because so often there is no obvious answer), and a variation of the line follows nearly every Establishing Character Moment.
• Hue Are You: "We help everyone" is the primary phrase repeated and shown in the first and second chapters. To the extent of it being the last line of programming that Build-a the build bot receives. She shows this in the first chapter by repairing the two vendor types that assist her at the start, and by building a body for Query so she can escape after Blue came and scared Build-a.
• Irregular Webcomic!: The cat and rat who've started chasing each other through all the time-travel settings might count as an arc image. As it turns out, it was setting up a Brick Joke referencing a classic Guide Dangit moment from a Sierra adventure game.
  • Shortly before several simultaneous disasters caused the universe to end and restart, multiple characters proclaimed "I've got a bad feeling about this."
  • In 2010, the phrase "Greatness is often linked with insanity" keeps popping up.
• The phrase "Reach heaven through violence" shows up frequently in Kill Six Billion Demons. The exact meaning is unclear (and probably a lie, considering the nature of the universe), but most agree that it means that violence is the greatest way to establish oneself and attain one's goals. Word of God is that this philosophy is wrong.
  • "Violence is inescapable."
  • "METATRON LIVES"
  • "Destroy the grand enemy called I."
  • "The King of Swords"
  • The words "Royalty" and "Sovereign" also show up frequently, and are intrinsically connected to the nature of the multiverse.
• In Leftover Soup, characters bring up variations on the "brother's keeper" line from The Bible throughout Jaime's personal arc, often resulting in Jaime analyzing its meaning. Jaime's arc explores the idea of personal responsibility, so this is fitting. Perhaps most notable is an instance where Jaime declares "I choose to be my brother's keeper," when justifying his decision to investigate Richard's murder on his own.
• "Beware the night of the five lights." in L's Empire. The authors flat out state so in the Alt Text.
• MS Paint Masterpieces has the phrase "happy ending" makes multiple appearances throughout No Future.
  • It's used here◊, here◊, here◊, and here◊.
• Nebula has the phrase "Something bigger than us" repeatedly used to describe what's happening, which is accurate on both a literal level (the fear that the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Sun, who is enormous, has something horribly wrong with him) and a metaphorical one (the situation is far outside anything that characters are equipped to deal with or help).
• This is all happening for a reason, along with slightly different phrasings in the Nuzlocke comic strip.
• Phoenix Flair: "I want to kill the person I used to be."
• "Nothing Dead Here" in the "Kesandru's Well" arc of Sluggy Freelance.
  • And "Nosce Te Ipsum" (Latin for "Know Thyself") throughout all the Oasis storylines.
  • Every storyline has its own, and there are several that span multiple storylines.
  • "Sluggy" and "Freelance," separately, halves of a beacon set up by Googol to call those capable of defeating K'Z'K.
• Parodied in the Stick-Figure Comic Stickman and Cube: For about nine strips, every comic contains the word "potato salad" somewhere. When the characters call the author on it, he admits that the words were foreshadowing something: they were foreshadowing their own exposition, and meant absolutely nothing.
• The title of the BDSM slice of life Sunstone is the Safe Word Ally gives her subs, and has often been hinted as having a fair bit of back story to it.
• Unsounded: Live in your best world. It's practically Sette's catch phrase, and even Duane comes around to appreciating the phrase. But while it starts off with a positive meaning, it starts to turn darker as both Duane and Sette begin to sit in denial over their situations and the consequences of their actions.

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