Dresden Codak

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Kimiko.

Sokar: I have issues with the Schrödinger's cat experiment. [...] In the period before observing the outcome, [the cat] is said to be in "superposition," a state of both decay and not decay, meaning [it] is both dead and not dead. Observer-dependent physics undermines the gods' decision three thousand years ago to ban cats from straddling the borders of the Netherworld. We won't have it! Kimiko: I have reservations about reconciling a quantum mechanics thought experiment with Egyptian mythology. More importantly, what possible threat could superpositioned cats pose? Sokar: Somewhere, Niels Bohr walks among us, unobserved and immortal.

Dresden Codak is a web comic by Arryn "Sen" Diaz that has been running at an irregular (and very slow) pace since 2005. It offers whimsical humor focused on physics, philosophy, and transhumanism -- except for the Hob storyline, which, while having the same focus, was much more serious. The story that has been running in the late-2010s with over 100 strips as of May 2021, Dark Science, starts out humorous, but this doesn't last long.

Dresden Codak is a sometimes Dada, sometimes Mind Screw comic focusing on the (mis)adventures of several often unrelated characters:

• Kimiko "Thunderbolt" Ross: A misanthropic, cybernetically-enhanced Mad Scientist.
• Tiny Carl Jung: Self-explanatory.
• Dmitri and Alina Tokamak: A parody of the Wonder Twins and Marvel Family. They also have similar powers, except rather than using transformation and...water... they use physics.
• "D.H." Ron Awning: A caricature of the literary-minded artsy intellectual.
• Yvonne "Vonnie" Awning: Ron's sister and a fashionable, trend-focused bureaucrat, fitting, considering she works for the Department of Taste.
• Rupert and Hubert: Two elderly Victorian scientists who live in a castle they built on the moon.

Not to be confused with The Dresden Files or the city of Dresden, though its name is a reference to the Dresden Codex.

The comic also has a number of similarly surreal one-shots, including the page that we adapted into the Essential Third Act Twists.

Updates irregularly.

Tropes used in Dresden Codak include:

