Chimneyspeak

Chimneyspeak (first title page NSFW, first story page here) is a webcomic taking place in America and England during the late 1800's. It focuses mostly on Elgie, a midget enforcer, and Chelsea Grinn, a completely insane serial killer out for Elgie's blood.

The story frequently features graphic violence, edging into Gorn at times, as well as nudity and the occasional sex scene. The author also publishes a number of side stories which expand on the background of the setting, which cost a modest fee.

The site is so frequently NSFW that, with the exception of the above, there should be no direct links.

Tropes used in Chimneyspeak include:

• Ax Crazy: Chelsea, and how.
• Bad Dreams: Elgie has buckets of them.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted ever so much. Chelsea used to be the most beautiful character in the comic, and was convinced she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Now...well, she's still cute, but in a ripped-up teddy bear kind of way.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Rose, who is easily Alice's biggest girl.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Suka's Russian (which is pretty accurate) and her tattoos.
  • The fairy Elgie hallucinates.
• Bi the Way: Suka and Alice. Though Suka is more Anything That Moves.
• Catapult Nightmare: Elgie's dream about all the boys that fit his description that were killed by bounty hunters looking for Elgie.
• Cold Sniper: Question Mark and Tabby.
• Deadpan Snarker: Several characters, especially Chelsea. To herself.
• Determinator: Chelsea's murderous insanity (more specifically, the personality that embodies that insanity) drives her to get up and keep going, no matter how badly she's hurt. It has recently been theorized that her body massively overproduces adrenaline, allowing her to ignore the crippling effects of the injuries she's sustained
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Why did Chelsea slaughter her way through England, find her way to America, and start killing her way through town (twice), racking up enough wounds that she has more scar tissue than non? Elgie ran past her one night and accidentally tripped her, causing her to fall and get a small scar on her face. She went ballistic.
  • Suka had a pretty good one as well after Alice's husband left her.

Suka: Are you sad? Why are you sad!? Mikhael! Kill everyone!

• Drowning My Sorrows: Elgie does this enough that his absinthe fairy is practically a character of her own.
• Dynamic Entry: Chelsea. First when she rams a boat into an English dock on her return from Australia. Shortly thereafter, she goes into a tavern to track down Elgie. The blood of the people upstairs soaks through the floor and begins to drip on the people in the basement.
• Eye Scream: At the end of their fight in the street, Chelsea cuts Elgie's face open with his own knife, damaging his left eye.
• Eyes of Gold: Chelsea
• Fan Service: Suka and Alice. Chelsea is more Fan Disservice.
• Glasgow Grin: With a name like Chelsea Grinn, it would have been a surprise to anyone in the present if she hadn't added one to her collection of scars.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Chelsea's first scar actually falls into the "cute but warlike" top-of-page example on the trope page, and it's solidly within the good scars rage on her "good" mental construct. The rest of her scars, on the other hand, especially the cheek scars that never healed right...
• Gratuitous French: Elgie's absinthe fairy, and Elgie when she's around.
• Grey and Gray Morality: Apparently, random murder is OK, but pimping kids isn't.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Elgie will murder all the adults you want him to, but children are off limits for anything. And most of the people he kills are utter depraved lunatics or total bastards...MOST.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Alice jumps all over the place on this. Her girls are well-fed and making more money (both for her and themselves) than ever, but she also engages in child prostitution, and got her position by hiring a man to kill her predecessor's husband, and taking over when she broke down. She also employs children as snipers.
• Hot Chick in a Badass Suit: Suka in one sequence.
• Impaled Palm: Happens to Chelsea during her fight with Elgie.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: A brutal fight between Elgie and Chelsea is intercut with panels showing Suka and Alice having sex, which is happening at the same time elsewhere.
• In the Blood: The queen of England claims that all the Grinns are as bloodthirsty as Chelsea, although there is evidence that they know exactly what they're doing. Not Chelsea, though. She's just crazy.
• Karmic Jackpot: Chelsea spares an entire group of people in the basement of a bar that she had planned to slaughter gleefully. All because she recognizes one man there who had given her a single genuine compliment six years earlier.
• Knife Nut: Elgie. It backfires a little when he brought a gun, but started the fight by throwing a knife. He's not used to using guns, you see.
• The Ladette: Suka (except when she's with Alice).
• Made of Iron:
  • Elgie is two feet tall, and shrugged off having a horse thrown at him and being kicked and thrown around by Chelsea.
  • Chelsea's survived being impaled and having multiple point blank gunshots to the chest and torso. The current theory is that her body overproduces adrenaline constantly (so much so that her usual low point is where most people are when they're on an adrenaline high}
• Made of Plasticine: Bit characters. Chelsea or Elgie are both more than capable of ripping or cutting an Innocent Bystander or Mook in half without breaking a sweat.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Chelsea Grinn sports a Glasgow Grin, also known as a Chelsea Smile.
  • "Suka" means "bitch" in Russian (in both the "dog" and "not-nice-behavior" senses), and also something like "traitor" or "informer" in Russian prison-speak. Whether the second one is meaningful remains to be seen.
• Mercy Kill: Chelsea to Heinrich, after he tells her where Elgie is. Alice's pet American tells Heinrich "You're a dead man", by which he probably meant a brutal murder. Chelsea kisses Heinrich on the forehead and shoots him in the base of the skull, through the mouth.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Suka and her men.
• Naked on Arrival: Chelsea is introduced stark naked, and she murders a sailor for his clothing.
• Notorious Killers: Elgie is referred to by the surname of "Mr. Ripper" early on in the series, and the story from which he originated connected him to the Jack the Ripper murders. The author's commentary places this story as non-canon to Chimneyspeak. Alice confirms in the third chapter that Elgie killed Jack the Ripper.
• Nepali With Nasty Knives: Nandi.
• One of Us: The author is familiar with the phrase "More Dakka."
• Pants-Free: Chelsea on plenty of occasions.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Elgie
• Proud Warrior Race: The Scots, which is a pretty good summary of the real life version from the time.

