Cross Time Café - TV Tropes

A long running Furry Webcomic created by Scudder "White Pony" Kidwell. Despite its sizable cast, it really only features 2 original characters: Beth, the White Guardian and White Pony^note . The rest are cameos from at least six other webcomics. Kidwell does only a limited percentage of the pages for the main comic since the creators of most of the other characters that appear in the comic also contribute pages. It is mostly a funny, slice of life type comic, but has also seen several lengthy story arcs. While the longer arcs are usually handled by a single artist, sometimes, another artist will step in for a few strips or even quite a few.

The other artists include, but are not limited to Mark Stanley, Scott Kellogg, Kathy Garrison-Kellogg and Chris Kozloski.

Read it here. There are multiple comics accessible from the main page. The first is Cross Time Cafe which is the main comic. Second is NeoCTC, which features the main cast as stick figures. The third is CTC Annex, which is Kidwell's 3D CGI comic about the construction of an addition to the Cross Time Cafe. Fourth is Beneath the Catacombs which is a second Kidwell 3D CGI project following Beth as she journeys through the caverns under the cafe on a mission to protect a dragon royal. Finally, Teaching Flo to Ride in which Florence asks Beth to teach her how to ride a motorcycle.

Due to Tapas adding some ill-advised language to their terms of service, The main CTC and NeoCTC comics (plus the fact that both these are created by more than just White Pony) have been taken down from Tapas pending a rebuild of the main CTC site. Since WP is the sole creator involved in CTC Annex, this comic is still online. As of 11 June 2017, both CTC and NeoCTC have been reloaded on the main CTC site, but several months of CTC comic pages will have to be reloaded to bring the comic back to current.

This webcomic features examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: On this NEOCTC page, Marmoe discovers that a batch of "...rotten reptilian rejects have wrecked my Roomba".
• Animal Stereotypes: Lots of them. Here are some standouts:
• Analogy Backfire: Kaheda has only ever known digital clocks
• Animate Inanimate Object: One of the chairs (introduced here) is alive and occasionally eats people.
• Art Evolution: It's difficult to track when the art is coming from half a dozen artists. For a better idea of the art evolution, just visit the webcomic sites of the contributing artists and track their progress. If you're familiar with a particular artist's style and look, it's easy to tell what pages they've contributed.
• Bad Boss/Benevolent Boss: Mzzkiti is in charge of the cafe, and she swings between the two extremes depending on the situation; sometimes, she is extremely understanding of her employees, and other times, no thanks to Sam Starfall, she chases after them with a meat cleaver
• Bad Hair Day: Cats and low humidity do not mix.
  • And a hyena's coif when improperly dried.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Especially when in the presence of the little penguin, Sleepy John.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Or rather, stick-figure anatomy, as lampshaded and zig-zagged in strip 319.
• The Bet: This page features Rocky the Monolith losing a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors to White Pony.
• Big Eater: Kathy Grrson will often wind up shaped like a pear and complaining of being overstuffed. Then, in the last panel, she will ask "what's for [the next meal]". At one point early in the comic, she turns an armchair into a giant Hershey's Kiss, and is later seen, armchair-shaped, moaning with regret, "I can't believe I ate the whooooole thing".
• Bizarrchitecture: The cafe, partly due to being an Inn Between the Worlds, and partly due to letting Sleepy John redecorate.
• The Cameo: While attempting to prank Beth, Kathy uses an overclocked painball marker. Page 392 shows the aftermath as well as Doc and Roger from The Whiteboard preparing to bail.
• Catfight: Featuring one actual feline.
• Carnivore Confusion: When she encounters an injured impala who happens to be a friend, Florence remembers that she is a predator here.
• Censor Box:

  Pony! Would you mind keeping your ba[U P Ds] off the table?!

