| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/str_9.png]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:'''your brand new favorite is back again.''']] |
| 3 | ''[[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/ Goodbye Strangers]]'' is an online bestiary/ongoing interactive project that details mysterious, semi-tangible creatures [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment called Strangers.]] Solid and visible but completely unnoticed to most of the world, they live exclusively in populated areas and cause various weird, often dangerous phenomena all around the world. Chewing wires, clogging gas tanks, inducing stutters, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick luring people to deserted areas to mangle them beyond recognition...]] Strangers are mostly disinterested in humans, but their influence is often more harm than good. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Despite resembling living organisms, they defy any known laws of nature or physics. Possessing no digestive, nervous, reproductive, circulatory or skeletal systems, the exact mechanics of ''[[StarfishAliens how they work]]'' are vastly unknown. Some strangers are completely hollow inside, others are filled with gas, motor oil, human tissue, or other seemingly meaningless substances. Their existence and behaviors largely incomprehensible to humans, the strangers are an alien yet familiar presence, and the [[InvisibleToNormals few people who can perceive them]] have to struggle to investigate ''what'' they are and ''why'' they do these countless strange, unnerving things. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | The website was taken down in mid 2021 and was brought back in late 2021, and access was heavily restricted until it was made public again in February 2022. A few sections of the website are currently unavailable due to the creator currently being in the process of updating them to the website's new framework. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | ---- |
| 10 | !!! "T R O P E S": |
| 11 | |
| 12 | * AcidTripDimension: Parallel to reality are two dimensions known as Red Hell and Blue Hell. Blue hell is the home of the noninveterate strangers and is where ''The Red Module'' takes place. Blue Hell visually appears to be just a collection of blue rooms and hallways but it appears to have serious effects on the minds of anyone who gets trapped there, as the entries in ''The Red Module'' are extremely incoherent. And the strangers that live there are much more alien in design. |
| 13 | * AdorableAbomination: The matadroli and its related strains look and behave like cats and are very popular in universe. Several other strains like the dodomuri are also considered to be very cute. |
| 14 | -->'''Kazma Bones on the dodomuri:''' baby. perfect round baby. (also, you're not allowed to hurt it. it's a rule that i made up, so, it's pretty much canon at this point.) |
| 15 | * AfterTheEnd: ''Dead Cities'' is set an unspecified amount of time after ''Primer'' and ''Module II'', after something caused [[spoiler:entire cities to disappear]]. WordOfGod doesn't specify if this was because of the Strangers or something else entirely. |
| 16 | ** ''Walltown'' does this again, but with a worldwide flood that appears to have [[spoiler:wiped out many, if not all strangers, and judging by the unnatural red water may have even been caused by strangers]]. What connection if any it has to ''Dead Cities'' is unclear. |
| 17 | ** Heck, even ''Primer'' might be this, considering that the appendices talk about strangers and sensitives in ''[[FridgeHorror past tense...]]'' |
| 18 | * AlienGeometries: The Alphabetarians and Animalarians are extremely weird. They look like two dimensional beings, but they actually are higher dimensional beings we are only seeing a small part of. The Animalarians look like children's drawings of animals that are always facing towards the viewer, but their bodies are described as being like a flipbook whose spine stretches from the dimension of the Alphabetarians. And the Alphabetarians look like living letters, but they are described as being vast dimensional tunnels that absorb any thoughtform that they intersect with. Looking at them is painful. |
| 19 | * AlienSea: The FloodedFutureWorld shown in the ''Walltown'' and ''Infrared'' modules is covered in red water. |
