Elf Only Inn



""You idiots! This isn't imaginary play time! This is ROLEPLAYING! This is Serious Business!""

- Lord Elf

Elf Only Inn is a Web Comic by Josh Sortelli, available here.

The comic follows the events in a roleplaying chatroom, which often deviate from the intended roleplaying, and parodies some personality types one's likely to find online, from the uptight moderator to the annoying and oblivious newbie. Later on, the characters move to a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, which slightly changes the previous character dynamics - for example, some actions can no longer simply be ignored as they were in the text-based chatroom.

"Hah! The mods? The mods have abandoned us! Where were the mods when the demon burned down the forest? Where were the mods when the Dorum brothers sacked their own city? The mods don't care. Do the mods ever even answer when you call them?"
 * Aborted Arc: The comic was about to start a D&D game, went on hiatus for over two years, and the setting suddenly shifted from a chat room to an MMORPG.
 * Almighty Janitor: Lord Woot, the Eternal Sweeper.
 * Art Shift: Eventually the author stopped using variations on the standard avatar images, and started drawing new strips completely from scratch.
 * Brainless Beauty: Lady.
 * Breast Plate: Parodied with elvish swimwear early on, then later played straight after the Genre Shift.
 * Butt Monkey: Ben more than anyone.
 * Clingy Jealous Girl: Megan.
 * Cool and Unusual Punishment: Megan and Lady submit Duke and Woot to
 * Crossover: With Penny Arcade; Megan went on a date with the Fruit Fucker.
 * Cross Player: . First revealed in said crossover, interestingly enough, though little attention was drawn to it.
 * Though even before that, at one point the character gets jostled and causes part of their costume to slip. The art lends itself towards showing their real gender briefly.
 * Creator Breakdown: One of the last things mentioned by the author was that he had a huge fight with his wife when he said he was going to do the comic again. After the comic stopped again and he dropped out of touch, whenever he does show up fans avoid bringing it or the comic up.
 * Cut Short: It seemed to have ended a few times, one of the latest times to remake itself to change the setting. It has now not since been updated since 2008, in the midst of a storyline dealing with multiple character interactions, including Duke and his father.
 * Demon Lords and Archdevils: Lord of Dorkness.
 * The Ditz: Goku666 and Lady.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?? There's plenty in the chatroom stuff, and then of course there's Barbivine railing against the Mods:

"Fan: Before the rude and the ungrateful chime in, may I simply pass on the desires of a longtime fan? An ending. Just let us know where they went from there. NONE of the characters were happy, and most of them deserved to be. Yeah.. they aren't real people, but they made me, and many others, happy for a while. Could you do your fans a favor and lay them to ease, if not rest? Sortelli: Well... April and Percey never get together. Duke and Megan do, but only after a lot of nonsense and Gothgrrl getting in the middle. Duke and his dad come to an understanding. Woot and Barbi have nasty sex. That's about as far as things got in my head."
 * Dumb Muscle: Duke Commando.
 * Fan Service: A rare male example. Much rejoicing.
 * Flanderization
 * Heroes Want Redheads: When the guys go for Lady or Lilith.
 * Griefer
 * Handsome Lech: Duke.
 * Les Yay: Mainly for humor.
 * Open Roleplaying Decay
 * Phrase Catcher: "Go away, Ben!"
 * Red Eyes, Take Warning: Lilith.
 * Schedule Slip
 * Series Hiatus: There's been a couple at least, one of them leading to the MMORPG setting.
 * The latest, unannounced one has been going on for over three years.
 * A recent journal entry of his has stated that he does not intend to start up the comic again any time soon, if ever.
 * Shout-Out
 * "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Lord Elf acts like this a lot.
 * Stripperiffic: Different characters at different points.
 * Soapbox Sadie: Megan, though this usually doesn't turn out well for her.
 * Strawman Political:
 * Megan can come across as a Straw Liberal at times. Her friend King Herman is also liberal, but more down-to-earth.
 * Woot uses one to confuse people by claiming he's the victim of Republican propaganda.
 * The Roleplayer: Lord Elf in a nutshell. He routinely criticizes the others for not being elves or properly roleplaying their characters, tries to enforce roleplaying (with threats of banning) and routinely sets up odd scenarios, usually for the purpose of cybering with M'Lady. After the genre change, he ignores most of the game in favor of roleplaying as an innkeeper, and, when killed, refuses to talk to people until properly rezzed. He also calls Lilith out (and congratulates her) on the same thing after she deliberately switches to a badly battered avatar after taking a beating (since hitpoint damage by default doesn't affect your appearance).
 * Throw the Dog a Bone: Twice. slave (lack of capitalization intentional), one of the annoying vampire fanboys, gets to think he beat Lord of Dorkness by dressing up like Tuxedo Mask and throwing a rose at him. Later, Lord Elf actually ends up marginally useful during the "Necromrun.icon" arc.
 * Unresolved Sexual Tension: Throughout the entire series it is made very clear that Duke and Megan have a thing for each other, though nothing ever comes of it.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Literally, with sweet_grrl.
 * Winged Humanoid: Lilith, sometimes.
 * Word of God: According to some back-and-forth on the author's Livejournal account:

Tropes before the Genre Shift:

