Webcomic / Does Not Play Well With Others

Michael Poe's (Exploitation Now, Errant Story) gag-a-day webcomic, starring Francesca (a college age wizardess) and her roommate, Naga (a naga).

Started at the beginning of 2011. Signs so far point to it being closer in tone to the first rather than the second of his previous series. Can be found — surprisingly — at DoesNotPlayWellWithOthers.com

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This comic provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: In an inversion of Real Life Writes the Plot, a planned story arc where Craig was going to be accused of being a Nazi for beating up a pair of annoying protesters ^note meant to parody tokenism in comics in general, and in particular Captain America being Retconned into having been a Nazi all along was cut short because it came right at the heels of a real-life incident where an actual Nazi ran over a counter-protester with a car. Instead, the idea of outing Craig as a Nazi turned out to just be a Batman Gambit by his public relations representatives to make him more amenable to the idea of signing a public apology.
• Accidental Misnaming: Craig admits to Janis that he calls the Artificer "Tekmage" because during their first fight he was so nervous he couldn't remember the real name, so he just made one up on the spot. He kept doing it because he saw how much it annoyed him.
• All Women Are Lustful: The female characters are every bit as gross and horny as the male ones. In fact, Seth is just about the only character, male or female, who isn't interested in hitting just anyone.
• Alt Text: Generally containing commentary and alternative punchlines or continuations on them.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Fran's mom, who is a devout Wicca and is... matter-of-factly when it comes to sex, to the point of once sleeping with Fran's first-ever boyfriend so that he'd know how to give Fran a good first experience. On the flip side, Fran's mom is embarrassed that her daughter is completely uninterested in the spiritual implications of magic and just wants to blow things up.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: When Nikki reveals that she can read minds she says that Francesca tends to think about X-rated fan pairings while talking to her. Nikki finds this really gross, and at one point is literally driven away from Fran because the witch has started randomly picturing Jafar and Rasputin having sex.
• Anal Probing: Fran finally gets around to asking her alien neighbors what the deal is with the anal probes. Zakmar reveals it's because the polyps produced by pre-cancerous human colons taste almost exactly like an extremely rare delicacy from their homeworld. The probing is to find and harvest these polyps, which are big money as well as delicious.
• Asian Rudeness: This parody of the Five-Token Band tendencies of certain other webcomics includes it.
  Chubby Asian Chick: I buck Asian stereotypes by being a huge unlikeable bitch!
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Amusingly justified and lampshaded. See Nipple and Dimed. Comes full circle to an aversion in later comics, after the webcomic moved to it's own domain name: Naga loses her shirt in an Out-of-Clothes Experience and both Scenery Censor and Barbie Doll Anatomy are averted. Amusingly, the nipples go from a dot, to a undefined circle where the areola are, to being fully detailed over the next few strips.
• Bizarre Monster Biology: Whenever it's relevant for a gag, such as Naga's hair turning into snakes when it gets long.
• Book Dumb: Craig fully admits to being barely literate ("I spent my teenage years on a planet two hundred light years away fighting a robot overlord"), but he tends to play up his stupidity, and is actually rather clever when it comes to things that directly relate to his job as a superhero. For example, he has an excellent memory, recalling a random friend Janis made up to explain her absence one time, and later instantly recognizes "Ann" as a robot.
• Brainless Beauty: Janis implies that Craig is one here.
• Brick Joke: The one-off gag here comes back as a way for Nikki to one-up Naga at the end of the same storyline.
• Butt-Monkey: Ann, the Sexbot Janis invents to set Seth up with. Janis takes entirely too much glee in treating her like a disposal object that is worth exactly zero consideration. Possibly subverted in that she might actually be an object (as in, she might not be self-aware and her reactions might be purely scripted with no genuine feelings behind them - the comic is a bit vague on the subject), though in that case Janis certainly programmed her to appear very much like this trope.
• Captain Ersatz: Khinkae's barbarian (as the Alt Text indicates what her character is) is very clearly drawn to look like the Amazon from Dragon's Crown, right down to her weapon as well.
• Child Eater:
  • A recurring gag about side-character Baba Agnieszka, a Witch Classic from Russia based on Baba Yaga.
  • Naga has eaten at least one of her own fertilized eggs so as to avoid having to deal with the hassle of being a mother.
