Genre Savvy/Web Comics

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• Doug from Cinema Bums has a Genre Savvy moment in this strip, where he recognizes evil dialogue and removes himself from the situation.
• Elan, from The Order of the Stick, is a bit like Malicia in the Pratchett example, in that he suffers from being too genre savvy. Like here. The other members of the titular band of adventurers also tend to lack Genre Blindness, but Elan's the only one notable for occasionally needing some. Not that it doesn't occasionally work out for him.
  • Really, one of the main points of The Order of the Stick is genre savviness. Try this comic page where even the stupid orc chieftain is hilariously genre savvy.
  • Elan's mentor, a dashing sky pirate who helps him literally take a level in badass also displays Genre Savviness -- hoping never to meet Elan again, lest he become The Obi-Wan.
  • While sleep trance-deprived, Vaarsuvius displayed a blend of cynicism and genre-savviness by killing someone (Kubota) just because Elan is holding him prisoner, and V knows that Elan only takes major villains prisoner, and rationalizing it by explaining how the trial would have been a tedious 20- or 30-episode affair which would interfere with the bigger picture.
  • Then our trusty wizard, when confronted with a silver-tongued imp, demonstrates that s/he knows what happens when you make a Deal with the Devil, regardless of its stature. And then goes on to make a slightly different deal with different devils anyway.
    • Which is in its own way a bit of brilliance; by first showing that V knows just how foolish such a thing is and then setting him up to do it anyway it becomes a very clear Moral Event Horizon. "Welcome to the deep end of the alignment pool."
  • Whilst all the characters are Genre Savvy to some extent, Elan is clearly more Savvy than the rest of them; unfortunately, his status as Cloudcuckoolander means that the others are only inclined to dismiss his concerns in their moments of Genre Blindness, only to learn too late that they really should have paid attention. Eerily, he can come off as a Genius Ditz these days.

Elan: Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight, the urge to say "I told you so!"

• • Roy is also extremely high on the Genre Savvy meter... so much so, he recently took advantage of Elan's savviness by telling him to find the most aesthetically-appropriate location for a hidden magical gateway. And Roy fully expected Elan to stumble over it by chance, Scooby Doo-style, rather than deduce its position. Exploiting Genre Savvy as a Xanatos Gambit for the win!
  • He even gets Genre Savvy about being Genre Savvy here:

Roy: It's okay, you can just say "+ 5 sword" here. We do stuff like that all the time.

• • Heck, even the monsters are Genre Savvy!
  • Tarquin, Elan and Nale's father is Dangerously Genre Savvy. As seen here and, even more eloquently, here.
• Cherry Blossomfeather, of RPG World, has an uncommon lack of genre blindness. While it's eventually justified, she's largely a way for the author to poke fun at RPG tropes.
• Karn from Adventurers!! is extremely Genre Savvy about computer RPGs despite his general stupidity. Good for him that he lives in such a game. The much smarter Ardam is continually frustrated in his expectations that the game world physics make sense from the real world physics point of view; he finally realizes that no matter how nonsensical the rules of the world are, they're still the rules of the world, and it's irrational to go against them.
• Deconstructed in Girl Genius. All the characters are Genre Savvy, and most of them have the genre correct, but they don't always know their place in or importance to the story, which results in some disastrous misunderstandings. Bystanders make assumptions based on fairy tales which are only partially correct and often lack context.
  • At one point, Othar Trygvassen, who is a Marty Stu swashbuckler, is being held captive by the regional dictator, who considers him to be dangerously insane due to his habit of killing mad scientists. He tries to convince Agatha Clay, the protagonist of the real story, to release him, first confusing her for the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter or a plucky lab assistant, offering her a job as his sidekick. She refuses to, because she considers herself to have a different part in this genre:

Agatha: Look, no offense, but I've been around labs most of my life. Othar: Oh? Agatha: I'd rather not be the easily-duped minion who sets the insanely dangerous experiment free. Or the hostage who ensures the smoothtalking villain's escape. Othar: Er... Agatha: I don't have any proof that you are really Othar Tryggvassen or even really human. Othar: Ah... Agatha: This girl sidekick job doesn't call for a lot of smarts, does it?

