Webcomic / Hello from Halo Head

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Created in June 2020 and currently ongoing, Hello from Halo Head is a webcomic by batshaped on Twitter that explores the multitudes of a person's response to trauma, it's also cartoon animal adventures. It's a trauma comedy, a traumedy.

The webcomic follows an angel who creates a brightly colored world to entertain her demon companion. Tensions rise between the two and the denizens of the new realm, with hints of a darker plot under the cartoonish surface.

You can read the story so far on its own website, Twitter, WEBTOON, as well as on Tapas, though only the website is still being actively updated.

Hello from Halo Head contains examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: Clair can't help but crack up at Chloe's silly little poem.
  Chloe's Poem:

  Flowers and grass

  can eat my ass

  but words can never hurt me.
  Clair: *snrk* Goddammit... stupid
• After-Action Patch-Up:
  • Both Clair and Pepper end up doing this to Chloe at different points.
  • Pepper does this for Achilles after the latter cuts his hand during an argument.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Both Achilles and Chloe wag their tails when happy or excited.
• Alliterative Title: Hello from Halo Head.
• All Work vs. All Play: Clair is All Work and Chloe is All Play.
• Ambiguous Situation: Chloe and Clair represent different aspects of batshaped's Personality. Their In-Universe relationship is never made clear, though.
• Amusing Injuries: When Chloe trips on Pepper’s conversation pit, leading to a bleeding nose.
• Anxiety Dreams: Pepper has one after Achilles shows him the true nature of Halo Head. He see Ares with no outlines and she's noticeably less friendly than Achilles described. She mocks him for not being as smart as he thinks.
• Arc Symbol: The diamond shapes from the layer Ares lives on.
• Art Evolution: The lineart and shading is visibly different in the earlier episodes. The shape and size of the ears of Achilles and Mars changes as well.
• Art Shift:
  • The flashbacks that Chloe has are in black and white.
  • The first page is also that way until Clair shows Chloe the land of Halo Head.
  • The scene when Achilles talks to Ares has a notably different art style. Pepper’s dream where he meets Ares is in 2 different art styles, both of which are different from the usual one the comic has.
• Aside Glance: Mars in the final panel of comic 45.
• Beat Panel: The most common way the strip sets up a punchline.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Chloe laments in one arc that nobody is around to hear her contemplating a chrysalis. Peachykeen shows up straight after.
  Peachykeen: THOU HAST REQUESTED AN AUDIENCE
  Chloe: Dammit not you!
• Beleaguered Boss: Clair, sort of. She isn’t exactly the boss, but she is in charge of Halo Head, and is often on the receiving end of Chloe and Mars’ hijinks.
• Beef Bandage:
  • Pepper takes Achilles home with him when he finds the latter with a black eye, slipping in and out of consciousness. He puts a steak on his eye to help the wound.
  • Later that night, when Pepper is having an Anxiety Dream, Achilles puts the steak on his face to "help his brains".
  • Clair lampshades the Real Life implications of doing this.
    Clair: Though if documentaries are anything to go by, I think doing it in Real Life would just set you up for a pretty gruesome infection.
• Berserk Button: Most characters have at least one:
  • Don't press Chloe for information on Clair. Especially don't suggest that she's scared of her.
  • Don't cut off Peachykeen's sermons.
  • Don't tell Mars to her face that she has feelings for Achilles.
  • Don't lie to Clair in front of Achilles, or try to convince him that she's a bad person.
• Berserker Tears: Mars finds a leash by the sea and assumes the worst about its owner. She is livid when she finds him again, angrier than she's ever been. When he acts as though nothing happened, she is crying out of rage and hurt.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Clair has the patience of a saint, she really does. But when she's pushed too far, she shows her spiteful side. Usually this just amounts to letting Chloe stew in her own problems but she has gone as far as deliberately introducing residents she knows Chloe will hate.
  Clair: So what do you think [of Peachykeen]?
  Chloe: What the fuck, Halo Head? I thought you picked these people with me in mind. That thing is loud and weird and gonna freak everyone the hell out.
  *Beat*
  Chloe: Wait... you have a sense of humor?
  Clair Oh... something like that.
• Beware the Silly Ones: When Chloe cuts off one of Peachykeen's tirades and stops her from eating a nearby bug, Peachy gets annoyed enough to attack her.
• Big Entrance:
  • Chloe usually enters Clair's lighthouse by shoving both front doors hard enough to slam against the walls.
  • Lampshaded by Clair when she thinks someone is politely knocking for once.
    Clair: That's odd. Usually people just slam in here and mark up my walls.
• Black and Blue and Scary All Over: Pepper views the stairs in his own house this way, thanks to his phobia of stairs.
• Blasphemous Boast: Courtesy of Chloe:
  Clair: [Covered in peach flesh] Seriously, this is so childish. Now I'll have to take a shower.
  [It starts raining]
  Clair: Huh... well speak of the devil.
  Chloe: Who, me? I got a name, bitch.
