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Val and Isaac
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Val and Isaac (Webcomic)
From left to right: Isaac, Minnow and Val.
Val and Isaac is a Science Fantasy comic, originally hosted on the Tumblr blog of Tredlocity. Some of the comics can also be found on the creator's Twitter.

Val and Isaac are space mercenaries: Val is a gun-toting, one-eyed badass, while Isaac is a studious wizard. Occasionally, the comic shows them doing their merc work, but the strip is largely dedicated to Slice of Life antics.

Despite the title of the strip, the series is actually more of a trio act, with Minnow, the cyborg fish girl who works as the ship's engineer, serving as the group's third. Also featuring are a revolving cast of connected characters, including Minnow's girlfriend Doris, a detective robot working a menial job, the comically serious assassin only known as Space Dread, fellow mercenary Garla, and many more.

Notable for having mostly same-sex relationships.

Val and Isaac contains the following tropes:

    open/close all folders 
    A-M 
  • Absurd Phobia: In her youth, Minnow suffered from an intense fear of swimming. Normally this would not be that absurd, since aquaphobia is a thing in real life, except that (a) Minnow got very freaked out at even small volumes of water, refusing to even go into a bath without a floatie (which she also treated as a Security Blanket, to the point of wanting to take it to school with her), and (b) Minnow is amphibious. It's unclear where exactly this fear came from (her adoptive dads being somewhat mystified by it), but she's gotten over it long before the story's present day. A flashback where she jumps in a pool at a party when one of her classmates lampshaded the absurdity of the phobia implies that she was seeing visions that she didn’t understand or remember after the fact, but eventually stopped.
  • Abusive Parents: Val's mother was heavily implied to have been abusive towards her for much of the comic's run before it was outright confirmed here. By the time she's an adult Val believes that a mother is something to be afraid of.
  • Achilles' Heel: Warlocks can be unilaterally defeated or worse by taking their patron out of the picture. Isaac mentions this weakness is why wizards diversify.
  • Acquired Poison Immunity: Isaac has managed this entirely by accident.
  • Action Girl: Val, Dread, Sila, Garla. Occasionally Doris, too.
  • Action Mom: Garla has a son named Hunter (who's frequently seen playing video games with Dread).
  • Affably Evil: Metronome is unfailingly polite and pleasant despite being the unrepentant founder and former leader of an assassin's guild and having enslaved thousands of artificial brains to kickstart a all-encompassing galactic war.
  • Affectionate Nickname:
  • Afterlife Antechamber: Dread ends up in one of these, which looks like a normal waiting room, after dying due to a magic arrow. She's reading a magazine. Another soul tries to make small talk with her, but she fades out shortly thereafter, having taken Resurrectol that morning.
    Soul: Coulda left the magazine here...
  • Alliterative Family: The Vanya/Volsdottir family's first names all begin with V - the parents are Vanya and Vol, and their children are Vera, Val and Vic.
  • Alliterative Name: Supplementary material reveals Val's full name is Valor Volsdottir, with the rest of her family also following the double V pattern.
  • All There in the Manual: The Patreon version of the strips often have an extra panel or bonus material to either expand on some lore or world-building, provide a secondary punchline, or both.
  • Alliance of Alternates: A couple strips deal with Val's hatred of these, mainly because every other version of her is a staunch, manly, and generic male hero.
  • Amazon Chaser: Sila falls for Val when the latter takes the former down in the practice ring of a virtual reality gym.
    Sila: (upon learning that Val's VR avatar is just herself) Please tell me your abs are real too.
  • Amicable Exes:
    • Garla and Fang have a strong co-parenting arrangement and are amiable towards one another. Fang wonders why they even split up in the first place, and Garla reminds him it was because he sold her out to space pirates.
      Fang: A fool I was, in my youth.
      Garla: Yeah, you could have asked for more money, at least.
    • Minnow is still on good terms with her ex-boyfriend Djynn.
  • Amusing Injuries: Thanks to the various types of magic and advanced technology, normally debilitating or even fatal wounds can be easily cured and played off for laughs, up to and including outright death. Space Dread occasionally makes use of Resurrectol, a pill that can resurrect you upon death, which she stopped using because she feared it would dull her skills (and was too expensive to use along with her hobbies). There are exceptions to this, such as wounds that are linked to some serious psychological trauma (like Val's eye) and certain illnesses like the one Isaac's mother had that wound up killing her.
  • Animal Athlete Loophole: Subverted when Isaac tries to have the Fear Goblin play on his wizardball team.
    Isaac: No, no listen. I have an idea. There's nothing in the rules that says—
    Twitch: Article 12 section 8B states that emotion goblins can't play wizardball.
    Isaac: Oh. Dang.
  • Answer Cut: Just as Doris is lamenting to Minnow that she has nothing in common with her new boss, the first other member of her robot model she's ever met, it cuts to said boss and her girlfriend — who, like Minnow, is a member of an aquatic species (although more resembling a cute octopus or squid person than a fish like Minnow).
  • Anti-Climax: The multiple years of foreshadowing and storytelling that Isaac's soul is missing? He forgot it behind the dryer.
  • Artifact Title: The title originated from when the only identified characters were, well, Val and Isaac. The series quickly turned into an ensemble cast, and while Val and Isaac are still main characters, Minnow is on at least equal ground, and Space Dread and Doris aren't far behind.
  • Artificial Limbs:
    • Minnow has robot arms, which she had to have replaced as she grew up. It's unknown what happened to her original, biological arms, since she was found as a baby with red prosthetics in an escape pod.
    • Her father Liam also has cybernetic arms, as he lived under an evil empire that threatened to exile any citizen found "unproductive." It's later hinted said empire was the Children of Kazgar, and they might also be responsible for whatever happened to Minnow.
  • Ascended Extra: Metronome was introduced as the boss of Space Dread's old Mercenary Guild and was used for a one-off gag involving his status as an Eldritch Abomination when Space Dread attended a guild reunion party. He later shows up as an Arc Villain for Space Dread and Zuri, with a plan to create an Eternal War across the galaxy so mercs like he and Dread always have work available.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Wizard cuisine, which while extremely creative and cool can also be a nightmare to actually eat, as Val learned first-hand when she dropped her watch in a bowl of infinite nachos.
    • Space Dread's boomerang gun, which just flies back and hits her in the face.
    • Val uses a Recoil Boost to fly briefly at one point, but it takes so much energy the gun needs to recharge for a while after doing so.
    • An early comic (seen here) showed Minnow trying out a number of specialty arms, most of which amounted to this (e.g. an arm made from a swarm of nanobots: can shapeshift, but the moment it runs out of power the swarms essentially turns into a pile of powder that has to be cleaned up).
  • Baby Planet: Isaac owns one, populated by a society of microscopic beings, and keeps it in a pot. A running gag is Isaac leaving the tiny society in the care of his coworkers, which interprets him and them as a pantheon of gods.
  • Back from the Dead: There's a pill called Resurrectol which can bring you back from the dead, but it only works if you die within eight hours of taking it and your body is mostly intact. Also, it's super expensive. Dread used it for a while, but gave it up for various reasons (though she keeps one in a hollowed-out tooth for emergencies).
