Webcomic / Out-of-Placers

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Imagine having your gender changed involuntarily; pretty inconvenient, right? Now imagine having your species changed at the same time, becoming a small, vulnerable bird-rat type thing.

This is Kassen's life. Not only does he have to cope with a new diet, cravings and urges, as a rare female he's suddenly become a very hot commodity for an entire species best described as a bunch of happy-go-lucky idiots.

Out-of-Placers takes place in a world inhabited by several sentient species: humans, Indrel (insect people), Yinglets (the bird rat things), Baxxid (bug snakes with scythe hands) and... whatever Isher is.

Can be found here. Or read from the beginning here

Out-of-Tropers:

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Kass's new neck is freakishly flexible.
  Elim: What's wrong with your neck!?
  Kass: ...It is made of yinglet
  Author's Comments: Therefore it is ridiculous.
• Accidental Murder: Kalgkur slightly misjudges his turning speed when trying to stop a thief. Unfortunately, since he is a giant serpentine creature made almost entirely of muscle and blades, the result is a spectacular and gory mess.
• After-Action Healing Drama: Happens after Elim's fight with Brakka's gang. The shiv stuck through his guts has to be removed, and his bleeding controlled, all with a medical science that appears to be mid-1800s level at best.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Beizel has found that the network of air vents throughout the Teeth makes a perfect infiltration route for an enterprising yinglet spy, er, scoutmaster. He has an awkward moment after running into Yannit, who also enjoys crawling around in the vents.
• Alien Blood: When Yannit is injured, her blood is shown to be a greyish blue color so dark that it is nearly black.
• Alternative Calendar: The story begins in Year 1359 of what is by all appearances a Constructed World. Muddying the waters is the near-total loss of recorded history before Year 640: aside from legends and scraps of Lost Technology, no one knows who the ancients were or what they based their calendar on.
• Appeal to Tradition: The crux of Vizlet's conflict with Narklet and the Elders. Whereas Vizlet's goal is to speed up yinglets' cultural and scientific development by working alongside humans, the Elders see this as a threat to the purity of yinglet traditions and identity.
• Appropriated Appellation: An unwitting version. The indrel exile Kassen and Elim bring to Val Salia has no verbal name (due to the indrel language being based on pheromones and body language), but when prompted quickly declares she wants to adopt the "name" given to her by a human she met long ago - Hyanoisyskank. Fortunately, she's later convinced to shorten it to the much more innocuous "Yannit".
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Matriarch Vizlet asks the very tired Kassie when she last slept, Kassie responds by telling her "last night" like it was a stupid question. This shocks Vizlet into realizing that Kassie was telling the truth about being human before, since no yinglet, no matter how uninformed or how slow-witted the majority of their species is, wouldn't know how to sleep properly. ^note  Word of God is that while they need to sleep less than humans, they exhaust themselves quicker than most other species and need three to seven short naps every twenty-four hours. Trying to stay awake between sunrise and sunset for a yinglet is like a human trying to stay up for several days straight.
• Art Evolution: In addition to the general artwork improvement over the course of a several-year comic runtime, Isher in particular has had some character design updates. Early pages depicted her with four-fingered hands and modestly-sized toe claws. Later pages depict her with five fingers and giant talons on two of her toes.
• Art Shift: Pages from Yannit's perspective are drawn depicting both what she sees (essentially thermal imaging) and her thoughts (which are drawn in a very simple, almost cave painting-esque style).
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The yinglets tend to be hyperactive and easily distracted as a species, the males moreso than the females.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Male yinglets appear to consider Kass a rather attractive specimen even before the makeover ambush. And well, She Cleans Up Nicely...
• Bee People: The Indrel are insectoid, and soldier and worker forms have been seen so far, with the existence of drones implied. Yannit is something of an oddity in that she chooses to leave her hive.
  • Even more so, considering that indrel are known to go violently insane when separated from their hive for too long (fortunately, not only is Yannit highly unusual for her species, there have been hints that she has subconsciously "switched" her "hive" to her current group of True Companions, so in all likelihood this won't be an issue for her).
  • Later pages indicate Yannit (and by extension, other indrel) suffer from sensory deprivation when separated from their hives (where communication is primarily done through pheromones). Yannit still gets impulses to go crazy, but touching human hair helps keep her sane. Ran has also begun work on finding substances that can simulate indrel pheromones to calm her down when these impulses come up.
• Being Human Sucks: Or, Being a Yinglet Sucks, rather. Besides Kassen for obvious reasons, Lopin admits that if he had the choice, he would love to be human over being a yinglet, because humans have everything that most of his species wants.
• Beware the Silly Ones: The Salia family's hat. The nobles of House Ivenmoth are known for being eccentric and whimsical. Those who take that for a sign of weakness tend to come to sticky ends. Viracroix is a prime example of this, perhaps best exemplified when dealing with a subordinate with more appreciation for profit than their citizens. His method of debate involves wearing a "special outfit" (a tarp) to avoid getting splattered by Mister Omarhan's messy execution.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Patriarch Kattajak is not amused by the news of Brakka's attack on Kassen and Elim. and hollers “Wut!” in response.
  • Kalgkur does this when he finds out that the Trademaster wants to see him, which he assumes is not good news.
  • Kassen lets out a big "Huh!?" when Isher casually reveals that her badly injured arm is almost completely healed after only one night.
• Big "YES!": Vizlet invites Kass to the yinglet nursery partly in the hope of getting him interested in breeding since female yinglets are rare and the enclave currently has a shortage of females. Kass is mostly just grossed out by what he observes, but he ends up secretly helping a struggling baby yinglet hatch from its egg. When Vizlet realizes what Kass did, the nurses hear a strange noise that turns out to be Vizlet letting out a very long "yes."
• Bitch Slap: When Kass confronts Vizlet about making him wear "the reed of carnal beckoning," she gives a weak apology and start lecturing him about how he should trust her wisdom. At this point Kass has reached his Rage Breaking Point from the pain and humiliation of being turned into a female yinget and shuts her up with a smek across the cheek. She is stunned into silence for a moment before returning the smek, leading to a Wimp Fight.
• Bite of Affection: Beizel initiates sex with Lopin by biting his ear.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Yinglets are egg-laying mammals with a massive gender imbalance and a very bizarre reproductive cycle which effectively turns each female into an ambulatory eugenics lab, mixing and recombining the genetic material of all the males she mates with during a given reproductive cycle.
• Bizarre Alien Senses:
  • Yannit appears to see by thermal imaging.
  • Indrel, due to their pheromone-based communication, have automatic emotional reactions to certain scents. In an attempt to help Yannit acclimate to living among humans, Ran explores her reaction of a variety of scents and substances. The results range from 'nothing' to 'hooray' to 'PANIC'.
  • Apparently, the vision of the hind pairs of baxxid eyes isn't obstructed by cloth. Some baxxid will wear headdresses when interacting with humans to cut down on any confusion over which eyes the human should be looking at.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • As a female yinglet, Kassen is inherently given the rank and privilege that all females of her new kind are born into, as well as automatic deference and admiration from all of the lesser males... but she's still now seen as little more than a slightly more intelligent vermin by everyone else.
  • Isher is huge, extremely strong, and dangerous-looking, making her naturally great at her job (standing around looking intimidating). Unfortunately this runs completely counter to her actual personality.
• Bloody Handprint: Isher's cunning anti-burglary system for her apartment in the slums consists of daubing the front wall with bloody smears, handprints, and "GO AWAY" and "DIE". She's a Gentle Giant so she got the blood from a butcher.