• Crossover: Jordan from Exploitation Now shows up.
• Dating Catwoman: Falchion and Tekmage are archenemies, but are dating. Not that Falchion is aware of this; he thinks that Tekmage is male, and his girlfriend is Tekmage's daughter.
• Dark and Troubled Past: To varying degrees, mostly played for laughs. Naga is a constant disappointment to her family. Francesca's mother is a "dance naked under the moon" style Wiccan, with such charming parenting tactics as sleeping with her daughter's first boyfriend to make sure he knew what he was doing (which Francesca walked in on). Seth is an orphan elf raised by Jews who has been persecuted for being an elf, being Jewish, and being gay (which he's not). Nikki became a vampire in an impulsive burst of fear after her mother died of breast cancer, and has kind of regretted it ever since. Craig is a superhero with an abusive father who used mind-control pheromones to make the rest of the world see him as a selfless hero, and spent his formative years on the other side of the galaxy fighting various evil overlords. Craig's sister, though not seen, has it worse, as until their father sacrificed himself to save the world, her boyfriends tended to disappear under mysterious circumstances and she once adopted a cute Blob Monster pet that turned out to be a shapeshifting alien sex criminal with a thing for human girls. Janis hasn't gone into much detail, but her parents are conspicuously absent and she's missing an arm, not to mention the times she's muttered about not being able to go to school as a child. ^note The story behind all those things is detailed in Exploitation Now, and yes, it's all pretty brutal. For added humor, the one with the worst past by far is a random member of Nikki's blood stable, who tells a story about how her stepfather tried to rape her and she and her little sister had to prostitute themselves to survive.
  Francesca: IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Death turns out to be quite amiable, even granting a recently dead woman's request to come back to life for five minutes so she can teach a Jerkass nurse not to use her death to make herself look good on social media.
• Dysfunction Junction: See Dark and Troubled Past above, add the fact that most of the cast are varying degrees of Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, and top it off With Friends Like These...
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Inverted. Falchion finds one of Tekmage's schemes to have such a low "evil" content that he just can't bring himself to foil it.
    Tekmage: Mheh... I knew there was a reason I let you fuck me on the first date.
    Falchion: Hm?
    Tekmage: I said, I knew there was a reason my daughter let you fuck her on the first date.
    Falchion: Okay, that's not weird and awkward at all...
  • During the 2012 elections and American government shutdown, Tekmage can't bring herself to do anything particularly destructive, comparing it to kicking retarded puppies.
  • Likewise, during the time of furious protests, counter-protests and overheated accusations flying around following the 2016 election, most supervillains appear to lay low "until things start making sense again."
• Flying Broomstick: Fran's transportation method of choice. she doesn't find it all that comfortable.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Naga, whom everyone loathes but who they keep hanging out with anyway. Justified by the neurotic mindset of the rest of the cast — Nikki has a lot of guilt about being a vampire and drinking blood to survive, so she enjoys being around someone who she is a really good person in comparison to, and Fran is just so lonely and pathetic that Naga is the closest thing to a friend she's got.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Averted. Fran usually wears goggles on her hat, but she does actually use them to protect her eyes when flying.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": May decides to masturbate using the penis-in-a-jar as a dildo, affectionately referring to it as "King Missile".
• Idiot Hair: Naga's old design.
• Ignored Aesop: The universe needn't think that it can make Janis learn her lesson!
  Janis: Okay, you know what? Fuck you, world! I know where this is going! This is supposed to be some kind of ironic morality lesson about how I should be nicer to a glorified fuck toaster! Well, tough shit! I refuse to learn anything!
• I'm a Humanitarian: Naga. It's ok, though, as she eats pedophiles she meets online... and at least one person with a vore fetish who was only too happy to be eaten by her.
  Molly: You have no idea how relieved I was when Naga turned out to be an actual man-eating monster instead of another twenty-something guy living in a basement.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Naga again — she has no nudity taboo, is actually outright opposed to the idea of wearing clothing, and only wears shirts because her contract includes royalties on any shirt designs they help sell.
• Inspirationally Disadvantaged: Janis (who is missing an arm) absolutely loathes this trope and considers it insulting. She learned to cope with her handicap because she had no damn choice, not to make other people feel warm and fuzzy!
• Intimidating Revenue Service: They send a pair of half-demons (tieflings) after Naga's unreported livestream income.
