Penny and Aggie/Recap/Stickjocks

"Are you starting to see a performance-based injury pattern here?"

This brief and seemingly light, but foreshadowing arc sees Aggie, Lisa and Brandi join the Belleville High girls' lacrosse team and face off against an intimidating, hockey-mask wearing team from a rival school. Aggie, hoping to avoid contact due to her philosophy of non-violence, plays goalie; however, her game-winning save involves the ball hitting her mask at close range. As Aggie nurses her bruise after the game, the concerned and angry Penny, ignoring Aggie's claim that she was off-balance, chews her out for taking her pacifism too far. Lisa says Penny has a point in that Aggie could stand to be more aggressive on the field, and Brandi (still guilty over the Xena incident) adds that it keeps people "from explodin'." There follows a close-up, captioned "Two weeks later," of a bloodied lacrosse stick, and a panel of a young Alanis Morissette asking her mother what "irony" is.

Tropes

 * Actual Pacifist: Aggie. She states that one of the reasons she took up lacrosse is that it's "low contact." (In fact, while women's lacrosse is lower contact than men's field lacrosse, it hardly constitutes a low contact sport...as Aggie learns.)
 * Alternate Self: A version of Di Sturm from Fans, with a similarly aggressive attitude and Control Freak father, appears as one of Aggie's teammates. The major differences are that the Penny and Aggie version has braces and attends high school instead of having been homeschooled.
 * Anger Born of Worry: Penny's reaction when Aggie takes a blow to the face.
 * The Atoner: Brandi twice makes indirect reference to her assault of Xena, showing that she still feels guilty about it.
 * Foreshadowing: The final strip presages.
 * Granola Girl: Another reason Aggie gives for joining the lacrosse team is that she wishes to "feel close" to the sport's Native American originators. She is apparently unaware that, among other functions, lacrosse served traditional Native American societies as a form of combat training.
 * Gretzky Has the Ball: Although the Belleville High team is correctly portrayed with protective goggles and mouth guards, Aggie doesn't get a regulation, full goalie mask until the second-last strip, after readers had pointed out the error. Also, the opposing team's hockey masks, though indeed intimidating, are decidedly not regulation for women's lacrosse.
 * Shout Out: To Morissette's Signature Song "Isn't It Ironic." (Not an example of the trope by that name.)
 * Teachers Pet: Lisa, in her thoughts, characterizes assistant coach Tharqa as this, implying that she may have sucked up to the coach or Phys. Ed. teacher in order to get out of playing.