• Ellie, in Okashina Okashi is familiar with manga tropes. But like Sugimoto, she's never the heroine of those stories.
• In this issue of Bitmap World, Cyan speculates on who her teacher may be, based on various Schoolteacher Tropes. After being reminded that she's not a character in a sitcom, she discovers her teacher is the Hippie trope.
• Sam Starfall in Freefall knows about genre conventions, and will set them up, but doesn't get the point of them.
• The two title characters in Stickman and Cube have No Fourth Wall, and thus know their tropes.
• Meji from Errant Story is quite up-to-date on her tropes. Among the more notable examples is her awareness of the dangers of Superpower Meltdown ("All the stories that starts like this ends with 'And then his head exploded...'") and her instant recognition of the sheer number of tropes involved in the backstory of the Amraphel siblings. Ellis, as well as several minor characters, also gets in on the action from time to time, but she's a step ahead of them -- at one point, she deliberately invokes Deus Ex Machina. Literally 'invokes'...
• Sam Sprinkles, from Zebra Girl, is a former cartoon actor who is way too Genre Savvy for his own good, and has a tendency to get very, very mouthy with people over their role in the story.
  • Considering he browbeats a character into a Heel Face Turn, mouthy doesn't even begin to cover it.
• All of the main characters of Sluggy Freelance are highly Genre Savvy, though normally only after they fall into one of the traps of the genre at the time. Best shown in this strip.
  • And this one.
  • There was also a genre savvy bear. She brought her cub along when robbing campsites to provoke in humans the reaction "If you do anything and the bear senses her cub is in danger, she'll kill us to defend it! And it will be our fault!" And when she found herself faced with a small rabbit that was completely unimpressed by her ferocious roar, she gave the heck up immediately rather than take a beating she should have been lucky to escape with her life. It turns out she's a he, too, just taking advantage of the whole Mama Bear thing.
• Gordito in the fourth episode of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.

Ben Franklin: But the excitement does get to you! I suppose this lifestyle isn't so bad. Gordito: Ah! Don't! Dude, in "this lifestyle" if you say something like that, it's pretty much like pushing a "make the situation worse" button. It's the opposite of the one they have at the office supply store. (helicopter shows up) Gordito: See?! That's Schrodinger's helicopter right there. Ben Franklin: You must mean "Murphy's Helicopter". Gordito: I'm twelve. Ben Franklin: Well it can only be more ninjas, and we've had no problem with those so far. Gordito: Oh please keep talking!

• Knowledge Is Power: EmJay is about to ask David to pretend to be her boyfriend, but remembering how poorly that goes in fiction, changes her mind. Whereupon it happens anyway.
• Gold Coin Comics is Genre Savvy, such as when Theo tells Lance they can't buy higher quality armor because the game developers wouldn't allow it, or their lower job class levels.
• Miranda West of The Wotch seems pretty Genre Savvy, calling out Natasha Dahlet on her use of a villainous cliché and often pointing out some other clichés, like when she threatens to turn Anne into a newt.
• The latest arc of MSF High revolves around the fact that the "pocket-universe" in which the story takes place conforms to genre rules. This is exploited by many students most recently in the form of the "runner", an anime girl who will run everywhere eyes closed with an armload of books in the hopes of causing a romantic comedy style collision.
• Wonderella here.
• The whole routine of K, the main character of The Antagonist... Though his genre savvy has gotten a little spotty at times ever since getting kicked out of the League of Villains, if they hadn't been actively trying to screw him over on nearly every job, he'd be quite Dangerously Genre Savvy.
• How tragic it must be to be a Genre Savvy Redshirt.
• The Major in the Hellsing fancomic And Shine Heaven Now is familiar enough with fandom terms that he gives a fanboy version of his famous 'I Love War' speech to subdue the fangirls attached to everyone. It's Better Than It Sounds.
• This strip from Subnormality not only has one ercharacter ruefully noting his inability to avoid falling into the "best friends who hate each other" trope (as a result of a ridiculously extreme bet), but actually using the word "trope" to describe it, and hanging a lampshade on it by saying that it's a completely ridiculous and "implausible" trope, like "Time Travel" and "Dinosaurs vs Cavemen", but apparently necessary for conflict. His friend then jumps on the Time Travel reference and inevitably gets his friend into yet another ridiculous and ridiculously implausible scenario. The strip skirts within tripping distance of Breaking the Fourth Wall ... but then again, we're talking about a comic that revels in Post Modernism and Deconstruction, so that's par for the course.
  • And this strip exhibits both a genre-savvy character and a genre-blind one, complete with lampshading a suspiciously fitting strip title, a case of Medium Awareness and fate tempting verbal queues
• Pip from Sequential Art is rather Genre Savvy on what happens when you go up into the attic to investigate a strange sound.

