YMMV / Vegan Artbook

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Being a vegan doesn't automatically make you a good person. Even if you have a point, being a huge self-righteous murderous asshole (or really just a huge asshole) about it will undermine whatever point, or perceived moral high ground you had.
  • It is important to do proper research when convincing people of your points, especially if someone actually wants to go vegan but is given misinformation about it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Instead of the egotistical, selfish bully he's supposed to be portrayed as, a lot of detractors see Shawn as a decent guy who is unfairly demonized by his sisters and their friends for being a meat eater. He has gotten many sympathetic interpretations like suffering from low self-esteem, being jaded by how many of his friends cut ties with him after they turned vegan, being bisexual, or being a former Bully Hunter. The other omnivores are often portrayed by detractors in this way as well. In this strip, does he really believe plants might be sentient? Or (seeing as he was willing to trim his hedge, pull out flowers, etc.) was he just trolling the woman?
  • In contrast with her brother, Brie/Plausibell is often looked at as a Holier Than Thou Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, instead of the loving, patient animal protector she is shilled as. A lot of non-extreme vegans find a lot of nastier aspects to her character that the narrative doesn't see as an issue like her hatred and intolerance for omnivores. The other vegans, being similar, sometimes worse than Brie, are also interpreted as self-righteous jerks by detractors.
• Anvilicious: To the extreme. The webcomic can be pretty unbearably heavy-handed and close-minded about its message that veganism is the healthiest and best way to live, to the point of claiming omnivores are the scum of the Earth and condoning vegans killing them within the comics.
• Angst Dissonance: Omnivore and non-extreme vegan readers tend to be apathetic to the vegan protagonists' concerns over animals used in the food industry, due to how overdramatic they can be and the fact that they compare the situations to the worst atrocities in human history -like the Holocaust and American slavery.
• Ass Pull: Shawn murders a bunch of pets and a mentally disabled girl in a wheelchair to prove he's "consistent" at killing other, 'lesser' beings, as Shawn has been repeatedly portrayed as a spineless wimp who is all bark and no bite.
• Bile Fascination: So biased and myopic that anyone who isn't as much of a fundamentalist as Yerdian is likely only reading it for this.
• Catharsis Factor: The way the omnivore characters are often treated is this for any vegan that shares Yerdian's views.
• Creator's Pet: Brie/Plausibell is never allowed to be wrong about anything and always wins when she and Shawn debate even when he has a much better argument.
• Creator Worship: Despite how reviled the series is, Yerdian actually has fans, who praise her work and are equally as extreme.
• Designated Hero: All the "heroic" vegans see nothing wrong with using physical violence against those who disagree with them. Especially Raziel who has killed several "carnists" after they refused to stop eating/farming animals.
• Designated Monkey: Shawn. Even though he's made out to be a self-centered Jerkass, who hates vegans. Non-vegans and moderate vegan readers tend to find his treatment to be disproportionate, especially since in many strips he's usually getting punished just for having the opposite opinion of everyone else and being a straw carnist.
• Designated Villain: Shawn, Cuntons, Diva, Chanel, Bindiya, Bongo, and anyone who commits the mortal sin (in the eyes of the author anyway) of not being a vegan.
  • Especially obvious in the case of Cuntons...who supposedly hates vegans and stalks and harasses Brie, despite the comic never offering any proof of this being the case (and despite her actually being something less of a Chew Toy in her interactions with the rest of the cast than Shawn).
• Designated Evil: The comic hits the reader over the head with the notion that eating meat is evil, even when it's obvious that it's not.
• Don't Shoot the Message:
  • Non-vegan readers who read this series would say that the series does bring up important environmental issues, but it's bogged down by propaganda that plagues it with half-truths, misinformation, and obvious biases that favor vegan solutions.
  • It's perhaps no surprise that less radical vegans often point out how bad the whole comic makes the movement look.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Shawn among critics, due to not actually being all that bad of a guy and his frequent Chew Toy status making him a sympathetic character. Just look at all of the sympathetic theories about him! Diva and Bindiya also follow this trope
  • For the vegan audience, Sterk is absolutely adored as a fan favorite, even though he's violent (to the point murderous) towards anyone who disagrees with him, specifically non-vegans, and even Yerdian admits he is a bad guy who looks for excuses to kill. Granted, much of the love is because he advocates absolute genocide of non-vegans - which is rather telling of what kind of people these fans are.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sterk is this for Yerdian's fanbase, who apparently love his cruel actions against the non-vegan characters and his good looks. He was so popular that after being out of the comics for so long, he was brought back by a fan vote held by Yerdian.
• Epileptic Trees: Among the hatedom, there's a theory that Shawn's murder of a disabled kid was actually a Frame-Up committed by Sterk - which would be in character for the latter.
• Fan Nickname: The glasses-wearing omnivore is usually referred to as "Weeb" since in-story she isn't given a name.
• Glurge: The comic's super colorful and cutesy style often contrasts with what's actually happening or being said.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Comics like this tend to blame the strawmen for provoking animal rampages by eating meat. In the PlayStation Vita game, Idol Death Game TV, a potential Death Live challenge for Shirase Tsubaka actually involves her eating steak (unknowingly) in front of a bull, only to be gored to death by it in retaliation. What makes it funnier is that Mr. D (one of Doripaku's assistants in the Death Live challenges) actually releases the bull onto her, which would not be out of place for the 'heroes' of this comic to do.
  • Shawn killing pets and a disabled child to show he is "consistent" about his narrative. Considering most of the time he is way above doing so, unlike some of the characters the audience is supposed to root for, he is actually inconsistent here.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • The omnivore characters' defense of meat and dairy is often treated by the vegans as supporting violence and oppression against animals, where anyone who doesn't agree with the comic's premise actually finds Shawn and others' stances grounded in reality.
  • The one time Shawn was portrayed as doing something legitimately evil (murdering someone) falls flat because Sterk did the same thing several times and was still portrayed as in the right, so what really makes Shawn any more "wrong" than Sterk?
  • In this comic, Dolly, while still an omnivore, tries not eating animal products for a week and feels extremely tired by the end of it. Turns out she's been eating nothing but instant noodles and the rice from her mom's cooking because these are the only vegan options she has. The reader is supposed to conclude that her lethargy is simply from not eating a proper vegan diet (Brie admonishes her with "No wonder you feel weak, silly!"), rather than consider the possibility that going vegan might not be good for her health with the options she has at the moment.
• Jerkass Woobie: Shawn. A total underdog surrounded by loons who sometimes physically abuse him. Plus his sisters obviously consider their veganism more important to them than him, and both his first girlfriend and crush distanced themselves from him when they became vegan. He also has a inferiority complex when it comes to himself and his sister, due to how successful she is in comparison with him. No wonder the guy lashes out.
• Karmic Overkill: Shawn gets his food stolen by vegans, gets scalding hot tea thrown into his face, is on the receiving end of a Groin Attack, and is constantly bullied verbally by his sisters and other vegans. All because he is an omnivore. The readers who don't share the author's extreme views tend to think that Shawn is treated way more harshly than he deserves (especially since he isn't even against veganism in general, he simply doesn't want to go vegan himself, while the vegans in the comic tend to think everyone who isn't one of them deserves all the bad karma in the world).
• Misaimed Fandom: The audience is supposed to hate the "carnists" and their trolling of the vegans, but most people side with the carnists due to the comic's promotion of fundamentalist veganism and how the vegans are so amazingly insufferable.
• Moe: All the vegans, attractive non-vegans, and farm animals look adorable due to the art style.
• Moral Event Horizon: Even if one ever saw Sterk as a sympathetic character, to begin with, he unequivocally crosses the line when he murders a dairy farmer's wife and kid in response to the farmer saying that he treats his cows like family. The narrative still chooses to portray him in a sympathetic manner.
  • If that wasn't enough, he's also stuffed several people into a meat grinder while they were still alive and fed them to Sophia Sae's fennec fox after they complained that her fox being fed a vegan diet was unhealthy for it. Not only is this portrayed as a good thing, a lot of the comments for the picture on DeviantArt were cheering him on.
    • He pushes the line further, when he extends his cruelty to pets in Pupa Vegan comic 568, where he cuts off the head of a cat to show the "consistency" of allowing people to eat animals. Noticeably in contrast with how Shawn did the same thing, Sterk didn't get as much condemnation for it.
  • In an attempt to portray how ("morally illogical") omnivore mentality is, Shawn for the first time does something truly evil by murdering a wheelchair bound person along with cats and dogs, just so he could prove to Azusa that he is "consistent" on the justification of killing sentient who are less intelligent. Keep in mind that up to this point, he's always been shown as all bark and no bite. The author has explicitly stated this chapter is not canon with the rest of the series, and is merely an example of the "cognitive dissonance" of omnivores.
  • Lilith and Raziel prove they can be as brutal as Sterk when it comes to lashing out at meat eaters when the former subjects a faceless "carnist" to a Fate Worse than Death (strapping him to a machine, removing his brain, and cutting off his legs), then leaving him to be eaten by lions, while the latter approves of her actions. Even Legua, who was previously shown to be willing to use physical violence to prove a point, is put off by their actions. However, like Sterk, they are still treated as sympathetic anti-heroines, instead of cold-blood murderers.
    • In Pupa Vegan Black 463, we see Raziel coldly kill someone for making a joke about "vegan" being another word for a bad hunter. And this is supposed to be played for dark laughs, even though Lulu is visibly disturbed. Like with Sterk, Yerdian's fans actually cheered for her.
• Nausea Fuel: Some comics portray omnivores as willing to eat or drink anything non-vegan no matter how gross, such as a raw egg still in its feces-covered shell, a questionable-looking soup, rotten carcasses, and unpasteurized milk from the udder.
• Nightmare Fuel: This series is filled to the brim with so much disturbing, violent, and bloody imagery that Yerdian has to put Content Warnings on her work.
  • Sterk is a brutal Serial Killer, who goes around slaughtering people◊ just for the sin of being non-vegan( despite the fact he's a nonvegan himself ). The worst part is that the target vegan audience actually enjoys and approves of Sterk slaughtering omnivores!
  • The 30 page barn storyline features drawn and real life photos of animals that were burned during or after the fire. Even if you don't believe in the (questionable) narrative about this being insurance fraud, it still is a gruesome fate for these animals and the descriptions of the animals wailing in pain don't help at all.
• More Popular Spin-Off: While the comic has noted infamy, it's actually based on a previous older comic that she did called Devil Of Justice/Legua, which is where her characters originate. When she decided to do the vegan comics she reused them for the series, while still trying to work on releasing her book.
• Older than You Think: Even though Yerdian's characters are more known in Vegan Artbook, they actually originally appeared in Yerdian's first comic and novel series: The Devil Of Justice (formerly Legua).
• Rooting for the Empire: Thanks to the good guys being so insufferable and quite often really not that good at all, the majority of people who've read this webcomic would rather root for the "carnists". Not to mention Shawn, Diva, Chanel, and Cuntons are such underdogs it would be majorly cathartic to see them actually win once or twice.
• The Scrappy: Sterk is the worst of all the main cast since he goes one step further and kills those who don't agree with him. It's rather telling who exactly the target audience is that they regard him as an Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Raziel is a very close second. She might actually be worse, while Sterk is supposed to be a psychopath who wants an excuse to murder, Raziel is an actual fundamentalist vegan and her attitude isn't handwaved, unlike Sterk's. At least she has a smaller body count.
• Seasonal Rot: It was never stellar, to begin with, but as the criticism wore on her, Yerdian stopped caring about trying to tell a story and more about pissing on her detractors. Many comics are rehashes of earlier ones with different characters, the art has gotten cheaper, the characters have gotten nastier and more violent, and the comic has slowly but surely dropped any pretense of being educational and devolved into a childish revenge fantasy.
• Strawman Has a Point: The comic has so many instances of strawmen making valid points that it warrants its own separate page.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Shawn, Cuntons, Chanel, Diva, and the rest of the comic's Rogues Gallery who are often just farmers and other normal people trying to make a living. The audience is supposed to agree with the vegans that they are monsters for refusing to give up eating meat and arguing against their pro-vegan statements, but the carnists getting frequent unfair treatment just for disagreeing with the vegans instead makes the more sensible readers feel sorry for them.
  • Add to that the fact that Shawn is apparently allergic to at least one vegan staple and Diva has trouble processing nonheme iron, both of which are very real health conditions that would hamper one's ability to safely be vegan. (Yerdian, predictably, frames both as lazy excuses that are invalidated by the existence of living, healthy vegans.)
  • Although Uncle Pimples is used to invoke animal farming as being as bad as sexual exploitation and slavery, it's not hard for non-fundamentalist vegan readers to feel sorry for the guy when Sterk ruthlessly kills his whole family to make a horrifying stance against slaughtering animals for consumption.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The main vegans are intended to be seen as unfairly oppressed by "carnists", but instead come off as insufferably self-righteous and narrow-minded due to holding animal life above human life and trying to force their beliefs and lifestyle onto others. This especially goes for Sterk (who is apathetic at best and casually murderous at worst) and Raziel (a Misanthrope Supreme who hates even the other vegans for being too "peaceful" for her liking). It doesn't help that, despite the comic portraying them as all loving heroes, the Vegans don't really come off as people who are generally interested in animal welfare.^note Thanks to the comic's format, the Vegans are rarely ever shown to actually help animals, and when they do (typically offscreen) it's exclusively toward animals that are farmed for food. They seem far more like people who want an avenue to feel morally superior to others, and that animal welfare is just a happy byproduct.
  • Sterk, like the vegans, is supposed to be more sympathetic than he is, and his murders of omnivores are supposed to be deserved. For most readers, they are not, and they see Sterk as scum.
• Unpopular Popular Character: While Shawn is treated like the Chew Toy in-universe by the others for being an omnivore, non-vegan fans see him as an underdog who has to deal with self-righteous vegans who are intolerant of him and other people who eat animal products.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Yerdian had to declare that Azusa was male, when he was introduced.
• Wangst: It's very difficult to take Brie/Plausibell and the other vegans' distress over the deaths of animals from the food industry seriously when they unironically compare farming to atrocities like the Holocaust and the transatlantic slave trade and expect readers to agree they're equally bad (if not worse). Even if you agree that farming animals for food is wrong, to try and equate it with some of the greatest atrocities in human history is not only hyperbolic but reductive.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: At first, it looks like a cute Animesque series aimed at young children. However, it features tons of grisly panels of animals being stabbed, profanity, sexual references, occasional violence from the main characters, mentions of the Holocaust and Slavery, and more. Yerdian actually labels her books depending on what kind of content it has.