• Bottle Episode: Pepper "persuades" Mars to spend all day in the lighthouse with Achilles. As a result, they spend #339 to #351 trapped in there together (Clair is in there as well, but asleep the whole time).
• Cannot Spit It Out: Chloe shows up on Pepper's doorstep in the middle of the night and plays out an Imagine Spot in her head where she tells him how much his friendship means to her and she wants his emotional support. Instead she blurts out "I'm hungry".
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Mars is constantly trying to ditch Achilles once he turns into a "little freak". When he actually does disappear, she starts to wonder where he went, while claiming she isn't bothered in the slightest.
• Cartoony Tail: Chloe has a pointy devil-like tail.
• Censor Suds: When Chloe decides to cool off by bathing in a hot tub full of ice, the blocks of ice preserve her modesty.
• Characterisation Click Moment: Achilles was initially an introverted straight man, but ever since Mars shoved him to the ground, he wanted nothing more than to be abused by her.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Mars frequently veers into this, especially given her small size. She can rip a tree to kindling with her bare hands.
• Chekhov's Gun: Chloe randomly picks up a copy of The Yellow Wallpaper while at Pepper's house. She later steals it when he upsets her. Clair is visibly nervous when she finds out that Chloe is reading it, and her attempts to get the book away from Chloe leads to increased friction between the two.
• Chewing the Scenery: Peachykeen. Almost all of her dialog is screamed at the top of her lungs. At one point, Chloe has to cover her ears and yell over her just to be heard!
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Speech bubbles, possessions, even sound effects are similar colors to the person they belong to:
  • Chloe: Purple
  • Clair: Cream
  • Mars: Red
  • Achilles: Blue
  • Pepper: Yellow
  • Peachykeen: Green
  • Ares: Purple
• Confusion Fu: Pepper tries to distract Clair long enough to get out of her questioning:
  Pepper: Where else would I be?
  Clair: I don't know, where else would you be?
  Pepper: That's what I asked you.
  Clair: That's what I asked you.
  Pepper: Right so we're on the same page.
  Clair: Right.
  [Beat]
  Clair: What
• Constructed World: Halo Head (the place) and probably its non-human inhabitants were created by Clair.
• Control Freak:
  • Clair just wants what's best for Chloe, but her well-intentioned meddling often ends up pushing her away instead.
  • After seeing the true nature of Halo Head's reality, Pepper seems to be turning into this, with even less success.
• Crack Is Cheaper: Mars eventually comes to accept Achilles' "eccentricities". She makes him pay throught the nose if he wants her services, though, and gives nothing away for free.
• Crush Blush:
  • Achilles, whenever Mars is nearby.
  • When Achilles starts listing all the ways Mars would be good at hurting him, she starts blushing herself.
• Cryptic Conversation: Achilles' encounter with Ares is almost entirely this. Lampshaded by Pepper.
  Pepper: You weren't once like "Hey, what the hell does that mean?!"
• Cute Monster Girl: Chloe. Although her personality might not be as cute.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Clair created Halo Head to distract Chloe from a traumatic memory. When Chloe is thinking about it, her left eye opens slightly.
• Death Glare:
  • We don't see it, but the way Pepper reins in his Brutal Honesty after explaining why Chloe would like The Yellow Wallpaper suggests she gave him one of these.
  • Clair gives Pepper one of these when she finds him at home after finding pawprints leading to the Other Layers.
  • Chloe gives Clair a withering one after the latter tries to pull a fast one and whisk the book away from her. She just stares, completely unfazed by Clair's excuses, holding her hand out expectantly.
• Defiant Strip: Chloe strips down to cool off when it gets too hot in Halo Head. It takes an absurd amount of yelling, chasing and begging from Clair to get her to put her clothes on again.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Flashbacks to Chloe's traumatic past are colored this way.
• Devilish Hair Horns: Chloe has them, in contrast with Clair's angelic appearance.
• Didn't Think This Through: Pepper tries to help Mars launder some money by lying about catching some fish. It's only when Clair asks to see them he realizes he doesn't actually have any fish to hand.
• Distant Reaction Shot: Clair's reaction to Achilles coming into work all beaten up from the previous day is presented like this.
• The Dreaded:
  • Achilles to Mars, initially.
  • Clair to Pepper in later strips.
  • Peachykeen to everyone.
• Dream Sequence:
  • Chloe has dreams about her past through out the comic.
  • After Achilles tells Pepper about how he met Ares and his journey to the previous layers, Pepper has a dream where he falls off the edge of the world. In the dream, he then encounters Ares who points out that they never actually met and he only knows what Achilles told him about her.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Clair reacts this way when Pepper tries to lighten the mood during his introduction with a "What do you want, bitch?" After Mars brought out the worst in Chloe, and Achilles turned into a masochistic pervert, Clair nearly has a Heroic BSoD on the spot. She lightens up when he walks back his joke, but is still very clearly unimpressed.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Clair frequently laments that nobody appreciates the work she puts into keeping Halo Head running.
• Ear Notch: Achilles has one. It's implied to have darker origins.
  Achilles: [Looking at the drawing Clair made of him] Wow, it's perfect! ...Except you forget my ear notch.