• Body Horror: The remnant liquid from "Zhat Zhing" still has the ability to turn organic matter into yinglets, but it's far less effective without a big-enough lifeform to modify. The result is a puddle of anomalous liquid with malformed plant/insect/yinglet organs growing out of it and a coagulated Meat Moss of tumours around the edge.
• Break Them by Talking: Brakka tries to do this to Kass after he's yingnapped her, in order to get her to tell him where "zat zhing" is. Kass turns it right around on him with an impassioned speech about how close she and Elim are.
  Brakka:Ya poor li'l dupe. So da reds took ya in, put you in a fancy coat, and got ya a fancy goon to guard ya. You're bein' used. Dey is all smiles and friendlies now, sure. But once dey get what dey want from ya, you'll get kicked to da curb. Humans? Dey might see you as a pet, a distraction, a tool... but you will never be a friend to dem.
  Kass: Oh, you are so right! Guess I'm just being tricked by za guy who's been my companion for years, who's always stood by my side even when he had nothing to gain from it, who I survived a fekkin' war with, and is so close and trustworthy zat he is essentially my family. Za guy you just stabbed in the back, pretty much ensuring I will never cooperate with you in any way.
  Brakka: [shrieks in total horror]
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The "dog" of this world looks like something out of the Mesozoic
• Call to Agriculture: Isher prefers working in the gardens to guard work, despite being a huge armored lizard lady.
• Cassandra Truth: Vizlet doesn't buy Kass' story at first, and while she's willing to go along with the Trademaster's machinations, she doesn't initially have much interest in easing his transition into enclave life. One flippant answer to "When was the last time you slept", though, and Vizlet is forced to revise her position in a hurry.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats: The setting has all kinds of fantastical flora and fauna, including various giant arthropods that can pull carts or simply have carrying space carved into their shells. They're also decent eating.
• Charm Point: Kalgkur is drawn to Nell for her skill and creativity in sculpting metal. She blushes furiously from his eloquent praise of her artistry and later realizes she's interested in him.
  Kalgkur: Nell. Your mind is a forge of incomprehensible, beautiful creation.
• Clash of Evolutionary Levels: The yinglets are descended from smaller ancestors ('lesser yinglets', as Ran calls them) that still exist. However, the number of lesser yinglets is steadily diminishing, since either kind of yinglet will try to kill the other on sight, with the newer ones usually coming out on top.
• Ceiling Cling: Yannit can easily climb walls and can sleep hanging off a ceiling.
• Closer to Earth: Yinglet society uses this as their central organizing principle, relying on their relatively sensible and rational females to keep their flightier males in check. However, the females are if anything even more ruthlessly utilitarian than the males, especially when it comes to dealing with outsiders.
• Commonality Connection: Kalgkur, a massive serpentine baxxid, agonizes over how to introduce himself to Isher, an amazonian half-human, and settles for griping over the inconvenience of being too big for human settlements. It wins her over on the spot.
• Connected All Along: A rather dark example. Yannit starts getting agitated after Kalgkur becomes Kass' bodyguard when she picks up his scent. As it turns out, it's because baxxid would frequently prey on her kind.
• Cringe Comedy: There's a lot of this, especially while Kass is trying to deal with his abrupt, unwanted, and unintentional change from a rather ordinary young male human to a very attractive female yinglet.
• Cumbersome Claws:
  • Kassen is turned into a yinglet, a type of ratlike creature with clawed fingers. At one point he writes about wanting to ball his hand into a fist to punch someone, but that would just jab the claws into the puffy paw pads he has now. He also initially has trouble holding a quill, making his handwriting sloppier-looking than it used to be until he adjusts.
  • The baxxid are serpentine insectoids with spiky limbs that, according to Ran Ste-Su G'Mindel's Val Salian Regional Field Guide, "are suited for ripping apart large, armored plains-beasts in an instant." But these are not gripping limbs, so despite having memories and language-learning skills that greatly surpass those of humans, they cannot make tools/structures or write things down like other civilized races. They have to rely on human servants to do those things for them.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Elim, despite having had a jagged piece of metal shoved all the way through him and struggling to stay conscious, completely wipes out Brakka's gang in a matter of (very, very violent) seconds. The one survivor (aside from Brakka himself) is a Cloudcuckoolander who wandered off to do his own thing instead of fighting.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Not necessarily "cute" by conventional standards, but baxxid are nevertheless often very peaceful and shy. They also have very powerful lungs. One baxxid in the streets is frightened by an insect crawling over it, and screams loudly enough to be heard across the entirety of Val Salia. The author's note on the page sheds some light on it:
  If human lungs/vocal cords can be likened to a trumpet, baxxid's are something more like bagpipes. A deep breath in, then continuous buzzing that is then shaped into words. Also comparable to an electrolarynx, except instead of tinny electric vibrations, it’s more like a warhorn from the depths of hell itself.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Matriarch Vizlet is by far the smartest yinglet in the Valsalia enclave and quite snarky about it.
  • Kass gets her shots in too, which tends to go right over the heads of most of her entourage.
• Death World: The Yinglets' native ecosystem (which they bring with them wherever they settle due to carrying seeds and spores in their fur) is a poisonous swampland incredibly lethal to anything not native to it. Yinglets are mostly immune to all the toxins (at worst, they give them a bit of a buzz) but humans need to tread extremely carefully around anything that grows, crawls or flies near a yinglet swamp.
• Declaration of Protection: Thrice, all related to Kass.
  • Firstly, there's Elim voicing his thoughts after Kass expresses fear at being a much more fragile, vulnerable yinglet:
    "You're not doing this alone, Diplomat Kassen. If anyone, scav, human, or whatever else, even thinks about harming you… I will break them."
  • Later, when Kass's situation reminds Yannit of a certain story:
    "Ohhhh, poorpoor Kasss! Is frog, sofroggg. We find hyou princess and hyuu be happilevverrafterrr. Iff Big Bad villain come hurt Khass, I crushh head verry."
  • Most recently, there's Kalgkur's thoughts when he has his first experience with Kass' benevolent leadership:
    "How is it I am feeling such tremendous stress burdens lifted by a creature so small, so dangerously fragile. Does she even realize? Though already instructed to do so by outside forces, I now willingly set upon myself this responsibility, in extreme: this tiny creature will achieve and maintain the highest degree of possible safety through my self-directed actions."
• Did You Just Have Sex?:
  • When Vesaria is looking for Zally (who is known for her Extreme Libido), she immediately knows where Zally is when she sees a male walk out of a room with a dumb smile.
  • When Isher, who is a large Half-Human Hybrid suffering from Freakiness Shame, manages to score a one-night stand with a nice young man, she is metaphorically glowing the next day.
  • Lopin acts like he is drunk after Beizel humps his brains out and is in enough of an unusually good mood for Kass to ask him what's up the next morning.
• Didn't Think This Through: Kattajak's opinion of punishment by exile in the northern yinglet enclave, since, unlike down south where there's nothing but untamed wilderness for the exiles to flee to, up north is located right next to a flipping city. Said exiles will not only be able to make a living there, but will most likely do so by using the same bad behaviors that got them kicked out, resulting in them a) not having any incentive to change their ways, and b) giving the rest of yingletkind a bad name.
