Idle Minds is a Transformation Comic by Ian Samson (best known for City of Reality). The Big Bad Draco will be having a meeting with an unknown individual in a hall of statues sometime during the week. Our protagonist, Alana, is disguised as one of the statues via a petrification spell, so she can spy on the conversation and get some useful information for The Resistance. However, Alana's story immediately becomes not one of spying, but one of trying to stay sane while doing absolutely nothing for a week.

The original link no longer works due to Ian Samson's site going defunct, but it can be read on archive.today.

Tropes

• And I Must Scream: It doesn't actually happen, but Alana imagines scenarios where the plan goes wrong and she is stuck as a statue forever.
• Bookends: Alana's transformation both starts and ends with an Identical Panel Gag. In fact, it's the same panel both times.
• Didn't Think This Through: Alana has to figure out ways to pass the time as a statue, implying the matter wasn't discussed beforehand. This oversight nearly kills the entire mission, since by the time Draco's meeting actually happens, Alana is broken from understimulation and cannot focus on the spying she's supposed to be doing, (possibly) imagines them saying things they didn't actually say, and once they're gone she almost completely breaks down over how poorly it went. The mission only succeeds because she not only managed to pull herself together, but also spent the entire rest of her time as a statue thinking exclusively about Draco, the meeting, and the war (or at least that seems to be the implication of her saying "I had a lot of time to think about it.").
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Alana freaks out when a rat crawls onto her. Of course, given she can't really do anything about it, she gets used to it pretty quickly.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Early into being a statue, Alana spends some time appreciating how she does not have any responsibilities as a statue, not even water, food, or sleep... then the next panel is her, 45 minutes later, thoroughly disappointed to find that she doesn't even seem capable of sleeping.
• Given Name Reveal: Alana's name isn't mentioned until the end of the comic, which is most likely intentional, given that it comes immediately after she aspires to be an active hero herself rather than a bystander.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: The whole point of the strip is to explore this trope. Alana is disguised as a statue for one week in a big deserted gallery so she can spy on Draco and an accomplice when they visit the place. Draco ends up not arriving until the sixth day, and the isolation drives her completely crazy. When Draco comes and goes, the fear that she may have failed in her mission to spy on him almost completely breaks her—but she's saved by her subconscious mind and uses the last day to figure everything out regarding the mission, so she's ready when Luke arrives.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: At one point, Alana imagines Luke using her petrified self as a weapon.
• Identical Panel Gag: On page 3, as soon as Alana is left alone, the same panel is used six times in a row, including the entirety of page 4, each one hammering it in just how much This Is Gonna Suck for her. (The joke being that this sequence starts with her thinking "I miss you already, Luke." and ends with a "2 minutes" time caption and her second thought, "I'm going to kill him.") The panel returns at the end of page 6 to contrast the mundanity of the actual situation against the heroic way she was describing it, and it even stays identical for the entirety of pages 7 and 8 (with lighting differences, as these pages go through 18 hours of nothingness). By that point her imagination starts running overtime instead of returning her back to this reality, although we do get a different panel repetition on page 18 due to a Beat Panel. We don't see the panel again until the very end, when it gets a final four uses on pages 26 and 27, just before Luke finally comes back to restore her. The bonus page parodying a Video Game adaptation of the comic also makes use of this trope, as the "gameplay" is completely static.
• Imaginary Friend: Alana personifies the statue next to her as "Mari" and a rat that happened to crawl over her as "Deedo".
• Imagine Spot: Used often, given that both Alana and her surroundings basically do not move at all for the entire week. This is also Played for Drama when Draco's meeting actually occurs. She continually gets distracted when she's supposed to be spying on him, and she has to keep reminding herself to focus whenever she starts imagining something, which may or may not include some parts of the conversation itself. Luckily, she still had a bunch of time afterwards which she used to figure out what actually happened and come up with a plan.
• Kick the Dog: Draco makes his arrival known by stepping on Deedo, much to Alana's distress.
• Satellite Love Interest: It's implied that Alana herself was one to Luke, a hero in the resistance. Upon making up Mari, Alana initially just gossips to her about Luke, at least until "Mari" points out that she never really introduced herself... and she is unable to. This comes back at the end of the comic, when she tells Luke that she no longer wants to be a bystander in the war, and asks to join the resistance.
• Patience Plot: Zig-Zagged. While the fact that Alana is waiting for Draco is integral to the plot, once her mind moves on to other subjects it doesn't come up again for most of the comic.
• Taken for Granite: A comic about a woman turned into a (fully aware) statue for a week for spying purposes.
• Title Drop: Page 18 wraps up with the clear allusion to the comic's title:
  Alana: I really think, the only thing you need to be happy - no matter where you find yourself, or what you're doing - is a healthy mind. Says the girl talking to a statue. Hee hee. Okay, perhaps... just an idle one.
• We Wait: Draco is going to have an important conversation in a hallway full of statues, so the plan is to petrify Alana, wait for the conversation to happen, then return Alana to normal so she can relay the information. Most of the comic is spent on the waiting part.