YMMV / Achewood

• Angst Dissonance: While clinical depression is a serious condition, those who don't have it or haven't experienced it first hand can sometimes find Roast Beef tiresome. He has a loving wife who accepts all his faults and dedicated friends. He's depressed because that's what the disease does, regardless of circumstances — but often he has nothing to legitimately be depressed about.
  • Roast Beef has probably one of the most accurate portrayals of depression in entertainment, right down to little symptoms that don't get discussed much. So his character can be incredibly cathartic to those who have had depression, but a bit frustrating for those who haven't.
• Arc Fatigue: When combined with Schedule Slip, it's a nasty combination. Some arcs wouldn't be so bad if they didn't go two weeks between updates.
• Archive Binge, Archive Panic: It's been running a long time, and the fact that each strip tends to be an extremely long one with multiple jokes, scenes and panels doesn't help matters. It probably takes twice as long to get through as a similarly long-running strip. While the comic began receiving weekly updates again in 2016, that only lasted a year, and the strip has been dormant enough to give a reader enough time to catch up in case he ever starts updating again.
• Catharsis Factor: Onstad has received a great deal of fanmail regarding the portrayal of Roast Beef's depression for this reason.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Chochachos, for members of the semi-official Achewood Facebook group.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The various Take Thats toward Jared Fogle in the early Subway Wars arc take on a somewhat harsher tone after the spokesman was arrested for having sex with minors.
• Heartwarming Moments: "Is he really that much of my dogg?"
• Ho Yay: To commemorate Roast Beef's then-newly founded relationship with Molly, Ray gives him a book on sexual techniques. And then oddly gives Roast Beef a tight hug that makes him visibly uncomfortable. Especially when Ray informs him the tight hug is one of said sexual techniques.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • HERE COMES A SPECIAL BOY!
  • Roast Beef's I'M THE GUY WHO SUCKS/PLUS I GOT DEPRESSION shirt
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Nice Pete brings Phillipe to his home.
  • Zell and Cory. Survivors of a fire and sufferers of fourth degree burns ("no dude uh with fourth-degree burns you're considered unlucky if you live")... all over their bodies. You only see them in silhouette, but Cory's ruined face is... deeply disturbing. Zell's cryptic reference to "collecting" before wheeling away into the darkness also makes one wonder what on earth they could be collecting...
  • Speaking of creepy duos, Trouble Man and No No. "All souls did burn" indeed.
  • The "hull" Ray lends to Roast Beef in this strip is really creepy.
  • Cartilage Head looks like something out of a Tim Burton nightmare.
  • The high school storyline. Nice Pete was already incredibly creepy, but... yeesh.
  • The occasional flashbacks to Roast Beef's childhood are a mixture of this and Tear Jerker. Of special note are the strip where Beef's mom shoots his dad to death and a panel showing a baby Beef wearing a Wonderbread bag fastened with an extension cord.
• Sacred Cow: The comic, for relatively obvious reasons, but also, oddly enough, Onstad himself within the fandom. In spite of him being of... somewhat questionable trustworthiness, anyone bringing this up ^note particularly the incident where he took thousands of dollars in pre-orders for a second cookbook, and then never made the damn thing and refuses to acknowledge that it ever happened will get immediately and violently shouted down.
• Tear Jerker: The "what is the saddest thing" strips are clearly trying to get this reaction, and they certainly do from Philippe. Special mention goes to the arc where Phillipe got some of Ray's Born Lucky qualities and made several million dollars as a result. Teodor used some of the money to send him back to his mother, only to find that his old home has changed so much that its not really home to him any more. This eventually ends with Phillipe being visited by the spirit of his father:
  "Home, she is . . . la grande illusion. She a time, no a place, an' you time here was over. Pack you bag an' go back to thees life you already 'ave. You maman she will cry . . . but that is what a maman mus' do. Life ees cruel . . . but at least eet is life, at least for a while."
  • At the time, because he (and the entire strip) was so underdeveloped, Roast Beef's reasons flying into space wasn't that sad. But, rereading it now... Seeing Beef say goodbye in that last panel tugs the heartstrings something fierce. His reply to Pat asking if he would be returning the spaceship soon was also quite melancholy.
  • If you've ever been depressed, Roast Beef's storylines in general will probably hit hard.
  • The "obituaries" section of this paper.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: A cartoon strip about talking animals ... who are sometimes abusive alcoholics. Yay!
• The Woobie: Roast Beef. May be the entire point of his existence.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Beef also qualifies as this from time to time.
  • 'Jerkass' is a bit of an understatement, but Nice Pete is a prime example of a woobie that was pushed just a little too far and snapped.

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