  • Combined with a Shout-Out here:
• Chase Scene: As seen here Now, once again with "Yakity Sax" soundtrack.
• Counting Sheep: An occasional gag in Neo-CTC, the first instance being here.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Beth, here.
• The Ditz: Ky. Just don't say that to her face.
• The Dreaded: In Rackenroon, the monsters look under their beds for hyenas.
• Duct Tape for Everything: A restoration advisor sent in his proposal. Cecil is not impressed.
• Embarrassing Tattoo:
• Exact Words: This page provides a good example of why you want to make elaborately precise worded requests when asking Sleepy John for anything.
• Executive Meddling: The In-Universe management decides to Retool the CTC here. Mr Kornada makes an appearance at the end of the arc for some Rage Against the Author.
• Face Hugger: Sam did this early on. His sister's offspring do it again later.
• Fanservice: Occasionally, but often the punchline is Fan Disservice.
• Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: Unicorn boogers have undisclosed magical properties. Oompa Loompas wind up chasing White Pony around, trying to gather said nasal secretion.
• Food Fight: It breaks out on page 695.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Discussed and presumably occurs here, but misidentified as Voice Changeling.
• Genius Bonus: Some of the puns are rather obtuse; like when Tiger-T wakes up tied in a knot after going on a bender.
• Gonna Need More X: Being unfamiliar with measuring giraffes for dresses, Triac discovers he's going to need a bigger extension.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Another running gag.
• Good-Guy Bar: What the Cross Time Cafe is all about. It exists to let webcomic characters meet up outside their own continuities.
• Impact Silhouette: Courtesy of one of Doc and Roger's overclocked paintball markers on page 392.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Seems to be becoming a running gag in Neolithic CTC pages involving Kathy.
  • Mzzkiti needs to go wash her Styrofoam when confronted with a drooling hyena.
  • Jenny Seems to have induced this upon herself.
  • Fred has to be reminded he has to go wash the Styrofoam.
• Inept Mage: White Pony seems to have been one early on, assuming he wasn't just being a troll.
• Inn Between the Worlds: This cafe exists so that all of the different characters can interact outside their own continuities.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Practically in the title.
• I Thought It Meant: A major source of gags, eg "I'm game" (meant as "I'm ready" but misinterpreted as "I'm prey"), "bunny suit" (for an Easter Episode, with Kaheda wearing a bunny kigurumi, Mzzkiti wearing a Playboy Bunny outfit, and Florence wearing a Hazmat bunny suit) or "Dominos Pizza" (which Scarletpelt interprets as literal dominos)
• Killer Game Master: Here, when everyone bails on a gaming session and wants Scarletpelt to play their character for them, leaving him to exercise his frustrations on their characters.
• Lame Pun Reaction: After a crack from Ky about hyenas being in spots, Kathy (a spotted hyena) promptly decides to stay where she was, hanging by her fingertips from a cliff down in the catacombs.
  • Everybody has some kind of reaction when Chef Scarlet Pelt makes some kind of food-related pun. Some reactions are more extreme than others.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Kathy and Mzzkiti discuss their webcomic employment.
• Lethal Chef: Old Wolf has a rather open-minded idea of ingredients. "It's one of our best running gags." In addition, Helix, as in Free Fall (in which he cooks with explosives due to Oven Logic), cannot be trusted to make popcorn without causing extreme collateral damage. And somehow, nor can Kaheda.
• Literal-Minded: As mentioned above, Little John takes things at face value. He doesn't quite get figures of speech (although often this verges on outright Mondegreen Gag territory). Some of the food Scarletpelt cooks, when it isn't pun-based, is also this. Not that some of the others don't have their moments.
• Local Hangout: For cast members of over half a dozen webcomics.
• Magic Pants: Averted by Ky here when she leans heavily on the 4th wall and lampshades the Rule of Funny.
• Mantis Mating Meal: An Arthrocon couples' costume.
• Mondegreen Gag: Another common source of humour. Eg,

  Earl: I'm glueing down these sheep.
  Old Wolf: Why in the nine worlds...
  Earl: Hey, Mzzkiti says she wants a lambinate floor in here, she's going to get one!

• Mr. Imagination: Earl McClaw has shades of this.
• Mundane Utility: Scarletpelt wants White Pony to "not just change the laws of nature but break them in half and toss them on a fire" to free his D&D players' schedules.
• Must Have Caffeine: Several characters, according to a series of Neo-CTC strips starting here: Kathy fades into existence, Merlin is depicted as Frankenstein's monster being reanimated, Mzzkiti de-frizzes from a jagged orange blob, a shoggoth turns into Roy, and Archae evolves from a fish into an Archaeopterix. Also, in Neo-CTC 551, they treat the coffee-maker breaking like an intolerable disaster.
• No More for Me: Happens with beauty products in Neo-CTC when Florence and Jenny see Kathy the hyena transformed into a blonde bunny bimbo.

  Florence: You know, Jen, I was thinking about a makeover. A little trim, maybe some nail inlays, what do you think?
  Jenny: I know what you mean, I've been thinking some tinting and frosting!
  Kathy: Pony! Pony, where are you! I want to look like a hyena again! POOONNEEEEEE!!!!
  Florence: Brunette. Brunette is good.
  Jenny: I'm going back to my room and throwing out every bottle I own.

