Cheer!

The Wotch: Cheer! is a defunct Spin-Off of The Wotch (obviously). It revolves around the misadventures of four cheerleaders (who used to be jerk jocks) at Tandy Gardens High School, which is a much stranger place than it seems. The main characters include:

• Alexandra "Alex" King, the leader: prone to long, dramatic speeches. Quite wealthy, but hides it (she's sort of a Non-Idle Rich).
• Cher "Lita" Harper, a D&D player and Big Eater, and not afraid to use her dude magnet powers to get her way.
• Samantha "Sam" Smith, an artistic homebody who creates the uniforms and choreography.
• Johanna "Jo" Star, a Cloudcuckoolander, and the only one of the four who remembers life before being transformed.

A Wayback Machine archive of the website for Cheer! can be found here. You can go right to an archive copy of the first strip here.

Tropes used in Cheer! include:

• Absolute Cleavage - Primarily with Agent 32, although Lita's outfits also tend to show off quite a bit. She's even shown jealousy of 32's superior chest-basedpersuasion powers.
  • Karen too, though she's not very happy about it.
• All Cheering, All the Time - A notable aversion. The four all have wildly different personalities; Alex treats the cheer squad as a glorious military unit.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders - subverted six ways to Sunday, up to and including "All Guys Want To Be Cheerleaders" in Jo's case.
• All Men Are Perverts - Pointed out here, and played straight here,
• Alpha Bitch - Tamara Cass and, to a lesser degree, Lindsay Verte. Also the Ekaltsew High cheerleaders.
• Anime Hair - Lampshaded here
• Art Evolution
• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny - Alex seems to have a mild case of ADD, noticeable only when she tries to go off on one of her long-winded speeches and gets derailed.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: After getting rid of the (male) principal, Agent 32 manages to convince a teacher and some students that she is the principal--no, not a new one, the same one as ever.
• BFS - Two of them, in this filler comic.
• Bifauxnen - Alex in a suit, as shown here
• Big Eater - Lita has been shown to be quite a fan of beef.
• Body Horror - Alex's minotaur transformation wasn't exactly the type of "poof" that transformations took on in the parent comic.
• The Cheerleader - very much averted; The only collective adjective ever used for the squad as a whole is "kind".
• Clothing Damage - Alex's transformations do a number on her outfits.
• Cloudcuckoolander - Jo, as proven here
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right - Jo is frighteningly aware of a large number of things she shouldn't be aware of, and not just her past as "Colin." It borders on being some sort of psychic or oracle.
• Convergent Non Sequitur - Two geese, a roll of duct tape, 23 toothpicks, and some sodium benzoate.
  • "There won't be enough sandwich baggies in the world..."
• Embarrassing First Name - Lita
• Empty Piles of Clothing - Alex leaves these behind when she (apparently) turns into a small fairy or bug in the middle of an assembly. Naturally, when she pops up later, she's in desperate need of clothing.
• Explosive Instrumentation - Poor, poor Mary.
• Eyes Always Shut - Agent 40
• Fanservice - This. Also Agent 32, on purpose. * ka-flirt*
• First Law of Gender Bending
• Gambit Pileup- The student assembly ends up being one of these, with a minimum of six different plans being set in motion (with some other people simply winging it).
• Gamer Chick - Lita, of the tabletop RPG variety
• Gender Bender - our four hero(ines), later Peter Hall.
• Genius Ditz - Jo again, who is surprisingly observant and spookily insightful when she wants to be.
• Go Seduce My Arch-Nemesis
• Gratuitous English - Lampshaded in this comic: "Maybe with an accent...Faiaa Bouru!"
• Half Identical Twin - Lita has two siblings who fit the bill. They even have the 'finishing each others' sentences' bit down pat.
• How Do I Shot Web? - Jo found an obviously magic wand as a toy in a happy meal. She still can't figure out how to use it.
  • Except as a club: "Pretty Cosmic Crystal Rainbow Overhead Smash!"
• Involuntary Shapeshifting - Aside from the original Gender Bender, 32 turns Alex into a minotaur for help during the invasion. Since then, she's prone to weird transformations during emotional duress, but she never recalls any of her episodes.
• Jedi Mind Trick - Fails miserably.
• Kudzu Plot - The first chapter sets up a large number of immediate issues, none of which actually get resolved any time soon.
• Large Ham - Alex
• Les Yay - Alex and Lita
  • Recently, Alex went into a WOW expy world and summoned a demon. Not only was the demon a attractive woman (specifically stated as impossible to create), but said demon then makes out with Alex for what is hinted as a long time. Bonus points? Alex says that if she was going to do that again, to give her a heads up.
    • Possibly has something to do with the fact that she used to be a guy and has a few lingering feelings from that time?
• Mad Scientist - Mary Miller, who even bears the title in the cast page, and created a pie launcher that used an AI to target for maximum comedic value.See it here!
• Meaningful Name - Cher Lita Harper. Think about it.
• Missing Mom - Sam, implied to be due to Death by Childbirth
