Webcomic / A Softer World

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"In the caves behind my house, I found a softer world. They understand what I had to do for love. They don't believe in restraining orders."

— Narration, comic 3

A Softer World is a Photo Comic, full of dark surrealist comedy and just plain weird stuff. Generally, Emily Horne takes the photographs and Joey Comeau writes the captions. The comics often focus on death, love, loneliness, or other similarly heavy themes. There are few if any actual characters, apart from Baby Doom (now deceased) and a small cat.

In almost every comic slightly cropped or zoomed versions of one photograph are arranged into 3 panels, with a short line of text over each one; the writing is usually divided into a straight line, a subversion and an over-the-top punchline. A frequent variation will have a second punchline in the rollover text.

Shares a forum, Truth and Beauty Bombs, with Dinosaur Comics and The Perry Bible Fellowship.

The strip officially ended on June 1st 2015 after 12 years with its 1243th strip, but came back for five strips due to meeting a Kickstarter goal for the Best Of book.

This comic features examples of:

• 90% of Your Brain: What if instead of only 10 precent of our brains, we could access 9 percent. Just one percent less, how happy we might be!
• Abusive Parents: Jimmy, the narrator's boyfriend in 182, is beaten by his father after he hits the narrator during their fight. The narrator thinks that he's lucky to have a father, and aims to hit him in the fresh bruises during their next fight.
• Always Someone Better: 1220 remarks on it, saying that while there's always going to be someone out there better than you... "But, on the bright side, who cares?"
• Ambiguous Situation: The girl who killed herself in 46 mentioned the main character in her suicide note in a way that could be read as affection or condemnation: "You were always laughing."
• Apocalyptic Log: The narrator of 1185 realizes that they're too far from help and that what they're currently saying to their tape recorder are going to be their last words. The comic ends with "[RECORDING ENDS]". What exactly happened to the narrator isn't explicitly stated, but the photo shows a forest, implying that that they met a typical slasher-movie protagonist end.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • This particular strip is a parody of the xkcd formula.
  • xkcd returns the favour like this.
• All Just a Dream: The narrator of number 44 would like to see the depressing stories in newspapers end with "But it was all just a bad dream", for once.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The narrator of 1075 has creatures inside them that go silent whenever the person they're addressing the comic to is near. They note that "i have never seen them scared before"
• Alt Text: Nearly all the comics have unique alt-text. It's usually a toss-up if it's depressing, or comedic.
• The Anti-Nihilist: 767's narrator thinks that nothing matters in life, so they might as well be nice to people.
• Babysitter from Hell: "Spare the axe, spoil the child." says the text of 715, with the alt text commenting that maybe they should fire that babysitter, implying that they hired someone who disciplines children with medieval weapons to watch their children.
• Bathos: The main source of the strip's humor is the sudden and surprising tone shifts from dark comedy to absurdity to nihilism and back again within the span of three panels.
• Beautiful Dreamer: The narrator of 656 says that their love interest is beautiful while sleeping, "But that's not good enough." They then request for their love interest to Please Wake Up, revealing that it's a far darker situation than the reader had been led to believe.
• "Before" and "After" Pictures: The narrator of 221 says they have no use for them, since they can't remember starting and they're never done.
• Best Years of Your Life: Over a picture of two kids on a ship.
  "Childhood is the best part of life. So don't worry, kids. You won't be missing out on much." (Alt Text: "I honestly thought the iceberg would chicken out first.")
• Black Comedy: When the strips are humorous at all, it's with very dark comedy, usually joking about the pointlessness of life and the inevitability of death. It's also common for the actual strip to be poignant but have darkly humorous alt-text.
• The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: Parodied in 1015, where the person is indeed calling from inside the house... about the ad that the homeowner placed in the paper.
  "Are your parents home?"
• Call-Back: 26 twists the John Lennon song "Imagine", with the protagonist saying that yes, they're a dreamer and they aren't the only one: more importantly, they have bombs, truth and beauty bombs. Over two hundred strips later, this is referred to again in 227, whose protagonist takes a darker view of the original comic. They comment that while truth and beauty are nice words, the bombs' shrapnel is the same as ever and they must live with what they've done.