Pip: I watch horror films. I should not be doing this without a chainsaw handy...

Art is pretty Genre Savvy himself. He's only partially off though.

• A lot of the humor in Homestuck is derived from Lampshade Hanging and Breaking the Fourth Wall, but Dave is particularly well-versed in tropes and comments on a lot of the increasingly-ridiculous situations the main characters find themselves in. He also serves as a foil to the more naive and Genre Blind John.

EB: i'm in my room again, i really think there's someone else in this house. EB: like monsters or something. TG: dude monsters arent real TG: thats stupid kids stuff for stupid babies EB: maybe. yeah you're right. TG: what are you an idiot TG: of course there are monsters in your house TG: youre in some weird evil monster dimension come on TG: skepticism is the crutch of cinematic troglodytes TG: like hey mom dad theres a dinosaur or a ghost or whatever in my room. "yeah right junior go back to bed" TG: fuck you mom and dad how many times are we going to watch this trope unfold it wasnt goddamn funny the first time i saw it

• • Karkat has a similar reaction to being told that Kanaya is a Rainbow Drinker. However, Karkat's genre savvy wraps all the way around back to Genre Blindness.

PCG: I GUESS I HAVE NO CHOICE TO BELIEVE YOU BECAUSE SKEPTICISM IN THIS SITUATION IS FOR IDIOTS RIGHT? PCG: IF I SAID "YEAH RIGHT! IF THERE'S A DRINKER IN THIS HIVE I'LL EAT MY COCOON!" I'D BE LIKE THE DUMB LUSUS IN THE MOVIE WHO DOESN'T BELIEVE THE KID WHEN HE TELLS IT THERE'S A RAINBOW DRINKER IN THE CLOSET. PCG: SO I GUESS BY REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY I SHOULD NOT BE THAT DUMBASS, YELL "OH FUCK", AND TELL EVERYONE TO GET IN THE SCUTTLEBUGGY BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. PCG: WELL FAT CHANCE, I'M NOT FALLING FOR IT.

• • Homestuck is a very interesting example when you think about it. Due to the time loops and focus on character growth, sometimes characters MUST perform actions that go against their own self-interest, or ANYONE'S interest, because, if they don't do what they're destined to do, even if it's horrific....
• David from Ow, My Sanity. Scarily so.
• Rumors of War has Obadai, who's the most Genre Savvy of the lot. He's fits the bill as a Deadpan Snarker, and seems aware enough of the concept of Mentor Occupational Hazard that he almost refuses to refer to himself as Elysia's mentor, and is frequently absent during important plot movements.
• He may not be like this all the time, but this strip of It's Walky! shows Danny in a rare moment of clarity.
• Camp Camoline: a gun is better than splitting up with nothing but flashlights
• The crew from Schlock Mercenary, despite being repeatedly portrayed as mostly dumb grunts, do have their moments of savvyness, for instance in the Running Gag where they realize they should never say "What's the worst that could happen?" Then there's this one..
• Pibgorn Who am I to deny trite formula?
• Underling lampshades the tropes
• Yang Child The lowest of the low among cliche thieves
• Orwing Battler in Lovecraft Is Missing is a pulp writer who basically finds himself in another pulp writer's universe. Naturally, he feels like he's in one of his own stories and will occasionally comment on the action.
• Nelson in Full Frontal Nerdity.
• Blue Hat from Gengame tends to make a lot of decisions based on genre conventions. Justified in that it's a video game in which the mechanics of her character are somewhat based around genre conventions. She also isn't very savvy about the actual comic's genre.
• Played With in Moképon; Atticus is one of the only characters who has a decent amount of common sense, and often lampshades the ridiculous nature of the Pokémon world. On the other hand, he's still not completely sure about how his world works, and sometimes his Genre Savvy moments (such as setting a Beedrill on fire to set off a chain reaction that'll get rid of the rest of the bugs) backfire on him.
• When you're the classmate of a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, you have no choice but to become Genre Savvy if you want to survive. Thus, almost everybody in Erma is Genre Savvy.

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