Girls Next Door
Corollary to Roommates, this Deviant ART fancomic crosses the Labyrinth, Phantom of the Opera, Pirates of the Caribbean and Les Misérables. This one is told from the girls' perspective, and apparently developed its own storyline with only loose connections to Roommates. Found here. Tends to run off of Failure Is the Only Option and Rule of Funny (or Rule of Fanservice)
Rooming arrangements so far:
- Sarah with Christine
- Jareth with Erik
- Commander Norrington with Javert
- Crowley with Aziraphale
- Legolas with Sweeney Todd
- Jadis with Darkness, when they're in town
Has a YouTube voiceover project here.
This comic provides examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Javert at one point is "being John Malkovich"; Elizabeth is very weirded out by seeing Sweeny Todd and Legolas; Rorschach mistakes Raoul for Nite Owl.
- Added Alliterative Appeal:
- Angrish: Many characters, frequently
- The Alcoholic: Jamie
- Art Shift: Even lampshaded
- Beyond the Impossible: The main reason Chihiro is the unofficial president of the Wibsy (Weirdo Boyfrend & Supernatural Stalker club): using Christine words "It's hard to trump dating a river." While the others have at least human-shaped (a fae, a ghost and a vampire amongst others. Christine with her murderous deformed psycho is the most normal of them all.) boyfriends/stalkers, so this is impossible by their standards. in her defense the river was in the form of a human boy that looked her age at the time she fell for him.
- Big Damn Heroes: or heroines.
- Bound and Gagged: Sarah, our darling Distressed Damsel.
- Brain Bleach: Exactly what Christine calls for when Jadis hooks up with Satan
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- The girls are pretty sure that that Les Yay Outtake wasn't in continuity.
- Jareth does so at the end of "The One With the Kiss".
- Crowley and Aziraphale tend to do this all the time. Legolas has bouts of this too.
- Sarah, for whatever reason, has a video copy of her movie.
- Christine has mentioned the largely fan-reviled proposed sequel to ALW's musical.
- Brick Joke: Back in comic #35, Sarah wrangles a promise from Erik to wake her up if she's ever found wandering towards a certain person's room in her sleep. 2 years and 93 comics later, she gets a rather rude awakening.
- Call Back: The outtake gets one here (this page also has a Shout Out to Star Wars and Katie Perry).
- Captain Obvious: Legolas
- Cuteness Proximity: Jareth uses his owl form as a means to get close to Sarah on occasion, when she doesn't react to the sad fluffy owl on her windowsill he knows he's screwed up big time.
- Cut His Heart Out With a Spoon: Here Jareth threatens Erik with magicking all the songs of Miley Cyrus into Christine's head if he doesn't let Sarah go. Later he uses a rather elaborate threat how he'll stop Webber before he makes the musical (leaving Erik with only his literary characterization). There are also frequent threats of boging (meaning: "Headfirst into the bog of eternal stench" or something like that) from either Jareth or Sarah.
- Damsel in Distress: Mostly averted. Lampshaded in this comic
- Dramatic Irony: Sarah has a crush on David Bowie, while Christine has a crush on Leonidas, but could very well have a crush on Gerard Butler. If you don't get the joke, look up the actors of their respective stalkers.
- Almost Lampshaded when Christine thought it was weird that Sarah likes him, but can't understand why.
- Dramatic Wind: Jareth likes to conjure one of these up now and then. Particularly when he's trying to convince Sarah to team up with him in a game of Risk.
- Exactly What It Says On the Tin: The One With the Kiss
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Said almost word-for-word by Jareth when he encounters the Pale Man, who apparently followed Ofelia.
- Failure Is the Only Option: The Apartment has a fail field surrounding it, so anything that should be awesome... isn't. Like when Edward Cullen happened upon the Barbecue for Toby's birthday...
- Fourth Wall Observer: Aziraphael and Crowley, to the point that they essentially call out the comic on being too meta in one strip.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Pika doesn't really believe in the Translation Convention. So we had:
- Gratuitous French: For obvious reasons the French characters a lot of times,
- Gratuitous Polish: Geralt of Rivia.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Ofelia
- Idea Bulb: Leia gets an idea lightsaber here.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her: Erik tries to use this on Raoul here, turns out that always acting like Murder Is the Best Solution (and some other things) lessens the effect.
- Is That Cute Kid Yours: "She says she's a princess of the Underground and that her father is the king in the castle past the Labyrinth. Doubtless you can explain."
- Laser Guided Amnesia: Inflicted upon Raoul after he endures a very long, unpleasant day. The dubious morality of this is Lampshaded.
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"[Aziraphael and Crowley are] having a long and convoluted debate about whether wiping his memories of today would be a good or a bad thing. If they come to the conclusion that it's a kindness, Azi will take care of it. If they decide it's wrong and deceitful, Crowley will." |
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- The next time Raoul is subjected to this, Christine only comments on the potential health risks a second mind wipe may or may not cause.