• Came Back Wrong:
  • In 668, the narrator buries someone in a creepy ancient cemetery and they come back to life, but different than they were before. The narrator doesn't mind though, as the person was "kind of a dick, originally."
  • In 232, the narrator is just irritated by the changes that bringing her dead loved one back to life has brought on them. Her zombie significant other now demands she bring them brains, which pisses her off.
  "Get off your ass if you're hungry, you lazy zombie fuck."
• The Chessmaster: Subverted painfully in 364. The narrator of the strip begins to compare life to a chess game requiring strategy and forethought... Before he trails off and instead says how lonely he is, implying that his worldview of life as a game has driven everyone else away from him.
• Comically Missing the Point: "and my party was cancelled."
• Continuity Nod:
  • The alt text of 886 ("To drown would be an awfully great adventure!") is one to the alt text of 221 (to die would be an awfully big adventure").
  • In one of the earliest strips, number three, the narrator finds a softer world behind their house. In one of the last strips, 1237, they find the ruins of a softer world behind their house, with the comic's tone far bleaker than three's darkly humorous one.
  • Strips 227 and 667 are nods to strip 26, referencing 'Truth and beauty' and 'Love and dreamer' respectively.
• Cozy Catastrophe:
  • The narrator of 102 tries to look on the bright side of atomic war, saying it means "no traffic in the mornings, no bills in the mail. I can stay in bed with you all day."
  • The narrator of 920 views the zombie apocalypse as a great time to get together with someone they're interested in rather than dwelling on the fact that it's the end of the world as they know it.
  • 671 takes the form of a broadcast in the aftermath of an unexplained disaster. The narrator warns people that radiation levels are unchanged, so people should stay indoors. They then add, in an oddly sentimental touch for a broadcast, "And be kind to the people you care about."
• Cute Kitten: Used to mock Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in 427 by supposedly doing the same thing, but with kittens instead of zombies. This creates "Pride and Prejudice with kittens. No, Kittens and Kittens and even more kittens, oh my goodness, by Jane Austen."
• Dead Sparks: In 524, the narrator and their partner have fallen out of love... and the narrator feels weird about the fact that not being in love somehow makes the sex they have exciting again.
• Deal with the Devil: Parodied. The narrator in 686 sold their soul to the devil, but not for money or power or anything concrete. Apparently he just told them it would be good experience, as if it was an unpaid internship.
• Death by Origin Story: Invoked; the narrator of 314 says that while they never wanted anything to happen to their parents, "a hero needs an origin story."
• Defiant to the End: The narrator of 791 says that they aren't going to give up and die, even as it seems that their struggles will be in vain. "I fought my way into this world. I'll fight my way out."
• Destructive Romance:
  • The narrator of 709 admits that her love will hurt the person she's involved with; in the alt text she says that all romances end up Destructive Romances because of human nature. "I love you the way a knife loves a heart, the way a bomb loves a crowd, the way your mother warned you about, essentially."
  • In 876, the narrator says that their love is both intense and will probably end up killing both of them, but doesn't seem at all regretful of it. "Our love is a forest fire and we are the little things that live in the trees."
  • The narrator of 1055 compares their love to a meteor impact and a volcanic eruption, saying that they and their love interest aren't going to survive their relationship but at least they won't die bored. In their view, that makes it worth it.
  • In 234 the narrator admits to their love interest that "We are terrible for each other, and, yes, we are a disaster." They continue on to say that despite knowing that, they don't regret their love even if it is a mistake.
  • Strip 908 has the narrator stating that their love was 'doomed, a burning building, a broken neck'.
• Disneyfication: Subverted. The narrator of 528 wanted a fairy tale romance, but hadn't actually read any actual fairy tales. The implication is that they ended with something far more in line with the Brother's Grimm version than they wanted, continuing on to say that it's the "First time I've ever wished for a disney version."
• Drowning My Sorrows: Implied in 707, whose narrator muses that just as we need happiness to appreciate sadness, "we need sadness to appreciate alcohol."
• Dying Dream: The narrator of 228 realizes that she and her friends probably didn't survive a crash after she realizes that they've spent five afternoons just making cupcakes together.
