No Rest For the Wicked is a Web Comic by Andrea L. Peterson set in a world where many Fairy Tales are true, in all their grim glory.

Some are Fractured Fairy Tales, but that does not prevent them from being as grim as the originals.

The main plot features the insomniac Princess November from "The Princess and the Pea" setting out to save the moon, buried as in the fairy tale "The Dead Moon". She gathers a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits about her from various tales, and they encounter more fairy tale characters along the way.

Other included fairy tales are "Puss in Boots", "Diamonds and Toads", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Beauty and The Beast", "Hansel and Gretel", "The Girl Without Hands", "Sleeping Beauty", "The Boy Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was", "Bearskin", "Snow-White and Rose-Red and The Raven.

Characters:

  • November, the princess from "The Princess and the Pea". Suffering from insomnia ever since the moon vanished. (Not that she slept well at any time.)
  • Perrault the cat from "Puss in Boots" -- except that he's a Funny Animal, not a Talking Animal. Still working for his master, the Marquis, until November persuades him to leave.
  • Red from "Little Red Riding Hood". Has an ax. Uses it freely.
  • Jack-or-maybe-Hans, The Boy from "The Boy Who Set Out To Learn What Fear Was."
  • Clare, the Girl Without Hands.
  • The Witch, an old woman who's lived alone in the woods. For a long time.
  • Anna & Klaus, two children the witch has kidnapped.
  • Prince Ricardo, AKA "Picky Dick", the prince from "The Princess And The Pea". A Prince Charmless if there ever was one.
Tropes used in No Rest for The Wicked (webcomic) include:
  • Abusive Parents: Claire strongly implies that the village parents are like this.
  • All Trolls Are Different: This one lives under a bridge.
  • An Arm and a Leg: Claire's hands were lopped off.
  • An Axe to Grind: Red.
  • Angel Unaware: The innkeeper asks Perrault
  • Arranged Marriage: November has one planned in the background.
  • Artificial Limbs: Clare has a pair of silver gauntlets that work like mechanical hands.
  • Ax Crazy: Red, literally.
  • Back from the Dead: Red says that three people died in a certain bed, and she was one. Perrault wonders how she's alive.
  • Badass: Red definitly qualifies.
  • Badass Normal: To be just, Ricardo can pull this off.
  • Baleful Polymorph: Prince Orson
  • Barehanded Blade Block: The boy's meeting with Ricardo
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: November's mother knows this
  • Berserk Button: Perrault speaks of "Beauty" to the Beast, as an abstraction; Beast assumes it's his Beauty and goes berserk.
    • Considering her backstory and reaction to the Hansel and Gretel witch, it's safe to say Red hates people who hurt - or at least eat - children.
    • She also hates anyone who gets in her way.
    • Ricardo may be a prat, but he is genuinely anguished when his horses are killed.
  • Big Badass Wolf: alluded to. And a number of their skins appear in Red's cottage, although she claims they left the woods because of the moon's disappearance.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Red at the witch's
  • Big Fancy House: The Beast's
  • Bilingual Bonus: November's mother is named Avril, which is French for "April" (thus fitting into the Temporal Theme Naming).
  • Blackmail: Perrault accuses November of this.
  • Blatant Lies: November denies stories about a witch in the woods.
  • Break the Cutie: Red and Clare both went through hell in their backstories; Red, especially, is a Broken Bird.
  • Burn the Witch: Clare almost gets this treatment. The actual Witch does, though less publically.
  • By the Lights of Their Eyes: Beast and November, in his shadow
  • Captain Obvious: The innkeeper
  • Catch Your Death of Cold: One danger of playing in the snow
  • Cats Are Mean: Played entirely straight with Perrault.
  • The Chick: November. She's fragile enough to be bruised by a leaf, but she knows people well enough to keep her group together.
  • Chronic Pet Killer: Ricardo is on his thirteenth horse name Artax.
  • Clear Their Name: The group for Claire.
  • Colourful Theme Naming: Red.
  • Cool Gate: With Ravens!
  • Curse: The beggar woman laid one on November for not being generous enough to part with all of her food. A frog pops out of her mouth whenever she says "altruistic."
  • Cutting the Knot: While Perrault thought up a clever plan to get Red and November through a gate by manipulating the owners of the mansion, Red simply smashes the gate with her axe.