  Clair: Oh yeah, that was a mistake.
  Achilles: Can you fix it?
  Clair: Theoretically, yes, but it'd be... Oh, you meant the drawing?
  • Later:
    Ares: Oh, you're one of us.
    Achilles: I am?
    Ares: [Pointing to her missing ear] Sure. Far I'm concerned, anyone who's been through THAT is a friend of mine.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
  • Early on, the girls had much rounder heads in 3/4 view, before their cheeks became more defined later. They also had more defined chins in profile shots.
  • The very first strip has Chloe and Clair looking much shorter than they would be just five or six strips later.
  • Chloe's left eye opens very slightly when she's remembering her Dark and Troubled Past, except in the first strip, where it remains closed.
  • Clair used to wear her hair in a bob, before keeping it straight(er) in later strips.
  • The cats were drawn with very tall, pointed ears, unlike the smaller rounded ears they have now. Also, Mars originally had skinny arms.
  • Pepper was originally very skinny, with all his apparent "weight" coming from his puffy hoody. He would later become a Top-Heavy Guy.
  • Clair was originally drawn with a much smaller colour palette than other characters, mainly being restricted to shades of cream with little countershading. Since #243 she's been drawn with more puce in her palette and more detail in her colouring, including the shadow under her Holy Halo.
• Egopolis: Subverted. While "Halo Head" started out as a nickname for Clair, the place wasn't named in her honor.
• Everyone Can See It: Both Pepper and Chloe point out Mars' barely hidden feelings for Achilles. She reacts with characteristic anger.
• Exact Words: Chloe does this to Troll Clair during an argument over housing:
  Chloe: I'd sooner build a house than live with you.
  Clair: Oh my God-- Fine! Good! Thank you!
  [...]
  Clair: [Happily reaching into her filing cabinet] I'll draw up a permit right now! Then we'll talk logistics.
  Chloe: I said I'd rather do that than live with you. What I'm going to do is neither.
  Chloe: Besides, a cat living in a house while I live outside? That's fuckin' hilarious. I love it.
  [Clair Head Desks against the filing cabinet]
• Exposed to the Elements: Both the girls are underdressed, to say the least. Especially true of Chloe, who sleeps outside at night.
• Expressive Accessory: Clair's Holy Halo stops floating when she's asleep. It smears when she moves quickly (even forming a question mark in one strip) and sweats when she's nervous. Lampshaded by Pepper.
• Extreme Omnivore: Chloe:
  • When Chloe first arrives in Halo Head, Clair keeps trying to get her to change things in order to leave a mark on the place. Chloe responds by trying to eat a passing butterfly while a panicked Clair tries to wrestle it out of her hands.
  • Later, Clair gives Chloe a pack of seeds saying "I'm sure you can figure out what to do with this". Chloe immediately starts snacking down on them.
  • When all the other characters are too busy (or manipulative) to spend time with her, Chloe starts contemplating whether she should eat a chrysalis she found in a tree.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Pepper usually has both his eyes covered by his hair.
  • Both Chloe and Clair have one of their eyes closed most of the time. Though it's on a different side for each of them.
• Feminine Leg Swish: Clair sits on her desk and swings her legs when introducing Chloe to the lighthouse.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Chloe spends a long time contemplating a chrysalis before turning away lamenting that no one is around to hear her wisdom. She turns back to see that the chrysalis has been joined by a larger green shape that resembles a certain bat person. Peachykeen reveals herself on the next panel.
• Flashback Chloe has these to a traumatic event from her past. The audience is only shown vague shapes, though.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Achilles initially at first with Chloe and Mars, due to his nerdy appearance and extreme and obvious masochism, but becomes downplayed as his friendship with Pepper develops.
  • Peachykeen inherits this role in later strips, since no-one is pleased to see her.
• Friendship Moment: When Chloe and Mars first meet:
  [Mars and Chloe stare at each other]
  Mars: The fuck you starin' at, bitch?
  Chloe: Oh thank God you're cool! Let's be best friends!
• Furry Confusion: Lampshaded in this exchange between Pepper (a dog) and Mars (a cat) about Achilles (another cat).
  Pepper: I'm the one who came along and found him all beat up - alone - outside...
  Mars: Great work. You should start a cat rescue.
  Pepper: I'm the one who took him in, cleaned him up...
  Mars: Dewormed him...
  Pepper: Made him a bed, got him some food...
  Mars: Spayed him, neutered him...
  Pepper: We had a very rough night.
  Mars: What do you want? "Pet owner of the year" award?
  Pepper: NO! I WANT YOU TO BE A MORE RESPONSIBLE PET OWNER!
  Pepper: ...Never mind, I really hate this analogy.
  Mars: Yeah, you ruined it invoked. Start over.
• Furry Reminder: Most of the cast's Funny Animal characters get this at least once.
  • This also shows in characters' attitudes towards one another:
    • Chloe asking Pepper if he eats dog food.
    • When Pepper is searching for Achilles, he reasons that he might have gone nocturnal because "cats probably do that".