- Let's Just Be Friends: Christine to Erik as she tells the thing to Sarah here.
- Long Distance Relationship: Raoul/Christine and when they are together they tend to be disturbingly physical and unbearably cute.
- Love Triangle: Triang Relations type 4, possibly type 7 between Raoul, Christine and Erik. Also, pretty much any guy Sarah wants to be involved with besides Jareth. Look, there's even a quadrangle!
- May December Romance: Played with as the characters lean on the Fourth Wall. Jareth is a fairy tale kind from... a long time ago. Sarah is in college... and was 15 in 1986, and had at least one date with Jacob Black, definitely a teenager.
- Medium Awareness: Outside of the occasional bout of fourth wall breakage, the characters are seemingly aware they're in a humor comic, and will sometimes comment on it.
- Mega Crossover: Phantom of the Opera, Labyrinth, Good Omens, Les Misérables, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Lord of the Rings and many more. Seems like every fiction in existence has a door leading to the Building-verse (and back).
- The Missus and The Ex: James' meet as Funny Background Event here... they won't get along well.
- Moment Killer: Legolas, Nanny Ogg.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Erik tried to do this so many times it was a running gag.
- Naughty Tentacles: this comic. Notable because its title is "The Tentacles Trope," and the author links to this wiki.
- Never Wake Up a Sleepwalker: Erik advises Sarah not to wake Christine when she finds her sleepwalking toward his room for some late-night music lessons. Sarah dryly informs him that modern science has disproved that notion, then makes him promise to forget the potential trauma and just dump a bucket of cold water on her if he ever finds her sleepwalking toward Jareth's room. See Brick Joke for the follow-up.
- Noodle Incident: Sarah's prom photos. Arguably, the chikins. Also: Erik's Sushi Incident.
- No Sense of Personal Space: "PERSONAL SPACE, JARETH! GET WITH THE NOTION!"
- Of Corsets Sexy: Jareth catches Sarah while she's playing dress-up in Christine's undergarments. That particular comic page is a fan-favorite, having spawned at least one fic on Deviantart.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Somewhat of a running gag in the comic. A couple of examples include:
- The off-screen fight between Jareth and Frank-N-Furter, which many readers imagine to be an epic thrown-down of glittery madness.
- Erik's "plan" to thwart Jareth during the kidnapped Sarah arc. Said plan included the use of salt and deadly black chikins, of which Jareth is known to be very afraid of.
- Jareth's planned fight against Peter from Heroes for Sarah's love.
- Those last two are more of a Missed Moment of Awesome seeing as they never happened instead of simply occurring off screen.
- One of Us: Pika is an avid Troper, as shown on many of her artist's comments
- Otaku: It's rarely touched upon, but Erik likes anime. He once tried to get Christine to dress as Sailor Moon for Halloween.
- Portal Picture: Looks like Jareth has a Portal Mirror in his room.
- Precision B Strike: GND 77 - R.o.t.K., b:tch
- Running Gag: the prom photos, Owl!Jareth, Erik's hatred of glitter, the chikins.
- Shipper On Deck: Christine is a Sarah/Jareth fangirl. She also seems to ship Javert/Valjean.
- Shout Out: River Tam Beats Up Everyone
- Stalker With a Crush: Both Jareth and Erik.
- Tangled Family Tree: Jareth's inexplicable relation to pretty much every magical blond in fiction (Jadis is his mom, Nuada is his nephew, Howl is his great great great great grand-nephew once removed...) is something of a Running Gag. This comes from Roommates. In the "Building-verse" every magical being is related somehow, not just the blonds.
- Tempting Fate: Sarah actually invokes the trope so it'll be subverted when she decides to rummage 'round Jareth's room, since doing so makes it predictable and thus not funny. It doesn't work.
- Trenchcoat Brigade: Lampshaded here.
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Sarah: "... that's a whole lot of leather dusters." |
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- Truth Serums: Harry Potter Veritaserum. Sarah used it to get information out of the goblins... and unwittingly caused Christie's Let's Just Be Friends speech.
- Tsundere: Sarah to Jareth, much as she loves to deny it.
- Unholy Matrimony: The Jadis/Darkness ship definitely qualifies. Also a Guess Who I'm Marrying situation for Jareth as he loathes Darkness with passion.
- Villains Out Shopping: And eating sushi, and having picnics, and playing video games...
- Weapon of Choice: Erik has his Punjab Lasso.
- Weirdness Censor: The official answer to why the muggles don't notice all the weirdness is because Azira&Crowley keep up a SEP field around the building.
- What the Hell Hero: Christine to Erik, after he kidnapped Sarah to force her in their pre-character development relationship.