Webcomic: Niklas And Friends
The title characterNiklas and Friends
is a discontinued coming-of-age webcomic whose author used the pseudonym "Niklas Edlund". The comic, site and author were criticized for supposedly promoting paedophilia even though none of the stories contain anything related to that. The stories do have a minor GLBT component but this is deliberately left vague and mainly up to the reader.
The site was started in 1998 and was last updated in 2006 after the author ceased working on the comic due to threats and abuse.
Tropes used in Niklas and Friends:
- Ambiguously Gay: Most of the boys have very close friendships, but only one is canonically gay.
- The Unpronounceable: a character is named Martin Czrnczinsky. When asked about the correct pronunciation, the author replied to "pronounce it any way you like".
- Token Minority: His "token" status may be arguable but Randy is the only canonically gay character.
- Wicked Stepfather: Several comics imply, and the bio page for Keith shows, that Keith's stepfather beats him.
Tropes used in the spinoff story series My Friend Is An Alien:
- Covered in Mud: often, some characters end up like that, either because they were just playing in it, because they fell in it unexpectedly, or because they were trying an alien spa.
- E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: several pieces of Earth technology, including those present in theme parks, are implied to be derived from alien technology harvested from crashed UFOs.
- Expy: the Botarans are expies of the Andorians from Star Trek. The difference is that Botarans come in all colors (not just pale blue) and their skin color is not a genetic trait (so a green Botaran can have a purple brother).
- Recycled In Space: the premise of the spinoff is that Niklas and his friends meet some friendly Rubber Forehead Alien kids and live adventures in space with them.
- Starfish Language: The Botaran language sounds like radio static. Used to explain why we never intercepted any radio transmission from aliens: we were actually hearing them all the time, but we didn't recognize them as such.
- Unintentional Period Piece: while the author of the original series wanted to defy this trope by setting it in a generic present with no mention of specific technologies or popular culture references, the mention of The Phantom Menace as a new movie in the first chapters of the spinoff sets it firmly in 1999.