• Different for Girls: At first, the species change is far more significant than the sex change because yinglet gender relations are so different from human norms and being a tiny bird-rat is so physically different than a human that there's little basis for comparison. But when a moment comes where Kass is "one of the girls" for the first time, the realization hits him like a ten ton sack of bricks. After that, he writes a journal entry analyzing his preconceptions about women where he flatly admits that he basically knows nothing about what being a woman is like.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: The elderly seamstress Nana gives Kass a smack on the head for making Lopin cry as though reprimanding a naughty child, not realizing that Kass is an actual Ivenmoth officer and also unaware that Kass used to be human. Upon finding out that she just struck a superior, she apologizes but ends up further revealing her condescending thoughts about yinglets by explaining why she assumed that that Kass's uniform was just for show, while one of the younger seamstresses tries to warn her stop talking. Luckily for her, Kass is a Benevolent Boss and as a former human is understanding of why humans don't take yinglets seriously and so lets her off with a warning.
  Nana: Oh I am so terribly sorry, I didn't... The world's just... changing faster than these old bones can keep up with, sometimes. I thought you were something like... a mascot, you know? Like that it would make people smile to see a charming little yinglet donning the red? With a precious little badge and everything, just like the big people...
• Diplomatic Back Channel: Following an incident that could cause a diplomatic crisis if it went public, Trademaster Viracroix sends a spy to discuss with the yinglet spymaster Beizel about the ensuing coverup.
• Diplomatic Cover Spy: It's obvious to Matriarch Vizlet that Kass's diplomatic mission involves getting as much information as possible about yinglet culture, but she considers it an acceptable price for having diplomacy with a human trading guild.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Vizlet dresses Kass with "the Reed of Carnal Beckoning" for her introduction to the patriarchs knowing that it will distract them from asking too many questions. Now if she'd just had time to explain that to Kass first...
  • Lopin sold Kass the transformation artifact despite his better judgement because human Kass was just so handsome.
  • Kass seeing Elim shirtless caused a wee bit of distraction for the Diplomat.
• The Dividual: Ran's assistants are a pair of identical twins, Klaede and Ilden Maldery, who are always seen together.
• Dope Slap:
  • Matriarch Vizlet, who is one of the only fully level-headed yinglets in the setting, occasionally has to smack a little sense into the nervous pile of ADHD that is the average yinglet.
  • Less of a slap and more of a whack because baxxid don't have fingers, but Kuldra gets one from Varakses for crushing on the Trademaster and another from Zhretta for squeeing over Kalgkur's friendship with Nell.
  • When Kalgkur mistakes Lopin for Kass, Lopin is flattered to be mistaken for a woman and uses to the opportunity to fish for more complements until Kass puts a stop to it with a strike to the back of Lopin's head.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title of the comic references both how the main characters are misfits and the out-of-place artifacts which play an important role in the story.
• Driving Question:
  • What was the mysterious artifact that transformed Kass into a female yinglet and where did it come from?
  • What is Patriarch Narklet searching for and why does he seem to know exactly where to dig?
  • Why do people keep digging up artifacts of Lost Technology but no ruins of the civilization that made them?
  • Why is there almost no surviving history from before the year 640?
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Due to the massive gender imbalance in yinglet populations, around half of the males are extremely effeminate, both in looks and demeanor. Things like rounder snouts, shorter teeth and hair in addition to the fur are much sought after. Some major examples include The Oracle of Bakersroof and Patriarch Chakki.
• Eats Babies: Trademaster Viracroix's great-grandfather apparently ate children, hence why he was quietly assassinated and replaced with a saner relative.
• Either "World Domination", or Something About Bananas: When Vizlet receives some very bad news, she slams her hands on a table and gives a tail signal which Pekkit and Feeeena don't quite catch the meaning of.
  Vizlet: [shakes tail]
  Pekkit: Wait wait, is zat ze tail shake for "leave za room" or "time for footrubs"
  Vizlet: [shakes tail harder]
  Feeeena: YEAH OKAY OKAY OKAY
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: The yinglets carefully regulate reproductive sex in order to breed useful traits into the next generation. Recreational sex, on the other hand, is pretty much a free-for-all, especially between males.
• Everyone Is Bi: Baked into the yinglet genome. Since females are relatively rare and tend to be selective when they breed, males who want romantic relationships or recreational sex have to do so with each other. Their genitals have evolved to be just as compatible male/male as male/female specifically for these purposes.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Kass checks in on Isher and Lopin just in time to overhear them talking about how Isher used to have a crush on him but how his transformation means she can't see him the same way anymore. After a moment of mutual writhing in dismay, Kass changes the subject.
• Exotic Equipment: Yinglet genitalia is just as compatible male/male as male/female, though female/female they're no more or less compatible than humans.
• Extra Parent Conception: Yinglet females mate with multiple males over the course of their heat and each hatchling usually has genes from more than one father.
• Fantastic Caste System: Yinglet society tends to be fairly chaotic, with an inner core of females surrounded by a loose inner ring of the most competent males (the patriarchs) and a chaotic outer ring of less competent males who are often at loose ends. However, all females are considered nobility and accorded the title of "Lady".
• Fantastic Drug:
  • Bruisegrass powder, or "blood powder" is a powerful narcotic derived from a fast-growing red algae. It's also used as currency in shady deals.
  • Yinglets can get an alcohol-like buzz by consuming huge amounts of the plants found in their native environment which are toxic to most other creatures.
• Fantastic Livestock: In the absence of any non-fantastic livestock, humans on this world have domesticated a number of more alien creatures, such as tiplods: giant isopod-like animals that take the place of oxen as draft animals and sources of meat. A later page features a hauler-crab, a massive, lumbering creature that serves as both a beast of burden and an emergency water source in coastal regions.
• Fantastic Racism: The yinglets are subject to significant prejudice; Matriarch Vizlet warns Kass that practically everyone considers their species vermin.
• Fantastic Slurs: 'Scav' for yinglets, short for scavenger. While yinglets do a lot of scavenging and so far no one has responded to it negatively other than Vizlet sharply telling Kass not to use that word, it definitely reads as a slur.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Elim and Kass. They survived a war together and, even though they have no blood ties, they consider each other brothers. Even after Kass is turned into a yinglet, Elim assures him/her that Kass' new condition changes nothing and he will stay by their side no matter what.
• First Law of Gender Bending: Kass is apparently stuck as a female yinglet, since the humans have no idea how her transformation was accomplished, and any yinglet who isn't equally ignorant is not talking.
• Flat "What": Zhretta and Kalgkur's response to a poorly explained cry for help from one of the guards:
  "DISTURBING EMERGENCY! Please come, help! It's terrible, so terrible! Perrsurl! He has been cornered by the dick banshee!"
  "...the what"
• Flowery Insults: Baxxid tend to go for those, given their tendency towards Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  Bilshernnen: I therefore name you abrasive and childish for your current age. You are harshly urged to go forth and choke on the reproductive fluids of livestock.
• Food as Bribe: When Viracroix learns that two local orphans witnessed the attack on Kass, he remarks ominously about "loose ends to tie up", has the children brought in, and promises them a weekly supply of candy in exchange for their silence.
• Forced Transformation: Kass' transformation was caused by a mysterious alchemical artifact that was clearly intended specifically for the purpose of turning someone into a female yinglet.
• Foreign Queasine: Kass has mixed feelings about gaining a yinglet's taste for raw molluscs. Given how yinglet creativity tends to range from haphazard to deranged, Isher panics when the yinglet enclave offers them a welcoming banquet, only to find Poak prepared special dishes for non-yinglet palates.
• Foreshadowing: A page detailing the different flags worn by the baxxid and their meanings briefly shows one wearing a black flag and that they aren't to be impeded or interacted with. It's later revealed that these baxxid are members of their kind who failed a Secret Test of Character; it's implied that they've been lobotomized to some extent.