 * And Then What?: Pointed out to Lord of Dorkness by Lady, of all people.
 * Animesque: When the chatroom gets the sponsoring of foreign company, the avatars all change to this style, with the exception of Goku666 and Hambonetaru-Chan (who already fit).
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: One comic references the shrink in strip size, along with the Cut and Paste Comic style.
 * Catch Phrase: "It hurts and stings!" and variations.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Dennis Kucinich.
 * Cut and Paste Comic: At first, but it grows out of it.
 * Dating Sim: Parodied.
 * Demoted to Extra: By the time the comic stopped being cut and paste, Lord Elf had all but vanished from his own chat board for the longest time.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?
 * Emo Teen: Gothboi, Gothgrrl, and Slave.
 * Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Invoked when comparing the conflict between elves and dark elves to racism.
 * Fantastic Racism: Although the titular inn is meant to be only for elves, this is the most often broken rule - human characters often drop by, although the Vulcan Nimoy goes around unidentified for quite some time.
 * Hell, of all the characters in the entire comic, there are only three-and-a-half elves, one of them being a half elf.
 * Fur and Loathing: Megan attacks Herman for this when he dresses up as Santa.
 * God Modders: Goku666 somewhat, but especially Lord of Dorkness.
 * Gratuitous Japanese: For humor in a few strips.
 * Highly-Visible Ninja
 * Horny Devils: Lord of Dorkness after his "epiphany" regarding the purpose of roleplay. Lilith, on the other hand, is an outright succubus.
 * Hypocritical Humor: Lord Elf has a long list of reasons to ban people, but frequently breaks them himself (no out-of-character chat, for instance).
 * Just Ignore It: How Lord of Dorkness' chatroom antics are dealt with. Happens to Goku666 at times, too.
 * Knife Nut: sweet_grrl
 * Magick
 * Naughty Tentacles: Lord Woot is a fan of this, plus his avatar has tentacles.
 * Official Couple: The closest thing to a official couple the comic ever had was Megan and Woot. Though once he visited her offline and saw she wasn't exactly a nubile elven damsel, they broke up.
 * Note that Woot says this in response to Megan being the first to shout "He is nothing like his character!" They do continue to meet offline several times after that, it's implied their personalities meant they made decent friends but clashed when trying to be romantic.
 * Only Six Faces: Parodied early on (in a way) with Goku666, who only has one face.
 * Otaku: Lord Wootsayediditagyn goes beyond Fan Boy to this with his creepy obsession with Britney Spears.
 * Our Elves Are Better: Aside from Lord Elf and Megan Ayrwyn, Lady is a star elf (half). Then there's Geoph, who's a dark elf (though everyone treats him like he's Black).
 * Our Vampires Are Different: Lady is a vampyre (half). There's also the Vampire Chat.
 * Paper-Thin Disguise: Lord Elf as the Blue Wizard of Forestdale, sort of.
 * Purple Prose: Gothboi does this once.
 * Quote Swear Unquote: "Live long, and prosper, bitch," from Star Trek.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Herman plays one.
 * Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Lord of Dorkness quits the chat a lot early on.
 * Stealth Parody: The others can't tell if Goku666 is this or the real thing, sometimes.
 * Stocking Filler: Lady.
 * Straw Hypocrite: Lord Elf's stint as Reverend Strawman . Megan sometimes come off as this, as well.
 * Take That: There's jabs at a number of things.
 * One could argue that the primary Take That jab is the existence of the webcomic itself (pre-genre shift, at least), mocking roleplaying chatrooms at large. In particular, the comic takes a shot at Illusionary Minds Chat, a chat site dedicated to roleplaying. Sortelli used to host a room on this site and various issues with the site's management led him to create a website called "We hate IMC," (now defunct and 404) summing up his issues with the site's administrators. Many of the early gags used in Elf Only Inn first made their appearance on this website.
 * The above-mentioned Reverend Strawman was a pretty blatant Take That at Preacher (Comic Book), being a holy man who claims to be in search of God to "grab him by the balls" and demand to know why he hasn't fixed the world and made everything perfect.
 * Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Female Eternal Sweepers.
 * The Faceless: Sys Op and users with no clearly defined avatar appear as blocky, featureless dummies. The various NPCs Lord of Dorkness victimize does as well, although they only exist in his imagination since everyone real ignores him.
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting: Lilith can do this.
 * Whip It Good: Lilith.
 * Yandere: Megan has shades of this.
 * You Are a Credit to Your Race: Nimoy tells Geoff he's very well spoken for a dark elf. Geoff does not approve, less for the insult and more for getting fed up with the whole race issue.

Tropes after the Genre Shift:

 * Artifact Title: With the MMORPG plot shift, the action no longer took place in the titular Inn chatroom.
 * Lord Elf does spend most of his time in an inn he calls the Elf Only Inn... but it's just an NPC building that he has no real power over or claim to.
 * Catgirl: Lady has cat ears on her character model.
 * Cthulhu Mythos: Parodied, with an added Shout-Out to The King in Yellow.
 * Double Entendre: One-Eyed Willy, Harry Ars. Lampshaded in the latter case.
 * Dummied Out: The Nexromrun.icon allows access to stuff like this.
 * The Heart: April.
 * Jerkass: Barbivine Thunderjugs. (And Lord Elf, same as always.)
 * The Load: Lord Elf is about as useless as ever--even more so now that he has no mod powers. He's only level 2, because he never does anything beyond sitting around in his inn, roleplaying being an innkeeper.
 * MacGuffin: The Nexromrun.icon.
 * Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game: Marauders of Gaia, the setting of this part of the comic.
 * The Medic: Lady.
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same
 * Our Orcs Are Different: Kami
 * The Plan:
 * Player Versus Player