Line #17 Literature/UnrealEstate


1	->''It was 13 o'clock on a typical day when the sky turned blue.''
2	-->-- The opening words of "Boy Meets Worlds", the first part of ''Unreal Estate''.
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4	A WebOriginal serial written from 2001 through 2003 by Creator/{{Twoflower}}, ''[[http://stefangagne.com/unrealestate/ Unreal Estate]]'' tells the story of Mallory Heisenberg, a naive young man who wants to see the worlds!
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6	See, in this setting, many, many [[PocketDimension worlds and realities]] are created by powerful "Reality Engines". The Engines allow a universe to be created to any specification you imagine - provided you can afford the vast fees demanded by [=RealWare=], the massive corporation that builds the Engines.
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8	Mallory's home reality is the quiet and backward "Cooking and Farming" community of Grunwald, but a series of unlikely events and comical misunderstandings lead to him becoming the "Houseboy" of an all-female group of transient troubleshooters.
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10	And then things really get complicated.
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12	----
13	!!This series provides examples of the following tropes:
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15	* AlliterativeFamily: [[spoiler: All of Mallory's alternate selves have names starting with the letter "M" -- Mike, Multi, Melvin, Megumi, Matsuri, and "[[AtrociousAlias M]]".]]
16	* {{Animesque}}: Like ''WebOriginal/SailorNothing'', ''Unreal Estate'' uses and plays with several tropes common to Anime and Manga -- most obviously, the HaremGenre.
17	* ArtificialHuman: Kisei was created by [[spoiler:Tachi, a rogue {{ninja}} assassin. She was initially programmed identically to the fully robotic MechaMooks he used as minions, but was meant to grow beyond her initial programming.]]
18	* BluntMetaphorsTrauma: Mallory, like many examples of this trope, tends to overthink his idioms until they're virtually unintelligible.
19	* CosyCatastrophe: [[spoiler:The "Quiet Apocalypse" that drove humanity into the artificial realities turned out to be this for the survivors. Although it was a combination of all of the most infamous potential ApocalypseHow scenarios happening at once, they weren't enough to destroy human civilization. [=RealWare=] abandoning the real world was enough to drive the survivors left behind to actually save the Earth themselves.]]
20	* KillingYourAlternateSelf: [[spoiler: Phase One of Multi's plan to remake the Multiverse is to murder all of the other alternate Mallorys. This doesn't increase Multi's power directly, but it does remove potential rivals. "[[ThereCanBeOnlyOne Reality is determined by the last man standing.]]"'']]
21	* MisappliedPhlebotinum: Becomes a plot element. Although ''Unreal Estate'' is set InAWorld where technology that allows pocket universes to be created to order is ubiquitous, it's mostly used to create a few [[PlanetOfHats Worlds of Hats]]. The most unusual world is Tribal Alpha, the FirstPersonShooter world that automatically respawns "players" after lethal wounds. [[spoiler:The BigBad, Multi, reveals that he has a {{Vision\|aryVillain}} about using the technology to its full potential, and YouCantMakeAnOmelette...]]
22	* NotSoBadassLongcoat: M's failure to invoke the BadassLongcoat trope is lovingly described.
23	--> The man sitting in front of the herbs and spices didn't look too dangerous, but it wasn't from lack of trying. He wore a scary leather trenchoat typically reserved for chaotic neutral anti-heroes, the sort that flaps around nicely when you're performing zero gravity kung fu and hugs the shadows properly when prowling in dark alleys of a criminal underworld. On him, however, it was simply a badly fitting and overly large garment which was yanked off a bargain rack and bore all the tailoring hallmarks of unskilled mass-production labor.
24	* PlanetOfHats: Each artificial reality has a theme to it, such as Grunwald (an {{Arcadia}} focused on growing and [[SupremeChef preparing]] food), Nocturn ([[CoolestClubEver a reality dedicated to one nightclub]]), and Tribal Alpha (the FirstPersonShooter reality [[spoiler:[[DefectorFromDecadence where Lorelei came from]]]]).
25	* PocketDimension: The realities created by the Reality Engines come in various sizes, but they're all implied to be much smaller and more simple than Earth itself.
26	* PromotedToParent: Meiko has been supporting both her little sister Eiko and herself since they were orphaned at a young age, which gave birth to her ControlFreak tendencies.
27	* RealityWarper: [[spoiler:Both Multi, Mallory, and their other duplicates are able to manipulate the realities created by Reality Engines at will, although Mallory can only do it by accident at first.]]
28	* SupportingHarem: The general relationship dynamic between Mallory and the rest of Meiko's household. Although [[GoodBadGirl Lorelei]] enters a brief relationship with Mallory, it's made clear that the point was to make him learn how to act in a relationship before attempting a RelationshipUpgrade with Meiko.
29	* TacticalReminiscence: Subverted. [[spoiler: Eiko tries to use this trope when she's held captive by Multi, who agreed to let her email her friend Kensuke -- referring to a TV episode that would hopefully inspire him to send a secret message in a video file as a reply. She discovers that Multi had edited her original message and blocked her access afterwards.]]
30	* TrulySingleParent:
31	** [[spoiler: Tachi, Kisei's father and mentor, created her as an heir to his one-person "clan".]]
32	** [[spoiler: [=RealWare=] CEO Gillian Bates ends the story as the mother of a DesignerBaby she commissioned using DNA from herself, Multi, and Meiko (obtained under dubious but legal circumstances).]]
33	* WholesomeCrossdresser: Megumi, one of the members of M's support group for alternate Mallorys, was raised as a woman by her adoptive family [[NoodleIncident to avoid some kind of family curse]]. [[spoiler: Multi intimidates her into using her powers to change her body's sex before killing her, because his BerserkButton is people refusing to realize their potential.]]

Context Literature / UnrealEstate