The Dragon Doctors: Difference between revisions

* [[Almost Kiss]]: Kili and Greg. They do it proper later.

* [[And I Must Scream]]: Rina. For ''two thousand years.'' Mercifully, she fell asleep eventually, but not after [[Go Mad From the Isolation|going a little crazy]].

* [[Art Evolution]]: Some, though there's still room for improvement. The first chapter was poorly-drawn pencil sketches in black and white. The second chapter begins in color and with cleaned up art. The artist himself is constantly apologizing to the readers for not being a better artist. Contrast [http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Dragon_Doctors/index.php?p=482302 this early page] and the [http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Dragon_Doctors/index.php?p=708765 most recent page] as of this writing. Still has room for improvement, but proof that [[Art Evolution]] in the form of doing a webcomic ''works.''

* [[Attractive Bent Gender]]: Subverted/Inverted from the norm with Mori, a short, fairly plain woman who changes into a tall, buff guy, and averted with Aki's father, who's just as overweight as a woman. The aversion is Lampshaded when Aki's dad admits "Not everyone gets to be a babe when they jump the gender fence."

** To give an idea of just HOW strong her spirit vision is, when her powers first went out of control, she saw the ultimate embodiment of decay, chaos, and entropy, who sits on a throne AT THE ABSOLUTE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE, waiting for the end of existence. The guy is so terrifying that after seeing him once, Kili's hair went pure white.

** Also, her tattoos can completely nullify the powers of a regular shaman. She's ''still'' the best shaman with them.

* [[Body Horror]]: The Crax, a sentient cancer that devours its victims' minds and bodies. {{spoiler|Later revealed to be the physical manifestation of a man who chose the path of [[Immortality Immorality]].}}

* [[Body Snatcher]]: Again, the Crax. A couple of sub-tropes, too.

** The person who bankrolls the Dragon Doctors also had to undergo an [[Emergency Transformation]]. Her body was afflicted with [[Rapid Aging]] which even the prevalent rejuvenation technology couldn't fix. She had to spend a few years as a statue, but was able to interact with telepathic interpreters to run her company. Eventually Mori came up with the idea of turning her into a Crystal Person, since that species has no aging.

* [[Empty Piles of Clothing]]: [[Trope Namer]]. An explorer finds empty piles of clothing and says "That's bad! That's always a bad sign!" He goes through a minor [[Epileptic Trees]] guessing game about what happened to the owners of the piles of clothing, but it turns out they overdosed on a [[Fountain of Youth]].

* [[Expressive Shirt]]: Sarin's robe from the first arc.

* [[Extreme Omnivore]]: The Crax is a life-form that can adapt to devour ''anything.'' The human consciousness that resides within it, Preston Chang, says that once he's done eating everything living on Earth he'll switch to eating sunlight if necessary. This is the reason why the only way to attack the Crax is [[Kill It With Ice|by freezing it]], because it can even devour energy (making any magic except ice magic useless on it).

* [[Fingerless Gloves]]: Goro, for the express purpose of looking more badass.

* [[First Law of Gender Bending]]: Initially, the Agri Valley curse turned the male doctors (among hundreds or thousands of others) into women, and Mori was turned into a man to fix it. Despite magic, including transformation magic, being commonplace, it was said that they lacked "essence" of their original sexes and to change them back was not only impossible, but on some level [[You Keep Using That Word|inconceivable]]. Despite this, in chapter 14, {{spoiler|Aki (a nurse) and Mori are cured in a lab accident}}; since an extremely rare panacea was used, and Goro, at least, expressed reluctance to change back anyway for fear of disturbing Aki (a lifelong Agri resident {{spoiler|who had not known she was born male and turned back immediately}}), {{spoiler|all five doctors}} are now female for good.

** [[The Smart Guy]]: Mori, a sort of [[Magitek]] [[Science Hero]]. Diagnostician for the team, and its founder.

** [[The Lancer]]: Sarin, apparent goofball wizard, until you [[Beware the Nice Ones|get her mad]]. Doubles as both a heavy magic expert and an aesthetician, since she can turn anyone into anything.

** [[The Chick]]: Part-fairy assistant girl Aki Songbird; also Goro's girlfriend.

* [[Fountain of Youth]]: A very large (it's lake-sized) and very ''dangerous'' one; its anti-aging effects are so strong nothing in the vicinity grows at all, leaving it a desolate wasteland, and many people got regressed into nothing just by contact with the vapors from it. Reverse-engineering it allowed Mori and the rest of the world to benefit from its rejuvenating effects, hence why so many characters are [[Older Than They Look]], including Mori (who just turned 170).

** Sanguine: Sarin, fun-loving and creative, but can be arrogant and insensitive.

** Choleric: Goro, driven and capable, but can overbearing and inflexible.

* [[Magic Wand]]: Mori most often uses a wand which, while mechanical, seems to use magic and is usually used to scan patients with a "woob-woob" sound effect. It has a little pull-out display screen. A more traditional magic wand with a yellow star on top was wielded by one of the four magical thieves assaulting the hospital Goro was in; the wielder was the thieves' "technical expert" and used it for a variety of purposes including communications-jamming, lock-picking and (attempted) fireball-tossing.