  • Badass Normal: It's emphasized a few times that Val is completely physically normal, with no cybernetics (she has allergies), no magical abilities (she hates magic), and no noteworthy traits inherent to her species that would put her above a human. Even her signature body armor, though it would probably have worked as Powered Armor at some point, has been damaged and repaired to a Ship Of Theseus degree and barely functions, with Garla at one point grumping that "my bra offers better protection than that thing." Despite all that, Val is all but stated to be the best pure fighter of the group, and is actually significantly better than Space Dread, who has all of the above in great quantities.
  • Bait-and-Switch: The mystErious bEing in Isaac's head is strongly implied to be responsible for Isaac losing his soul—evidenced by a partially-obscured line of hEr text that reads "thanks for lEnding mE your so". But, much later, we learn both where his soul went, and what she was probably actually thanking him for, via part of one of her hidden Walls of Text:
    hEr: you lEft your soul in the ship's laundry room last wEEk it's bEhind thE dryEr hEy can i borrow your songwriting skills i wanna try writing a ballad
  • Battle in the Centre of the Mind:
    • An early story involved Val and Isaac being hired to do some pest control, only to find that said pests had been forcibly melded into a Hive Mind by a telepath who was a rebel against the Kazgar Empire, who mistook Val as a soldier hunting for her specifically. After Isaac uses magic to sneak Val into the hive mind, the two clash in a mental landscape, and the rebel briefly overpowers Val, but makes the mistake of looking at Val's childhood memories, taking her off-guard enough for Val to gain the upper hand. The two end up making a deal to remove the telepath from the animals (fulfilling the pest control contract) and provide her a new body (the original having died a while ago) in exchange for the telepath riding in Val's mind until the new body is ready, much to Val's annoyance.
    • A few comics have shown the character of Abby, who's a disembodied ghost-like character who can enter people's minds and search for information. On several occasions she's entered Zuri's brain, sometimes with and sometimes without Zuri's permission. Once she helped battle a ''different'' disembodied spirit, once she was forced to enter when a villain had her partner Dennis in a deathtrap, and once she was just helping Zuri remember a password.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Isaac is generally a friendly, good-natured dude who ambles through life providing magical assistance to Val, who wreaks all the actual havoc, and likes crochet. In the Wizardball arc, though, when Dread encourages him to apply himself, he takes apart Weatherton's team (even if they end up losing, it's impressive to watch). Space Dread even admits that in a mage duel to the death between the both of them, he could kill her if he wanted to.
    Dread: I've seen that guy work. He's legit.
  • Big Fun: Kraig is much bulkier than his husband Liam, and is the more easygoing and fun of the two.
    Liam: Remember, Melody: bug dad is the one keeping you safe, while rock dad is the one actively trying to kill you.
    Kraig: I prefer the term "fun dad."
  • Bilingual Bonus: The Kazgar language that's shown up a few times is Morse Code.
  • Bizarro Elements: Isaac and Twitch's teammate Four-Eyes is described as a master of the elements, but he's initially defeated by a wizard using muscle magic. He succeeds when Isaac reminds him that, apparently, "the muscle is an element as well."
  • Black Magic: Space Dread is partially made of it, and it partially works through I Know Your True Name.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Garla is a beefy space minotaur; in her first few appearances, she's seen hanging out with Val at a standard Bad Guy Bar, drinking and getting into bar brawls. In later appearances she softens somewhat, especially when she's shown taking care of her son. That said, she still tends to listen to her "fight" reflex over her "flight" reflex... save when dealing with other moms that will judge her.
  • Bruiser with a Soft Centre: Val. Badass space mercenary. Collects guns. Likes a fight. Crumbles on the spot when Minnow sniffles and tears up.
  • Butch Lesbian: Val is a tough space mercenary whose standard outfit is a suit of armour and considers busting up bandit outposts to be a fun afternoon.
  • Came Back Wrong: A guy who'd fallen foul of a Tome of Eldritch Lore asked his spouse to do him a favor when he died and hire someone to kill him in the event he came back as a zombie. Wise decision.
  • Cannot Tell a Lie: Kraig, for some reason, thinks that wizards can't lie, which is not the case.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: One of Dread's mothers started out delivering lines like "Another fly trapped in my web of despair!"
  • Carnivore Confusion: Minnow's dads were at one point uncertain whether they could feed her anchovies. Turns out she loved them. (They eventually decided that fish eating different species of fish was pretty normal.)
  • The Casanova: A rare female example in Zuri Starr, an assassin, Adventure Archaeologist, and "omni-seducer" who apparently makes money on the side as a Black Widow (though she only targets dictators and CEOs). She's noted to be able to perform Instant Seduction on anything attracted to women, as well as inanimate objects. However, it notably doesn't work on Isaac, who's aromantic and asexual. Dread is also resistant to Zuri's charms, because, as Garla puts it, Zuri uses her sexuality as a weapon, and Dread has trained herself to defend against all kinds of weapons.
    Zuri: I've made out with tougher security systems.
    Dread: ... you mean you've made it out of tougher security systems, right?
    Zuri: I said what I said.
  • Cast Full of Gay: Let's put it this way: the main recurring characters are Val, Isaac, Minnow, Doris, Garla, Space Dread, Liam, and Kraig. Of those eight, seven are or have been in relationships with another person of the same gender: Val is dating Sila, Minnow is seeing Doris but has also had boyfriends, Garla is shown flirting with women, Space Dread (who is also trans) has gone out with multiple women in the past, and is in a relationship with Dex, who's nonbinary, Minnow's dads Liam and Kraig are married, and Isaac is single, but only because he's aroace (he briefly dated his best friend Twitch in wizard college, who's nonbinary and also aroace, as an "experiment" they both agreed on).
    hackium: why they all gay tho :^)c
    tredlocity: cause its space
  • Censor Box:
    • A protection spell that kills anyone who so much as touches the one it's cast on has its name scribbled out.
    • When Dread says her deadname, it's scribbled out.
  • Chained to a Railway:
  • Charlie Brown Baldness: Val has a ... thing on the back of her head, the same color as her skin, that gives it a resemblance to a cartoon drawing of a fish. It's either a simplified Tomboyish Ponytail or some kind of flesh growth inherent to her species, and even characters in-universe seem unsure whether it's hair or not.
  • Chekhov's Gunman:
    • Metronome, Space Dread's former mercenary boss, comes back as the Arc Villain of the "Dread and Zuri do a casino heist" storyline.
    • One three-page arc involved Space Dread and Isaac curing a child of an overly-aggressive protection spell that killed anyone that touched them. Five real-world years later, that same storyline was revisited, revealing that the way Isaac "fixed" the curse was by taking it on himself and asking it to kill him via old age, and that the curse is still around as the mysterious dEmon in his head.
  • Childhood Friends: Val and Garla have been friends since they were kids on Kazgar.
  • Chromatic Arrangement: The three main characters are red/pink (Val), blue (Isaac), and green (Minnow).
  • Closet Key: Garla's redesign had her asking if Val had a crush on her when they were teens, with Val absolutely refusing to answer. A flashback arc shows that teen Val was a Closet Gay who indeed had repressed feeling for her best friend, having a double combo of a massive Crush Blush and crushing her soda in her shock when she mistakenly thought Garla wanted to kiss her.