• All of Them: As seen at the end of this strip
• Alliterative Name: Kim's dad (Kaito Kusanagi) and Kim herself as a child, before she had her surname changed.
• Anachronism Stew: Kimiko knew that a group of people were time travelers because they were dressed in a mismash of styles from all eras and segments of the 20th century, in a similar fashion to how other centuries are portrayed in modern media.
• Arc Symbol: the "rising sun" half-circle.
• Art Evolution: The art quality increases immensely as the comic progressed. For full effect, compare this first strip to this more recent strip and this even more recent strip. The art is actually starting to get kind of ridiculously detailed. Perhaps not coincidentally, author Sen Diaz considers Moebius to be his most important artistic influence.
• Artificial Limbs: Kimiko, post-Hob.
• Author Appeal: Among Diaz's four majors was Anthropology. It shows.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Be warned. The author doesn't like religious types, especially Evangelical, fundamentalist Christians.
• Big Eater: Kimiko's prostheses run on glucose , which requires her to eat huge amounts of sweet stuff.
• Book Dumb: Kimiko got very poor grades in school. According to Word of God, this is because she generally didn't bother to do her schoolwork in the first place.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The comic started out as lighthearted and whimsical. Characters talked to Egyptian gods, Niels Bohr is apparently a cat, and everybody was all happy-happy-joy-joy-let's-go-to-the-moon-and/or-play-tabletop-RPGs. Then this came along. And then this, which seems to swing right back to comedy again.
• Changed My Jumper: The time travelers in the Hob storyline who look like mashups of several pop culture characters.
• Character Blog: Kimiko, D.H. Ron, and Tiny Carl Jung have their own Twitter accounts.
• Chekhov's Gunman: tiny Hob
• Cloudcuckoolander: Kimiko herself, if her Twitter account is anything to go by.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Possibly averted in that Kimiko seems no more or less human after losing her arm and legs in the Hob storyline.
  • Considering that Diaz is an avowed transhumanist, it's pretty clear that the comic is a complete aversion.
    • If anything she's more human now.
  • By the middle of the "Dark Science" arc, Kimiko has gone total-conversion, leaving only her brain organic. Cyborg Time With Kimiko Ross has the details.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Whenever the characters engage in a tabletop roleplaying session.
• Disappeared Dad: Kimiko's father who was always away doing his job.
• Electronic Eyes: Kim has one.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Some readers see Kimiko as this. Whether they're right is up to some interpretation.
• Fan Service: Surprisingly gratuitous amounts are present. Special mention goes to Kimiko naked and Kimiko in a loose dressing gown.
• Floating Continent: Nephilopolis
• For Science!: Kimiko's entire purpose in life.
• Fun with Acronyms: M.A.D.E.M.O.I.S.E.L.L.E.
• Future Imperfect: See the Changed My Jumper point above.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Kimiko.
• Gratuitous French and Gratuitous German: The April Fools' Day movies En Deuil and A Work in Progress respectively.
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue: Kimiko's attempts at writing fan fiction.
  • Alternate prehistory fan fiction involving her making out with the T.A. from her physics class.
• Hotblooded Sideburns: Kaito Kusanagi
• Humans Are Psychic in the Future: In the first strip.
• Infinite Canvas
• In Name Only: Ronnie's "adaptations." Kimiko sponsors them in order to harvest the energy of their original creators spinning in their graves.
• Ironic Hell: Hell is apparently reserved strictly for religious types. This comic also has an ironic heaven, namely, Secular Heaven, a parody of Fluffy Cloud Heaven
• Le Film Artistique: This video, which took over the Dresden Codak website on April Fools' Day 2010.
  • And the sequel from April Fools' Day 2012. And the Film Within This Film!
• Kick the Dog: Dark Science has Mathias Melchior, Director of the Department of Opposition, who in his first appearance trips a scientist/bureaucrat carrying a huge stack of paper and tosses a old lady with a walking frame off the side of a building. But then again, that's his job.
• Mad Scientist: Kimi.
  • Her estranged father seems to be a bit out of touch with reality as well.
• Mind Screw: Neon Genesis Evangelion makes more sense.
• Mismatched Eyes: As of the Dark Science storyline, Kimiko has one brown and one (artificial) blue eye.
• Ms. Fanservice: Yvonne frequently sports an impressive Cleavage Window.
  • Kimiko, sometimes.
• Nerds Are Sexy
• Network Decay: Highlighted in-universe in "Spike's Guest Comic"
• New First Comics
• Noodle Incident: "Remember when Reverse Moses parted the city to escape Aqua-Pharaoh?"
• Odd-Shaped Panel: Panels are often warped and/or arranged in unusual ways.
• Overly Narrow Superlative
• Parental Abandonment: Kimiko's mom is dead, and her dad had apparently long since buggered off to parts unknown. Then HE died.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up
• Quintessential British Gentleman (or gentlemen, rather): Rupert and Hubert.
• La Résistance: The Department of Opposition.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Kim concentrated on science and let her social skills languish all her life. This is especially apparent on her Twitter account.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Kaito Kusanagi.
• Schedule Slip: It has a schedule? (New comics show up basically at random, with time gaps varying from a week to two or three months.)
  • The comic once had a "Next Comic On [date]" feature, which has since disappeared.
• Science Is Bad: Parodied and taken to extremes in "Caveman Science Fiction".
  • A similar parody of this trope appears in the lengthy comment under this comic.
• Series Hiatus: See Schedule Slip.
• Shaggy Dog Story: Lantern Season
• Shout-Out: Kimiko "Thunderbolt" Ross (née Kimiko Sarai Kusanagi) dresses (and at times acts) a lot like her namesake.
  • This guest strip has references to Fahrenheit 451, Battlefield Earth, Battlestar Galactica, and Snow Crash. Wait... what did that first one say about stairs?
  • The stuffed animals near the beginning of this comic include Beartato and Reginald from Nedroid.
  • Caspar is clearly a stand-in for Ayn Rand, considering her books titled "Wellspring" and "Nimrod Faltered"
• The Singularity: Kimiko mentions it a few times in the comic. She (and the author) are futurists, after all.
  • In addition, the time travelers are refugees from an alternate timeline where this almost happened, but they rebelled and killed off anyone beyond baseline human intelligence, and the series climax involves a second, small scale one causing a Deus Exit Machina.
  • This page references Princess Mononoke.
  • The time colonists were a parody of the primary crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their leader, in particular, is a dead ringer for Patrick Stewart.
• Space Amish: The time travelers in the Hob arc destroyed future Earth because they believed post-singularity technology had taken all meaning from their lives, and they planned to colonize the past Earth and live like us "noble savages"
• Stuff Blowing Up: "This seems excessive on the bank's part." With a Plunger Detonator, too.
• Super Senses: According to the author, Kimiko's robotic eye shifts, the iris becoming more square, to give her better vision in low light.
• Swiss Army Appendage: Kim's artificial arm. It's apparently weaker than her real one, though.
• Tabletop Games: The philosophy-based role-playing game "Dungeons & Discourse".
  • Now in playable form, thanks to the fans.
  • Particularly notable for Dmitri's "Dark Kantian": "I am compelled to do evil, regardless of its utility."
• Teen Genius: Kimiko. Who has entered her early twenties (it says so on the cast page!), but continues to fit in the looser sense of being young, brilliant, and angsty.
• Terminally Dependent Society
• Toilet Seat Divorce: Despite all she'd put them through up to that point, it was apparently Kimiko scientifically proving that blue was the best color that made her last few friends ditch her.
• Token Evil Teammate: the Dark Kantian in this one. He is compelled to do evil, regardless of its utility.
• Transhuman: See The Singularity above.
• Truth in Television: Phantoms of a Lost Muse is based on the premise that people contribute small parts towards a greater work. Similarly, the Royal Opera house is planning to show an opera written by Twitter contributors.
• Unusual User Interface: Kimiko has a interface jack in her upper back post-Hob.
• Viewers Are Geniuses:
  • It does tend to refer to all sorts of weird and obscure topics; but the author, unsurprisingly, expects readers to augment their own intelligences with the Internet while reading, as mentioned in the comic comment here.
• Word of God: The author has stated that Kimiko, the protagonist, is meant to come off as more than a bit misanthropic, describing her version of transhumanism as how he felt when he was a teenager.
• What Year Is This?: The time travelers in the Hob storyline, when they realize Kimiko is their Big Bad.
• Word Salad Title: The title is a reference to the Dresden Codex, a Maya book considered to be the oldest written document in the New World.
• Wrench Wench: Kimiko, especially in the Hob storyline.