Waterworks is an Interactive Comic, created by LuFa as a MSPA Forum Adventure; apart from normal and animated panels, it also makes use of Flash animations accompanied by music, Homestuck-style.
It follows the adventures of Connie Cohen, a "concerned citizen" who arrives at the local waterworks to investigate the mysterious lack of water in her household. As it turns out, the facility has been taken over by a gang of thugs who apparently wish to steal the water for reasons unknown, and it is up to Connie to stop them. And, of course, then it turns out that there is far more at stake than that...
Combat and action abound throughout.
It can be read here
, and the current forum thread is here since the original forum threads lead to 404 pages.
This comic displays the following tropes:
- All There in the Manual: Information not revealed in the comic is posted on the author's blog, along with various extras.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The thugs are blue. Well, Slick is white, and only his suit is blue.Connie: So, why are you guys all blue?Slick: THAT'S RACIST
- Battle in the Center of the Mind:
- Connie and her Id wage war against an alien hivemind threatening to consume her.
- Later on, Connie and Laze's Egos battle in the center of the Hive Mind.
- Berserk Button: Connie goes for an off-screen Extreme Mêlée Revenge after being splashed with what she thinks could be toilet water.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Everyone in Slick/Rheo Wasser's underground civillization get four of these, on the arms and legs, at birth and are supposed to care for them until the end of their life.
- Bold Inflation: Pretty much every other word is bolded! Only in the original forum thread though; the mirror eschews all of this boldage.
- Chandler's Law: The plot stalls... suddenly, forklift mecha crashing through the door! Followed by Tubs..
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The factory employees are referred to simply by their job titles. Connie herself is just a "concerned citizen" and doesn't get named until a few hundred pages in.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Tubbs throwing severed heads at Juliet, right as she readies grenades.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Connie gets angry rather easily... usually with destructive results; as it turns out, this is pretty much the main reason she has barely any friends, let alone a boyfriend.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: The mood ring, where each specific mood is a separate inventory slot that can only be accessed when Connie is in that mood. A source of much frustration.
- Iconic Item: The subjects wearing special suits each has their own unique harpoon. Slick's is a pair of blades attached to a spinning pivot while Surge's is a Grappling Gun.
- In Spite of a Nail: In an attempt to prevent her date with LL from going wrong like it did the first time, Connie convinces him to go to the Alpha Hall instead of the Skylight, which is where the Mist look-alike crashed their date. Unfortunately, she shows up at the Alpha Hall and manages to lure LL away anyways, much to Connie's frustration.
- Literally Shattered Lives: In the flashback, José freezes Pvt. Chambers and Caddie with a snowglobe, and shatters the former with the butt of his gun.
- Made of Iron:
- How Connie manages to survive through everything she does boggles the mind.
- Tubs is unfazed after being suplexed by the forklift mecha and keeps going after a direct hit from Endian.
- Must Make Amends: Connie needs to fix the situation once she destroys the fish whose smell was the only thing keeping the workers safe from Tubs.
- Portal Pool: The Spatial Transport ability of Slick's suit allows Slick to use any puddle as a portal to any other puddle. Spatial Transport II is this for any body of water.
- Shout-Out:
- Urist McWorkman is one walking Dwarf Fortress reference.
- Also, there's the aforementioned "Hitmontop" worker. In addition to spinning around on his head, he attempts to use triple-kick on Slick. Later, Slick is told to "mash the B button" to stop one of the goo creatures from evolving.
- The sisters Philia and Phobia are two overall & cap wearing plumber siblings, one red and one green. There's also one to Super Mario Sunshine when Connie asks José if he's going to use his pack to fly around collecting blue coins.
- This panel is a reference to Prequel
- Johnny from the interlude looks like Johnny Bravo especially when you consider his position in the team's Theme Naming.
- Charlie's pumpkin is a reference to the Running Gag from MS Paint Adventures.
- Starter Villain: Tubs, Flush, and Jose are the primary threats for the first part of the comic, but after the story moves to the basement and beyond, they haven't made an appearance in the present since and more pressing and wide-reaching problems (namely the goo) have to be dealt with, though they did later get a flashback interlude of their own.
- Super-Strength: Tubs seems to border on this, at least. Wielding a stone pillar like a normal weapon and lifting the entire Rifle Tower into his bag is no normal feat.
- Ultraterrestrials: Slick/Rheo's civilization.
- Theme Naming:
- Slick, Flush, Tubs, and José (Hose) all have a plumbing theme.
- Philia and Phobia, the heavy plumber sisters.
- Slick, Mist, Typhoon, Surge, Syphon and Mariner are water-related.
- The green antagonists in the interlude are based on the NATO phonetic alphabet.
- Wham Episode:
- Derelix and the revelation that the black goo is some sort of organism. There's also the easter egg during the dance sequence where it turns out that Connie has been infected by the goo SO BADLY that her skin's turned completely black.
- Connie is told by her Superego that she died and didn't wake up from her coma. The goo took over her body, proliferated and ate up the entire planet.
- Who Forgot The Lights?: A rare non-video game example. Whenever there's something happening in the underground, you really should turn your monitor's brightness up to the max if you want to be able to tell what's going on.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Connie is pretty germ-phobic, specifically in relation to toilets, and will freak out at the drop of a hat about them.