  • Dances and Balls: November met Princess Colette at one.
  • Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday: November is sixteen.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Claire.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Perrault.
    • Red gets snarky comments in every chance she gets. They pretty much make up half her dialogue.
  • Deal with the Devil: Clare's parents made one with the actual devil to get riches in exchange for her. Luckily, the Moon intervened, though she still lost her hands.
  • Death by Despair: Beauty thinks the Beast's condition is caused by this.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: Limited Palette; Red's cloak is red, as are the roses at the Beast's castle.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Claire may not actually have fallen over it, but she came very close; she was saved by external forces and
  • Disappeared Dad: The Boy's threw him out. Even his foolish and cheerful nature does not entirely protect him from this; he is wistful about how November's father loves her.
  • A Dog Named "Dog"
  • Domestic Abuse: The Beast accuses Perrault of this.
  • Don't Sneak Up On Me Like That: Perrault startles November.
  • Dramatic Thunder: When November feels desperate.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: A Jack the Boy remembered.
  • The Empath: November is extraordinarily sensitive. Against her, this means that she gets hurt by things such as having leaves fall on her face. More impressively, she can sense death, tell when people have noble blood, and is usually able to surmise the intentions of the people she brings into the group(she senses Perrault's boredom, as well as Clare's innocence). This is a Call Back to her source story, The Princess and the Pea, where it is the Princess's sensitivity that is used to determine her royal lineage.
  • Everything's Worse with Bears: Or so the characters assume.
  • Fair-Weather Friend: Red calls Perrault this.
  • Fallen Princess: November.
  • Famed in Story
  • Fearless Fool: The Boy
  • Fence Painting: Perrault's technique for getting the bear to dig.
  • The Fool: The Boy.
  • Forbidden Fruit: Red picks the Beast's roses and puts one behind November's ear. The Beast is furious.
  • A Friend in Need: They search for the information to save Claire, and then Claire goes to help them.
  • Friend to All Children: The children, sanely, do not like her, but Red is passionate about defending children.
  • Friend to All Living Things: The Boy sings a song about how Ricardo would think such a princess must have fleas.
  • Funny Animal
  • Ghost Story: When November was little, her sister September told her about how a queen once wished her daughter into a raven.
  • Girl with Psycho Weapon: Red and her axe.
  • Genre Savvy: "Aha, I can see where this is going. Mysterious old beggar women need to be handled very, very carefully."
    • Invoked intentionally by Perrault when tricking an inn keeper to let them stay the night for free. He convinced the man that they were fairies, figuring he probably knew his fairytales well enough that he wouldn't question strange forms of payment (like a dead bird) if they came from the Fair folk.

Perrault: Now, if you were to bury this bird behind your inn...should you then find, say, a golden tree with diamond fruit growing upon that very spot three days later...well, that would be quite something, wouldn't it?

November: Well obviously she recovered!
  • Upper Class Twit: The Marquis.
  • Visible Silence: Often invoke.
  • Weakened by the Light: The Moon used to keep creatures of darkness at bay.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer: When November, Red, and Perrault reach the Beast's estate's gate, Perrault, having gotten on the other side by himself, lays out a detailed plan of tricking the then-unknown-owners of the mansion into vacating the place and letting the other two in. Red just smashes the gate in.
  • Wicked Witch: Attributed to both Red and Clare. It's not true for either.
  • Word of God: The author provides footnotes for those who do not catch the allusions.
  • You're Not My Mother: November says this to the witch.
  • Youngest Child Wins: the Boy chose November because she was the youngest. This is lampshaded, when The Boy and the Marquis imply that the youngest implies that she is the most attractive.
  • Zany Scheme
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