A Moment of Peace
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This is the first character. —Narration
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Anyway. What I mean to say is: would you like to have tea with me and George? We're going to wear hats. And pretend to watch soccer.
—Evi
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When you fall in love, God breaks out his crayons.
—Abigail
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A Moment of Peace, occasionally shortened to aMoP, is a story about two lovers trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where rampaging monsters rule the earth and human civilization has been reduced to a collection of nomadic scavengers. Unlike most other fiction that takes place after the end of the world, A Moment of Peace has a gentle, optimistic tone. One of the main premises that the comic keeps coming back to is that the world is flawed, but beautiful.
The comic engages in a lot of one-shot comics expressing ideas, credos, or playing with the 4th wall. Its story lines focus on the relationships between the characters, some of whom are humans, some of whom are monsters, some of whom are gods.
It's comparable to the Colour My Series.
This comic shows examples of:
- All Love Is Unrequited: Among the gods, anyway.
- Alt Text
- Anthropomorphic Personification: There are gods personifying in-between places, trust and betrayal, stories, and now love.
- After the End: "A long, long time ago, there weren't any monsters. People used to live in one place and never move. They worked in small rooms and slept in small rooms and only went outside to move between the rooms. We know this because sometimes we find books and papers in the ruins." - Clorian
- Aside Glance: The Hulking Shyster made a somewhat traumatic aside glance in this comic.
- Beat Panel: Three entire pages of "Awkward Pause" follow Ito's declaration of love.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Lampshaded in The Cycle arc, when Clorian and Evi encounter some wish trees.
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Clorian: Did you ever pick one? |
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- Bittersweet Ending: Crux's Climb, and the balloon story.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The fourth wall is given a loving fracture every now and then.
- By the Eyes of The Blind: The gods of A Moment of Peace are invisible to the stick figure humans they walk among, but apparently Monster Food, worm like creatures hanging from the very bottom of the food chain, can see them. Or at least this one can.
- Cliff Hanger: One strip had Evi in danger of being eaten, and it wasn't resolved until the next strip.
- Emotion Eater: The gods.
- Flat What: Story when she gets the wrong answer to her rhetorical question.
- God of Evil: Ito, somewhat, at least from the point of view of humans. He is quite nice to other gods, though.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: The gods of the universe eat human emotions to survive, like baked cheer or gruel made of sorrow.
- Holiday Nonupdate: The comic actually tends to update more often during the holidays, though it generally does so with errata and amusing randomness. The website itself tends to come out looking prettier as well.
- Homage: In the storyline 'Clorian's Journal,' Evi and Clorian encounter adventurers from the Kingdom of Loathing and an eyeless stick figure they call the Blind Philosopher who is clearly a reference to XKCD.
- Infinite Canvas: Comics in A Moment of Peace tend to sprawl vertically. Sometimes this is an intentional effect that creates a sense of descending or ascending.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: The only thing George ever says is 'Meep,' but Evi seems to hold extensive conversations with him.
- Invisible Anatomy: Only the gods have visible fingers.
- Invisible to Normals: The gods of A Moment of Peace are invisible to the stick figure humans they walk among.
- Least Rhymable Word: Evi encounters this problem when chocolate ice cream sprouts.
- Living MacGuffin: The subject of one of the god's quests is a glowing entity named Gloria on the Mountain.
- Medium Awareness: While they mostly exist in their own universe, the characters occasionally acknowledge the 4th wall in a casual way, going so far as to use it as a slide at one point.
- Mr. Exposition: Clorian, by way of journal entries.
- Noble Demon: Ito steals dreams and crushes hopes for a living, but he seems to be kind of a nice guy when you get to know him.
- Non Human Sidekick: George qualifies. And so does the Hulking Shyster, eventually.
- Non Malicious Monster: "Hulking Shysters are a common, but rarely seen type of monster. They produce the creepy sensation you get of being watched. They are also very shy." - Narration
- Monster food could count, being creatures on their own merits.
- Oblivious to Love: Crux seems completely oblivious to Storyteller's romantic interest in him.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Monsters in aMoP range wildly in appearance and behavior, but are almost universally rather funky.
- The Power of Love: A very frequent theme.
- Raymanian Limbs: Ito is clearly the lovechild of the lizgreaper and Rayman.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Monster Food is classically adorable. Big eyes and little else.
- Schedule Slip: Happens at times.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Idealistic, despite the After the End setting.
- Speech Bubbles: While humans have normal speech bubbles, gods speak in floating, colored, Comic Sans MS text.
- Stick Figure Comic: All of the humans in the comic a stick figures, differentiated by hats and hairstyles.
- Sugar Apocalypse: It's After the End.
- Sugar Bowl
- Sweet Dreams Fuel
- Team Pet: George.
- The World Is Just Awesome
- Title Drop: This one.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream. It even grows in fields!
- Trope Pantheons: So far, there's a goddess of stories, a god of in-between places, a sort-of-evil snake god of lies and deceit, and the goddess of love. It has been implied that there are more.
- What Measure Is a Non Human: Clorian has this view of George at first. Justified somewhat in that he's a pellet of monster food, which will attract them.
- You Can See Me: Ito is kind of put off his game when Evi's worm-companion George catches Ito stealing her dreams.