• Forgotten State of Undress: When Kass starts having a panic attack in the middle of the night, Isher runs to his room to try and comfort him. Afterwards, Lopin comments that she must be a great friend to have come to him without even putting on clothes first, which Isher hadn't realized.
  Isher: ...Oh no. Ohhhh no. I must've passed... five guards...
• Fun with Acronyms: The archive URLs shorten the comic's title to "oops".
• Funny Background Event:
  • Over the course of this page, you can see one of the yinglet burrows outside going from smoking to visibly on fire.
  • Another yinglet burrow on fire can be seen in the background on this page.
• Gender Bender: The transformative artifact produces a female yinglet, never mind that Kass was male to start. Deconstructed as one of many sources of dysphoria he suffers in his new body; when he's not doing his damnedest to ignore it or play it off with sarcasm, he speaks bitterly about being stuck as a "scav bitch".
• Gender-Blender Name: Male or female, Kassen generally goes by "Kass"
• Gender Rarity Value: There's a lot more yinglet males than females by a margin of at least five to one. The females are kept cloistered in each enclave for the sake of survival, but they're mostly running things from behind the scenes.
• Gentle Giant:
  • The baxxid are basically giant, serpentine creatures made of armor and knives; they also avoid conflict at all costs and are incredibly adept interpreters and mathematicians.
  • Isher is an eight-foot-tall Half-Human Hybrid with huge talons, fangs, and powerful-looking raptor legs. She also bemoans her position as a guard/bouncer and would much rather tend to plants.
  • Patriarch Poak is a yinglet version. He comes up to a human's chest as opposed to their crotch, and while he occasionally punishes unruly yinglets by sitting on them, he's a friendly, jovial member of the enclave.
• Girliness Upgrade: Kass receives what amounts to a "makeover mugging" from the the other girls at the yinglet enclave before her presentation to the patriarchs.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Yannit struggles with this possibility. As an indrel drone, she is used to living among people who share her means of pheromone-based communication, which functions as a sort of limited Hive Mind among the indrel. Travelling to Val Salia, however, she finds herself not only the sole example of her kind for miles around, but also experiencing great difficulty understanding the people around her. With their lack of pheromones and their reliance on verbal communication, humans are like silent "storyghosts" to most of her senses, and she is becoming increasingly gripped with existential dread and paranoia. However, she has developed a coping mechanism - touching people (mainly their hair), which reassures her that they do exist.^note According to Isher, the previous indrel drone to leave their hive and try living among humanity eventually went on a murderous rampage. It's implied that their breakdown was fueled by the same kind of prolonged sensory deprivation Yannit is beginning to suffer from.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The death of the thief who was accidentally killed by Kalgkur is shown only as a white silhouette. Considering that he was apparently torn in half by the baxxid's claw, it's for the best.
• Half-Breed Angst: Since she's a half-human, Isher is smaller than the non-human part of her family, which makes her feel like she doesn't belong. She moves away, thinking that life among humans would be better, only to be met with the same feeling of non-belonging, this time due to being bigger that everyone else.
• Hastily Hidden MacGuffin: Lopin got the artifact which caused Kass's transformation from Brakka, who was running from Beizel's scouts and decided to drop it into Lopin's bag, telling him that he would eat his eyes if he didn't return it.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Kass has trouble speaking and eating in her new form. Even relatively simple things like keeping her balance and a different sleep cycle throw her for a loop. Learning the "facts of life" yinglet-style from Matriarch Vizlet literally leaves her bug-eyed, and her reaction to being forced to recount them for Ran's research is documented in the page image above.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: To most yinglets (small, short-lived, and very fragile), humans (tall, strong, seemingly immortal) are absolutely awe-inspiring. Human children are terrifying monsters (since they often don't realize how easy it is to maim or kill the yinglet they're "playing" with), and an extremely angry human soldier might as well be Godzilla to them. Basically, humans are elves to yinglets. They have long lives and they are the species that created the culture and civilization of the world. Valsalia says this was intentional.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Happens on this page when two baxxid discussing how they must keep peace with humans mention how another baxxid passing by can't go outside anymore due to suffering from an embarrassing condition that has caused her to grow more monstrous.
  Bilshernnen: Your speech emissions reach me from your location. You are clearly aware of this. I therefore name you abrasive and childish for your current age. You are harshly urged to go forth and choke on the reproductive fluids of livestock.
• Incompatible Orientation: Lopin (male yinglet) is attracted to Elim (male human), who is not interested in males or just not interested in yinglets (probably both).
• Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Kattajak imagines stabbing Narklet in the neck and chuckles about it when Narklet gives Kattajak a condescending reminder of his runaway daughter.
• I Know You Know I Know:
  • Matriarch Vizlet is perfectly aware that Kass is as much a spy as an envoy, but tells Kass it's a price she's willing to pay.
  • Isher is horrified to realize that Ran recognizes her species (or her origin, it's not entirely clear from the context), but they both agree that some secrets are best kept secret.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Vizlet is in the middle of such a situation: while Lippie has a lot of potential, being favored by Vizlet to be the next Matriarch, she's also a complete Nervous Wreck most of the time, and the other females, while relatively more mentally stable, don't seem to be as capable as Lippie.
  Vizlet: She's already memorized ze entire base of zhe birzhscript but zhat's only half of a Matriarch's duties. She can barely handle an unexpected situation of her own, let alone zhose of an entire enclave zhat would be looking at her for direction.
  Figgins: ...But you're not ready to give up on ze "Lippie as Matriarch" possibility.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After witnessing the weirdness of House Ivenmoth firsthand, a new hire is next seen at a bar with a mug of beer...
  Craylor: So House Ivenmoth's got some kinda shit goin' on
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Isher pines after Kassen, a (former) human.
  • Yinglets have been known to suggest "scientifically inappropriate" acts to human researchers in exchange for oysters. There's even human/yinglet brothels in the city.
  • Kuldra, a young, female baxxid, has a crush on the human Trademaster Viracroix, much to her elder Varakses' annoyance.
  • Lopin is explicitly described as a "human chaser" by other yinglets and it shows. He sold a very important item to Kassen because the latter was "so handsome" and seems to find Elim very attractive as well.
  • Another baxxid, Kalgkur, has a crush on Nell, a human coppersmith running a stall in the lower markets. He causes a bit of an incident and is assigned guard duty in that very area as a punishment. To Nell's own surprise, she's interested despite, or perhaps because of, the "giant boneworm" matter.
• Insistent Terminology: The younger, dumber yinglets insist on calling Kassen "sopretty Lady Kass", much to her irritation.
• Inventing the Wheel: Yinglet inventions reflect the fact that they're quite young as a sapient species and have the brain chemistry of a heavily caffeinated child. Thus, The Whel.
  Advantages: Almost a wheel
  Drawbacks: ...But not quite
• Is It Something You Eat?: In the "Of Ends and Beginnings" side-story, that's the reaction of the average Antenillian yinglets when Cairo begins talking about copper and infrastructure.
• Kids Are Cruel: Played with. While kids aren't portrayed as being particularly bad or mean, to a creature as small and fragile as a yinglet, human children are still large, very strong, and have poor impulse control. In one of his research entries, Kass implies that human children playing too rough with yinglets isn't uncommon.
• Last-Second Word Swap: A guard informs the approaching Kass (who has recently been transformed into a female yinglet) that the elevator is only for Ivenmoth personnel and starting to call Kass a "scav" when he realizes that Kass is wearing an Ivenmoth officer's uniform and switches to calling him "sir" questioningly.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: While drugged out of his mind from emergency surgery, Elim sees Kass and immediately starts cuddling him like a dog. Isher, squeeing internally, blatantly lies that she'll pretend "this precious tender moment" never happened.