| 20 | * AlternateHistory: The ''Zeroworld'' module/game is based on ''Pokémon''. ''Pokémon'' still exists in this universe, but its popularity never took off. In fact, the series was cancelled after the fifth generation due to what Space Madness describes as 'references to real world acts of barbarity'. The ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' franchise also exists but also is wildly different. It released a game called ''Sonic & Eggman'' in 1996 for a console called the Sega 64 Entertainment System. Another difference is that the film ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' was never finished and the leftover sets were used by Creator/OrsonWelles to make a movie called ''The Fearful Frontier'' that was supposed to be his masterpiece but was poorly received and damaged his reputation significantly. |
| 21 | * AncientConspiracy: "Ancient" is questionable, but the Partisans certainly are a conspiracy. They're a cabal of authors who insert strangers into their own works of fiction, attempting to acclimate the public to their existence. [[spoiler:This works so well that it continues working after their deaths, resulting in a religion focused around them and the strangers they recorded.]] |
| 22 | * AndIMustScream: The tindromi is a stranger that is animate but immobile due to its skin being completely rigid with no joints and not possible to remove without fatally injuring it. It is constantly struggling to move but never can. If a sensitive comes close it makes sounds like a person crying out for help but it never calms down unless it is injured. Groups of tindromi will appear to argue with each other and get angrier and angrier until they are all shouting. |
| 23 | * AnimalWrongsGroup: ''Zeroworld'' was developed by an anonymous game development company called Sadware as part of a stranger rights campaign. |
| 24 | * AnthropomorphicPersonification: Strangers might be a very weird form of personification of emotions and other concepts, especially negative ones like grief and loneliness although a few are based on more specific ideas. The moradromir for example seems to be an embodiment of fake news. |
| 25 | * AnthropomorphicTypography: The Alphabetarians are higher-dimensional aliens that look like 2-dimensional living letters. They sound silly but you don't want to encounter them. They are able to steal people's thoughtforms, leaving them as {{Soulless Shell}}s |
| 26 | * ApocalypseHow: A Class 2 as revealed [[spoiler:in the recently added timeline. Something causes the extruded strangers to suddenly reanimate during the V.H.Z. period, slaughtering humanity wholesale]] until the survivors get back on their feet and rebuild civilization... Somewhat. |
| 27 | * ApocalypticLog: The Red Module collection is much more weird than the "regular" entries, and it's literally described as "the destruction of meaning." It later is revealed to have been written by Default while he was trapped in Blue Hell. |
| 28 | ** Not necessarily apocalyptic, but the website takes a catalog/encyclopedia format, and is certainly a little worrying when it comes to its descriptions of the strangers and their abilities. |
| 29 | * {{Autocannibalism}}: One of the non-canon strangers from the now removed ''Radials'' module causes sensitives that encounter it to suffer a compulsion to eat themselves that doesn't go away until they have consumed between 1-5% of their own body mass. |
| 30 | * ArcNumber: Every stranger has one. WordOfGod states that there is a pattern to the numbers, though not an extremely strict one; for example, #32 (vermillieri) is similar to #8 (lindroni) and #16 (ganeshidroni), and #30 (smoldroni) has traits of both #3 (hale/haledroni) and #10 (miduradroni). |
| 31 | ** The number 1987 or MCMLXXXVII also pops up in a considerably frequent manner. |
| 32 | ** Another very important number is 13, which pops up in a lot of places, enough that it even has an entry in the index of terms. There are 52 entries in the ''Primer'' module, which includes 13 strangers of each temperament and [[FantasticNuke the motherbomb]] was [[BloodMagic powered by the blood of thirteen different animals]]. |
| 33 | * ArcWelding: The June 2020 update changes the formerly opaque home page to a quick run-down on the story thus far and confirming several things only insinuated before: that most of the sources in the modules know each other, [[spoiler:humanity at large eventually discovers strangers]], and [[spoiler:technology advances to where strangers can be exploited for power]]. This is all in preparation of the upcoming V.H.Z. Module, which appears to be much more narratively heavy than the others. |
| 34 | * AsteroidsMonster: The [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/elist/s_recurridaize.html recurridaize]] contains smaller versions of itself with the [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/elist/img/str_in/str_recurridaize_01.png colors flipped]], which also contain smaller version of themselves with the colors flipped [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/elist/img/str_in/str_recurridaize_02.png again]]. While the images don't go any further than that, it's probably more copies of itself all the way down. |