    • Pepper trying to explain to Clair what he was doing with Achilles for most of the day:
      Pepper: Just.. just animal stuff! Look. I don't know if I could explain it to a [human]...
      Pepper: ...you.
• Girls Stare at Scenery, Boys Stare at Girls: When Mars is at the very top of a tree, admiring the view, Achilles is on a lower branch admiring her.
• Good Is Not Soft: Despite her usually patient personality, Clair is not above physically wrangling Chloe if she has to.
• Guardian Angel: Clair is probably this. Unfortunately, Chloe isn’t interested.
• Guilty Pleasures: Once Mars warms up to Achilles, she actually starts playing into his masochism (provided he pays up). That doesn't mean she isn't incredibly embarrassed to be seen with him.
• Heel Realization:
  • Chloe seems to have one when she thinks no one wants to spend any time with her. It may just be a case of bad timing in reality, though, as two characters just happened to be too busy and another was suddenly holding the Jerkass Ball.
    Chloe: [To herself] You're loud and weird and no one wants you around.
  • After seeing how jumpy Pepper is around her and receiving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Chloe, Clair starts to feel as though her increasingly hostile demeanour is having a negative impact on Halo Head's residents.
    Clair: Maybe I have been too... I don't know, cagey, myself. Too suspicious.
• He's Not My Boyfriend: After Achilles goes missing, Mars tells Pepper and Chloe how unbothered she is. She is visibly blushing through her red fur.
• Hey, You!: Chloe held off on telling people her name for a long time because she enjoyed being on the receiving end of this.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs:
  • Pepper usually has both of his eyes covered by his hair.
  • Ares has her left eye covered by her hair.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite his "eccentricities", Achilles has a real passion for tending to flowers, particularly rosebushes. He also organizes Clair's files in a way that makes more sense to her than the system she created herself.
    Clair: Y... You're some kind of freak.
    Achilles: [Smiling] That's what people tell me.
  • When Chloe is contemplating whether to eat a chrysalis she finds in a tree, she uses language and metaphors that imply she's smarter than she lets on.
• High-Pressure Emotion: When Clair is pushed too far, her normally beige outlines are replaced with red, giving her a much harsher appearance.
• Holy Halo: Clair has one. Subverted in that while she isn't divine in the traditional sense, she did create Halo Head and is heavily implied to have created all of the other villagers.
• Ignored Epiphany: A somewhat dark example. Every time Chloe tries to remember a particular traumatic event from her past, Clair will say something or do something to distract her.
  [Chloe is staring into space with her left eye slightly open]
  Clair: You're doing that again. I can tell.
  Clair: I'll try to find you a good influence this time [Pepper].
• Imagine Spot:
  • When Clair stops Chloe from eating a butterfly, she goes on an angry rant about Chloe not respecting the time and work she put into creating Halo Head. Chloe spends the time imagining what would happen if she forced Clair to eat the butterfly instead.
  • Chloe sees a mysterious shape on the horizon and thinks Clair has introduced a new villager to Halo Head. She starts picturing what her new neighbour looks like, before imagining her neighbours in a more "cutesy" style.
  • Clair rolls her eye imagining all the horrible things Chloe is drawing on her idea wall.
  • Chloe, after a difficult day, shows up on Pepper's doorstep in the small hours of the morning. She plays out a conversation in her head where she tells Pepper how much their sleepover meant to her and that she needs him to take care of her. In reality she just says "I'm hungry".
• Inconsistent Spelling: The comic is titled HELLO FROM HALO HEAD, Hello From Halo Head or Hello from Halo Head depending on whether you're reading the official twitter, the website's about page or the comic's logo respectively.
• Innocent Innuendo:
  • Poor Achilles just can't find the right words when trying to describe his night with Pepper without revealing the truth.
    Achilles: Oh yeah! When we did "animal stuff" with meat.
  • When Chloe is making weird jokes about eating Achilles, Clair says this:
    Clair: Ugh, go find Peachy, will you? You already have a perfectly good bat you never eat.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Chloe blithely asks Funny Animal Pepper why he doesn't just eat dog food instead of cooking.
  • After an emotionally draining 48 hours for both the girls, Clair tries to open up to Chloe the following day but Chloe is too interested in the order she placed the previous day. Clair looks devastated for a moment before the façade comes down again. Clair may have introduced Mirror Character Peachykeen as a way of getting back at her.
  • Mars is furious after thinking Achilles had tried swimming off the island, only for him to show up safe and sound. Achilles doesn't notice and can only think about his Casual Kink. This just serves to make Mars more furious.
• In-Series Nickname: "Halo Head" for Clair. Only Chloe calls her that though. That or "bitch".
• Insistent Appellation: Chloe insists on calling Clair "Halo Head", even though she hates it.
• Insult Backfire: Between Chloe and Peachykeen:
  Peachykeen: It is an omen. A sign that the time is ripe.
  Chloe: Your brain is ripe.
  Peachykeen: Flattery is becoming of Peachykeen, but irrelevant.
