The Dragon Doctors: Difference between revisions

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This [[Web Comic]] contains examples of the following tropes:

* [[Apologizes a Lot]]: The ''artist,'' who often laments not being better at drawing.

* [[After the End]]: Civilization is said to have fallen four times during the two thousand years between modern times and the Doctors' time (The "Breakings").

'''Goro:''' Never underestimate a guerilla defending their turf. This is a hospital. ''You're in my jungle now.'' }}

* [[Badass Labcoat]]: Mori usually wears a white double-buttoned affair, like [[Doctor Steel]].

* [[Little Miss Badass]]: Poor, poor Goro, though this changed at the end of the thief arc.

* [[Baleful Polymorph]]:

** Sarin's master put him through this as training. The first step of said training was spending a couple years as a tree in a forest.

** The same thing happens to Tanica the assassin when she's hit with Sarin's seed. Duration is "somewhere between six months and four years".

* [[Beauty Is Never Tarnished]]: Averted. Goro suffers {{spoiler|1=[http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Dragon_Doctors/index.php?p=809354 severe burns] fighting Mr. Smith.}}

* [[Beast Man]]: The [[Petting Zoo People|anthropomorphic animal-people]] who have appeared are all collectively referred to as "beastmen." They include catgirls, bugmen, and one instance of a lawyer who looks like a buffalo. The author has said this is partly because of the fantasy setting, which allows more diversification to help avert [[Only Six Faces]].

* [[Bi the Way]]: A common and readily available enchantment specifically modifies sexuality to be "compatible" with another person. Useful for a village where all the men are gender-bent permanently against their will.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Not all the Doctors' cases end perfectly. Take Priscilla, for example. {{spoiler|They manage to stabilize her, but she's permanently blue and covered in tattoos that are keeping her from blowing up.... and they'll only work for a year, max, at which point they will have to forcibly regress her back to a child and let her grow up again, this time hopefully not gaining the condition in the first place.}}

** 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.

* [[Deconstruction]]: A minor mini-arc in the middle of the "Messenger of Death" chapter has Sarin being approached by the astral projection of a wizard who wants to recruit her for some grand purpose. Sarin, who is usually quite cheerful, refuses to play ball, growling at the recruiter for the presumptuousness of showing up unannounced to give a "You Are [[The Chosen One]]" speech and pointing out how creepy it is to spy on someone with magic. She loses her temper completely when the recruiter says "[[Stock Phrase|My name is of no importance]]" and slaps the recruiter's ''astral projection'', which both shows off Sarin's indignation as well as hinting just how powerful she really is. Sarin continues to rip the recruiter a new one verbally and [[Cherry Tapping|finishes off]] by zapping the recruiter with a curse that [[The Nudifier|makes her clothes disintegrate]] whenever she uses magic.

** The main reason that Sarin refuses? It's because, by her words, people who paint in broad strokes make big mistakes, and Sarin is much happier helping people on a one on one basis than trying to help millions and accidentally killing thousands. Given how powerful some magic can be, more than likely, someone has tried this before, and probably was the cause for one of the Breakings.

** See [[Clothing Damage]].

** This was how {{spoiler|Elizabeth}} was finally defeated - granted, it wasn't so much the [[Clothing Damage]] that did her in as it was the spell that caused it also getting rid of her gun.

* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: Averted, but lampshaded in the strip title when {{spoiler|Tomo arrives at the end of the Crax Arc}}.

** {{spoiler|Tomo is making a habit of this, showing up to help Kili defeat a missummoned [[Eldritch Abomination]] that was going to kill her. It's implied that Tomo is spending her [[Guardian Angel|afterlife watching over Kili from the spirit world.]]}}

* [[Discount Lesbians]]: The inhabitants of Agri Village, and in the main cast {{spoiler|Aki and Goro}}.

{{quote| '''Kili:''' I don't think they're lesbians so much as--<br />

* [[Dr. Jerk]]: Goro's abrasive some of the time, but this trope really belongs to Dr. Songbird, Aki's mother, whose idea of bedside manner is "try not to die in the next month or two."

* [[Dystopia]]: Thoria, a hundred-fifty years ago anyway. It advertises itself as "a safe country for normal people". Meaning no magic, no weirdness, no rejuvenations, all traditional. If you fit their standards for normal, it's a nice place. But if you have a genetic defect like Mori, you get deported. And that's if you're lucky.

* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: The characterizations and setting hadn't been nailed down in the first chapter, and there were a few odd things, such as Sarin wearing a robe that kept changing symbols on its front.

* [[Emergency Transformation]]:

* [[Everybody's Dead, Dave]]: Rina had to deal with this after being turned to stone for two thousand years; Kili had to deal with it as a kid when everyone in her village was drowned in a tsunami.

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

* [[Eye Scream]]: Goro faced an enemy with [[Eye Beams]] and went for the most immediate threat.

