9 Chickweed Lane: Difference between revisions

* [[Beat Panel]]: [[Cloudcuckoolander|Thorax]] is prone to taking up beat panels, and once used [http://comics.com/9_chickweed_lane/2006-03-16/ a double beat panel] to great effect.

* [[Beautiful All Along]]: Who would've thought that the semi-feral Edda and complete nerd Amos would've turned out to be a gorgeous ballet dancer and a talented cellist?

** Seth, Edda's dance partner/roommate (''very'' muscular and tall) and his boyfriend (skinny and short).

* [[Biting the Hand Humor]]: Edda was basically hand-picked to model for a clothing line that gave her such a large advance salary that she bought Amos an antique cello, despite never modeling before or even considering it. Her response to this generosity is to compare the execs to demon-worshipers and models to air-headed sex toys; her mother sarcastically describes the clothes as "menswear" as no woman would ever wear such uncomfortable and revealing things on her own (except for the "leopard-spot undies, those are [hers]").

* [[Brutal Honesty]]: Roger and Seth didn't meet on the right foot, what with Seth thinking Roger's mother's "affair" was highly romantic and Roger {{spoiler|being in deep, deep denial about being gay, or at least really annoyed with Seth's insistence that he's in denial about being gay}}.

{{quote| '''Roger''': Edda tells me you're a wonderful, nurturing person who stands by his convictions and speaks from the heart. [[[Beat]]] So is it all those special qualities that excuses you for being arrogant?}}

* [[Cannot Spit It Out]]: Played straight when Edda can't tell Amos how his adoration of [http://www.hilaryhahn.com/ Hillary Hahn] makes her jealous.

* [[Catholic School Girls Rule]] / [[Magic Skirt]]: Subverted in that Edda's skirt went past her knees, although that didn't stop her from taking flying leaps.

* [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|D-Day Guided Amnesia]]: Why Bill was missing for ten years. While he's completely healthy physically, he's being annoyingly coy about his mental state.

* [[A Date With Rosie Palms|A Date With Randy Palms]]: Edda imagining [[Straight Gay|Seth's]] [[Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?|serial dating phase]]. Seth is less-than-amused that his past anguish is his roommate's (and now her mother's) [[Fetish]] fuel.

* [[Defrosting Ice Queen|Defrosting Ice King]]: Kiesel.

* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Edda's. [[Blond Guys Are Evil|He's blonde]], has a trophy wife, and is despised by Edda and Juliette. Kiesl left after being told that Bill is the better choice.

* [[The Ditz]]: Roger ([[Alternate Character Interpretation|unless]] [[Obfuscating Stupidity|he's trolling Seth]]). "We need to talk." A minute later: "So, what did you want to talk about?"

* [[Longest Pregnancy Ever]]: After two or three years the pregnant ex-nun has finally started going through labor. {{spoiler|Edda's going to be pregnant for the next decade, if she's really pregnant.}}

* [[Love Makes You Stupid]]: Gran's reason for not immediately informing her future husband that [[Feed the Mole|she'd been compromised]] was that the German officer that told her to her face that they knew what she was was that [[Evil Is Sexy|he was a good-looking morally ambiguous figure.]]

* [[Mama Bear]]: Edda is "the love of [Juliette's] life" and God have mercy on anyone who harms her. {{spoiler|When Juliette finds out that Edda thinks she's pregnant, she wants to either hustle Amos to a church to get married with a shotgun at his back or bury his corpse and salt the earth.}}

* [[Manipulative Bastard]] : O'Malley's superior officer, Colonel Yancey. It was revealed that he decided a long time ago that O'Malley and Edna had to get married no matter what the cost to themselves or their children simply to make himself feel better about being the incompetent buffoon who set everyone up to fail in the first place.

* [[No Bisexuals]]: Seth still insists that he's gay despite being very, ''very'' attracted to Fernanda. He claims he's actually in love with her skills as a dancer despite constantly complimenting her on her beauty {{spoiler|oh, and he sleeps with her.}}

** Not to mention bisexuality never coming up as a possibility with regard to {{spoiler|Roger.}}

* [[Nubile Savage]]: Juliette often fantasizes about being Panther Woman, Queen of the Jungle.

* [[Only Six Faces|Only One Voice]]: ''All'' the characters are [[Big Words|exceptionally verbose]]. It makes sense for Juliette to speak like this since she's a professor who routinely thrashes med students verbally [[Sadist Teacher|and academically]], but it never seemed as though Amos and Edda's Catholic school was quite that posh.

** They also look alike: Juliet's husband is ''Pibgorn''s Geoff with grey hair; Young Gran is a dead-ringer for Edda; there's three identical brunettes (Drucilla the succubus, Isabel the pianist, and Fernanda the ballerina) and at one point Edda is talking to Isabel (Portuguese/older/worldly/short curly hair) and Edda like Fernanda's (South American/younger/"innocent"-ish/long wavy hair) saucy protege.

* [[Shaggy Dog Story]]: As we know, the extended flashback was Gran's way of telling Juliette the story of how she met and fell in love with her biological father; when it concluded, Juliette was astonished by the realization that Gran wasn't talking about the war hero who raised her but the Nazi opera singer who Gran had slept with before marrying him.

* [[She's Got Legs]]: All the female characters have or had them.

{{quote| '''Truth''': Noun. That which most easily appeals to the fears, hopes, and prejudices of the hearer; in essence, a lie.}}

 

{{quote| '''Faith:''' Noun. The unknowable promoted to the irrefutable. [[Children Are Innocent|The child's comfort]] – [[Church Militant|the fanatic’s trigger.]]}}

 

 

{{quote| '''Science''': Noun. [[God Is Good|God open for questions.]]}}

 

{{quote| '''Holy''': Cosmetic Adjective. On earth, any hostile activity, such as a war or pogrom, with [[God Is Evil|celebrity endorsement from God.]]}}

* [[Sibling Yin-Yang]]: Juliette was a divorced mother of one while her brother Roger seems to be a [[Happily Married]] father of ''[[Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?|eleven]]''. {{spoiler|Juliette is also proud to be a literal love-child while Roger has issues with his mother's past; Juliette is a uninhibitedly passionate woman while Roger is a stereotypically conservative Catholic (and if Seth is right, a closeted one); Juliette is happily remarried while Roger just got divorced.}}

* [[Single Issue Psychosis]]: If we're to take the entire Kiesl arc at face value, Gran's crabby bitterness and general anger at the world can be traced directly to giving up her true love in order to keep a promise to another. Once said love returns to her five decades later, that bitterness near-instantly vanishes.

* [[The Vamp]]: Juliette and Isabel.

* [[Wall of Text]]: To the point where it almost looks like [http://i.imgur.com/F7JMD.jpg the word balloons want to stab the characters].

* [[White Void Room|White Void World]]: With the occasional gradient; where much of the action takes place. Brooke was kind enough to put in some effort when Juliette and Edda visit Kiesel's grave in Vienna. Has become a very dark grayscale world in newsprint since Brooke started using color, starting with a strip ''that takes place at night and shows two characters from the waist down''. Lately, pretty much all you can see is the characters' faces and limbs (although that may just be the LA Times).

* [[Whole-Plot Reference]] / [[Homage]]: "Sister Caligula" in an extended tribute to ''[[The Owl And The Pussycat]]'' with God/"God" and Thorax as a third wheel.

* [[Write What You Know]]: Brooke really did attend Julliard, though as an oboe player , not a cellist.