• Interspecies Friendship: The six regular residents of Halo Head come from four different species (human, cat, dog, fruit bat), so this is a given.
• Ironic Echo: Pepper and Clair share these moments with each other a few times.
  • When Pepper gives advice to Clair that you can't make anyone do anything, and at a certain point you gotta say: "Okay. Good luck with that". Clair ignores it and concludes that she has to try harder, no matter how many tries it takes.
    Clair: If it takes a thousand tries.
    Clair: I just have to try harder.
    Pepper: *sighs*
    Pepper: Okay. Good luck with that.
  • When Pepper tries to bring it up with Clair the next day, she tells him that he caught her in a private moment, and prefers if he doesn't mention it to anyone else.
    Clair: You caught me at... a private moment.
    Clair: It's none of your business, or anyone else's. I'd appreciate if you didn't mention it to anyone.
  • By #258, Pepper has to make up an excuse on the spot where he and Achilles were last night, so he utilizes the same words Clair used against him, almost word-for-word, and Guilt Trips her in the process.
    Pepper: Look. You "caught us at a private moment".
    Pepper: Which is no one else's business.
    Pepper: You of all people should understand that.
• I Will Show You X!: Said by Chloe to Clair when the two are fighting in the rain:
  Chloe: What happened to not yelling anymore?!
  Clair: Change of circumstance!
  Chloe: I'll change your circumstance!
• Karmic Thief: When Pepper gets a little too nosy while Chloe is at his house, she stuffs one of his books down her shorts because he was being "boring and an ass".
• K-I-S-S-I-N-G in a Tree: Chloe mocks Mars for her very obvious feelings for Achilles, much to her fury.
• Laborious Laziness: Chloe will go to great lengths to do nothing at all, to the point of sleeping outside because she refuses to work towards building a house.
• Layered World: Halo Head is this, sitting above worlds that are similar to "our" Halo Head but bizarrely incomplete. It's implied that "our" Halo Head is not the first iteration.
• Large Ham:
  • Peachykeen will not be contained by mere speech bubbles.
  • Chloe's reaction in #391 gives the reader some impression of just how loud Peachykeen is in person.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Mars orders an Achilles plush, according to her an "effigy for violence". It's actually a reference to the Real Life Achilles plush that was having a second run at the time.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • Lampshaded by Achilles after making a huge discovery about Halo Head:
    Achilles: Guess I could take my chances in one of the places down there...
    Achilles: Do I really want that... ?
    [A tiny version of Achilles appears in his thought bubble and clutches his ear]
    Inner!Achilles: Yes!! You want this!!
    Achilles: Welp, nothin' like an extremely literal visual metaphor to help you figure out what to do!
  • When Pepper is trying to concentrate on his book in #160, Achilles is literally occupying his thoughts.
  • After yet another failed attempt at wooing Mars, Pepper advises Achilles to "let Mars take the lead". Achilles interprets this as wearing a leash (i.e. a lead) and offering Mars the handle. Much later after Achilles has been missing for days, Mars finds the leash and fears the worst. When she catches up to him, she's still clutching the leash. Immediately after, she finally gives him the punch he's been waiting for for so long, having "taken the lead".
  • When Mars starts warming (slightly) to Achilles, she pulls him up to a tree branch she's sitting on because he can't climb himself. Mars and Achilles, sittin' in a tree...
• Literal-Minded: Achilles can't understand metaphors or sarcasm at all.
  Pepper: Achilles! What are you doing on the ground?
  Achilles: I mean... not much.
• Lost Food Grievance: When Achilles first discovers his Casual Kink, he attempts to instigate one of these to get a rise out of Mars. She sees through it, though, and decides to bail.
• Lost My Appetite: Chloe says this word-for-word when she and Pepper are speculating how Peachykeen makes peaches appear in trees while the former is eating a bowl of fruit.
• Mad Oracle: For all her raving, Peachykeen seems to know a surprising amount about Halo Head, and many of her rants turn out to have some relevance later on.
• Manipulative Bastard: Pepper, especially once his Sanity Slippage starts.
  • In his introductory scene, he plays the girls off one another to get Chloe to carry his things.
  • He later pushes Achilles into lying to Clair.
  • He tries to trick Mars into helping him get over his fear of stairs. Unlike the above examples, Mars is having none of it.
    Mars: I'm not fucking stupid and you're not as smart as you think.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Mars and Achilles respectively.
• Meaningful Look:
  • Both the girls have one eye closed. Chloe her left, Clair her right. When Chloe's left eye is open, it's because she's remembering the traumatic event that prompted Clair to create Halo Head as a distraction. When Clair finds out that Chloe spent the night with Pepper instead of her, Pepper finds her later crying with both eyes open.
  • Chloe chastises Clair for introducing Mad Oracle Peachykeen to Halo Head, calling her "loud and weird". Clair just gives her a look.
• Minimalist Cast: Lampshaded:
  Mars: I heard you were good at solving problems.
  Pepper: Haha, aww. Chloe said that about me?
  Mars: I never said it was Chloe.
  Pepper: Dude there's like five people on Halo Head and you only hang out with one of them.