| 35 | * BedmateReveal: In ''[[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/gutters/gutters_04.html Gutters #04: The Touch]]'' a man wakes up to find that the woman he had slept with was actually a [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/module_2/s_tanzidroni.html tanzidroni]]. |
| 36 | * BeneathTheEarth: Many varieties of strangers such as the ladroni only appear in places that are below ground. |
| 37 | * BestialityIsDepraved: A few of the entries in the ''Sweeter Smoke'' module imply that that the Kazma has had sex with some of the Strangers. And in the ''Sickos Only'' module, Default talks about the abuse inflicted on strangers by his partner Bracey and shows images of strangers in various forms of bondage and with various injuries. Although apparently people don't consider sex with strangers to be bestiality, as strangers are not really alive or sentient in the same way animals are. |
| 38 | * BerserkButton: Xoridromella Oneirohazard does NOT like the souvredervish being on the site without her permission. |
| 39 | ** As of the March update, Barcey does something that has not been revealed that results in Xoridromella hiring Argona Cox to kill Bracey. This backfires, as Bracey and Argona find that they have a number of shared interests, and they become friends. |
| 40 | * BigBad: The condroni are heavily implied to be the masterminds behind the Strangers' collective "invasion" of our reality, notably being one of the few strains that are ''unambiguously'' sapient. |
| 41 | * BigDumbObject: The glassheads are huge structures larger than solar systems made of glass tubes that are found in deep space. |
| 42 | * BizarreAlienPsychology: Very few strains are unambiguously sapient, with even the ones that are having strange and ineffable behavior patterns. Many of the others outright behave in ways that almost resemble parodies or apings of sapience than anything. Of those strains that vocalize in some manner, very few approach actual, legible speech in a human language, and even the small handful that produce fully articulate sentences would be better described as talking ''at'' you like a parrot than ''to'' you, as even with them an actual conversation is still impossible. |
| 43 | * BlandNameProduct: The entry for the bibidrini in the Sweeter Smoke module mentions a product with a weird-tasting filling called "Splushers." |
| 44 | * BlessedWithSuck: Being a sensitive has a lot of downsides. Sensitives can see strangers, but many varieties of strangers attack sensitives or have negative effects on nearby sensitives so being a sensitive can put you in a lot of danger. Dissembler-sensitives are the lucky ones because they are immune to most stranger abilities and can permanently make a stranger inert with a touch. |
| 45 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: The strangers are mostly uninterested in humans, going about their own weird business regardless of people. Their influence, however, is noticeable and often detrimental, and those who do acknowledge humans tend to be malevolent. |
| 46 | * BodyHorror: Several strangers, such as the ladroni; whose body is filled with bile duplicated from the stomachs of people nearby and is [[VomitIndiscretionShot constantly vomiting]] the corrosive mixture everywhere it goes. |
| 47 | * BrownNote: Strangers are full of these; many cause adverse effects to humans just by ''existing'' in their general area. One of the best examples is the illidroni. Looking at an illidroni causes permanent eye damage and eventually blindness and it also is hypnotic so viewers are not likely to stop looking at it until it is too late. The Alphabetarians are described as being painful to look at due to their AlienGeometries. |
| 48 | * CanonWelding: The Meoms, Alphabetarians, and Probotaxazatonians originally came from a separate section of the Atrocityland website but were later added to the Strangers universe. ''Goodbye Strangers'' also crosses over with another work of the author called ''The Nurenverse'' through a dimension called The Fade. |
| 49 | * ChalkOutline: The satsumon from ''Zeroworld'' is literally this. |
| 50 | * CheerfulChild: The Hybotrone behaves and sounds like a hyperactive child, constantly rolling around and making joyful sounds. |
| 51 | * ColorMotif: Each of the main human characters is associated with a color. Default is blue, Bracy is a shade of green, and Fifi Cherish is a red-pink. The probotaxazatonians are associated with the color magenta. It is implied at any text written in magenta could be bait set by them to lure victims in. |
