Least I Could Do: Difference between revisions

* [[Characterization Marches On]]: Rayne starts as an very idiotic [[Lovable Sex Maniac]]. As the series progress, he gets nerdier and nerdier, and far more intelligent. His idiotic-ness is retconned as [[Adult Child|AdultChildness]].

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Rayne. Let's just use [http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20070802 this strip] as a STARTING example and go from there.

* [[Cut Himself Shaving]]: "I fell down some stairs." "[[Defied Trope|No he didn't. I beat the shit out of him with a smile on my face.]]."

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]

** [[The Chick]]: Issa

* [[Freud Was Right]]: Well, Rayne would say so anyway. "Friends come and go, but sex... sex is forever!"

* [[Future Loser]]: Subverted. Rayne is shown a vision of how he ends up as an old man. It shows him sitting by a fireplace, alone, with just a servant tending him. But then the story is more fleshed out and we see {{spoiler|Rayne is stupidly well-off, and he shows nothing but the utmost hospitality and generosity to his old friends, their families, and his own niece.}} About the only thing that hints at it being played "straight" is {{spoiler|Rayne never had any wife or kids of his own, but then again, probably didn't want either one anyway.}}

** [[Spotting the Thread|The servant was the first clue.]]

* [[Imaginary Friend]]: Ashley's is Lou Ferrigno. [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20100414 Only he's not so imaginary.]

* [[I'm a Man, I Can't Help It]]: Subverted.

* [[Informed Ability]]:

** Rayne's mastery of picking up chicks was originally a strong case of this. Virtually every strip featuring him hitting on a girl showed his asinine pick-up lines, childish behavior, and utter shoot-downs from the girls. 95% of the time, his hook-ups were only shown AFTER they'd already happened. Sure, Rayne was supposed to be good-looking, but it was more than a little obvious the writer didn't really know how a master pick-up artist works, and it was implied that Rayne merely used the "Shotgun approach" (A Tao of Rayne strip [http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20050525 pointed out that the one girl who said yes was more important than the 99 who said no]).

** Later strips partially fixed this. [http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20050711 On very rare occasions], Rayne has shown signs that he can be more subtle and sneaky about pickups. The implication is that usually he just doesn't bother. Plus, the cute, charming, and childlike angle does work for some. His pick-up of the hot cougar at the bar was a ''much'' nicer change of pace, showing his style and smoothness in place of his general idiocy.

* [[In the Style Of]]: [http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20101214 Sandra Boynton,] to whom they appologized profusely.

* [[It's All About Me]]: Rayne, to the point where he tells {{spoiler|Mick}} that in order for him to be interested in {{spoiler|Mick and Tammy's upcoming wedding}}, the event has to be about ''Rayne''.

* [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]]: On Alvin the Chipmunk, of all people.

* [[Just Eat Gilligan]] / [[Kill Him Already]]: [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20080721 Here ya go.]

* [[Life Embellished]]: Sohmer shares many of Rayne's obsessions and geek ways.

* [[Likes Older Women]]: Rayne recently picked up a woman in her late 40s, early 50s (judging by the gray streaks in her otherwise blond hair).

* [[Only Six Faces]]: Chad Porter was especially bad with this. It was literally impossible to tell most women apart aside from hair, and Rayne wasn't any more notable than any other guy.

* [[Out of Focus]]: John, for ''years'', thanks to Real Life Writes the Plot (see below). A more recent example is Rayne's secretary, who was shown giving birth, then having problems at home, and then vanished for the most part.

* [[The Pornomancer]]

* [[Practical Joke|Practical Jokes]]

* [[Really Seventeen Years Old]]: There's a storyline involving a girl in a bar who turns out to be underage.

* [[The Red Stapler]]: Defied; one of the strips in the arc about Rayne's [[Alternate History]] novel shows his [[Those Wacky Nazis|Nazi]] assistant wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt with swastikas on it. The header text for that comic reads "No, you can't have a shirt".

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: The "Midget Hooker" and "Rejected LICD Storylines" arcs.

* [[Rule of Funny]]: The comic runs on this. Rayne and company can do virtually anything without any consequences, even in cases where they probably should be in serious legal trouble.

* [[Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness]]: More often than not, it's stiff as a sheet of iron, but the scale moves quite a bit on occasion, sometimes veering into [[Medium Awareness]] or [[No Fourth Wall|disappearing altogether.]]

* [[Shout-Out]]: So many.

* [[Suspiciously Specific Denial]]:

{{quote| Rayne: [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20100909 You've seen my birth certificate. It specifically says 'not a Jedi' on it.]}}

* [[Webcomic Time]]: Belatedly averted. See page for more details.

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: The typical reaction to [[Straw Man Has a Point|a reasonable person pointing how stupid/illegal]] Rayne's latest [[Wacky Scheme]] is.

* [[Write Who You Know]]: Most characters are at least loosely based on real people, hence why [[Real Life Writes the Plot|real life will sometimes write the plot]].

** A recent storyline where Rayne helps his old paper reinvigorate itself into a new format seems to be a way for Sohmer to express his dissatisfaction with newspapers as a medium and the way they are run, containing more than a few [[Take That|Take Thats]] to newspaper owners and publishers.

** We've also got an arc where Rayne shows up to give a [http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090921 lecture] for [http://www.ted.com/ TED] on fear, materialism and entitlement. Given that this is ''Rayne'' speaking, you may be experiencing some dissonance.