  Elim: You like them scritches don'tcha. Lil' fluff fluff. Gon' scritch ya.
  Kass: I... Isher. Please... close ze curtains. And forget you saw zis.
• Lost Technology: People frequently dig up strange artifacts known as antiquities, ranging from high-tech weapons and toys to shards of unknown metals. Strangely, despite these seeming to be remnants of a more technologically advanced age, there is absolutely no archaeological evidence of the civilization that created them. One folk belief is that they were gifts from angels. The Transformation Potion-like item that turned Kass into a female yinglet is believed to have been an antiquity, though an antiquity being able to do something as magic-like as that is unheard of.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Matriarch Vizlet — once she becomes convinced that Kass truly is the unwilling changeling she claims to be — expresses genuine concern for Kass' personal welfare, in marked contrast to Trademaster Viracroix, who is openly mainly interested in her utility and needs her in the best achievable headspace to get that.
• Low Fantasy: Hard to classify but probably fits best here. Humans are far from the only sapient species and most other species aren't even remotely humanoid, but the only magic to appear as of this writing was "Zhat Zhing" that turned Kassen into a yinglet. Other "antiquities" are presented more as lost technology for the most part than magical artefacts, complete with mundane degradation of most examples.
• Low-Literacy Setting: House Ivenmoth has a "public education initiative" where their guardsmen learn to read using arrest reports.
• Made of Iron: Elim. Surviving a serious gut wound in the middle of a war in a medieval setting is already enough to qualify, but then he also gets a foot-long metal shiv rammed through his body and not only manages to get back up, but also to utterly destroy the yinglet gang that was threatening Kass. He's even projected to make a full recovery because the shiv went through scar tissue from Elim's earlier war injury.
• Makeover Montage: A full page is given to the "ambush makeover" inflicted on Kass by Za Girls.
• Makeover Torment: Kass's self-image at this point is still entirely male, so he reacts to the "ambush makeover" with varying levels of confusion and dismay, especially when he gets an unexpected ear piercing.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • The Transformation Potion-like object that started the main plot of the story is an example. Magic does not exist in this setting as far as anyone is aware, but while it is common for people to dig up artifacts of Lost Technology of unknown origin, an artifact being able to do something as magic-like as that is unheard of.
  • Patriarch Narklet has an uncanny ability to know exactly where to dig to find treasures which he attributes to listening to the yinglet ancestor spirits. Some other yinglets like Patriarchs Kattajak and Beizel suspect that claims like that are lies that the traditionalists use to keep control of yinglet society, but Narklet's internal monologue suggests that he really does believe he can hear spirits.
• Micro Monarchy: Val Salia is a tiny, independent city state that technically does not have an official government, but the human part of its population is effectively ruled by a merchant house, House Ivenmoth, with the head of the house, known as the Trademaster, being effectively the city's king. Its exact population isn't given but evidence suggests it is only a few hundred people.
• Mistaken Identity: Kalgkur initially mistakes Lopin for Kass, given that Lopin is the only other yinglet living in House Ivenmoth. Lopin plays along to fish for more compliments, overjoyed that he's pretty enough to be mistaken for a female.
• Monochromatic Impact Shot: The moment Kalgkur accidentally kills a thief is shown entirely in silhouettes. It's still quite graphic, showing the poor thief being torn to pieces by the impact of Kalgkur's claw.
• Monstrous Mandibles: The indrels have a bifurcated set that usually stay closed. Judging by Yannit's example, they tend to open when they're exceptionally excited or angry.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • In this page, Lopin comments on how Kass is lucky to have such a loyal friend like Elim... and then starts he commenting on how strong and handsome Elim is.
    Elim: WOW that went from heartwarming to weird so fast.
  • This page has a badass action scene and a dramatic flashback as a badly injured Elim is fighting off the gang that assaulted Kass... and it ends on two little kids cheering happily as blood splatters all around them.
  • After the battle, when Elim is mortally wounded, Kass is increasingly desperate and bursts into Ran's office in the small hope that he could somehow do something... only to find Ran playing dress-up with Lopin.
  • Vizlet calls a secret meeting with Kattajak and Beizel regarding serious "cloakin'-an'-daggerin'", until the final panel with them Squeeing over Lippie's embroidery skills.
  • After multiple pages of Kalgkur being his usual adorable self and finally getting to talk to his secret crush (who looks like she might actually reciprocate), he accidentally kills someone in a very graphic way, traumatizing everyone around including himself.
• Morphic Resonance:
  • Kass retains his long brown hair as a yinglet: it's a hassle with the new shape of his head, but he can't bear to cut off the last remnant of his natural body. Since everything else transformed by Zhat Zhing has the same colouration, Ran isn't sure whether it's coincidence or if Kass' appearance was somehow "locked in" and used for any future transformation.
  • Same goes for Cairo in the side story "Of Ends and Beginnings". He even keeps his glasses and suit.
• Motivation on a Stick: An illustration in the "Val Salian Regional Field Guide" shows a typical yinglet caravan, among which a "colossal dirt rasper" (a mix of a crab and an anteater) is guided by its "carter" with a seed-bulb infest with cone-gnats, its favorite prey. It must be guided this way because it is too stupid to be trained and it never stops trying to reach the food.
• Mundane Luxury: Having never had a room of his own with a door before, Lopin considers a closet with a few pillows in it to be the fanciest place he has ever slept.
• My Instincts Are Showing:
  • Kass eats bugs when tired/half asleep, much to her displeasure. She's also displeased by her own arousal when told that other yinglets consider her very attractive and very displeased by her body's physical reaction when she's propositioned by one of the yinglet patriarchs. They also get into an argument with her own "stupid yinglet brain" when she first meets Kalgkur, which is telling her to run from what it registers as a predator.
  • Even baxxid are occasionally subject to this. As a Proud Scholar Race, they try to hide these instincts from humans as much as they can.
• Naked Vulnerability: Kass is so overwhelmed by his transformation that he walks naked through the streets without noticing or caring. The Panic Attacks start later.
• Nature Versus Nurture: After extensive travel and study to learn how to improve yinglet conditions, Matriarch Vizlet has come to believe that they don't lack any innate wisdom that humans enjoy, they just don't have centuries of ancestral knowledge to pass down to their children. Correcting that imbalance is her greatest dream.
• Never Trust a Hair Tonic: One of the Ivenmoth guards that rescues Elim has a large bald streak down the center of his head after falling for this. In his case, the "treatment" consisted of letting a mite lay eggs on his scalp.
• New Form, Old Fashion Sense: Kassen's transformation from human to yinglet sees him shrink out of his Ivenmoth uniform. He eventually gets a new uniform fitted for yinglet proportions.
• No Brows: Yuziv, one of the guards House Ivenmoth uses for intimidation, appears to be completely hairless and has bulging brow ridges, giving him a brutish appearance.
• Noble Bigot: Before his transformation, Kassen was sympathetic but condescending towards the "younger races".
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Noble Bigot Kassen buys a shiny stone for a high price out of pity from Lopin, a struggling yinglet peddler. It promptly turns him into a yinglet. A female one. He may have seen yinglets as an annoying lesser race and called them scavs, but he never mistreated them and was always kind to other non-human creatures. When Lopin later finds out what the artifact did to Kass, he is initially happy for Kass because female yinglets are rare and treasured in yinglet society (and also likely because he wishes he could be female himself), until Kass reminds him of all the reason why being a yinglet is terrible compared to being human, which causes Lopin to admit that Kass didn't deserve what happened to him.