  • Later, when Clair catches Chloe throwing fruit at the lighthouse:
    Clair: You think I'm stupid?! I know that was you!
    Clair: ...
    Clair: [Calmly] Only four people live here beside us and Peachy wouldn't hide.
    Chloe: Says who?!
• Naked People Are Funny: When Chloe gets too hot she strips down to her birthday suit.
• New Friend Envy:
  • Clair begins to resent Pepper after Chloe spends the night at his place.
    Clair: I've told her a thousand times she could stay with me
    Clair: I've told her a thousand times I'd help her
    Clair: [turning to Pepper] Why did she go to you?
  • Chloe starts giving Mars the cold shoulder after she finds out about her and Achilles' "arrangement".
    Chloe: [To Clair] Do you think... Mars likes Achilles better than me now?
• Nobody Poops: Averted. The lighthouse tower has an "employee bathroom" for both Clair and Achilles to use while working there.
• NO INDOOR VOICE: Peachykeen, on account of being the Large Ham-iest character in the cast.
• No Name Given: Despite being the first characters introduced, Chloe and Clair aren't named until over 50 strips into the comic's run.
• Noodle People: Clair and Chloe both have incredibly lanky physiques, especially in the later updates. Ares is also drawn this way.
• No OSHA Compliance: Pepper's conversation pit, which has no guardrails and no steps, much to Chloe's misfortune.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Peachykeen implies that she and Chloe are Mirror Characters, but it's the latter who makes it explicit. Doubles as a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Ocular Gushers: Clair gets these at one point.
• Only Sane Man: Achilles was initially presented as this, until that ill-fated moment with Mars shoving him onto the ground, due to her losing the crab race with Chloe, turning him into a "little freak", becoming harshly subverted. Then Pepper would inherit the role from him.
• OOC Is Serious Business: If either of the girls has both eyes open, it's a sign they are not okay.
  • Specific examples:
    • Chloe excitedly tells Clair that she spent the night at Pepper's place, not noticing Clair's heartbroken reaction. Later that night, Pepper comes into her office and finds her crying with both eyes open out of jealousy and betrayal. The sight alone is enough to freak him out.
    • Clair becomes jealous when Chloe starts confiding in Pepper instead of her. When she introduce Chloe to Peachykeen she adopts an uncharacteristically cold and mocking tone. Even Chloe is creeped out by this.
    • When Mars finds Achilles after fearing him dead, he doesn't acknowledge her feelings at all. She's so angry and hurt she cries.
    • Clair finds footprints going beyond the lighthouse and suspects that Pepper has seen things he shouldn't, She adopts a calm accusatory tone on confronting him about it.
    • Pepper tries to press Chloe into talking about an uncomfortable subject. Chloe almost literally balls up and refuses to elaborate. Pepper doesn't take the hint, though, and keeps pushing. Chloe doesn't get mad or play it off as a joke, she simply closes the book she's reading and leaves, only saying "Bye." on the way out.
    • Pepper lies to Clair in front of Achilles. When Achilles challenges him about it he brushes off his questions and tries to change the subject. This causes Achilles to snap and demand an answer.
    • Later when Pepper starts working on Achilles to convince him that Clair is a bad person, Achilles snaps even harder and launches into a tearful tirade defending her.
• Out-of-Character Moment: The girls are discussing horror stories when Chloe dismisses The Tell-Tale Heart because "books aren't scary". Clair reacts by grabbing the book Chloe's holding and swinging it at her face in a Reaction-Seeking Feint. Chloe is left stunned by this uncharacteristically aggressive behaviour.
• Pet the Dog: Chloe's first action on seeing Halo Head's beauty is to genuinely compliment Clair for her work. Extremely high praise from her. It's such a sweet moment that Chloe spends the rest of the strip trying to make up for it.
• Pictorial Speech-Bubble: When Achilles is begging Mars to stamp on his face and Mars is demanding payment, their speech bubbles look like this. Characters sometimes do this in supplementary material as well.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Mars is the physically strongest character in the cast, despite being the size of a child.
• Plant Person: Peachykeen is a fruit bat with a literal peach for a head.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Clair to Chloe when the latter is running around naked, minus the "please" part.
• Poor Communication Kills: Pepper's plan to falsify entries in Clair's work records only fails because Clair wakes up at the worst possible time. When Achilles said she was sleeping, Pepper didn't realize he meant she was sleeping right behind the desk.
• Precision F-Strike: Clair doesn't drop these very often, in contrast with the rest of the cast.
  • She drops an F-bomb when she catches Chloe hanging upside-down from a tree branch poking a beehive.
    Clair: I think things will be just-WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
    Chloe: Do you want me to answer that or are you just like, yelling to yell?
  • She doesn't drop a second one until much, much later when her strained relationship with Chloe causes her to break down in front of Achilles.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Clair and Chloe. Everyone else is a Barefoot Cartoon Animal.
• Prompting Nudge: Pepper does this to Mars when trying to scam Clair. Unfortunately for him, Mars doesn't know even the first detail of his grand plan.