• Evil Is Cool: Invoked by the narrator of 972. Addressing someone unseen, they comment that "You aren't a very good person, but god damn, you make bad look awesome." invoked
• Fair Cop: The narrator of 482 is very appreciative of good looks of the police officer arresting him. "I don't mean to seem disrespectful officer, but god damn. I want, like, three of you."
• Flipping the Table: Subverting the phrase "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all", the preferred action of the narrator of 586 when they can't think of anything nice to say is flipping the table.
  Fuck this table and fuck you!
• A Fool for a Client: In 604, the narrator is dealing with someone choosing to represent themselves while under the belief that "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" is a valid legal defense and who is, according to the alt text, eating pizza in the courtroom.
• Godwin's Law: Zig-zagged by the narrator in 803, who says that "People who compare every petty evil to Hitler...are worse than Dracula!"
• Gratuitous Latin: The alt text of 632 is "post hoc, ergo propter hoc", a Latin phrase that's come to name the logical fallacy of assuming that something that occurred before an event caused that event. It's relevant to the comic itself, whose narrator says that sex doesn't ruin friendships, people do: it's a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy to say that because the sex happened before the friendship was ruined, it was ruined because of the sex.
• Happily Failed Suicide: In 158, the narrator found that his significant other was cheating on him, and took pills to commit suicide after finding out. They ended up just making him poop all over their bed instead of killing him though, which he cheerfully concludes is a funnier story in the long run.
• Hitler Ate Sugar: In the alt text of number 716, the narrator claims that everyone knows Hitler was a waiter, therefore making it okay to be mean to them.
• Hope Is Scary: The narrator of 880 is afraid now that they have the chance to experience something better than they have before. They compare themselves to a lion raised in captivity whose keeper left the cage open.
  "Scared to be free."
• How They Treat the Help: Subverted and parodied in 716.
  If someone is nice to you but mean to the waiter,
  good.
  A waiter killed my whole family.
• I Just Want to Be Special: The narrator of 251 takes waking up in the woods covered in blood surprisingly well because in their view it means that they're either crazy or a werewolf... but they definitely aren't a nobody.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: In 746, the narrator thinks that to make everyone love her, all she needs to do is be herself but with money.
• I Like My X Like I Like My Y:
  • The narrator of 1227 likes their witches the way they like their books: "properly respected for their cultural importance", and possibly flapping around a haunted mansion.
  • In 397, the narrator likes their women like they like their squirrels: "Preternaturally intelligent." (But not in packs, please.)
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • Summed up in 164. "Love you. Miss you. Wish you weren't queer."
  • Subverted in 868, whose narrator clarifies that yes, they're gay...but they're gay for the person they're dating.
• It's All About Me:
  • While the protagonist of 883 does eventually realize that other people have feelings, their main concern is how rough it was on them to realize that.
  • The protagonist in 65 is upset that for the second year in a row someone they loved died on their birthday... because that means that their birthday party is canceled again.
• Kill the God:
  • The protagonist of 244, a young, innocent-looking child who picks up a telephone and asks the operation to put God on the line. He proceeds to threaten God, telling him "You're next."
  • 909 twists the saying "man plans, God laughs" by comparing it to the fable of the hard-working ant who prepares for winter and the grasshopper who just laughs at the ant until winter comes and it has to beg for help because it didn't stockpile any food. That it means humanity outlives God is stated in the alt text, which claims it's like "the real version. Where the ant let the grasshopper die."
• "Knock Knock" Joke: Often used, and often twisted.
  • The narrator's grandma starts to tell a knock-knock joke in number 30 but can't remember how it goes, leaving her in tears. "I can't remember" she says and starts to cry.
  • Number 732 starts off following the structure of a knock-knock joke, but it's then revealed to be the police knocking on the narrator's door to tell them that there's been an accident.
  • The narrator of 268 relives their boredom by using knock-knock jokes to play cruel jokes on their grandma. They start to tell her one, but when she asks "who's there?" they pretend as though she's asking a serious question and ask if she remembered to take her medicine.
  • In number 600, it starts off as a normal joke but it quickly becomes evident that the person has serious depression when they reply with "I'm so sad I could die."
• Living Statue: In 138 all the statues in town came to life, but they've all seen enough to know not to show it.