| 52 | * ContinuityCreep: And how. ''Primer'' can be read on its own, but if you look closely the [[spoiler:extrusion plotline]] pops up as early as Module 2. Drug manufacturers like to dig up drasorome corpses? But how would they even know that they're there? Unless... |
| 53 | ** Heck, if you count the excerpts it goes even further back. Alex Muto, [[spoiler:the leader of the Partisans]], appears as early as ''the second entry of the entire series''. |
| 54 | * CosmicHorror: A lot of the tension in this 'story' comes from the fact that the strangers are just so alien, and their role to humans so unknown (but often disconcerting). In addition, most of them are dangerous, with only a very precious few that seem to be purely beneficial. |
| 55 | * CrapsackWorld: Pick any given era of the strangers continuity and you'll be challenged to find a single aspect of it that isn't this. To be fair, this aspect does quite accurately reflect the real world... |
| 56 | ** Even the superficially utopian VHZ timeline is glaringly closer to Brave New World than Star Trek, being founded on the capitalist exploitation of strangers and the destruction of the natural environment. |
| 57 | * CruelAndUnusualDeath: Both strangers and their victims suffer some weird and unpleasant deaths. |
| 58 | * DarkerAndEdgier: The June 1st 2020 update might be considered an example of this type of shift, though it arguably only said bluntly what was merely implied before. |
| 59 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: |
| 60 | %%** Pretty much all of the Widower-class Strangers are this. |
| 61 | %%*** Madradrone often make obscene motions and sounds. |
| 62 | %%*** Thoradromi manage to combine Lust and Gluttony in one package. |
| 63 | ** The moradromir's entry has imaginary news headlines on it, and the stranger itself is described as filling its lair with arrangements of old newsprint. The part that makes it this trope? Its effects include making people (sensitives and non-sensitives alike in equal measure, which is very serious in stranger terms) unable to perceive the truth. |
| 64 | ** The infidroni is a harmless stranger resembling a fetus. It has the ability to generate duplicates of human organs inside of itself. In the future, this leads to them being harvested to extend the lifespans of the rich and powerful. |
| 65 | * DrivenToSuicide: Victims of some strangers will have this happen, such as those affected by zarosorivritis, an endless, blaring noise that might appear in your head if you encounter a zarodroni. |
| 66 | * EasterEgg: |
| 67 | ** Hovering your cursor over the Stranger's name at the top of its own page changes it to a title. |
| 68 | ** Hovering it on the Stranger's picture removes a section of skin, allowing you to see its insides. |
| 69 | *** The alt-text of the Stranger's portrait is a scientific name of sorts, although at least one word is not in correct Latin. |
| 70 | ** If you open a module's page in a new tab (except the main one), the tab name will not be the module's name, but a text specific for each page. |
| 71 | *** ''Dead Cities'' also reveals a hidden quote next to the normal entry. |
| 72 | ** Some words change colors when the cursor is placed over them. Clicking them leads to a hidden page. |
| 73 | ** At the time of writing, there's at least one distinct sections of the website that can't be reached from the module section: |
| 74 | *** ''Infrared'' is set after the [[spoiler:cataclysmic red flood]] described in Walltown, apparently being the gospels of a stranger/sensitive-based religion. [[spoiler:It can only be found by clicking an instance of the word 'flood' in Walltown, or by checking the module directory in the strain index]]. |
| 75 | *** ''Sonic & Eggman'' is something in its own league. Its nature as a Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog fanfiction means that it has a linear narrative, which is almost unheard of within the canon, and doesn't namedrop strangers at all, leaving it ambiguous as to what its relationship to the rest of the website even is. It was also very deliberately linked in the site's home page. It was later revealed in ''Space Madness'' that ''Sonic & Eggman'' is an in-universe video game. |
| 76 | *** Another hidden module called ''Hello (A Class Module)'' was added in August 2022. |
| 77 | ** A hidden link in the ''Matatown'' module leads to a separate section that resembles ''The Red Module''. |