* [[Magitek]]: Since Mori is a "magical scientist," Mori is often seen using some sort of techno-wand. There's also been a few guns that shoot magic.

* [[The Masquerade]]: The pre-first breaking world, which is based on 21st century Earth. It turns out that mages were secretly running ''everything'' in almost every situation of power imaginable, most notably political positions. Violators, sociopathic mages who enjoyed torturing people, were somewhat rampant as well. When enough victims were made aware of each other they formed The Hearts Society, a group dedicated to protecting people from and undoing magical victimization. They decided the best way to do this would be to loosen the Masquerade slightly, so that people would at least start seeking help; The mages in power disliked this and fought back, believing that their power was more important than the victims of a few psychopathic mages (many of which were also in positions of power)... so the Hearts decided to completely [[The Unmasked World|completely destroy the masquerade.]] This caused an immediate civil war in every country on Earth as the non-magical realized that their leaders were either being manipulated by mages or were manipulating mages. This war, called the Breaking, destroyed civilization, but the resultant reformation was relatively quick and lead to an arguably better world.

* [[Meaningful Name]]:

** Mori was later revealed to be 170. She discovered the [[Fountain of Youth]] as an old woman, and was one of the first to benefit from it, so she's currently one of the oldest people alive (though not the oldest; other, more morally questionable forms of rejuvenation existed already, mostly involving massive life essence transfusion.)

* [[Our Werewolves Are Different]]: Literally; as of the "Quarantine" chapter, Greg and Kili have become "variant" werewolves that do not necessarily follow the known patterns of other werewolves, due to the highly unusual way they contracted the condition (a living cancer invading their souls). One of the current side-effects is their hair growing REALLY long. They're also not contagious, and later Kili's werewolf form grew in size in response to her suppressed rage issues.

* [[Patient of the Week]]: Patient of the Arc is more accurate, but the trope works.

* [[Pride]]: Why Elizabeth lost. Sarin describes her as "Like me; smart enough to forget you can make mistakes."

* [[Pronoun Trouble]]: Generally the comic follows the ''[[Orlando]]'' rule; call 'em "she" if their body is female and "he" if their body is male. So if we're seeing Kili in the past, Kili's a "he," but present Kili is a "she." The author said in several posts that he's amused when readers refer to characters otherwise since it shows off their perception of the characters.

** It's later [http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Dragon_Doctors/5356182/ explained in-universe] that when most of the medical team works on bodies rather than minds, it's better to always use physical genders than to make a mistake.

* [[Psychic Surgery]]: Discussed in the Crax arc, but not used; it would rip out the Crax from Greg's body instantly but since the technique requires bare hands, it would be unwise to use it on a life form that devours everything.

** Mori gives a good one to {{spoiler|Udo while he's being arrested, in response to a [[Hannibal Lecture]] he gave earlier. [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|He doesn't get it.]]}}

** And Sarin gives one to {{spoiler|Elizabeth}} on why she failed.

* [[Science Hero]]: Mori.

* [[Second Law of Gender Bending]]: Played with. Mori still isn't fully comfortable as a man, Sarin (being a shapeshifter) never minded it in the first place, Goro initially despised it but realized she hated being weak more than being female, and Kili, after some soul-searching, settled in so well others have difficulty remembering she used to be male in the first place.

* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]: Kili and Goro. [[Gender Bender|(When they were guys, anyway.)]]

* [[She Cleans Up Nicely]]: Multiple characters, although Priscilla may take the cake -- normally, she's a [[Hollywood Nerd]] with tightly bunned up hair and geek glasses, wearing conservative, baggy clothing. ... Then her nudity curse kicks in, letting her hair down and destroying the glasses. And, er, everything else.

* [[Unperson]]: Variation; when people are banished from the country of Thoria ({{spoiler|such as Mori}}), their surname is magically eradicated so that no-one, not even they themselves, can remember what it was.

** It's later mentioned that this ''can't be undone'' - even if the people in charge change their minds and want to undo what they did.

* [[Used to Be A Sweet Kid]]: Inverted; as a child, Kili was a complete brat.

* [[Vague Age]]: Rina comments on this during Mori's 170th birthday party. All the parents and grandparents look like young adults, due to society having access to a functioning [[Fountain of Youth]].

* [[World Sundering]]: It's happened ''four'' times, and people are ambivalent about whether or not a fifth is due.

* [[Xanatos Speed Chess]]: During the [[Die Hard On an X]] chapter, Elizabeth the shapeshifting thief keeps re-adapting her master plan every time Goro tries something different to stop the thieves. If it hadn't been for a slip up at the end (making her disguise as Goro ''too'' perfect) she'd have gotten away with it, too.

* [[You Can See Me]]:

** {{spoiler|Tomo}} says this. Subverted because {{spoiler|she}} really wants to be seen.