• Irony: There are apparently countless in-universe Falchion/Tekmage fanfics portraying them as in a gay relationship (with Falchion as the bottom). They actually are dating... but Tekmage is a girl. And Falchion actually isn't aware that he's dating Tekmage for a good part of the comic.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That: See Nipple and Dimed.
• Jackass Genie: A genie offers a young man a wish, with a warning that there will be consequences. He wishes to be able to transform into a helicopter, and the genie starts a transphobic meme that destroys his superhero career by association.
• Jerkass: Par for the course for a Micheal Poe comic. Naga's the worst offender of course.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Craig/Falchion may act like a superpowered fratboy a lot of the time, but he has plenty of Pet the Dog moments and seem to basically mean well.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Janis poses as this when Falchion catches her outside her Tekmage armor.
• Mermaid Problem: Well, naga problem.
• Mistaken for Racist: Happens to Fran a lot. It might not be entirely a mistake, though.
• Nice Jewish Boy: Seth is Jewish (by adoption) and is the nicest, most normal person in the strip.
• Nipple and Dimed: Naga's are retractable!
• Only Sane Man: Seth, most of the time.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Naga has a tendency to get naked more than any other character in the strip. The first major version is when she gets squashed by a refrigerator and undergoes a trip into her own psyche.
• Orifice Invasion: During their first sessions playing Dungeons & Dragons together, Naga's character attempts to defeat the dragon kicking their asses by climbing into its anus to invoke Kill It Through Its Stomach. Their disgusted DM has the dragon promptly die of a heart attack, its death-spasms crushing Naga's character to death before it is violently ejected in a heap of burning, acidic dragon feces.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: It's revealed in the forth comic that Naga eats people. To get around Fran's moral complaints, she explains she's been eating pedophiles she meets online and tricks into meeting up with her. That doesn't exactly make it ok, but the other characters can't bring themselves to get her to stop.
• Pheromones: According to Craig, the reason why his Dad is remembered as a great hero instead of a bigoted jerk.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Francesca to Naga over the course of the first few strips.
• Poke the Poodle: Power and Prejudice, social justice supervillains, never actually commit any crimes. They just go out in public and yell at people and try to make them feel bad.
• Political Correctness Is Evil: The comic takes numerous potshots at the perpetually offended social justice warriors that Tumblr has become known for.
  • A walking Tumblr SJW stereotype plays a literal victim card here. She later shows up as the superhero Princess Badass, still playing the victim by using VapoRub to make herself cry, and screaming "rape" after it's clear Tekmage isn't going to hold back when fighting a woman, which ends up attracting a literal white knight to the scene.
  • The "Bullshit Tumblr/SJW Words Jar" mentioned below.
  • Naga becomes a feminist icon by taking Mein Kampf and just replacing all mentions of Jews with men and the patriarchy, which immediately becomes a huge success and makes her tons of money, with women's studies courses adding it to their syllabuses as early as next semester. Then she fakes death threats against herself to weasel out of having to give a lecture about the book, which only makes her even more money from all the sympathy donations she gets.
    Naga: Being a professional internet victim is awesome!
  • Related to the above example, Naga plans to "complete the circle" by taking the SCUM Manifesto and replacing all mentions of men with black people and Latinos, then selling it to white supremacists.
• Politically Correct Villain: Power and Prejudice are this. Craig finds that even more annoying than the normal kind of villain.
• Rape as Drama: Discussed here.
• Samus Is a Girl: Tekmage uses a voice changer to sound male and disguise her identity.
• Sarcastic Confession: Quite knowingly used here. And the Alt Text is related to a another trope...
• Scenery Censor: The original filler comics from Errant Story used this and lampshaded it. Later strips avert it.
• Sex for Services: May, the zombie "doctor" that Fran and Nikki take Naga to, hits on both Fran and Nikki, offering to accept sex as payment for her medical services.
• Shout-Out:
  • In strip #251, Nikki learns it's actually possible for vampires to have sex. In the next strip, it's clarified that it runs on Vampire: The Masquerade rules, with vampires needing to expend stored blood to... "lubricate" the necessary parts, and the whole thing is less than satisfactory for vampires. Although Nikki is so sexually pent up that she really, really doesn't care. Overlaps with at least a mild invocation of Take That!, as the Alt Text has the author note how stupid White Wolf's prudishness about the matter was considering they put a Vagina Dentata color picture on the back cover of their Tzimisce clanbook.