  Mars: The hell you want?! I'm following your lead; I'm not psychic!
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Achilles uses these when pleading with Clair for a job.
• Reaction-Seeking Feint: When Chloe dismissively claims that books aren't scary Clair grabs the book she's holding and swings it at her face, stopping only at the last instant.
• Reality Warper: Clair. It's implied that she draws the things ordered by the residents and their homes into existence.
  Chloe: That place... was not there yesterday.
• Rebel Relaxation: Chloe usually has a very languid posture, leaning over Clair's desk with her head on top facing up, for example.
• Recurring Camera Shot: The inside of Clair's lighthouse and its variant is shown from above with a character looking up toward the reader more than once.
• Refining Resources: Non Video Game example. The main method for making money in Halo Head is for villagers to collect natural resources (usually fish) and sell them to Clair. Subverted in that Clair only instituted the system to keep Chloe busy, which doesn't work at all.
• The Resenter: Clair begins to become jealous of Chloe's newfound friendship with Pepper, despite introducing him to Halo Head to be a good influence on her.
• Reverse Arm-Fold: Clair does this pose when grilling Pepper over his whereabouts the previous night.
• Reverse Psychology:
  • Clair tries this when Chloe is running about in the nude. It nearly works, but as Chloe is putting her clothes on again, Pepper praises Chloe for giving Clair a win. Cue Chloe ripping them off again and Clair has to start over.
  • Mars gets offended when Achilles is more scared of Peachykeen than her and tries to convince him that she could do far worse to him. Achilles tries to call her bluff by asking her to prove it. Unlike Chloe, Mars actually sees through it (though only at the last second).
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The comic already has a pretty cute style, but #378 reveals that Chloe sees her neighbours as even cuter than they already are.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Chloe comes to the lighthouse to relay a request for Mars to fix Pepper's broken skylight. Clair, suspicious of all the work Mars has been doing for him recently, insists on inspecting the house herself and flatly accuses Chloe of lying to cover for them. Clair is half-right: Mars and Pepper are up to something. But it has nothing to do with Chloe, and the skylight actually is broken.
• Rule of Symbolism: Batshaped created the strip as a way to document her own mental health journey. As a result the strip is dripping with symbolism:
  • Whenever Chloe tries to remember her Dark and Troubled Past, Clair always tries to stop her. After a particularly nasty row early on, Chloe announces she's leaving Halo Head. The next time we see her, she's encountered a literal wall built by Clair.
  • Chloe quickly strikes up a friendship with Pepper. When Clair finds out that Chloe confided in him instead of her, she's crestfallen. At the end of the reveal, when the speech bubbles have mostly disappeared, a picture of a broken heart is prominently visible on the wall next to her.
    • When Chloe wakes up that morning, the skylights resemble two eyes with Ocular Gushers, foreshadowing Pepper's encounter with Clair later.
  • During her introduction, when Peachykeen tells Chloe her name, her leaf looks like a heart.
    • This is also invoked in #378 when Chloe pictures her in a more "cutesy" style.
  • Pepper opens his kitchen drawer to discover he still has Achilles' can opener. It sticks out starkly against Pepper's things in much the same way Achilles himself doesn't fit in with the rest of Halo Head.
  • Chloe remarks that she's "not some boring bitch that takes shit all serious", obviously referring to Clair. As she does so, she walks in front of Pepper's clock, making it resemble a halo.
  • Peachykeen gives Chloe a subtle "The Reason You Suck" Speech by making a "Not So Different" Remark. Chloe is initially dismissive but at that moment she catches her reflection in a nearby lake just as a peach falls in. The fruit both shatters her view of herself and shows that the two are Mirror Characters after all.
• A Scar to Remember: Mars gives Achilles a black eye. He's excited to show it off, too.
• Scenery Porn: Halo Head is beautiful. Even Chloe comments on it when she first sees it. Batshaped is not shy about full panel vistas showing this off. #385 is a good example of this.
• Self-Harm: Played for laughs with Achilles. He can't stop talking about hurting himself to the point where other characters are sick of it.
• Sibling Rivalry: Subverted in that Chloe and Clair are two aspects of the same Author Avatar. They otherwise fit this trope to a tee, as they can't make it through a single conversation without bickering.
• Shout-Out:
  • In an early strip Chloe and Mars are carving a Cool S into a tree.
  • Pepper has a copy of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on his bookshelf.
  • In #160, Pepper is reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles.
  • Clair tries to convince Chloe not to sit in a tub full of ice by referencing Whole, a documentary about people who want to become amputees. One man gets his leg amputated by doing exactly this.
    Chloe: What the fuck is wrong with you?
  • In #164, Chloe seems to be doing an Awesome Face.
  • Pepper stops Mars from writing on the walls of the lighthouse and calls her " a modern Hemingway".
  • Chloe accuses Clair of trying to set up a "littlest control freak pet shop"
• The Shrink: Pepper is usually the go-to guy when someone needs some insight, help with their problems, or just be a shoulder to lean on.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Achilles is obsessed with Mars.
