Listening to 11.975 MHz
Listening to 11.975 MHz is a Web Comic started in December 2002 by Ethan Forsythe.
And it's ... really weird. It's about a girl (whose name is never given within the comic but Word of God says is Deco Bleu), and her, um... adventures in a very surreal dream world.
The comic is filled with obscure references (especially to shortwave radio), and the comics sometimes contain messages to the author's friends. These are incomprehensible to anyone else.
It can be found here.
Tropes used in Listening to 11.975 MHz include:
- A-Cup Angst - Played with, sort of. While Deco has no breasts at all, she doesn't seem to care or even notice, aside from one strip where she's seen looking down her shirt.
- Adult Child - Fussy Britches, on occasion.
- Arc Words - wm
- Art Evolution - As in most webcomics, the art gets better and better as the comic progresses, with a particularly noticeable shift when the shading style changes. Another trend is how Deco seems to be looking younger and younger.
- Badass Cape - This one here. [dead link]
- Barbie Doll Anatomy - Averted like crazy with the Brazilian hippie, aka Fussy Britches. Most pages with her are somewhat NSFW due to nudity.
- Beautiful All Along - The Girl Who Speaks Math (Caboose) is adorable [dead link] when she takes her super-thick spiral glasses off.
- Big Ball of Violence - here. [dead link]
- Bilingual Bonus - Averted; while the comic uses a myriad of languages (see below) all of them are apparently nonsense aside from the references, which are always in English.
- Bilingual Dialogue - Multilingual would be more accurate; between Deco's French, Lunchbox's Chinese, Fussy Britches' Portuguese(?), whatever the white-haired devil speaks, the English used by signs and assorted one-off characters, and the calculus equations used by Caboose, this trope is present in spades.
- Body Horror - Whatever is happening on this page [dead link], it's a good thing Deco is turned the other way...
- Can't You Read the Sign? - Of course the signs warning of the deep, deep hole ahead aren't worth noticing. [dead link] Though neither Deco nor Lunchbox actually speak English, so I suppose it's justifiable.
- Catch Phrase - Deco says "Bassoon!" quite a bit at the beginning.
- The phrase "drink Early Times" shows up with fair frequency in later comics. Early Times is a brand of whiskey, by the way.
- Catgirl - Deco, in one comic only, [dead link] and these one-off characters. [dead link]
- Cute Mute - Antithesis (Fussy Britches' daughter) has blank speech bubbles. [dead link]
- Dada Comics - Of which this is a prime example.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin - The character often called "The Girl Who Speaks Math" is exactly that. Though her real name is Caboose.
- Fan Service - The characters are randomly naked every so often. (Here [dead link]'s an example.)
- Godiva Hair - Deco, in this comic. [dead link]
- Guest Strip - Only one, by someone named Divine. [dead link] It makes about as much sense as the rest of the comic, as in none.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl - The Brazilian hippie girl who rarely wears pants or underwear and frequently doesn't even button her shirt.
- Meganekko - Deco
- Mindscrew - Almost inverted, it's the parts that near comprehension that are disorienting.
- Mood Whiplash - The comic is cute and whimsical, right? Then you have this [dead link], which is pretty damn depressing. Then it's back to cute and whimsical.
- Ms. Fanservice - See Innocent Fanservice Girl above.
- Mushroom Samba - What do you expect from brownies made by a hippie? [dead link]
- Shout-Out - Lots and lots, particularly to old video games such as Pac-Man (Deco's headband has the game's titular character and a ghost, not to mention this [dead link]), Zork (when Deco and Lun Che Box fall into a pit, the opening text is in the background) [dead link], and plenty to Super Mario Bros.. There are also excerpts from The Idiot at Home by John Kendrick Bangs every once in a while, and one comic has the last few lines from Tennyson's Sir Galahad.
- This comic [dead link] references the last two lines of the song "Truckstop" by Marty Stuart.
- There are many, many references to the end text of Lemmings.
- Talkative Loon - Nearly all characters gives off this impression.
- The Unintelligible - EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. But especially Deco herself, the Anime Chinese Girl Lunchbox, and Caboose.
- Unsound Effect - Many of the "sound effects" are things like celebrity names. Actually, none of them are real sounds...
- What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs? - Just...just read it.
- Wholesome Crossdresser - One-off character Sinbios [dead link] (presumably).
- Widget Series - Ohhhh yeah.
- The comic's host site is also pretty weird.
- Wrench Wench - The Girl Who Speaks Math. [dead link]
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair - Deco's hair, though it can only be seen in the colored pages, is bright blue.
- Word of God - The characters' names have recently been clarified. For reference, Deco is still Deco, "Lun Che Box" is just Lunchbox, "Fuzzy Pants" is Fussy Britches (her daughter is Antithesis), "The Girl who Speaks Math" is Caboose, and finally, the succubus/minister who shows up from time to time is named Elsepeth.