Chelsea: These men will be remembered as heroes. These men that shot blindly into the smoke. These men that screamed and cried and ran. These men who couldn't kill one little girl. Honestly, I'm disappointed. Are these the best soldiers that England has to offer?
Highlander: Aye, lass. Those were the best that England has tae offer.

• Scars Are Forever: All of Chelsea's scars, but most importantly the first one. Justified: she's a noblewoman, and delicate skin scars very easily.
• Shoot Your Friend: One of the causes of Elgie's Bad Dreams.
• Shown Their Work: All the slang is correct, as are the foreign languages and the weapons used. Oh, except that the Highlanders use the wrong type of sword, but that's fine:

The Rant: Yes yes, sword nerds. We all know that during the 17th century onwards, Highlander officers preferred the basket-hilted broadswords. But fuck it, they ain’t nearly as terrifying. And they have an Italian flare that leaves a foul taste in the mouth when it comes to the brutish juggernauts the Chimneyspeak Highlanders need to be!

• The Speechless: Question Mark, on account of having his tongue cut out.
• Split Personality: Chelsea has several personalities, representing how she was before the accident, how she could have been (if she had just accepted her first scar as an unfortunate accident and gotten on with her life), and how she is now. And then there's the last one, which even the others are scared of.
• Squee: Suka's reaction to Alice's freckles.
• Tattoo as Character Type: The Russian mobsters have large tattoos on their arms and hands as a status symbol. Suka's tattoos cover most of her back as well.
• Underboobs: Chelsea shows them off.
• Victorian London
• What Did You Expect When You Named It?: Chelsea Grinn's parents could hardly be blamed for naming their child after a slang term for certain facial scars that wouldn't show up in British parlance until many decades later.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Or, as the author put it: "Why do I keep making all my serial killers so cute?"
• You Have Failed Me...: Inverted Trope. After Elgie and Chelsea succeed in acquiring Chelsea's deed from them, Suka's cohorts abandon her, claiming that associating with Alice has made her soft.