• Skeptic No Longer: By #222, once Achilles shows Pepper the same staircase off the island to prove that what he was saying was in fact real, Pepper starts to question what is real anymore, and seemingly develops Bathmophobia (the fear of stairs).
• Sleep Cute:
  • Clair gets so tired after a sleepless night she uses Achilles as a pillow.
  • At one point Chloe bails on a sleepover with Clair and Achilles. The two decide to continue the sleepover without her and we see them snuggled up together in a pillow fort.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Clair swears much less frequently that other characters (except Achilles). This makes the times she does swear stand out a lot more.
  batshaped: chloe's rate of swearing is my baseline and clair's is like when im at disneyland and trying my best but i end up saying "shit" like every hour instead of every 4 minutes
• Squick: invoked Chloe has this reaction when Peachykeen pulls a peach out of Hammerspace (without breaking eye contact, no less!) and offers it to her.
  Chloe: Uh... where the fuck did that peach come from?
  • Achilles indulging in his Casual Kink often elicits this response from others.
• Strange Minds Think Alike:
  • As Pepper and Chloe are returning from a fishing trip Chloe says "You know what they say, 'you don't catch fish with charisma'" and claims it's an actual expression people say. She brags to Clair (who missed this conversation) about how many fish Pepper caught with his charisma. Clair actually says word-for-word "You don't catch fish with charisma" to Chloe's glee.
  • During Achilles' first day working for Clair, Chloe comes in and greets them with "Hey, freaks 'n' geeks". Later Mars comes in and addresses them in the exact same way.
  • While grilling Pepper over his whereabouts the previous night, Clair's threatening demeanor freaks Pepper out enought that he makes up a lie and hastily shoves her out of the door. Clair walks away asking herself "Was I acting weird?" Cut inside the house and Pepper is asking Achilles the exact same question.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Pepper working with Mars to launder $900 so he can hide the fact He Knows Too Much from Clair.
• Tempting Fate: Clair will often declare out loud to herself that things are going to be more normal from now on, starting now. Only for something to come up out of the blue that adds more stress into her life.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Peachykeen subtly suggests that she and Chloe are Mirror Characters, in that they are both "loud and weird and no one wants them around". It's clear from the look on the latter's face that the realisation hits her hard.
• Thinking Out Loud: Both the girls are fond of doing this.
  Chloe: AND WHY IS NO ONE AROUND TO LISTEN TO ME BEING FUNNY!!!
• Threat Backfire: See Too Kinky to Torture below.
• Too Dumb to Live: Chloe's antics often veer into this. From poking a beehive while covered in sugar water to bathing naked in a tub full of ice.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Achilles is this for Mars and occasionally others. She mentions that she would like to beat him up for constantly following her, but that he probably would enjoy it too much. The only exception to this is Peachykeen, as to him there's no way to make it fun.
  Mars: You know I can fuck you up way worse right?
  Achilles: Uh-
  Achilles: ...Prove it?
  Mars: Maybe I w-
  Mars: Wait no fuck.
• Toxic Friend Influence: What did Clair expect when introducing Chloe to someone who is similar in personality and temperament to her?
• Unusual Halo: Clair's halo will often change shape when she's moving quickly and will often emote with her.
  Pepper: You okay, dude? Your lifesaver's sweating.
  • #403 shows that it floats with enough "force" for Chloe to hang from it, albeit with Clair supporting her.
• Visual Pun:
  • Achilles is a cat who is obsessed with hurting himself. Appropriately his fur is colored black-and-blue.
  • Peachykeen is a fruit bat whose head is a literal peach.
• Wall of Blather:
  • In an early strip Clair's ranting about Chloe not respecting the time and effort she puts into running Halo Head is portrayed this way.
  • Peachykeen's sermons are almost always like this.
• Wham Line: In comic 357, Clair mistakenly calls Mars Ares right to her face. The effect however is diminished by the fact that Mars has no idea what this means and quickly brushes it off.
• Wham Shot:
  • Clair coming out of the backroom of her lighthouse while crying. Aside from her right eye being wide open, batshaped drew her with a more defined nose than usual and cropped out her Holy Halo, all to enhance the "wrongness" of the scene.
  • When Achilles is searching through Clair's filing cabinet for the picture she drew of him, he finds what appears to be a concept sketch of Ares. While he seems to shush the extremely literal, metaphorical version of himself, it's clear that finding this picture, which seems to prove that Clair at least knows Ares, is weighing on him heavily.
• Wild Take: Mars is the most likely to do this, though Clair gets quite a few of these, too.
• World Shapes: Halo Head is flat, with stairs leading down to lower levels.
• Workaholic: When Clair isn't getting into spats with Chloe, she's usually seen working on residents' orders or vaguely specified tasks related to "running" Halo Head. She doesn't seem to have much time to herself.
  Clair: You think I just work all the time?! I sleep too!
  Chloe: Fucking when?!
• Wound Licking: Achilles does this after nicking his hand with a knife, much to Pepper's invoked disgust.
• You Are Not Ready: Said word-for-word by Ares when she realizes Achilles isn't seeing things her way.