  • The side story "Of Ends and Beginnings" has a yinglet deliberately turning a random man into a female yinglet because she wants some revenge over how humans treat yinglets. Her unfortunate victim is a merchant who was trying to help the struggling town and had never been unkind to yinglets.
• No Longer with Us:
  • When informing Kass that Elim will take months to return to active duty but is otherwise fine, Surgeon Merrs delivers the news in a way that makes it seem like he's dead.
  • At one point, the baxxid Kalgkur visits what appears to be a baxxid cemetery of sorts, where ossified baxxid exoskeletons rest with gigantic mushrooms growing from their skulls. After three pages of Talking to the Dead, reminiscing about the things he and his parent did together, Kalgkur's parent suddenly speaks (very slowly, taking all night to finish a sentence) to chide him for being so sentimental, revealing the cemetery to actually be a sort of retirement home, and the mushrooms to be a benign part of the baxxid's Bizarre Alien Biology.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Isher is rather stacked for someone who is largely saurian otherwise. Female yinglets are more proportionate and actually used to be (egg-laying) mammals, but used their self-directed evolution process to breed out the need for breastfeeding their offspring so females could focus more on running enclaves and producing more eggs.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Lippie, a yinglet with severe anxiety issues, has a stress dream that starts with having to give a speech and forgetting to wear clothes, and then everything catches fire.
• Obfuscating Insanity: The unnamed guard with a severely burned face makes himself appear even more intimidating by laughing.
• Oblivious to Hatred: The two yinglet human-chasers that Brakka first meets when trying to find Lopin - Brakka makes it very clear that he doesn't like them, even telling them to their faces how they're "everything wrong with the species", but they're still convinced he's their friend.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Vizlet has one after realizing that Kass is telling the truth about being an ex-human because she is about to present Kass to the patriarchs and it would be really bad if the patriarchs, especially Narklet, found out what Kass really is and she has no time to explain the situation to Kass or educate him on how to hide his true nature. Luckily the meeting is cut short by lunch time before the patriarchs ask too many questions.
  • Brakka gets a lot of these as his plans unravel around him. To begin with, he finds out that Lopin (whom he desperately needs to find) is well and truly out of his reach.
  • He also manages a fairly respectable Oh Crap moment when it dawns on him that a) he has completely misread the relationship between Kass and Elim and b) he stabbed a ranking member of the city's ruling house, and house Ivenmoth hasn't got to where it is by letting that kind of thing slide.
  • Another one from Brakka as he realizes that the opponent he is fighting has grabbed his tail, and what's about to happen is not going to be pleasant.
• Oh, My Gods!: When Vizlet realizes that Kass is telling the truth about being a changeling, it shocks her so much she uses what's clearly some rather unladylike language:
  Vizlet: Great Habzig's tits, you really were a human!?
• OOC Is Serious Business: Lopin being startled by Yannit suddenly showing up in a recent strip prompts Kass to tell Lopin that he really should get used to Yannit's presence, that she means no harm, and that, just because another species can seem scary at first sight doesn't mean they're bad, citing the baxxid as an example because, while the baxxid are very much alien in nature compared to humans, they're still respected citizens of Val Salia in their own right and nobody's afraid of them... Which prompts Yannit to admit that she came to the heights of the fortress because she was scared of the baxxid "moving around so fast" in the streets, which lets Kass know that something is, indeed, very wrong.
  Kass: ...Wait. Baxxid? Fast ? I've never seen a baxxid in a hurry. Za Hell's going on down zhere ?
• Out with a Bang:
  • When Vizlet sarcastically says that she will have the very elderly Figgins breed with Zally, Figgins replies that that would probably kill him. Vizlet just tells him to get stronger bones.
  • Men fear that having sex with the giant woman Isher would kill them, but also think the risk is Worth It.
• Painful Transformation: Kassen's transformation is neither smooth nor painless.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Downplayed. After the transformation finishes, Kass's human-size tunic is far too large for his yinglet body, so he takes it off. He doesn't see anything wrong with this since yinglets in town are often naked, or nearly so. However, his friends in the room react this way to his action, which is what clues him in to the fact that his new body is a female yinglet.
• Pose of Supplication: Shrinking Violet Kalgkur does this in a panic when he is called to see Tradmaster Viracroix and starts giving a rambling apology, thinking that Viracroix wants to further punish him for the disturbances he recently caused, which causes Varakses to reprimand him for him for his lack of decorum and Viracroix to suppress a laugh. He does it again when he realizes that he mistook another yinglet for his new boss Kassen, accidentally setting off Kassen's prey instincts with the sudden movement.
• Post-Op Ditziness: Kass runs in to see Elim after his surgery, only for Elim to start rubbing Kass' face while the nurse explains that he's still under heavy anesthetics. Elim spends the next few hours petting and scritching Kass while coming out of it, much to Kass' embarrassment.
• Practical Currency: Patriarch Beizel repays a human who did him a favor with a bag of drugs. It is explained in The Rant that it is common to use drugs as currency in Val Salia since there aren't any drug laws. Since Beizel is a Stealth Expert, he prefers to carry drugs because they are lighter and quieter than coins.
• Primal Stance: Yinglet physiology forces them to move with a pronounced hunch to counterbalance their tails. Kass discusses the trope in his report, describing the mental effect of needing to adopt a stance that feels intrinsically subhuman.
• Post-Victory Collapse: Elim curb-stomps Brakka's entire gang even though he's got a foot-long shiv through his gut. However, he's running entirely on adrenaline; when the fight is over, the pain and loss of blood from his injury mean he basically has to be carried to the medical clinic so a surgeon can remove the shiv and save his life.
• Rage Breaking Point: Kass pretty much loses it during Vizlet's lecture about how difficult her life has been, leading to their Wimp Fight.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: As implied by the title of the comic, the main characters are all out of place in some way.
  • Kass and Elim are War Refugees from a faraway country that no longer exists. The main plot of the comic is set off by Kass being accidentally transformed into a female yinglet by a strange artifact and getting assigned to work as a diplomat to the local yinglet enclave.
  • Isher is a hybrid of a human and some giant reptilian species suffering from major Half-Breed Angst.
  • Yannit is an indrel who deliberately got herself banished from her colony because of her unusual fascination with humans. She is the only indrel in Val Salia as indrel rarely interact with humans and those who leave their colony tend to go violently insane.
  • Lopin is a yinglet banished from the enclave and assigned to serve Kass as punishment for his involvement in Kass's accident.
  • Kalgkur is a baxxid assigned to be Kass's bodyguard after accidentally killing a human, which makes him an outcast among the baxxid despite being found innocent.
• Raised by Humans:
  • Kass pretends to be an orphaned yinglet raised by humans to explain away a complete lack of knowledge regarding yinglet culture (and significant parts of their basic biology).
  • Matriarch Vizlet was apprenticed under multiple human tradesmen before becoming matriarch, hence her "strange ideas".
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Trademaster Viracroix freely confesses to cultivating a bloodthirsty reputation, but is smart enough to ensure Kass gets enough out of their deal to secure her "good-natured cooperation."
  • Matriarch Vizlet is just trying to do what's best for her people and accepts Kass' freedom and role as Viracroix's spy as the price of doing business (though she'd be well within her rights to just claim Kass as a daughter and use her as breeding stock). She also becomes much more sympathetic once she becomes convinced that Kass truly is a human changeling. Both Viracroix and Vizlet seem to recognize that increasing human knowledge of the yinglet is, on balance, a good thing.
• Red Herring: Her expressions and manner at first leads you to suspect that Vizlet knows something about why Kass was transformed. As it turns out, she's just aware of the ulterior motives from Viracroix that sent Kass her way, and is genuinely gobsmacked that his story is actually true.