• Love Makes You Crazy:
  • The narrator of 647 tells their love interest that seeing them smile gives them crazy impulses, in ways they like. "Like I want to step in front of buses, in a good way."
  • In 642, the narrator wants kids one day to tell scary stories about the things they and their partner did for love.
• Metaphorgotten:
  • 654 twists the phrase "Revenge is a dish best served cold" by saying that accidentally shooting yourself is proof that it's a dish best served by someone with at least a bit of experience cooking.
  • 662 has an addition to the classic Sphinx's riddle of "What walks with four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?", In the comic, they add an extra line to the riddle "then becomes a burden and gets put in a home?"
  • The narrator of 735 either quickly loses track of their metaphor or deliberately subverts the expected comparison. "I usually sleep in, but not today. Today I wake like the Kraken! Weird and damp. (Surrounded by terrified fishermen.)"
• Morality Pet: 955's narrator is addressing the person who they find brings out the best in them and makes them want to be a better person. They then add that unfortunately, that's not really what you want in a CFO.
• Not Afraid to Die: In 400, the narrator explains that while they used to be terrified of dying, they aren't anymore. They say it's because, after getting to know the person they're addressing, they feel that whenever their life ends what they've experienced now will have been enough for it to have been a good life.
• Not Big Enough for the Two of Us: "This town isn't big enough for the two of us. ... Let's run away together!"
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Subverted when the Ambiguous Syntax of the sentence reveals this not to be a dream at all.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Parodied. Yes, the narrator of 1194 committed elaborately staged psycho-sexual murders... but they also have a dog walking company, why doesn't anyone talk about that?
• One True Threesome:invoked "Okay, you don't think 'threepover' is funny. But I still want to sleep with you both."
• Parents in Distress: The narrator of 638 is an Actual Pacifist, and avows to remain so until either the day they die or until the day someone threatens their mom. "I would seriously stab Gandhi in his face for that woman."
• Please Wake Up: Please don't leave me alone with our stupid children.
• Platonic Life-Partners:
  • "You and I will never be a great love story. That's okay! Let's see what kind of story we'll be! (Ooh! Ooh! I hope it's science fiction.)"
  • "but i do want to hang out with you for basically the rest of my life"
• Platonic Prostitution: The narrator of 183 hires a prostitute to play hide and seek with him. While she thinks it's some kind of sexual repression thing, he just misses having friends who are girls. He doesn't mind paying her, as he considers it worth it.
• Prison Escape: The grandma from 226 writes her grandchild coded letters telling steadily more extreme acts she's taking to escape from her retirement home as though it were a prison, culminating in "I made a shank from my dentures."
• Protocol Peril: "'It's a compliment in their culture.' ... I am never believing anything you say again. (Now come bail me out.)"
• Rage Against the Heavens:
  "Operator, put God on. Yes, I'll hold."..."God? You're next."
  • "Mm, Girl. Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven? For rebelling against God?"
• Remix Comic: There's an entire community devoted to resetting the comics to figure skaters.
  • This seems to be catching:
  • Glee has two separate ASW remix Tumblrs.
  • Doctor Who [1].
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic [2]
  • Homestuck [3].[4]
  • EarthBound (1994), including the general Mother series.
  • Kingdom Hearts [5]
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger [6]
  • Dragon Age [7]
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers [8]
  • The Hunger Games [9]
  • Parks and Recreation [10]
  • Mass Effect [11]
  • Star Trek [12]
  • Channel Awesome [13]
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe [14]
  • Sherlock [15]
  • Teen Wolf [16]
  • Ghost Trick [17]
  • The World Ends with You [18]
  • The Slender Man Mythos [19]
  • Welcome to Night Vale [20]
  • Uncharted [21]
  • Zero Escape [22], [23]
  • Fandomstuck [24]
  • Transformers [25]
  • Persona [26]
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica [27], [28]
  • Akuma no Riddle [29]
  • Katawa Shoujo [30]
  • Pretty Cure [31]
  • Danganronpa [32]
  • Steven Universe [33]
• Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...: ...you can do whatever you want to me.
• Rousseau Was Right: I believe most people are inherently good. But overcoming our nature is what separates us from the animals.
• Revenge: You dedicate your life to it...then, the day after you get it, you see it for much cheaper online.
