Building 12
Building 12 was an early webcomic by Misfile creator Chris Hazelton. It was an embellished webcomic about a group of misfits dealing with the Fantasy Kitchen Sink at their college. It ran for nine issues of about 25-30 comics each.
It can be found here.
Tropes used in Building 12 include:
- Aliens Speaking English: Lampshaded; Brian asks them how they're speaking English, and they answer, "What is this 'English' Do not try to confuse us with your Earthian words!"
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: When the Chairman doesn't get his life-preserving medicine (because O'Halloran had the latest shipment altered to create the Zombie Apocalypse), he goes giant. Luckily, one of the zombies bites him, and it cures him.
- Ax Crazy: Craze, Peoni, Tia, Yuki?
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Look at this page, first panel. What's missing?
- Bifauxnen: Alex, for complicated reasons.
- Bishonen: Kitch (Tia's father)
- Blob Monster: Slauf/Slough
- Capulet Counterpart: Peoni, Tia
- Casanova: Jack
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Yuki can punch through walls.
- Cloudcuckoolander: The Chairman; Klaus Der Phobia
- Combat Tentacles: Slauf vs. Chairman
- Consummate Liar: Shayne is "the master of bullshitting".
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: Tia dresses up in a variety of outfits.
- Crying Wolf: Shayne gets subjected to this a lot. This is because the truth is often less believable than his usual lies.
- Cute Bruiser: Yuki
- Cute Monster Girl: Tia
- Dead Comic: On indefinite hiatus so that Chris can concentrate on Misfile, and occasionally A Steel Wing Shattered.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Chairman
- Expy: Okay, not really, because Building 12 came first, but Alex and Ash are extremely similar. The former is a girl who dresses as a guy, and tries to hold back her feelings in order to keep up The Masquerade (at which point Joe suggests that they could be gay); the latter a former guy with issues about carrying on a relationship with "another" girl (okay, she doesn?'t have a problem with it, but still), and they look a lot alike.
- Eyes Always Shut: The Chairman; Joe's parents.
- Fan Service: At the end of each issue is a "fanservice page", which is exactly that.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Demons, aliens, mad scientists, zombies, and military nuts--and those are just the villains. On the heroic side, we have another military nut, another mad scientist, a witch, and a girl who can punch through walls.
- Foe Yay: Jack and Peoni get this a lot, and then there was Peoni's mistaken assumption that Yuki was a lesbian.
- This looked like it could have been becoming a subplot - Yuki, while insistent that she wasn't gay, had a very funny look on her face at the time.
- Foreign Queasine: Tia's meals are still moving.
- Gag Boobs: Surprisingly, the best comedic use of boobs was done by Alex, who usually has them wrapped. Sarah also gets a mention:
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Sarah: Why is a zombie staring at my rack? |
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Craze: Why are we running, Sarah? We've fought WAY worse than these pathetic tentacles today! |
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- The Gunslinger: Craze, who's absolutely nuts about guns.
- I Can Explain: Craze, after Tia shows up when his sister comes to visit. This doesn't help:
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Craze?s Sister: I hope this girl's at least eighteen years old or mom and dad will have a fit. |
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- Instant Seiza: Alex and Joe This.
- Love At First Punch: Tia falls in love with Craze because he tried to kill her.
- Marshmallow Hell: In more ways than one...
- Mad Scientist: Brian
- Melee a Trois: The aliens vs. Klaus Der Phobia vs. the committee vs. Ornat.
- Mistaken for Gay: Peoni groped Yuki because she thought Yuki would like it, and then there was the time that Alex was so overjoyed that Joe wasn't dead that she momentarily forgot that she's supposed to be a boy.
- Ms. Fanservice: Sarah
- Naive Newcomer: Joe, at the beginning of the comic
- Naked on Arrival: Tia
- Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Craze
- Neural Implanting: Peoni steals memories from one of Jack's one-night stands and implants the memories of the night into her own mind. Which backfires spectacularly when the girl turns out to be into some sort of nasty Fetish.
- Nipple-and-Dimed: Tia's first appearance before Craze and Sarah appears to show something off.
- No Name Given: Both Peoni and Tia didn't have their names given until the second issue in which they appeared. Both also appeared on the fanservice page in the issue in which they debuted.
- Also, Craze's sister.
- Nosebleed: Joe, when he first finds out Alex is a girl.
- Only One Name: Everyone except Peoni and Klaus
- Our Zombies Are Different: They were trying to create a disease that would make people more charitable (to get donations on parents' day), but it ended up having the side effect of turning them into zombies with a desire to eat human flesh and an ability to communicate the disease through their bite. The cure is also saliva-borne, so Craze injects himself with it and then bites the other members of Building 12 to immunize them, and together they bite all of the zombies to cure them.
- Panty Shot: Sarah gives one to Craze (which we can't actually see), and Tia gives one in fanservice page 4.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Even before The Reveal, Joe had his suspicions that Alex was a girl, and after the reveal, Hazelton doesn't even bother drawing her flat enough to fool anyone (though still far flatter than she actually is). Somehow, no one else figures it out.
- Perky Female Minion: Slauf/Slough's gender is indeterminate, but it does play the part of "Mommy" to Tia on Parent's Day, and this troper figures that an animated version would be quite reminiscent of GIR, only not quite as high-pitched, probably sounding more like a battle droid.
- Perky Goth: Sarah doesn't even look like a typical Goth for the most part, but she does study witchcraft. So she?s part Perky Goth, part Cute Witch.
- Punny Name: Klaus Der Phobia
- Sarashi: Used to help facilitate Alex?s boy disguise.
- Ship Tease: Yuki's reactions to Peoni's constant flirting with Jack suggest that she might have feelings for him.
- Shout-Out: One of Tia's outfits seems to be a shout out to Urusei Yatsura.
- Skinship Grope: Peoni, to Yuki; Tia, to Craze's sister. (Okay, that second one was an accident; from behind, she thought it was Craze that she was hugging until she found the boobs)
- The Starscream: O'Halloran
- Tsundere: Yuki, Tia
- Unknown Rival: Victor
- White-Haired Pretty Boy: Kitch
- Yandere: Peoni
- Younger Than They Look: Tia was "born" fully grown, hence her innocence and the aforementioned "not nearly that old".
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Yuki's is light blue, Peoni's is purple, and Tia?s is red with a blue streak (yes, naturally)
- Zettai Ryouiki: Sarah often does the hot-pants variety.
- Zombie Apocalypse