• Relationship Chart: An in-universe relationship chart drawn by Ran describing the relationships of the main characters as of Kalgkur joining the group appears here.
• Sarcasm-Blind:
  • Yinglets, and Lopin in particular, seem to have problems interpreting metaphor and sarcasm.
  • Isher tends to be a bit late to catch sarcastic remarks, mostly due to how genuine she always is.
  • Ran pretends to miss sarcasm, and uses it as an excuse to frequently Troll Kassen.
• Sarcastic Confession: When one of the other refugees at the Dinnish bunkhouse keeps asking questions about why he hasn't seen Kass, Galen, who is known to be The Stoner, sarcastically reveals that Kass was turned into a female yinglet, which leads to the questioner assuming that Galen is on some hard drugs, and Felsa shooting him a Death Glare.
  Turns out it’s a lot easier to “keep secrets” when you’re the least believable person in your entire local refugee bunkhouse
  Which is an experience we’ve all had at one time or another
• Scary Flashlight Face: Used to great effect by Isher and her fellow Ivenmoth guards to intimidate a delegation from a brigand clan before trade negotiations here.
• Schizo Tech: While the overall technological level of the setting ranges from Bronze Age to Early Renaissance, there are a few examples of scavenged Lost Technology in the form of artifacts, closely guarded knowledge, and semi-religious relics. Val Salia in particular is noted as having some of the best doctors around due to their abnormally advanced research into germ theory and asepsis, as well as their refinement of anesthetic drugs.
• The Scream: A page opens with a view of the city of Val Salia at night. In the second panel, someone lets out a very loud scream just before sunrise. We then see shots of people being disturbed by the sound. The culprit turns out to be a baxxid who got scared by a harmless bug crawling on him. He is quite embarrassed when he realizes how many people he just bothered. The Rant explains that baxxid have much more powerful lungs than humans. The baxxid responsible is Kalgkur in his first appearance, and the consequences of this incident lead to some tragic events.
• Second Law of Gender-Bending: An ironic subversion. Kass says she accepts "this is me now isn't it?" but it's obvious to Matriarch Vizlet that Kass is still in denial and hasn't even begun to deal with what's happened to her.
• Secret Message Wink:
  • Happens on this page. Vizlet banishes Lopin from the enclave and offers him as a servant to Kass in order to prevent Narklet from interrogating and possibly killing him. She signals to Kass to accept the offer with a wink. Kass initially responds with silence as he is angry with Lopin, but accepts after Vizlet gives a second, harsher wink.
  • Patriarch Beizel gives a mischievous wink after hinting that he knows Kassen is a transformed human.
• Secret Test of Character: This is what Kalgkur's trial is ultimately revealed to be. After having him speak with the criminal He-Who-Knows-What-He-Did, the baxxid elders pretend to agree with His philosophy and state that they intend to one day "coalesce" and betray the humans of the city. This enrages the usually timid Kalgkur so much that he is fully prepared to attack the elders. This turns out to have been what the elders wanted to hear, as it means he fully believes in peaceful coexistence with humanity and the baxxid's new path. He also passes the secondary test of not simply going along with the elders for the sake of conformity.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Although it was a one-way transformation, Kass lost a lot of mass going from human to yinglet. One of Kassen's journals talks about the difference in mass and what that feels like.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Kass' clothes, a shirt and pants, aren't affected by his transformation. The trousers slip off during the transformation as his body shrinks, and when the transformation is done, the tunic looks like a full-length robe on her yinglet body.
• Shout-Out: Yinglets Ripped My Flesh is a reference to both Weasels Ripped My Flesh and also to the Man's Life magazine cover which inspired the album's title.
• Skewed Priorities: After an urgent operation to save Elim's life, the doctor comes out and solemnly delivers the bad news: he'll be off duty for some time while he recovers. Kass throws a towel at him. Later, during mutual apologies, the doctor admits that he's worked for commanders who would sincerely rather have a dead minion than an injured one who needs to be looked after, and is glad Kass isn't one of them.
• Sneeze Cut: Played with in one page where Elim refuses to seek medical treatment from Galen, a former medic who spends most days getting high after his country's destruction. Cut to Galen, who sneezes, but it turns out it was from a fly getting stuck up his nose.
• Social Darwinist: The yinglet matriarchs practice a fairly ruthless form of eugenics, either using breeding as a reward or specifically breeding males with exceptional qualities or useful mutations. The Patriarchs are given the most access for breeding as the most able and accomplished males. Yinglet culture also discourages parents from favoring their own children over others in order to prevent nepotistic family lines from forming.
• Something Only They Would Say: Kass proves her identity after the change to Galen by insulting him using Kass' own colourful vocabulary.
• Speech Impediment:
  • Due to the positioning of their shelltooth, yinglets cannot pronounce the English "th" sound. Urban yinglets tend to replace it with "z" (e.g. "zat is zhe way we say zhis") while those further from human civilizations prefer "d" ("dat is de way we say dis"). Kass has trouble with this at first but quickly adapts to the urban yinglet way of speaking.
  • As exoskeletal snake-bug-creatures, baxxid aren't built for humanoid languages, so their verbal speech has lots of drawn-out sounds and stray "mmm"s and "rrrrr"s. It's likened to trying to speak by playing bagpipes.
• Spit Take: Well, what would YOU do if you just found out yinglets were having gay sex in your supply closet?
• Spotting the Thread: Inverted — the Yinglet matriarch Vizlet is justifiably skeptical of Kass's story until he mentions sleeping overnight. Yinglets can't function on a 24-hour sleep schedule, instead power-napping at odd intervals, but humans (and freshly metamorphosed ex-humans) wouldn't know that about them.
• Starfish Language: Indrel communicate by use of pheromones and body language. Baxxid language, meanwhile, is primarily infrasonic.
• Stealth Hi/Bye:
  • Beizel, as Patriarch of Scouting & Intel (read: yinglet Spymaster), excels at these. Quite a few of his interactions with others begin with him startling the party he's interacting with.
  • Ran also has a knack for surprising people.
• The Stoner: Galen, the Dinnish bunkhouse's resident medic, who copes with the destruction of his (and Kass and Elim's) home country by smoking biteleaf all day long.
• Straw Nihilist: Briefly parodied by a trio of particularly philosophical yinglets here, who realize that nothing matters because everything is bones and go decide to burn a house down.
• Struggling Shop: A recurring problem with theft has reduced Nell from goldsmithing to sculpting copper and tin at a stall in a dingy corner of the outdoor market. She still loves the artistry of her work, but she admits the loss stings.
  Kalgkur: You wisely seek out the silver liningsss in life, I seeeee.
  Nell: Well, I don't exactly have the budget for silver. But I can get by on tin linings.
• Stumbling in the New Form: When Kass first gets turned into a yinglet, he falls over several times due to being unused to his spindly, digitigrade legs. It doesn't help that he initially tries to keep a humanlike pose with a vertically oriented spine when yinglets are physiologically meant to keep their torsos parallel with the ground like a bird. He also has trouble writing with clawed, paw-padded hands, making his handwriting very sloppy until he adjusts.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: One of Kass's many struggles with his new form — the sight of his best friend Elim with his shirt off makes him leave the room, muttering about intrusive thoughts.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Matriarch Vizlet tends to feel like this in her enclave, given how she's basically the only (natural) yinglet with the benefit of a human education. A couple of the patriarchs seem fairly intelligent, but one of them was sent by the "traditionalist" enclaves to keep an eye on her.