• Romantic Runner-Up: Second best isn't so bad.
• Screw Destiny: "When I was just a little girl, I asked my mummy what should I be? "Fuck 'should'," she said."
• Screw Yourself: "I would totally make out with my clone. If it was okay with her. No pressure."
• Secret Other Family: #802, although the reason it upsets the narrator is typically a little off.
• Self-Made Orphan: The main character in 734, so that she can go as a 'Sexy Orphan' for Halloween.
• Sex Bot: Subverted; the narrator and their Robotic Spouse actually mostly play Battleship.
• Shaped Like Itself: The "random strip" button is labeled "fnord"
• Shout-Out:
  • To Spider-Man, among others.
  • 594 is entitled A Song of Ice and Fire Ants.
  • 443 is titled Me fail romance? That's unpossible.
  • 633 references a parody comic of ASW by XKCD
  • "Hell is other people" is the Alt Text for one comic, a reference to Jean-Paul Satre's No Exit.
  • Nirvana gets one in the alt text for [34]
    • And again here.
  • To Wall Street in the alt text of 879
  • The Alt Text of 653 is "teenage suicide: don't do it!"
  • I finally developed a computer with feelings. It just doesn't have feelings for me. (It's in love with Randall Munroe).
  • And the Alt Text to 658 is a Mountain Goats lyric.
  • The alt text of 761 is "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"
  • To a well known line by (supposedly) Ernest Hemingway, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn", and to A Farewell to Arms in the alt text.
  • I've seen the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are answers."
  • I shot a man in Reno just to watch you smile!
• Smart People Play Chess: Geniuses play chess in bed.
• Some of My Best Friends Are X: Multiple times.
  • "I'm not racist. My best friend is black. SHE'S the racist one."
  • Deconstructed in another comic - having a gay friend doesn't mean you're not a bigot, it just means your friend isn't paying enough attention.
• Space Is Noisy: Averted "This is the way the world ends not with a bang but only because explosions don't make sound in space."
• Speaks Fluent Animal: "Animals talk to me."
• Spiritual Successor: A Softer Sea is a fan-made one for the comic as a whole.
• Spoof Aesop: Invoked by some of the strips, which run on the formula of "Standard aspirational phrase...horribly subverted by the end." Maybe none more than this one:
  As a child I learned that books set you free, an encyclopaedia held over my head...waiting in the dark as he crept into my room. (long overdue)
• Straw Vulcan: "I am a being of pure reason."
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "I'm unarmed."
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: "You and me, and baby makes..." "...life into a series of compromises."
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: 648 and 784.
• Throw the Book at Them: As a child, the protagonist in 67 used an encyclopedia to brain the man who was implied to molest them. "Books can set you free" indeed.
• Title Drop: The phrase "a softer world" is said three times in total in the comic.
  • First in Comic #3, whose narrator is awed to find what they call a softer world in the caves behind their house, whose people understand what they had to do for love.
  • It's the alt text of the final comic of the 1000th comic special. That comic's narrator muses that they don't want a world without pain or sadness, they just want a world where those things mean something.
  • It's not mentioned again until one of the final comics,#1237, which itself is a Call-Back to #3. The narrator finds what they call the ruins of a softer world in the caves behind their house, bleakly saying that "kindness couldn't save them".
• To Hell and Back: Painfully subverted:
  "If you died, I would go through hell to bring you back. That would be easy. I'm not sure how to deal with us just drifting apart."
• Trans Equals Gay: "No, I don't want to be a woman. What a stupid, limiting idea of homosexuality. I want you to be the woman."
• Unusual Dysphemism: "He overdosed on pills" is just a polite way of saying "the world got him".
• Very Special Episode: Occasionally, the strips forgo jokes to deliver a poignant message.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: "and the guilt I expected never came."
• Virgin Sacrifice: "If I could get a hold of a beautiful virgin girl, would I be summoning you in the first place?"
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: I wanted to have you. I didn't realize having you meant I'd stop wanting you.
• We All Die Someday: "I intend to deserve it."
• Who Wants to Live Forever?:
  • "I'm not even sure I want the time I have."
  • Living forever would be hell.
• Write Who You Knowinvoked: The authors have used photos of their friends.