  • Reaching, but, in strip #236, the backstory for Craig's sister Rebecca whose pet Blob Monster turned out to be a shapeshifting pervert could be seen as a combination of this and Take That! to Ranma ½, given the similarity between Rebecca's "pet" and Ranma 1/2's P-chan gag.^note A secondary character in Ranma 1/2 named Ryoga Hibiki has a Forced Transformation curse that turns him into a small black pig. The female protagonist, Akane Tendo, has adopted this pig as her pet, naming it "P-chan". Being completely oblivious to P-chan's real nature, she routinely does all manner of intimate things with him, including letting him sleep in her bed. Whilst Ryoga is canonically established as too shy to take full perverted advantage of the situation, it's easier to see the darker interpretations.
  • Another shout-out/Take That! overlap in this comic, which references the infamously contentious finale of Game of Thrones.
  • One two-strip comic is an homage to Goblin Slayer and the negative publicity around it.
  • As part of their gaming group, the protagonists have run games of Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and ''Call of Cthulhu]], amongst others.
• Sleep Paralysis Creature: Fran is tormented by one until she manages to get rid of it.
• Squick: invokedFran's reaction when she discovers that Naga brought home a meal that she met on a vore fetish website in strip #284.
  Naga: Did you remember to stop at Costco for the bucket of butter and the paintbrush?
  Fran: ... I think my vagina and stomach are having a race to see which can eject themselves from my body and flee in horror the quickest.
• Suddenly Ethnicity: In a version that breaks the fourth wall, the first strip that was in color had Naga being surprised by her own Ambiguously Brown skin color.
  Naga: I suddenly have opinions about white privilege and cultural appropriation.
• Swear Jar: Fran and Naga have a "Bullshit Tumblr/SJW Words Jar", seen being used in this strip.
• Too Kinky to Torture: A variation. "A certain mayor" turns out to be Too Kinky To Extort.
• Unsound Effect: John Johnson, the muscle wizard, attacks with a Ka-Fist!
• Unwanted Rescue: Parodied. When the Damsel in Distress in one of Fran's roleplaying sessions starts insulting their efforts to rescue her, the players promptly put her back in her cell, on the principle that she can rescue her own damn self if she's so sure she can do a better job of it.
• Urban Fantasy: Major characters include a Wizard, a Naga, a Vampire, an Elf, a Superhero, and a group of alien geeks.
• Vampires Are Rich: Averted with Jian, who never developed the knack for making successful long-term investments.
• Villain Has a Point: On at least two occasions, Falchion has found Tekmage's goals so sympathetic that he didn't really want to stop him. On one of them, he actually did take a dive and let Tekmage succeed.
• Villain Protagonist: Naga, hands down. All of the other main characters have at least some shallow signs of Hidden Depths to keep from being entirely evil. Naga is a cannibalistic^note in both the "eats other sapient beings" sense and in the "eats her own kind" sense impulsive murderous psychopath^note she ate her own unhatched egg and later reminisces about it happily, even anthropomorphizing it by giving it a name and a gender at her worst, and a shallow, selfish, impulsive, irresponsible Jerkass troll at her best. There's a reason why she's The Friend Nobody Likes.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Tekmage's actual ideology seem to be nothing more sinister than mainstream American liberalism. It's just that she pursues it by means of killer satellites and mind control rays...
  • Power and Prejudice ("together we are Bigotry!") parodies this trope. In theory, their schtick is to give the privileged majority a taste of the suffering endured by marginalised groups. However, since they don't have any powers or fighting skills whatsoever, their extremism is limited to going out on the streets and yelling mean slogans at people.
• World of Jerkass: It kind of goes without saying for a Michael Poe comic. Even by his standards, the cast are absolutely monstrous, including an unrepentant Literal Man Eater Naga, a half-heartedly reluctant vampire, a somewhat narcissistic Dark Magical Girl who is obsessed with blowing things up, a narcissistic and shallow superhero, and a liberal supervillain with empathy problems. The author has actually used Alt Text at several points in the comic's run to remind readers that the cast are supposed to be terrible people who shouldn't be respected, believed or emulated.

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