• Noodle Incident: An occasional source of humour, especially secondary gags. Eg, "Remember the time he [Sleepy John] alphabetized his sock drawer?", "Helix only smoked when he thought the dishwasher was an amusement park ride."
• No OSHA Compliance: The catacombs; apart from such obvious violations as the death traps (as seen here) and the railingless staircases, it is outright lamp-shaded here.
• Not So Above It All: Essentially all of the cast has their moments. Even Rocky:

  I don't know, some days it's like the universe is expanding and I can't keep up with it...

• The Omniscient: White Pony and Rocky, although they have different ideas on what to do with omniscience. Although they now know not to argue about it at midnight.

  Mzzkiti: By the silken breast of Mother Mogg, if you two immortal yahoos don't SHUT UP and let people sleep, you know what's going to happen!!!

  SLAM!

  White Pony: (whispering) Do you know what's going to happen?

  Rocky: (whispering) No, and I don't think I want to.

• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Multiple characters suffer from this trope.
• Only Sane Employee: Originally, Florence and White Pony, but now usually Mzzkiti fills the role, at least when she isn't pranking co-workers and/or customers or chasing down the staff with a meat cleaver.
• Paintball Episode. On page 391 and page 392, Kathy attempts to prank Beth. Hilarity Ensues.
• Painting the Medium: A variety of different kinds of paint get used with this trope.
• Pass the Popcorn: While watching a Catfight, the guys decide to round up chairs and snacks.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Also a common source of humour.

  Carnivores have the weirdest ideas about where food comes from.

• Really 700 Years Old: White Pony (in a Reincarnation Romance interrupted by "ten-thousand-year bachelor part[ies]"), Beth (who describes herself as "younger than the stars; older than the mountains... old enough to have paid off my college loans"), and Rocky (whose last birthday cake was the Andromeda Galaxy).
• Recursive Reality: Attempted here, but Kaheda tells the cartoonist to knock it off.
• Reincarnation Romance: Florence is apparently just the latest incarnation of White Pony's soul mate.
• Retcon: Originally, the Cafe was already an Inn Between the Worlds when they found it abandoned, and in fact they chose to gather there because it was outside normal continuity, but an arc from 690 to 700 explains that it was an ordinary cafe until they let Calbeck eat a chili called the Exodus Device.
• Retroactive Precognition: Becomes a plot point here in Neo-CTC, when Kaheda realises that she is from twenty years in Kathy's future. Uncharacteristically for the comic, played for heavy drama.
• Right Behind Me: Kaheda in this Neolithic CTC strip.
• Rule of Funny: Ky and her size changing hair bracelets but not her panties.
• Running Gag: Oompa Loompas trying to stick their fingers up unicorn noses. Starting on page 81.
  • Crosses over with Brick Joke as they don't return until years later page 784.
• Sexy Cat Person: Discussed by the boys sometime prior to Neo-CTC strip 27:

  Kathy: Well! Who made you the thermostat goddess??

  Mzzkiti: The boys did.

  Kathy: The boys did?

  Mzzkiti: Yes, I heard them saying that catgirls are the universal standard of hotness.

• Shoot the Messenger: Mzzkiti threatens this on a bathroom scale, resulting in a more flattering weight. Tarin actually follows through, incinerating a D20 for daring to roll a natural 1.
• Shout-Out: Quite often, and mostly to other webcomics. But here's a few stand outs:
• Spit Take: Ky once made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Using KY jelly.
• Stable Time Loop: Looks that way here. Discussed here.
• Staring Contest: The Neolithic CTC characters start an entire Tournament on page 502.
• Take a Third Option: One of the ways to get there. When you meet the guy with the pills, ignore the Red Pill and Blue Pill and take the White Pill instead.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Kathy: doughnuts and/or chocolate, Mzzkiti: fish (specifically "Earth fish" rather than Moggian fish, and also beef-flavoured fish sticks).
• Tempting Fate: Most notably used when Kathy says "All's well that ends well!" right before the Wonkamatic explodes.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Some under KY's bed in this strip.
• Unicorn: 2 of them. Roy Calbeck and Florence's long-time boyfriend, White Pony.
• Unmoving Plaid: Check out Kathy's pajamas on this page.
• Unwanted Assistance: Even at 2 AM, Old Wolf can't play solitaire.
• Ventriloquism:
• Webcomic Time: Referenced by Kathy here.
• Wretched Hive: This trope gets both lampshaded and mocked while Beth is helping White Pony search for a replacement server in Mos Eisley. Much panel space is devoted to how dangerous the place can be.

  Beth: Beware. It's an internet cafe. You will never find a more wretched hive of basement trolls.

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