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body - The girls act like girls, dress like girls, think like girls, and even throw like girls.
  • "Is charging something a good plan? It seems like a good plan..."
• Motor Mouth (Alex. Unfortunately, she also has Attention Deficit...Ooh, Shiny!, which means her long-winded speeches can end up wildly off-track.)
  • Her occasional Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness doesn't help matters either.
• No Name Given - The agents in Cheer!
• Noodle Implements - Apparently there's a lot you can do with two geese, a roll of duct tape, twenty-three toothpicks and some sodium benzoate.
  • This is even parodied in a Guest Comic, when the artist speculates exactly what those things are used for, but can only come to the conclusion that it causes vague panic in most people.
• Noodle Incident - Apparently involving a moose in the Dance Club's room... which Alex knows nothing about.
• Otaku - Alex dreams of D-Day, and knows quite a bit about military weaponry.
  • And her ring-tone is the 1812 Overture. Y'know, the one that uses a cannon.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness - The Council
• Orphaned Series: Hasn't updated since July 15, 2011.
• Overprotective Dad - played with here. Bonus for Alex beating him to the sandwich baggie line.
• Paper-Thin Disguise - Agent 32, pretending to be principal O'Brian. Note that O'Brian was a rather unattractive old man, and Agent 32 is, well... not. And her disguise is to just flirt with whoever asks until they forget what they were asking about.
• Parental Abandonment - Alex, who is shown spending Christmas Eve strumming her guitar alone (sniff) and even gets her allowance via direct deposit.
  • "Hello Darkness..., my old friend..."
• Playing Cyrano - Max & Xander
• Ret-Gone: The Girls' former Jerk Jock identities, which is generally a good thing since nobody liked them much, but the realization that no one remembers any of the good things they did either is enough to bring Jo to tears at one point.
  • RetGone-Proof Memory - Jo still remembers being a boy. Subconsciously, Alex does, too, as evidenced by some of her dreams. Also, The Wotch established that the girls' parents know that they used to be boys.
    • That was more of an Author's Saving Throw, as people were calling out Anne for forcibly changing people against their will, so by saying that, it would be ok (as Cheer does make it clear while they were Jerk Jocks for the most of it they were still the same people) plus it gets mentioned in The Wotch.
    • Anne's Feminist Pride says that spells can bring forth or diminish personality traits, but can't change personality completely. Thus, the cheerleaders are basically the same people they always were; it's implied their Jerk Jock behavior in their old life was because they thought that's how jocks should act.
• Rich Bitch - Alex and Lindsay. Averted in Alex's case (she funded the Cheerleaders' post-Gender Bender wardrobe binge out of her own pocket) and semi-averted in Lindsay, who isn't a Rich Bitch so much as completely clueless about the way common people live.
• Running Gag - Several, but especially agent 32's tripping people while invisible.
  • Also the Noodle Implements, which have been mentioned by multiple characters.
  • "Miss O'Brien!" "Who?"
• Scary Black Man (Bruce Camaro. A pretty cool dude, but he is a bodyguard and therefore "intimidating" is in the job description.)
• Schedule Slip - Following the typical webcomic arc from two to three times a week in the beginning to once or twice a month more or less at random lately.
• Sdrawkcab Name - The rival high school is Ekaltsew.
• Second Law of Gender Bending - Jo only; the others don't appear to remember.
• Ship Tease - 29/32, Alex/Lita.
• Shout-Out - pay attention to what Jo is doing in this strip...
  • All your wand are belong to us!
  • She's also a fan of "Windjammer Luna".
  • It seems the wand is a shout out machine...causing Jo to shout out things such as Dragon Slave, Fira Baru, and Meteor.
• Sleep Cute - As if we didn't already have enough evidence to support Alex/Lita...
  • Even the author thinks they're cute.
• Stating the Simple Solution - "He's standing right there..."
• The Stoic - Agent 29.
• Third Law of Gender Bending - In a big, big way, made explicit in canon.
• Tomboyish Name - Alex, Sam, and Jo, though ironically enough their girl names bear less relationship to their former male names (Aaron, Gene, and Colin) then Cher's does to her former male name of "Sonny".
• Uncle Pennybags: Alex is secretly very rich, but hides all mention of it because she's not fond of her distant parents.
• Unsound Effect - part of the Wotch tradition, with new levels including mysterious trip! and THAC 0'D!
• Weirdness Censor - Lita's mother knows she used to be a boy but hasn't said anything because Lita seems much happier as a girl.
  • In fact, it's established in The Wotch that all the families know, it's just that none of them ever said anything to the girls themselves, possibly due to Miranda's influence.
    • Or because Lita's mom at least is either really accepting of things or a ditz.
• Yandere - Agent 40, aka "That Grinning, Psychopathic Harlot", not that she tries to hide it.
• Zettai Ryouiki - Agent 32. God, Agent 32. Also Alex.