  • Cold Ham: Space Dread's facial expression rarely changes, but she's incredibly dramatic (to the point of refusing to waste "cool tricks" on lesser mooks, even when she and Val are out of other options).
  • Complexity Addiction: It's suggested that this is why Doris's boss, Iris, is working retail: she's too obsessed with the idea that everything around her is some kind of criminal plot, and so pulls many a Sherlock Scan on trying to "prove" wider conspiracies that don't actually exist. Even when she does catch a criminal shoplifting in the store, she insists on trying to do a Summation Gathering, and attempted to fire Doris for just admitting they saw the culprit on the security tape.
    Doris: Then she got even angrier when HQ told her "ruining a denouement" is not a fireable offense.
  • Cool, but Inefficient:
    • It's noted that Space Dread's showy combat style actually tends to slow her down—at one point she refuses to fight because she's used up all her cool moves and doesn't want to repeat herself.
    • Strips focusing on Isaac often parody the rather quirky contraptions designed by wizards in media, like a door that will only open if you serenade it, a painting that forces you into the third dimension, or a rifle made of knitted wool (it shrinks into a pistol in the wash) that don't have any clear advantages over their mundane counterparts, but sure are wacky. Val often makes remarks along the lines of "I hate whimsy."
  • Cool Sword: Isaac makes one for Val that folds to the size of a pocket knife. It unfolds when Val says the magic words, "Isaac is my best friend."
  • Comically Missing the Point: When Val tries to get the others to work out, Minnow has one of her robot arms independently lift weights, while Isaac grows a tree that can lift weights for him.
  • Cosmic Retcon: The Children of Kazgar built a weaponized version of this through a combination of dark science and magic, called the Song of the Prince. When used on a location (up to and including a planet), it would rewrite any magic, technology or cultural object to match that of the Kazgar Empire, effectively forcibly converting a population to their side while wiping out the original culture from history. Fortunately, the original Song was destroyed by rebels before it could be used, marking the day that Kazgar lost. However, even pieces of the Song can go off and overwrite the immediate vicinity, as Val finds out the hard way, though thankfully this wears off as soon as said piece is destroyed.
  • Creepy Good: The sapient, nameless spell that was originally attached to a small child and killed whoever touched them. She deeply regrets the first death she caused, and after bonding to Isaac instead she becomes incredibly fond of him, protecting him from spiritual invaders. Usually by violently unmaking them; she's still a death spell, after all.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Played for laughs. It's possible for a wizard to specialize in being able to conjure a particular type of sandwich without being able to conjure other types.
  • Cupid's Arrow: Well, "Romanticore's Arrow". Isaac gets hit by it here, though his asexuality means it does zilch to him. It's apparently a regular occurrence, as the Romanticore keeps getting told to hit a "Plumber Isaac," despite the individual in question having issues with commitment. Isaac thinks the Romanticores should unionize.
  • Cuteness Overload:
    • Minnow has a habit of trying to pet cute-looking creatures, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. One strip consists of three very simple panels: the trio entering a cave with signs out front saying DANGER and DON'T TOUCH, a Beat panel, and the trio exiting, with Minnow petrified with a single finger extended.
    • Doris towards "baby" robots, aka. newer models still under warranty.
  • Cutting the Knot: In one strip, Zuri and Dennis are searching an ancient temple for a treasure. When they find it, the chest is guarded by some kind of spirit that will ask them a riddle. However, before it can get more than a few words into the riddle, Dennis points out that only the box is cursed, not the treasure.
    Zuri: (walking out, her arms filled with treasure) Oh, to answer your riddle: the oracle is a woman!
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Averted. Neither Minnow's robot arms nor Space Dread's unspecified cybernetics stop them from being gigantic nerds.
  • Cyborg Wizard: Fairly common due to the setting. In particular, Space Dread claims to be made up of 50% cybernetics and 40% dark magic.
    Val: Yeah, I've read your dating profile.
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
    • Space Dread is described as a ruthless, murderous bounty hunter. She is also a colossal nerd and good friends with Val's crew.
    • According to the author here, this also applies to "dark magic." Magic in general is neutral, it's just that dark magic is more volatile if used carelessly as it taps into more dangerous energies than regular magic. Gets discussed in an argument between Dread and Isaac here.
      Dread: I mean, you can't really assign morality to a force of nature.
      Isaac: No, but some forces grow more unstable the more people use them, regardless of their intent.
  • Deadly Euphemism: Dread gets a call from a potential client who speaks in these — only in these. It frustrates her.
    Client: I want you to send him to a nice farm where he can run and play with all the other sons of—
    Dread: Sir, I'm gonna need you to verbally confirm that you want me to kill your boss.
  • Deceased Parents Are the Best: While Isaac and his dad do love each other, their relationship is complicated by the latter's bias against magic. Meanwhile, Isaac's deceased mother is said to have been very supportive of Isaac's magical ambitions, with this being credited to Isaac's dad letting him go to wizard college.
  • Demonic Possession: The "Terror Space" at one point takes over Isaac's mind but tries to pretend he's still Isaac, so Val tricks it into doing all the chores.
  • Depth Deception: Being one-eyed, Val occasionally has difficulty with depth perception. Fortunately, Isaac has a spell for that.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
  • Distaff Counterpart: Val is apparently considered this by her alternate universe doppelgängers.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: A recurring bit shows that, when Minnow and Doris are together, they can often fail to do their jobs because they're too busy with each other.
  • Does Not Like Magic:
    • Isaac's father is not very fond of magic (which makes it difficult for Isaac to get his approval at times), though it's portrayed more in a "It's not the same as real work" way than any actual hatred. It's later revealed that this dislike partly comes from the way he viewed wizards as people who "only use magic to show off" instead of doing something more beneficial like curing diseases like shadowlung, one which afflicted his wife (Isaac's mother) and left her bedridden before her death. Isaac apparently started learning magic for this purpose, but only learned a spell that could ease one's suffering slightly.
    • Val is unfond of magic, though this is less out of any actual prejudice (she is friends with a wizard, after all), and more because of her general stubbornness and resistance to things she doesn't understand or considers silly, with most magic landing right into that category.
  • The Dreaded: Space Dread.
  • Ear Fins: Minnow sports a pair of green fins on the sides of her head.
  • Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
    • Garla's head used to be more rectangular and lacked a chin prior to gaining her current rounded one. Her fur also looked much coarser.
    • Earlier comics had Minnow's standard outfit include a pair of goggles; she still wears them, albeit very rarely. She also did not have cybernetic arms in the original We Draw Comics collab.
    • Doris used to wear a blue knit cap, but like with Minnow's goggles it's been mostly dropped.
    • Space Dread, in the first artwork of her, had digitigrade legs and Iron Man-esque lines extending from the corners of her mouth and across her cheeks, which never appeared again. A number of early comics also drew her hat as a top hat, when it later morphed into a slouch hat. A later comic made a reference to her having a top hat phase.
    • The original artwork of Val had her armor in white rather than burgundy, which was changed due to looking too much like a stormtrooper.
  • The Empire: Val's race and/or civilization, The Children of Kazgar, were this, ruthlessly dominating most of the galaxy for a millennia before they were overthrown in a Great Offscreen War about 25 years prior to the comic's start.
  • The Engineer: This is Minnow's job, primarily keeping the ship running and fixing up Val's weapons and armour.
  • Entendre Failure: Sila tries to rile up Val by suggesting another way to pay her, but Val takes it a bit too literally.
  • Every Scar Has a Story: In one strip, Garla shows off her scars to Minnow and tells the story behind each one. They're not all equally exciting, though.
    Minnow: What about that big one on your back?
    Garla: That's just a paper cut.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • Iris may hate Doris, but she wouldn't hesitate to save her from an irate customer.
    • Space Dread has never killed a kid, something she finds the opposite of hardcore, and is aghast when a child attempts Suicide by Assassin to escape a curse. She also refuses to do scab work.
    • Isaac is very kind-hearted and accepting even towards those otherwise considered sketchy at best and flat-out evil at worst, but he does have his limits. Like the guy who, after being defeated by Isaac and then going on a fishing trip with him, admitted he was still going to eat babies afterwards. Isaac vaporizes him with Eye Beams.
  • Extended Disarming: Val + weapon detector = a long road ahead.
  • Extradimensional Emergency Exit: Parodied and subverted. Isaac is periodically visited by the Time Boys, wacky inter-dimensional partiers from some kind of bizarro alternate dimensional space. He goes off to party with them and returns to wherever he came from, even if it would've been helpful to go literally anywhere else. The first time we see this happen, Isaac returns to the "Far Side" Island on which he and Val are currently stranded, surrounded by a pack of sharks.
    Isaac: Now, where were we?
  • Eye Beams: Space Dread can shoot fire from her eye... as well as extinguish them with a puff of air from another eye.
  • Eyepatch of Power: Val can't use cybernetics (due to allergies) or magic (see Healing Magic Is the Hardest entry below) to obtain a new left eye, so she sports one of these. She keeps gum in the empty socket.
  • Eye Pop: In one strip, Zuri uses her powers of seduction on a cartoon wolf, whose eyes pop off his head. She then grabs one of the eyes and uses it to open a vault.
  • Famed in Story: Space Dread has an incredibly fearsome, entirely warranted reputation.
  • Fish People: Minnow is an amphibious, green-skinned humanoid with Ear Fins and long flipper-like feet (she uses dimensional socks to compress them). Her hands would also have large flippers, except her arms have been replaced with cybernetics.
  • Floating Clocks: The Time Boys, multi-colored interdimensional beings who party with Isaac, live in a dimension filled with these.
  • Friendly Enemies: Despite no longer being constantly at each other's throats, Space Dread does still occasionally consider killing Val whenever Val's bounty starts to get large enough.
    Val: (as they both draw guns) Dread, c'mon.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Doris's model name, DOR15, describes the two things she was designed to do: "Detective Or Retail, Mark 15"
  • Fusion Dance: Isaac fuses himself and Minnow together into a composite for a while because they need a technomancer, and since Minnow's good with techno and Isaac's good with 'mancy... It works, surprisingly enough.
    Val: I knew letting you guys unionize was a mistake.
  • Genius Ditz: Isaac is an excellent mage, but he has no common sense or awareness to speak of—how much of it is him being too easygoing to mind things versus him just genuinely being that unaware is unclear, but we're talking about a guy who picked up an Acquired Poison Immunity because he keeps drinking poison by accident.
  • Gilligan Cut: Dread gets in touch with her clients after she's finished a gig while Working Through the Cold:
    Dread: Job's done. You got the rest of the payment?
    Client 1: Uh, yeah. Meet us at our base and we'll take care of that real quick. (Client 2 snickers in the background)
    Dread: ... This better not be an ambush. I am not in the mood for an ambush.
    (A Beat later, it turns out it was indeed an ambush and Dread's been captured by the clients)
    Dread: (thinking) Should have called in sick
  • Good All Along: The dEmon in Isaac's head is an incredibly ominous presence, heavily hinted to be responsible for stealing his soul. But in its Origins Episode, it's revealed by the hidden text to be horribly guilty about its role as a killing curse, willingly joined Isaac so it could stop, and an adorably earnest fan of their new host. And they had nothing to do with his soul, he just dropped it behind the dryer.
  • Good Angel, Bad Angel:
    • While arm-wrestling Hunter's dad, Dread's devil suggests using her shock implant to zap him, her angel says that wouldn't be sporting, and they need to set a good example for Hunter, and her heart comments that while she doesn't swing that way, she's down for doing it with him.
    • It turns out that since Dread has four shoulders, she has four entities pop up: an angel, a devil, a heart, and a floating blue ball with glasses who's in charge of staving off depression.
    • Garla's angel is the manifestation of her flight reflex, cautious, analytical, and wearing a crash helmet and jumpsuit. Her devil is the manifestation of her fight reflex, a Blood Knight who only thinks of fighting... except when dealing with other moms who'll judge her
  • Good Is Not Soft: After defeating an evil wizard, Isaac offers them a chance to redeem themselves and find a peaceful hobby, but that one chance is all they get.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Iris' animosity towards Doris is heavily implied to stem from her own jealousy towards her abilities.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: One arc sees Space Dread trapped in one of these. She has no idea why, or how to break the loop, and tries a variety of tactics, until the loop ends on its own after 69 times.
    Isaac: The universe works in mysterious ways, Dread.
  • Halloween Episode: Fear Day has Dread, Isaac, and Val explaining some of their worlds' Fear Day decorations and the history behind them.
  • Happily Adopted: Minnow. Though Liam is a bit strict, her fathers obviously adore her and vice-versa.
  • Have You Tried Rebooting?: Twitch works a Soul-Crushing Desk Job and is shown saying something very similar to a customer. However, they're a technomancer, so their version is a little different.
    Twitch: Have you tried un-conjuring and re-conjuring it?
  • Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Healing magic apparently relies on the subject's memories of the affected body parts, so older wounds and wounds associated with highly mentally traumatic events can't be healed properly. Isaac tried healing Val's eye once, but the result was bad enough that he just casts a depth perception boosting spell every week or so now.
  • Hidden Weapons: Dread has a variety of weapons and supplies concealed in fake teeth, including a Cyanide Pill. In fact, she has so many, it takes her a few crucial seconds to find the specific one she needs.
  • Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: Garla's son Hunter speaks both the standard galactic language and his species' language Gesh, but Garla grew up on Kazgar, where other languages were outlawed, so her knowledge of Gesh is very limited. She suspects Hunter uses Gesh swear words to get around having to putting money in The Swear Jar.
  • Hive Mind: Dread discovers one target's a hive mind, and basically says "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" because she's not killing all those bodies. Her client tries to argue that they paid for one kill, and a hive mind's technically a single self, but Dread's not having it.
  • Ho Yay: In-universe, Minnow rewatches her old favorite show Barbaricelle (an apparent Xena: Warrior Princess counterpart), and realizes that she liked the show mostly because of the, er, rather close partnership between Barbarcielle and Walanda the Sky Witch.
    "Break free of her spell with the power of love between two very good friends."
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs: The phrase "hold your sporses" (space horses) has shown up at least once.
  • Hopeless with Tech: Val's a downplayed example, not being good with digital security.
  • How Would You Like to Die?: The killing curse that Dread and Isaac cured is retroactively shown to work like this. It takes anyone who touches Ari into a dark void and tells them to "pick their poison." We don't see what the first victim chose (for better or worse) while Dread chose anything that leaves her body intact (so the Resurrectol can work) and Isaac chose "old age," which works. While the curse could simply cause Rapid Aging, it actually hates being forced to kill, and allows hErself to jump to Isaac.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • Garla swears quite a bit, but her son saying "hell"? He's immediately told to watch his language.
    • Dex gets annoyed when security drones tag them as a potential shoplifter. Dread immediately calls them out on this.
      Dread: Everything you're wearing now is stolen.
      Dex: ...My socks aren't.
    • Dread tells Hunter's friend Lyndseigh that true crime podcasts are gross and disrespectful — only to immediately change her tune and ask for more details when she finds out it was one of her targets.
  • Iaijutsu Practitioner: Dread demonstrates her mastery of the blade by cutting a slice of cheese with a single stroke. Dex is unimpressed.
    Dex: So, you cut cheese really slow?
    Dread: No, I cut cheese really fast.
    Dex: It took you 15 seconds to make one slice.
  • I Know Your True Name: Dark magic apparently draws power from names. It's been confirmed that "real name" means the one you consider to be yours, so Space Dread's deadname doesn't count, and since she was already going by "Space Dread" when she found a name that felt right, she and her moms are the only ones that know it. A warlock who tracked down her birth certificate found this out the hard way.
  • Impossible Thief: That'd be Dex, who stole Space Dread's heart away. Er...
  • Inconvenient Summons: A bandit attacks Isaac's sister while he's in the bath. He answers her summons wearing a Modesty Towel.
  • Insectoid Aliens: Liam resembles a humanoid stick insect.
  • Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: This is apparently very common in the universe. The coffee machine developed sentience so often that they decided to just let it go off and become an adventurer. The crew's ship even has a switch labeled SHIP A.I. set to "Off," with a sticky note next to it saying "Don't Touch." When Val turns it on out of curiosity, the ship screams in agony and begs to be turned off; she hastily flips the switch back.
  • Instant Seduction: Zuri specializes in this. One comic even has her out-seduce her own shadow, Lucky Luke-style.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: While Dread and Garla hang out quite a bit, Dread spends even more time playing video games and skateboarding with Garla's son Hunter, who's vaguely tween-aged.
  • Interspecies Romance: Honestly, it'd be easier to name romances in the comic that are actually between members of the same species (most of whom are parents).
  • Ironic Fear: Despite being from an amphibious species, Minnow had an issue with water as a child for some reason.
  • It Runs on Nonsensoleum:
    • A comic involving Zuri, an omni-seducer, reveals that her powers don't work on Isaac because he's asexual—despite the fact that it's noted that an omni-seducer can work their mojo on inanimate objects. The comic offers two explanations for this: either omni-seduction also grants a limited form of sentience to those objects, which therefore wouldn't work on a being that was already sentient, or "the universe is just weird, I dunno." Dread can also resist it because, as Gael’s puts it. Xuri uses seduction as a weapon, and Dread has trained herself to defend against all weapons.
    • In one arc, the ship has run out of fuel because Val asked that they be paid for their last job in xerylium, not xyrelium. The ship can run on a wide variety of fuels, but only one is available in their current system: concentrated boredom. Cue the crew sitting on the couch in an empty room, very gradually refueling the ship.
  • I Was Just Passing Through: When Zuri teases Space Dread for saving the galaxy from an all-out total war for free, the latter denies it, saying she just wanted to steal one of the artificial brains to use as a graphics card.
  • Jack of All Trades: Space Dread is this for the rest of the cast. Val is a better fighter than her, Isaac won against her in a mage duel, Minnow outclasses her when it comes to tech, she lost in arm wrestling matches against Garla and Fang, and Hunter beats her at every game. However, she excels in all of these fields, to the point of being a Master of All to the rest of the world, and there is one field where she stands above all: strategy and cunning.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dread works as a hired killer and has a deadpan, sarcastic personality, but Garla has no problem trusting her around Hunter, and she's the one who points out to Isaac how important the match is to his team leader during the Wizardball arc.
  • Jet Pack: Val uses one to fight The Bhangoghat Pit Monster.
  • Killer Rabbit: One strip sees the crew hired to fight "the corruption," something which has every person on the planet absolutely terrified. They arrive at the corrupted village and discover ... a bunch of adorable cuddly creatures covered in hearts and flowers. Then one of them pulls out a gun.
  • Large Ham: Dread's ex-supervillain mother was like this in her old career, so you can kind of see where Dread gets it.
    ANOTHER FLY TRAPPED IN MY WEB OF DESPAIR!
  • Last Of Her Kind: Minnow believes she's this for her unknown, fish-like species. Apparently endlingsnote  are common enough that there are entire seminars aimed at them.
  • Lazy Alias: Doris is accused of this, being a DOR15 robot who goes by Doris, by her overly paranoid boss.
  • Limited Wardrobe: To the untrained eye, Isaac's wardrobe is full of identical dull blue robes, but those attuned to magical super-frequencies see the truth: one of them is the costume of Stardust the Super Wizard.
  • Literal-Minded: Val has trouble picking up on Sila's meaning here:
    Sila: My hero! However shall I repay you?
    Val: Oh, you can just transfer the credits to my-
    Sila: I have a better idea.
    (she whispers into Val's ear while Val starts blushing)
    Val: (awkwardly) Th-that sounds nice, but we need to cover the fuel costs to-
    Sila: Yes, I will pay you for real too.
  • Loads and Loads of Races: It's easier to name members of the cast who share a species with another member than ones that don't, and that number falls off when you discount families.
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • A spear in a pedestal can only be pulled out by a descendant of Fioll the Paladin. So Garla just pulls the pedestal out of the ground.
    • The original warning sign on the cookie pantry says "He or she who trespasses this room shall be cursed." - which doesn't apply to Twitch, who's nonbinary. So the school put up a new sign saying "They who trespass this room shall be cursed.".
    • Isaac removed a curse/overactive protection spell that killed anyone who came in contact with a child by asking them how they want to die by answering "of old age". Deconstructed in that the curse points out that shE could just age him to death in seconds; it's Isaac's genial personality that wins hEr over, rather than the loophole itself.
    • Twitch summons a magical being that will answer only five questions. They get to have at least 2 additional answers by never formulating their inquiries as questions and simply letting the being answer them, thus getting the knowledge they sought without spending their questions.
    • When Minnow reads a Strangely Specific Horoscope that she will stab her friend Isaac, she and Isaac try to outwit the horoscope by having her "stab" him in various other ways: giving him an injection, stabbing him in a video game, and "backstabbing" him by eating all his crackers. Then they visit a sword store.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: One story sees Val, Isaac, and Dread get their minds trapped in the collective mindscape of a Face Hugger species known as humbugs, where they're all in a shared fantasy of themselves as children. Dread breaks out by punching a humbug off her face, while Val and Isaac escape by resolving psychological issues.
  • Magic Eater: Space Dread has weapons made specifically to counteract these types.
  • Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: Space Dread's original design wore a top hat, but it was eventually swapped out for a shorter hat with a similar wide brim. Fast-forward several years, and a race of Lilliputians bring out a Mecha Space Dread to fight her—she's a gray-and-silver dead ringer for Dread's original costume design. Dread is less than amused.
    Space Dread: [internally] Oh no, my top hat phase.
  • Missing Mom: Both the titular characters' mothers are absent for different reasons.
    • For Val, her mother suffered an Uncertain Doom during the fall of The Empire, with Val unsure of her fate and only having her damaged helmet to vent at. It's later shown that her mother survived the war, but lost an eye and is now stranded on an uncharted planet.
    • Isaac's mother is said to have passed away when he was younger, with him mentioning it took a while to process her passing and he still thinks about her often. In one arc he reveals that she died of a disease called Shadowlung, with Isaac's magic only able to ease her pain.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Space Dread has four arms, and despite her dorkiness is clearly very competent at her job.
  • Multipurpose Tongue: As part of Sila's flirting with Val, she uses her Overly Long Tongue to open a locker door at arm's length.
  • Mundane Utility: Dread is shown using her shapeshifting to do things like take multiple free samples or get movie tickets for "one adult, one child" so she can put her feet up.

    N-Z 
  • Nerd in Evil's Helmet: The more we learn about Space Dread, the dorkier she gets: she likes juggling and took her title from her MMO character. She ended up joining her space merc chapter because she happened to be in the room when it formed, and her current outfit began as the cosplay she was wearing at an anime convention when she had to perform a job without time to change.
  • No Focus on Humans: It's unclear if this is a setting where humans exist or not (we occasionally see characters who look human, but it's not elaborated upon), but none of the main cast are human, and for the most part, they exist in an utterly cosmopolitan universe where dozens, if not hundreds, of alien races coexisting is considered completely unremarkable.
  • No Man of Woman Born: Being the "only thing on the planet" that can vanquish the Big Evil Whatever isn't all that meaningful in a Space Fantasy series.
  • No-Sell: Isaac being asexual means that things like the song of a siren and the arrow of a "Romanticore" have no effect on him (the latter apparently happens on a regular basis).
    • Since Dread has trained herself to defend against all weapons, Zuri’s weaponized seduction techniques fail to work on her.
  • Non-Heteronormative Society: Space is gay, by all appearances. There's no real evidence of homophobia or transphobia (the closest thing is a warlock thinking that Space Dread's deadname would work on her), and the majority of the cast are some stripe of not-heterosexual without facing any barriers for it. One imagines that, when a romance between a humanoid insect with robot arms and a war machine made of solid stone becomes a feasible thing, the fact that they're both guys is barely worth mentioning.
    • There actually is one society that appears to be heteronormative: the Children of Kazgar, the explicitly fascist empire.
  • Note to Self:
    • In one arc, the crew is plagued by an orkroid, a bizarre little parasite that latches on to someone's head and thus erases all memories of that person's existence. People can't even perceive the missing person in photographs of them. The problem is solved when Isaac manages to leave photos for Val and Minnow that say "If you're reading this, say 'Activate orkroid fumigation protocols.'"
    • Minnow has a bad habit of touching every cute creature she sees, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. On one occasion, her arm buzzes as she reaches out to pet a slime-like animal, and a message starts playing. We then see Minnow repairing her arm after the last time she touched a strange creature, recording a message reminding herself not to do so again. We then cut back to the present, where Minnow's detached arm finishes playing the message as it sinks into the body of the creature.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Colin, one of Minnow's classmates, had people copying off of him because they thought his brain was really big until they learned that it was actually his butt. One classmate, Nathan, kept copying off him, but since Colin hated him he made sure that he got the wrong answers.
  • One Degree of Separation: The comic's supporting cast works off this principle: just about every recurring character can be associated with Val, Isaac, or Minnow, whether as friends, colleagues, romantic partners, family members, or rivals.
  • The One with a Personal Life: Space Dread's mercenary guild has a member named Emotion Joe, who's well adjusted, has friends outside of mercenary work, and a happy family. This makes him unpopular with other mercenaries, and very popular with everyone else.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Common practice among space adventurers for protection from dark magic. From the main cast, Minnow and Space Dread both use characters' names from an MMO they played. Space Dread specifically made sure that nobody but her parents know her true name, audience included. Dark magic was considered a myth on the planet where Minnow/Melody grew up, but she went with a nickname when moving out into spacefaring life just to sound cooler.
    • A later comic reveals that Dread also used the name Zora when she first joined her guild.
    • Twitch's original name is Lore Woodwind; "Twitch" seems to have started as a reference to how their eyes twitch when they get mad.
  • Origins Episode:
    • Minnow has one showing her being found and adopted, and another for how she first met Val.
    • Val's family history and culture gets explored mainly in a six-page storyline where her captured sister Vera explains it to a curious Space Dread. Further flashbacks show her growing up in Kazgar after the rest of her family fled and her mother became abusive.
    • Isaac gets a flashback arc showing how he and Lore "Twitch" Woodwind became friends after being teamed for a mock dungeon crawl at their Wizarding School.
    • Doris gets one for how she and Minnow first met during a routine pest extermination.
  • Our Minotaurs Are Different: Garla is basically a space minotaur. Later strips explain that her species are Basarans, their native language is Gesh, and that adult Basarans are extremely strong and tough.
  • Our Sirens Are Different: Isaac harvests some songs from sirens as a component of his dad's birthday gift. He's immune to their song because he's asexual, but his gay sister—-who was on the phone with him at the time—-wasn't so lucky. (She was fine, after some physical restraining and a cold shower.)
  • Overly Long Name: Isaac's full name is Isaac Merely-born-in-a-lakeside-cottage-one-drizzly-afternoon-fifty-days-before-the-grand-harvest Rydle.
  • Paper People: Zuri Starr's recurring would-be nemesis Centerfold is a woman who is as flat and thin as a piece of paper. She's also desperately in love with Zuri.
  • The Paranoiac: Doris's new boss could perhaps stand to have her detective programming debugged.
    Doris: And then she accused me of bugging her office to expose her secrets or whatever!
  • Parents as People: Minnow's dads are good, although Liam can be a bit overprotective; Isaac's father has certain issues with wizardry (note that Isaac is a wizard) and keeps talking up Isaac's sister's axe business but does seem to care on some level, and Val is at one point shown slamming some booze and insulting her mother's charred helmet.
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Quite literally, with Val and Isaac.
  • Poison and Cure Gambit: Parodied when a villain poisons Val with a dart, and tells her that she'll die in thirty minutes unless she hands over the idol she's carrying. Val simply hits him with a dart of her own and tells him he'll die in twenty minutes unless he hands over the antidote.
  • Portmanteau: Minnow's parents are Liam and Kraig Rockbug.
  • The Power of Friendship: During an exam, Isaac and Twitch are faced with trying to move a boulder with the power of friendship, so they try using spells with a friendship component, and when they don't work out start questioning their friendship. It turns out it meant they were meant to push the boulder together. Isaac thinks that's the power of teamwork rather than friendship, and Twitch says the two of them have come to the conclusion it's the exam that's flawed.
  • Psychic Block Defense: As seen in this strip, Zuri has versions of herself that will appear in her mind to subdue any mental intruders — although, since this is Zuri, they don't subdue so much as seduce.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: We never actually get to see much of the antagonism, but at least two different people (including Space Dread) have asked Val out after attempting to kill her — after all, "space mercenary" is just a job.
  • A Rare Sentence: Over the course of one comic, Bibi says a number of sentences that she feels the need to lampshade as odd. While the first two are as strange as she thinks ("Yes. Rust-colored lipstick that'll help you seduce the oncoming train," and "Okay, I'll hack the general's cybernetics to be allergic to ghosts, and then make the sound system do a seance for the milkman who died in his office last week"), the third one, "We're out of coffee because I drank six cups of coffee last night," doesn't receive quite the same reception.
    Doris: Bibi, that's too much coffee.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Subverted with Space Dread, who has red skin and wears black. While she's Edgy (TM), and apparently tried to kill Val once, she ends up as basically their wacky neighbor. It is, however, played totally straight with the Children of Kazgar, the fascist empire that ruled most of the galaxy until recently.
  • Red and Black Totalitarianism: Kazgar, the fascist empire that threatened to dominate the entire galaxy, has a colour palette of red, black, and a dash of neon green.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Right down to color schemes, with pink/red Val being more aggressive and violent while blue Isaac is more relaxed and careful.
    • Isaac is also the Blue Oni (patient, easygoing, affable) to Twitch's Red Oni (temperamental, high-strung, caustic), even more so when they first met.
  • Retired Monster: One of Dread's mothers used to be a druid of Khash who fed people to her darling "locusts". Even having settled down with her family she still thinks it's okay to flay someone alive for holding up the line to order food.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: The galaxy's full of them, and Minnow wants to pet them all. And they almost all invariably do bad things to her cybernetic arms when she does so.
  • Robosexual: Minnow (a cyborg) is dating Doris (a robot).
    • Apparently every alternate universe version of Minnow is also dating a robot, except for the one who is a robot. (That one's dating a tree.)
    • Further underlining this, it seems that in this universe, aquatic life forms dating robots is relatively common. Iris's girlfriend is an octopus girl, and at a convention for retail robots, they get in a line for food with a group that apparently consists of nothing but varying kinds of Fish People with cyborg parts.
  • Robot Girl: Doris, Floaty Floats, and Doris's boss Iris. Zuri's assistant Bibi also appears to be some kind of robot, though it's unclear.
  • Robot Hair: Doris has this, naturally. It's reprogrammable!
  • Sapient House: Thraggaron's Promised Word is the seventh oldest sentient temple in the galaxy. She has a humanoid son who's also a sentient structure, and can let people inside him.
  • Science Fantasy: It's a sci-fi setting where ghosts are a thing, ships fly through the haunted Terror Space, and "wizard cuisine" exists (featuring such dishes as the aptly-named Literally Endless Bowl of Nachos).
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Minnow asks Garla about Val's mother, Garla's reaction is to finish her drink and bail out the nearest window.
  • Self-Defenestration: Val has issues with her mother, to put it mildly, and deflects any attempts at talking about her. In one strip, Minnow attempts to ask Garla (Val's childhood friend) about this. In response, Garla calmly finishes her coffee, then jumps straight out the window of the diner they were in without saying a word.
  • Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Space Dread tends to get stuck when she shapeshifts into a smaller form. She did an entire mission in the form of a baby because she didn't want to admit that she needed help getting bigger again.
  • Sherlock Scan: This is apparently a focus of Doris's product line. Iris attempts to use it on Doris, but somehow manages to get "you were a barista who fell in love with a coffee machine, eloped, and changed your name to start a new life" out of "your name sounds like it could be a Lazy Alias."
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Fighting over who Minnow should be with starts an actual war In-Universe (and for bonus irony, they're unaware she's actually in a relationship with Doris).
  • Shout-Out:
  • Skewed Priorities:
  • The Smurfette Principle: Much to Val's displeasure, it turns out that whenever an Alliance of Alternates situation happens, she is the only Val to be female, as "we thought more than one was redundant."
  • Socially Awkward Hero: Val is not good at this dating thing.
  • Sommelier Speak: Iris indulges in this, though she's talking about oil, not wine.
  • Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Doris would prefer to be a criminal investigator, and would be amazing if she was one, but her planet doesn't exactly have a lot of crime, so her retail job is the best that she's got. Once she's fired, she manages to locate a new one, which is hellish in an entirely new way (her boss, another robot of the same design, is a weird, paranoid overachiever).
  • The Soulless: Isaac, apparently, although his reaction to the idea is along the lines of "huh, that's odd," and it doesn't seem to have had any psychological effect on him. It seems like he misplaced it somewhere and only found out later. He forgot it behind the dryer.
  • Space "X": Shows up frequently and is usually explained with a small caption box at the bottom of the panel. Examples include spicken (space chicken), spurkey (space turkey), and spinach (space spinach). We've also seen paghetti (spaghetti, not in space).
  • Spotting the Thread: In one storyline, Val is trying to track down Minnow and Isaac after they were ambushed by an unknown attacker; she recruits Doris to help with the investigation. When she scans the spot where the group was attacked, Doris only finds genetic traces of Val and Isaac, and no trace of the attacker. Only later does Doris discover that Val doesn't actually have any penetrating injuries, so none of her blood was spilled — but the blood that's on her is still her genetic match, meaning the only possible culprit is one of Val's multiversal alternate selves.
  • Square-Cube Law: Minnow mentions the scientific principle and the corollary that giant creatures will be crushed under their own weight, which offends Twitch so much they and Isaac prove to her this doesn't mean anything to two wizards.
  • Still Wearing the Old Colors: Val wears the armor of a Kazgar Infi-knight, from back when she served in the empire of the Children of Kazgar. It isn't out of loyalty to Kazgar, but rather seems to be out of personal loyalty to her family, specifically her mother, who was some sort of high-ranking individual in the empire. Additionally, it's been heavily modified, which would be considered a treasonous offense in Kazgar, so in a way Val's continued use of the armor represents a kind of rejection of the empire and its ideals.
  • Strangely Arousing: Doris has a dream where Minnow has replaced all her organic parts with cybernetics, becoming a Minnow-shaped robot. For some reason this dream gets saved into both her "Nightmare" and "Sexy Dream" folders.
  • Strangely Specific Horoscope: Parodied in one strip.
    Minnow: "Today you will stab your friend." These aren't real, are they?
    Isaac: Well ... wizard horoscopes can be pretty accurate, but it's all just for fun. Though make sure you're looking at the one based on your current galactic coordinates. There, that one.
    Minnow: "You will stab your friend Isaac."
  • Strike Episode: One arc has Minnow and Isaac go on strike due to disagreeing about Val's choice of oatmeal brand.
  • String Theory: Iris uses this to try and figure out what her wife wants for her birthday. Doris points out she could just ask her, but Iris refuses. And that's just the board for the color the wrapping paper should be; the actual present has a different board entirely.
  • Supernaturally Validated Trans Person: Space Dread once avoided being hexed because a deadname doesn't count as a person's true name for the purpose of curses (she chose her name after she'd began using Space Dread as an alias, so only she and her mums know it). As a result, a warlock who went out of the way to find her birth certificate was wasting his time, and she just pulled a Boom, Headshot! on him.
  • Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Doris plays with this a fair bit. Though she spends most of the strip working a dead-end retail job, she also demonstrates a lot of unusual abilities. Later on, it's revealed that her name is actually "Detective or Retail-15," and therefore she also has a lot of functions (like built-in weapons, a teched-up Sherlock Scan, and investigation tools) that see no use in her current job. It's implied that building otherwise-specialized robots with a backup "or Retail" function is downright common, so it wouldn't be unheard of to see robots with military-grade weaponry mopping up spills or working a cash register.
    • A later strip has an entire convention for robots with an additional "retail" function.
    • In a flashback arc, Val and Garla see a movie at an underground theater guarded by repurposed janitrons. They still clean up spills, but with lasers. This becomes a problem when Val spills her drink on her shirt.
  • Suicide by Assassin: In one arc, a little girl called Ari hires Space Dread to kill her after her father put a "protection" spell on her that kills anyone who touches her. Due to the curse having already claimed 37 people (including at least one friend), Ari considers herself too dangerous to live. Dread is horrified by this prospect and instead calls on Isaac, who's able to remove the curse so Ari can go live with her aunt.
  • Symbol Swearing: In one strip, Isaac and Twitch are trying to bypass their magic college's swear filter using a bizarre technomagic device.
    Twitch: @$#k!
    Isaac: Alright, try switching it to the Lau frequency, maybe?
    Twitch: F$#k!
    Isaac: Ooh, now we're getting somewhere!
  • Tattle Tail: Dread can tell when Dex is mad at her when their tail sticks straight up.
  • Teleportation: Val's ship has a teleporter, although because it's old, organic things using it are horribly mutated, and Isaac's magic can't teleport things long distances. On the bright side, Doris can visit easily, since she's a Robot Girl with no organic parts.
  • The Tell: To Doris's dismay, Minnow can see when she's bluffing or holding a good hand, no matter how much Doris downgrades her chassis.
  • Themed Aliases: A running gag is that all of Space Dread's aliases are anagrams, such as Edda Parsec or Dr. Escapade. Everyone but her finds this incredibly lame.
  • Token Wizard: Isaac is this to the rest of the main cast (whose abilities mostly come from being highly trained, robots, aliens, cyborgs or highly trained alien cyborgs). This is typically played for laughs when the arcane nature of his powers clash with the scifi aspects of the Science Fantasy setting (e.g. a massive monster which can just be shot, as its "only" weakness was the only weakness on its planet). Space Dread also has some skill with dark magic, though she doesn't use it as often.
  • Translator Microbes: Everybody has some form of universal translator, but they're prone to quirks. When an update messes with the "intelligence filter" settings, it results in even the vegetables screaming their names constantly.
  • TV Head Robot: Zuri's assistant Bibi appears to have some kind of screen for her face, though it's unclear whether she's a robot, a cyborg, or something else entirely.
  • The Un-Smile: "Maybe smiling is counterproductive."
  • Ungrateful Bastard: A man leaves Doris a 3-star review after she saved his life because "it will encourage her to work harder".
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: Every time Space Dread is seen in casual clothes, she has a different outfit. And every single one of them is a Lemon Demon reference.
  • Unmoving Plaid: Used occasionally, but one specific example is notable as a Chekhov's Gun: Zuri sometimes wears a jumpsuit that displays an image of the cosmos that doesn't flow like fabric. That's because it's actually a portal, which she and Dread use as an escape hatch at the end of their casino heist. Of course, this results in Zuri being Naked on Arrival.
    Zuri: Well, I can't jump into the suit while wearing it, can I?
  • Useless Useful Spell: Played for laughs when Isaac notes that, since the universe is so vast, literally any spell could potentially be useful in the right situation, even a spell that makes wine openers cry. Cut to Val finding a bottle that can only be opened by a wine opener that laughs.
    Isaac: Another one?
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Space Dread and Isaac both are capable of it, and both use Minnow's form for aquatically-inclined work, much to her extreme distaste. Once Val uses a hologram mod to her armor to also look like Minnow, Isaac says that it's gone too far and has to stop.
  • Weight and Switch: Space Dread replaces an idol with a stapler. It actually works, although the explorers who show up the week after neglect to take this precaution.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: Isaac really wants to impress his father, but since all his skills revolve around magic — which his dad hates — he has a hard time of it.
    • While it turns out his father finds the magic hammer Isaac gave him very useful, he won't admit it to Isaac's face since he knows his son will rub it in (which was indeed Isaac's plan).
    • Later, Isaac's father tries to set up Isaac with a girl, and while Isaac is correct when he suspects something is wrong (the girl was a plant monster shapeshifter that preys on magic users controlling his father's mind), she was telling the truth about his father being proud of Isaac, having found out about him when his father was bragging about him to his friends at the market. This brings Isaac to Tears of Joy.
    • An anglerfish causes Isaac to see a photo of his dad saying he's proud of his son.
  • "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Starts here. Twitch makes a magic costume that appears as the observer's greatest fear. Isaac sees a note from "Every Wizard" telling him he can't practice magic anymore, Wally sees a t-bone steak being donated to charity without any tax deduction!, their teacher Ms. Everdale sees her younger self asking how many books she's written, and Twitch themself saw Isaac saying "I don't really wanna be your friend, but I'm too nice to say it", though they insisted it was just spiders.
  • When She Smiles: Doris and Minnow are shocked and delighted when they see the rare phenomenon of Space Dread not just smiling but laughing. Dread is annoyed to be caught.
    Dread: I could kill you both in two seconds, right now.
    Minnow: That's fine, I'd die happy!
  • Working Through the Cold: Starts here. Dread gets infected with parasites in her blood, and as a result of skimming the video on how to cast "Cure Parasite" ends up healing the parasites instead, leaving her having to wait out the infection. She takes a sniper gig, assuming it'll be easy, but discovers that maybe she should have called in sick.
  • The Worm That Walks: Space Dread can apparently turn into a swarm of bugs, although it gives her a headache.
  • Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Space Dread may be a freelance contract assassin, but she'd never kill a child, calling it the "opposite of hardcore." Even if said child is blackmailing her or tried to commit Suicide by Assassin.
  • Wrench Wench: Officially Minnow's job, but she's just as likely to end up fighting alongside Val and Isaac when they're on missions.
  • Wretched Hive: The title of a strip where the crew visits the most crime-ridden planet in the system. Val doesn't even let Minnow and Isaac leave the ship.
    Minnow: (on the phone) C'mon, it can't be worse than anything we've seen before.
    Val: Ugh, hold on, some punk just stabbed me.
    Minnow: Wait, what?
    Val: (with the attacker in a headlock) It's fine. The dagger's not poisoned. (to the attacker) Amateur.
  • You Didn't Ask: Isaac gets annoying with Exact Words:
    Val: I bought this expensive suit because you told me your water-breathing spell doesn't shield against extreme deep sea pressures.
    Isaac: Really? Why didn't you just ask me to use my extreme-deep-sea-pressure shield spell on you?

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