Dykes to Watch Out For: Difference between revisions

* [[Comic Book Time]]: Averted. Characters age pretty much in real time, including Raffi, and reminisce about the past from time to time with reference to how long it's been, with real time and strip time matching.

* [[Disabled Snarker]]: Thea in her first appearance, when Mo is being a jerk about Thea being disabled.

* [[Disability as an Excuse For Jerkassery]]: Sydney invokes this, although her level of jerkassery remains pretty much constant before and after she is diagnosed with cancer.

* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: The first few years of ''Dykes to Watch Out For'' had no regular characters or an ongoing plot; back then the strip was more like a lesbian-oriented version of ''[[Life in Hell]]''. The ongoing story started in the late 1980s, with the introduction of Mo and Lois.

* [[Emo Teen]]: Raffi as he enters his teen years.

** Raffi and Stella's have a classmate who is the adopted daughter of a gay male couple.

* [[Het Is Ew]]: Lois and Ginger react this way to Sparrow dating Stuart.

* [[Hidden Depths]]: Sparrow started off as "the most cartoony of the characters," a fairly one-dimensional therapy-head and [[New Age Retro Hippie]]; she later came out as bisexual, had a child, became an atheist, and developed a grumpy side to her personality.

* [[Hot for Student]]: Lois mentions and affair she had with her high school trig teacher, Sydney had a ''very'' long running affair with a grad school comp lit professor.

* [[Married to the Job]]: Evil academic Sydney, whilst researching polyamory, has the epiphany that she is in a polyamorous relationship already- her work is her primary relationship, while Mo is 'the other woman'. This also happens with Clarice and Toni, with Clarice's job as a lawyer almost immediately putting a strain on the relationship; and ultimately, when {{spoiler|Toni cheats on Clarice, it's with Gloria, with whom she's buried in Freedom to Marry activism.}}

* [[Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy]]: Stuart and Sparrow.

"''Soft'' butch. ''Maybe''." }}

* [[Meaningful Name]]: A few minor characters have [[Meaningful Name|Meaningful Names]] of varying levels of [[Viewers Are Geniuses|obscurity]]. Harriet's girlfriend after Mo, for whom Mo entertains a major hate-on and who later cheats on Harriet, is called Ellen Tufel, "Teufel" being German for "devil" (at one point Mo calls her "that she-devil"). Toni and Clarice had hoped to have their adoption case heard by sympathetic Judge Fairchild, but are instead heard by strict, conservative Judge Booker. Sydney's oncologist, whom Mo finds rather militaristic, is Dr. Rommel. And the creepy joined-at-the-hip perfect couple are named Liz and Beth - complete with daughter Elspeth. Also, Sydney's long-standing bit-on-the-side is a Comp. Lit. professor named Madeleine Zeugma. A zeugma is a figure of speech.

* [[Metaphorgotten]]: Clarice's attempt to explain the branches of government to Raffi by comparing them to the members of her household.

** And Wii backers can just vote for Ralph Nader.

* [[Nobody Over 50 Is Gay]]: Averted; several minor characters are older lesbians, and most of the characters are now in their late forties.

* [[Or So I Heard]]: Clarice back-pedaling after letting it slip that the bookstore's competition has good coffee, thus admitting that she had shopped there.

* [[Politically-Motivated Teacher]] / [[Strawman U]]: Played with – Cynthia campaigns against what she sees as the liberal bias of her university, with much skepticism from the other characters.

'''Ginger:''' Cynthia, if you really want more Republicans on the faculty, try getting our salaries quadrupled. }}

* [[Pride Parade]]: Several issues have a foreground plot about the main character's personal lives and a background plot of them arranging various demonstrations, including pride parades. Mo is a proponent of Shame parades, protesting the corporatization of the LGBT community.

* [[Strawman Political]]: In the character of Cynthia, one of Ginger's students, who began as a one-note right-wing conservative gadfly. Over the course of her [[Character Development]] she comes out as a lesbian, becomes conflicted about her upbringing, and is gingerly welcomed into the main characters' circle, but does not drop her conservative beliefs.

* [[Tastes Like Diabetes]]: According to Sydney, her chemo clinic.

* [[Transsexual]]: A trans woman character named Jillian was introduced in 1994; she hung out for a few strips. Later, a atrans man character named Jerry was introduced; Lois developed a crush on him, which later moved on to a fairly durable friendship. Finally, Jasmine's child Jonas became more and more insistent about identifying as a girl, and eventually started living full-time, taking hormones, and identifying as Janis, with Lois's support. Also, for a while, irritated by Mo's transphobic attitude, Lois lets her believe for a short time that she is transitioning, asking to be called "Louis." After Mo slowly comes to accept this, Lois tells her the truth, although she does identify as genderqueer. ("I enjoy being a girl... in a perverse kind of way.")

* [[Viewers Are Geniuses]]: With two characters being academics, and Bechdel herself a bibliophile, there are many academic and literary references well outside the usual [[Small Reference Pools]]. This troper took a gender theory class where she recognized quite a few theories and writers she had first heard of through this strip. The occasional latin pun crops up as well, and many political issues get discussed in depth.