• There Are No Therapists: Subverted. There isn't many real mentions of therapy, but dialogue makes it clear that the mental health of employees is a sincere concern of House Ivenmoth. Some of Ran's notes also confirm seeking counseling for mental illness is an option, though Kass has refused any suggestions to take advantage of it.
• Third Law of Gender-Bending: Kassen literally gets hit over the head with this one as the females at the yinglet enclave hurriedly prepare "Lady Kass" for her presentation to the patriarchs. However, Kass only goes along with it out of diplomatic necessity in the enclave and sticks to a gender-neutral uniform in Val Salia.
• Through a Face Full of Fur:
  • Kalgkur the baxxid is shown blushing when he realizes that his very loud scream of fear just disturbed a lot of people. This is likely for the benefit of the audience or just Rule of Funny as it should be biologically impossible for baxxid to blush since their faces are covered in a bony, expressionless exoskeleton. He is not shown blushing in later cases of him getting embarrassed.
  • The comic has many cases of yinglets blushing. Like when Lopin gets picked up by Elim or when Beizel playfully bites his ear.
• Too Much Information: Like many human men, Kassen was never very interested in learning anything about the female side of reproduction. But as a female yinglet, she has to know about the female side of yinglet reproduction. As a female yinglet who still thinks like a male human, however, there are some things she really, really would rather not know.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mollusks and shellfish. Kass may not like them, but as a species, yinglets get a 'buzz' when they eat them.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment:
  • The first time Kass uses the elevator after getting transformed into a female yinglet and then being promoted, two elevator guards are surprised to see an unfamiliar yinglet in the upper floors of the Teeth and one of them, later named Jal, tries to tell him that the elevators are only for Ivenmoth personnel before realizing that Kass is dressed as an officer and doing a Last-Second Word Swap. The confused guards accept the situation but don't dare to ask why a yinglet is an officer and ride down with him in awkward silence while Kass smiles to himself about being respected as an officer and Elim tries to act casual by whistling to himself.
  • Later that day, when Isher is bringing Yannit to Ran, she tries to make small talk with the unnamed elevator guard from the previous scene. The guard just looks uncomfortable, possibly because he is afraid of Yannit.
  • Much later, the trope is averted. When Kass is going to visit Elim in the hospital, he has a pleasant conversation with Jal on the ride down as they are now familiar with each other.
• Unfazed Everyman: Thanks to years of dealing with Viracroix' and Ran's Bunny-Ears Lawyer antics, House Ivenmoth is full of these.
• Unishment: Troublesome yinglets who aren't executed are exiled. It is noted that this is far less of a punishment in Vizlet's enclave because it is located right next to a human city where yinglets are tolerated. Vizlet invokes this trope deliberately when she exiles Lopin and makes him Kass's servant because she knows that Lopin doesn't deserve punishment but needs to keep Lopin away from Narklet because Lopin knows too much.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Happens on this page when Lopin asks Ran to help him take off the dress Ran put him in. Ran's visitor Eskavon is about to call Lopin a cute lil' girl, only to correct himself when the dress comes off. That Lopin is only shown from behind implies that his normally hidden penis was visible. This is one of the things that causes him to conclude that House Ivenmoth has "got some shit goin' on."
• Villainous Breakdown: Brakka is very prone to these, and they only get worse as the story progresses and his plans collapse around him.
• War Refugees: Kass and Elim are refugees from the former nation of Dinnlan, before it was invaded and conquered by Beletam. They fled to Val Salia to find new lives when the war started going south.
• We Are as Mayflies: Yinglets are considered elderly at 25 and likely don't live much beyond that.
• Weapon-Based Characterization:
  • A one-handed steel mace for Elim; he carries one around as an Ivenmoth guard and, as a flashback shows, he also used to wield one during the War. A plain and straightforward weapon for a plain and straightforward kind of guy.
  • Kassen used to favor a meteor hammer before his transformation, a flashy exotic weapon that relies on tricks and misdirection (skilled wielders can accurately snap the weight towards a target from almost any point in their dance-like routines). It also emphasizes how useless Kass feels now, since he's too small pick up his weapon anymore, let alone swing it.
  • Yinglets in general favor spears and knives, as their arms are built for quick thrusts and suffer badly when trying to swing anything heavy. Brakka in particular is shown using improvised shivs, showing that he's a nasty and untrustworthy piece of work. Meanwhile, Patriarch Kattajak has a favorite knife and prone to get stabby with it, showing his hot temper and un-yinglet-like love of fighting.
• Weird World, Weird Food:
  • The yinglet diet consists mostly of gross, slimy, and/or toxic things scavenged from along the shoreline, with their favorites being various mollusks. After his transformation, Kass is appalled discover he now craves the disgusting things yinglets eat.
  • The human diet isn't all that familiar either. With humans being one of the only familiar species on the whole planet, a lot of weird things end up on dinner plates, especially since all of the livestock animals are Big Creepy-Crawlies.
  • Here we see some of Poak's special recipes that are edible for both humans and yinglets. It includes things like poisonous thorns that can be used for flavoring meat when heated, a carnivorous plant that is eaten after flavoring it by getting it to drain the blood out of a dead animal, and a worm that must first be tenderized by stuffing it with a bug that inflates like a pufferfish.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: One baxxid (armor-covered serpentine creatures with spikes for arms), freaks out badly enough to wake a significant chunk of a city because a bug got on them.
• Wimp Fight: The scuffle between Kass and Matriarch Vizlet consists of hair pulling, low-impact slaps, and a lot of shrieking. Apparently this is usually how female yinglets settle things. Justified as a "contest of wills", effectively a game of chicken against the yinglet instinct to flee a direct fight.
• Worthy Opponent: Matriarch Vizlet tells Kass she finds dealing with another yinglet with equivalent intelligence and willpower refreshing.
• Wrong Context Magic: Somewhat downplayed, as magic for the most part doesn't exist in the setting. The most fantastical aspects are the existence of various sapient, non-human races with drastically different biologies and cultures. The discovery of artifacts that can transform species takes everyone by surprise.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Isher has her own house, but it is located in the bad part of Val Salia. When she first got her house, had so many break ins that she eventually resorted to decorating the outside with threatening messages written in blood to scare thieves away.
• You Did Everything You Could: Surgeon Merrs uses the 'I did everything I could' variant after operating on Elim. Ends up being a variation: rather than having failed to save his patient, Merrs regretfully informs the patient's friends that the recovery process will take months. This regretful tone was justified, since most officers and management just want to know how quickly a recruit can get back into the field, if ever, and Merrs didn't know Kass was personally close to Elim as a friend.
• You Keep Using That Word: Yinglet settlements are called enclaves because one of the yinglet great councils thought that the word sounded impressive. As pointed out by the author, the Val Salian enclave is actually the only yinglet enclave that actually meets the definition of the word (a territory that is entirely enclosed in another territory). To be more pedantic, the Val Salian enclave is technically only a semi-enclave because it isn't landlocked.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: As punishment, Kalgkur is assigned to feed the infamous baxxid dissenter "He-Who-Knows-What-He-Did," and told to open his mind to He. He calls whatever Kalgkur must have done "wonderful and true," preaching an old baxxid instinct known as Coalescence, which Kalgkur soundly rebuffs.
• Zoomed-Out Reframing Gag: When Kuldra is playfully teasing Kalgkur about his crush on a human, the comic zooms out to two human guards watching them. Baxxid can't make facial expressions and speak with each other in infrasonic but can have some surprisingly funny body language, so the less experienced of the two guards wonders what's going on, but the more experienced guard has a good idea of what's happening.