* [[Fatal Attractor]]: Greg's had a lot of girlfriends in the past, all with interesting backgrounds, but he also had to break up with all of them due to unusual circumstances. The worst was when one (an alchemist) accidentally split herself into a dozen copies of herself; Greg couldn't date all of them and it wouldn't have been fair to just settle on one, so they broke up.

* [[Harmless Freezing]]: Justified with the [[Nigh Invulnerable]] Crax; the Doctors plan to dispose of it by [[Schizo-Tech|freezing it with magic, storing it in liquid nitrogen, and dissolving it with magical acid.]] {{spoiler|This is due to its status as an energy eater, only cold effects work to restrain it cause there is no energy to consume.}}

* [[Hit So Hard the Calendar Felt It]]: The four "breakings" each started a new calendar. The current year is "625 4B". It becomes 627 4B by the time {{spoiler|Tanica finally turns human}}.

** {{spoiler|Larko Udo, swallowed by the spirit of death he summoned. [[Complete Monster|He totally deserved it,]] although Kili saved him with the rest of the people who got swallowed and gave him a [[Cruel Mercy|fate even worse.]]}}

** Subverted by {{spoiler|Elizabeth, who probably would have gotten away if she'd just cut her losses and not tried to pull an act of revenge by turning into Goro. However, if she had, she wouldn't have been able to get the money she needed, which was the whole reason she tried stealing rejuvenant in the first place. Turning into Goro was simply the most convenient method that happened to kill two birds with one stone.}}

* [[Ley Line]]: Rina was buried in one by Derek, so the magical spell keeping her trapped there would run forever. She was later discovered by a ley line surveyor in Frontera. Unfortunately, being stuck soaking in mana for centuries sent her into mana shock and she nearly exploded after being recovered.

* [[Locked Into Strangeness]]: Happens several times. Sarin the wizard's hair is green as a leftover from when she was turned into a tree for years, and Kili's hair has been white ever since she was haunted by a spirit as a child. Kili gets hit with more hair effects later; after becoming a werewolf, her hair adopts a [[Wild Hair|wild style]] and grows so rapidly it is now at perpetual [[Rapunzel Hair]] length.

* [[The Magic Comes Back]]: This was to be the main plot of ''The Odd Squad'', the unfinished prequel to ''The Dragon Doctors'' that set up the First Breaking.

* [[Magick]]: Made fun of in one strip, which had a background poster saying "Magic is not spelled with a 'k!'"

* [[Smart People Wear Glasses]]: "Impaired vision equals smart!"

* [[Spirit World]]: Kili goes here occasionally.

* [[Suddenly Voiced]]: Tanica, the assassin-turned-tree, is inaudible to the reader for the first few chapters she's introduced in, though the characters can hear her inner voice with the aid of magic (though Aki's fairy antennae work on their own, too). This resulted in a lot of one-way conversations with a mostly-inexpressive tree, which was tricky to do, so the author allowed Tanica's voice to be audible to the reader in later chapters, starting when she first converses with Greg.

* [[Taken for Granite]]:

** Sarin also frequently stoneskins herself when under attack.

** Tanica follows this trope in spirit, as she (and Sarin) were both turned into immobile, yet conscious and aware, trees. Sarin found it to be peaceful as she was relatively safe and no longer had to live her rather violent and stressful life, Tanica... takes a lot longer to find any form of peace.

* [[Tempting Fate]]: "Things are finally starting to look up."

* [[That Man Is Dead]]:

** 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.

* [[The Unpronounceable]]: Although everyone in-universe seems to have no trouble with it, it's uncertain how you pronounce the name of the [[Murder, Inc.]] group, the Trsanti.

* [[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]].

* [[Voluntary Shapeshifting]]: Sarin. Besides transforming, she can turn anyone into anything.

* [[We Help the Helpless]]: The Hearts Society is an international organization dedicated to helping victims of magic (in particular, debilitating transformation magic) and stopping "Violators" who cause these sorts of problems. For example, if an evil sorcerer turned you into a statue, or worse, ''a shoe,'' they'd be the ones who would hopefully find you and restore you.

* [[Winged Humanoid]]: Aki, a couple Pixies, and Sarin with the aid of a spell. There's no flapping because, as Sarin explains, Pixie wings (and spell wings, appearently) work using magic, rather than aerodynamics.

* [[The World Is Not Ready]]: Thoria, before their national [[Heel Face Turn]], had spies in the Frontier Exploration Force with explicit orders to kill everyone on any team that made a discovery that would be world-altering, {{spoiler|like a giant [[Fountain of Youth]]}}.

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

* [[Year Inside, Hour Outside]]: When Kili and Greg bond inside a dreamworld while the doctors operate on Greg's petrified body to chip out the Crax, we see seasons passing as they get to know each other. They spent long enough with one another there that they have fallen deeply in love.

* [[You Can See Me?]]: