A Girl and Her Fed

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Yes, that is a glowing clownfish. It makes sense in context

An unnamed woman who works as a journalism intern finds she is on a terrorist watchlist. When she confronts the Fed who is set to watch her, things get seriously, fantastically weird. There's a good deal of humor thrown in. And did we mention the forty billion undead pixies? And the talking super-genius koala? Once the fantastic elements are accepted by the reader, we then see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Much, much better than it sounds.

Read. Enjoy. Conspire.

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Contains these tropes:

• A Boy and His X
• Action Girl: The girl. She's one of the best in the world at judo.
• A God Am I: Clarice's eventual goal.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Agent 146/Clarice deals with ghosts on a near-daily basis, but refuses to believe that The Girl is an empath.
  • Also averted, sort of.
• Art Evolution: Downright noddy at the start, until the occasional Art Shift shows the artist's potential. The comic is getting redrawn in colour and a brand new style.
  • Notably, the first dramatic art shift happened after a significant meditation event undertaken by the girl. She opened her eyes and from that point on, the world is drawn in full color and with more details (including characters having visible eyes whereas before, it was a case of Eyes Always Shut). Slightly undermined by the art style reboot...
  • The 'Eyes Always Shut' bit was broken at various different points - the meeting with Mike, the flashbacks with the Fed and Dixon's wife, et cetera. The real art style change happened when the artist decided to do so for one reason or another...and the fact that she's bringing the whole strip into a more realistic style makes one wonder what it'll look like regarding those flashbacks.
• Artificial Limbs: Clarice has a super strong cybernetic arm and has apparently similar reinforcements planted to her spine to supports its weight and lift capability. However, apparently it's not designed to resist being ripped apart from her shoulder socket.
• Back From the Dead: Ben gives a pretty good and short Motive Rant about it too.

Ben: "I came back from the dead for this Country. I will not sit passively by while what I fought to forge is CORRUPTED and DESTROYED!"

• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: The Girl, in spades.
• Badass Abnormal: The Fed upgraded from Badass Normal once he gains control of the chip
• Battle Aura: Simulated in page 604.
• Battle Couple
• Brick Joke: Sparky and the group use Ben as a relay to record a meeting. Sparky meets his ghostly security detail and realizes they've watched him have sex with the Girl. Several times. Sparky and the Girl have sex in an elevator with no ghosts watching. Whoops.
• Character Blog: Speedy's Twitter
• Curb Stomp Battle: Planning an all-out assault really does make a difference, doesn't it?
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul
• Don't Explain the Joke: During a showdown with Clarice, Hope makes a joke about juggling Mac Guffins, and how they are high calorie. She then explains "muffin? macguffin? geddit?"
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Fed, whom The Girl refers to as "Sparky"
  • His real name is eventually revealed to be Agent Patrick "Pat" Mulcahy.
• Everything Is Online: Averted here.
• Feminist Fantasy
• Furry Denial: Speedy.
• Gentle Giant: The Fed, once the real him re-emerges.
• Genius Bruiser: The eponymous battle couple, who are a doctor and a lawyer, respectively.
• Ghostly Goals: Some are more malevolent than others.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Ghosts gain power from how well and widely they are remembered.
• Government Conspiracy: involving brain implants and ghosts.
• Grievous Harm With a Body
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: But the Girl is a Judo master, and can handle him easily.
  • I Let You Win: ...But then again, it's revealed that he held back in their sparring matches.
    • He states outright that he knows its stupid, because she is still much, much better than him.
• I'm Taking Her Home With Me: The Girl says this about one of the henchmen. The Fed vetoes the idea, though. After all, raising a villain is a big responsibility.
• I See Them Too: Originally Twice simultaneously, since RetConned to once, nonverbally, when The Girl meets The Fed.
• Insufferable Genius/Intellectual Animal: Speedy
• In Vino Veritas: the Girl gets a lot less cynical after a fair amount of vodka.
• I See Dead People: But only if they want you to.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time: Verbatim.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Rose
• Kryptonite Factor: Lampshaded here. See Weaksauce Weakness below.
• Land Down Under: An ad for holidaying in Australia has a warning about the claws and teeth of anything not poisonous.
• Last Second Chance: No.
  • Then four pages later, yes.
• MacGuffin: Lampshaded though here's to hoping that they're not what we'd traditionally call a MacGuffin, as they had better explain some things. Unless this is a hint from the writer that they won't...

Girl: Damn, we're juggling a load of MacGuffins. And I've heard MacGuffins are insanely high in calories... Get it? Muffin? MacGuffin?

• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Zig-zagged all to hell. The Girl seems like a shoe-in for this, being spunky, violent, and spontaneous. But it ends up that she has to spend a lot more effort getting used to Sparky's convoluted conspiracy/spy shenanigans than any effort he'd have to take to get used to her being merely eccentric.
• Masquerade: At least until the chips are revealed to the public between parts one and two. The ghosts are probably going to remain hidden for a while, though.
• No Name Given: Both title characters, initially. Word of God had this was intentional. Their real names are eventually revealed as Hope Blackwell and Patrick Mulcahey respectively.
  • • Name's the Same: As the priest in Mash.
• Noodle Incident: The first time she made a serial killer cry.
  • Also, whatever happened in the Fed's college days with a walrus. Mentioned a few times, so it's a Brick Joke.
• Our Ghosts Are Different
• Planet Eris: After the chips are revealed to the public. In the earlier comics it's the Masquerade (see above).
  • After? How about this qoute from the beggining of the strip.

The Fed: "Oh good, the ghost of Benjamin Franklin has arrived. Now things can get back to normal. That's the sound of a mutant conservative koala bear in a screaming fight with an EXTREMELY pissed-off Liberal wanna-be journalist. To the best of my knowledge, it's a first for the record books."

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: So, so much. A Girl, her Fed, the ghost of Ben Franklin, a talking koala....
• Ransacked Room: Here.
• Red Right Hand: Clarice Finch with her arm.
• Rich Idiot With No Day Job: The girl. She has a day job, albeit a really sucky one.

"Sometimes when we're bored, the ghost of Ben Franklin and I get hammered on old scotch and he goes five hours into the future to cherry-pick high-yield stocks for day trading."

• Stop Helping Me: Bitty Bush. Played horribly, nightmarishly straight.
• Sunglasses At Night: They even wear them in their sleep. See Weaksauce Weakness below.
• Take That: To the Star Wars prequels, when The Fed mentions that he wants to finally see them, as he loved the original trilogy.
• Talk About That Thing: Here.

Girl: We're gonna... go to the restroom and check on our drinks. Mako: Great! Get me a for god's sake, separate your sentences. With a twist of lime.

• Talk to The Fist: "Probably not what they mean when they say good manners make good opportunities..."
• Technopath
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. Hope went to one and "blew twenty grand" when Ben first popped up. Also played straight and subverted with Abraham Lincoln. In the afterlife he has completely lost his mind due to stress from the Civil War, but no one has been able to help him- partially because he seals himself off from almost everyone, Frederick Douglass being one known exception. But apparently getting somebody in hasn't been tried, or if it has been tried, it has...not worked.
• The Un-Reveal: The identity of the ghost who set the Pocket President program in motion. Further plot developments suggest that 99% of the audience wouldn't have recognized him by name anyway.
• Time Skip
• Took a Level In Badass: Lampshaded here.
• Verbal Backspace: Smithback talks about his nephew Mike.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Agents in the program get instant, debilitating migraines when exposed to bright light.
• Yaoi Fangirl: "I'LL GIVE YOU BOTH A MILLION DOLLARS IF YOU MAKE OUT!"
  • And "Sparky, he's got six inches and fifty pounds on you, so..." "Yeah?" "Make sure clothing gets torn. Strategic clothing."