El Goonish Shive/YMMV

• Adorkable: Tedd.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced:
  • One Way Road is about Tedd (and Grace). He hadn't really done anything in the comic in quite some time. And it's about SCIENCE. Fans are pleased.
  • It's equally about Nanase and Ellen. Fans are not quite as pleased.
• Arc Fatigue: Utterly infamous for this. Storylines can go on for years in this comic, despite only taking place over a few days. Only about three or four months (not including flashbacks) have passed despite the comic having been around since 2002.
  • The "Grace's Birthday Party" storyline is a particularly egregious example. Between the Arc Fatigue and the Schedule Slip, the events of a single evening took sixteen months.
  • Has gotten much better since updates have increased.
  • The New and Old Flames portion of Bringing Silly Back ran for one month shy of a year. Add in Indiana Elliot, Hammerchlorians and the two small T-Minus entries and you have an arc that ran for just short of a year and a half real time.
  • Death Sentence has had a bad habit of dragging along; not to mention the central premise is flawed to begin with, with Grace and Raven outright admitting it would probably be kinder to simply kill the boar, considering they're ecologically damaging and huge pests.
• The Chris Carter Effect: Schedule Slip trouble + Dan Shive's love for Chekhov's Gun = we should probably give up on expecting getting answers to all of the questions.
• Complete Monster: Most villains in EGS have a Freudian Excuse or some other qualifier that keeps them from being totally reviled. Damien does not. He constantly abuses Grace and her brothers, believes himself to be a god, and what brought him to everybody's attention was slaughtering everybody at the facility where Grace and her brothers were kept. What separates him from other EGS villains is that he doesn't even get to be funny. Every strip he appears in will be dark and serious, guaranteed. It's one of the reasons Dan killed him off. He didn't want the tone of the strip to change as a result of his presence.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome considering all that has happened recently this trope has been going pretty strong the past couple of years
  • In fact Tedd just got one in the most recent arc, shortly after his Crowning Moment of Heartwarming with Ellen.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Chika won this status after five Q&A comics with her, even despite general "enough of Q&A" reaction on EGS forum. The Demonic Duck, who went from a convenient plot device to a minor character, may also qualify.
  • Tedd, since more or less having been Demoted to Extra for a very long time.
  • Lord Tedd even moreso, in spite of being one of the most mysterious figures in the series.
• Epileptic Trees: Lots of them, Dan has made fun of this in the Sketchbook.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop: "Death Sentence" has one. Blind idealism and hope is not an option, because Reality Ensues. That doesn't mean trying is futile, but it can be misguided, even harmful.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Members of the fandom are dubbed 'bunnies,' a phenomenon explained here.
• Fan Dumb: Fans also complained how unrealistic Grace's obnoxious telephone chat with Tedd was, even though it's not that different from how many newly wed couples talk over the phone in real life.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: When Susan starts to explain the long-unknown events that occurred in France, she alludes to the not-vampire that's involved, when Grace calls her "Susan the Vampire Slayer". Yeah, guess how that story ended.
• Furry Fandom: A segment of the fanbase. Hasn't come up as much in recent years.
• Genius Bonus: In a filler comic, the Demonic Duck informs Dan that he's going to Australia to discover his roots. There is fossil evidence of a large, prehistoric bird that lived in Australia which has come to be known as the "Demon Duck of Doom".
• Growing the Beard: The first few strips served as a mildly hilarious introduction to the characters with No Fourth Wall. The beard stated to grow during the Sister arc and finished by the end of the Painted Black arc or the end of Grace's Birthday Party depending on who you ask.
• Hate Dumb: People have complained about how it's unrealistic for Rhoda to have gone unnoticed in school by changing her clothes, forgetting that in this universe you can get away with much worse.
• Les Yay:
  • Girls Who Have Kissed Sarah Count = 2.
  • It's common enough that some fans have taken to calling it "OMG LESBIANS!" whenever it shows up as a means of criticizing its frequency.
  • It got worse with the Death Sentence arc, which is blatantly shipping Rhoda and Catalina.
• Mary Sue: Grace most often gets accused of this as her adorable cuteness and prettiness and all around goodness is a constant thing in comics she appears in. She's so cute that she can get characters to do things they might not want to do by giving puppy dog eyes and anyone who's mean to her is seen as being iredeemably mean or evil. Her faults are things like clumsiness or naivete or hyperactivity that serve only to make her cuter and more lovable and she's one of the most powerful characters in the series. On top of it Dan has "jokingly" said before that hating Grace makes you evil. All of these have earned her the derisive of name of Gracie Sue among a segment of the fandom.
• Memetic Badass: Starting with the fight with the fire monster, the author began ascribing this status to Justin.
• Moe: Sarah, Rhoda, Grace, Catalina to a lesser extent, even Susan can be. On the (usually) male side, Tedd and Justin.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Chaos' manifestation on the physical plane will give you chills with her first appearance. When unfocused her image will haunt your nightmares forever. Which makes the revelation that she's the mother of a grumpy old history teacher all the more shocking.
  • Also the end of the Sister II arc: Holy crap, that is one Creepy Child. The fact that Dan went on to say that Rhoda and Carol weren't hurt helped somewhat, but it was still enough to seriously freak out some people.
  • No to mention "whatever the hell this thing is "
  • Susan's face in the second to last panel here isn't as strong as the others, but is still pretty damn scary.
• The Scrappy:
  • Because of his recently revealed magical powers, bunnies' opinion on Noah has become... strong.
  • Ellen has always had some of this.
• Scrub: No magic and summoning inner demons?! Scrub.
• Squick :
  • The reason Damien wanted Grace so badly was so he could use her for breeding.
• Tear Jerker: Lampshaded in the comic title here, but is an example nonetheless.
  • This may also count.
  • And this. You can see the exact moment where Susan goes from being a literal Wide-Eyed Idealist into her current personality.
  • And this counts as well.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Since she was little, Susan has dyed her hair dark, so as to not resemble the woman her father had an affair with. These issues were vaguely addressed at the end of Grace's Birthday, but just as clearly shown to still be there in her mind. As of July 7, 2010, Susan's hair has permanently changed color for reasons unrelated to this, completely ignoring the reasons she did it in the first place.
  • Not completely unrelated. She dyed her hair because her natural hair color reminded her of her father's indiscretion, which fueled her mistrust of men, following with her love of using the Hammers to deal with obnoxious men. Her Awakening was triggered by the knowledge that the Hammers were created to promote obnoxious male behavior in the first place. With her Awakening, she no longer is Tiffany Pompoms pretending to be somebody else, she is Susan.
• Ugly Cute: Chaos in her Creepy Child form.
• The Woobie:
  • Tedd, Grace, Susan, Justin, Rhoda, and Dex are prime examples. Especially Grace.
  • One Way Road basically is Tedd with his Woobie-ness cranked Up to Eleven.