| 78 | * EldritchAbomination: The strangers themselves. Though not all of them are exactly intimidating or hideous in form, their abilities and effects on people can be [[BodyHorror disturbing.]] For instance, encountering the zarodroni causes some survivors to hear a siren that persists even in dreams or when the ears themselves are destroyed, and the es indirectly compels people to push themselves into its doughy body. But the strangers are not the only weird entities that exist in this universe. The Alphabetarians are alien beings that just look like letters, although that is only because they are extremely abstract beings that you can't properly see the true form of. If you are unlucky enough to have one of them intersect with you, it will steal your thoughtform and assimilate it into its body. The Probotaxazatonians are horrible aliens from another dimension that also take people's thoughtforms and use them as drugs. |
| 79 | * ElementalRockPaperScissors: Zeroworld has Strangers classified into different types that parody the types from Pokémon. It is even more ridiculously unbalanced than Pokémon. The void type, for example, has a total of nine immunities, two resistances, and only two weaknesses, and is not resisted by or ineffective against anything except itself. |
| 80 | * EmptyShell: Strangers do not possess a thoughtform, which is the equivalent of a soul, or at least an aspect of the soul. A human that has lost their thoughtform is called an Empty. |
| 81 | * EndangeredSpecies: Could arguably apply to the pepperdroli. Once they show up, their population peaks at no more than 250 individuals within the largest infested city. After this peak, they start generating less and less frequently. Once they go extinct in an area, they don't come back. |
| 82 | ** It is heavily implied that, during the VHZ timeline, strangers as a whole are endangered due to mass harvesting by humans. Why does this happen when strangers can just continue generating from nowhere, regardless of outside action? [[MindScrew Search me!]] |
| 83 | ** Many if not all strangers have gone extinct as a result of the flood in the time of ''Walltown'' and ''Infrared''. |
| 84 | * EskimosArentReal: In the future, propaganda claims that animals that have gone extinct such as elephants never existed at all. |
| 85 | * ExtraEyes / EyesDoNotBelongThere: Some strangers, like condroni and mimetidrene. Several of the meoms also have more than two eyes or have eyes in the wrong place. |
| 86 | ** The condroni in particular has a body composed of alternating blue and black segments, with eye markings covering the entirety of either the blue segments or the black ones, depending on the individual. A few other strains use a similar design. |
| 87 | ** The ladroni appears to have its eye markings located on its neck rather than its actual head. |
| 88 | ** The pinzidrote has a single large eye marking located on the side of its midsection. |
| 89 | * ExtremeOmnivore: Though they don't seem to need food or water, some strangers eat anyway, and those that do often have... interesting diets. |
| 90 | * EyelessFace: [[DoubleSubvertedTrope Double subverted]]. Most Strangers do not posses true eyes; what look like eyes are actually eye-shaped color patterns on their skin. Nonetheless they still provide thee creature with vision somehow, and scratching this area of skin will even blind the creature. |
| 91 | * FantasticDrug: Psycholy and red milk are two drugs that are extracted from strangers. Unlike other materials extracted from strangers, they don't require a laminate-type sensitive to bring them into the real world. Another drug that plays a role in the story is Material D, which Olivia puts into North Mural's water supply. Psycholy and Material D both allow users to sense other dimensions but don't work quite the same way. |
| 92 | * FateWorseThanDeath: Certain strangers can inflict them, such as the boguldromi, whose close proximity slows the perceived flow of time. Those who stray too close will find themselves in a state where they experience a single minute as several hundred years. Though it inflicts no physical harm, the psychological damage of [[AndIMustScream being rooted to the same spot for what feels like hundreds of years]] is usually irreparable. |
| 93 | -->'''Chuck Rockwell:''' We know you're out there, thinking it's fun - tapping, letting it come up to you, feeling time slow down - well guess what, if you fall flat on your face, which a bunch of you will, it won't be a "bogulhigh" any more because not only will it take you apart piece by piece, but it's gonna feel like it's lasting for weeks! They call that the "living hell dissection" for a reason and it's hard not to get freaked out just thinking about this gruesome way to die! Hope that's enough to get you to take it seriously, kids! |
| 94 | * FictionalVideoGame: ''Zeroworld'' is an in-universe video game based on ''Pokémon''. It has Pokédex-like entries for strangers that describe the suffering inflicted on them by humans in a BadFuture, which ended up coming true. |
| 95 | * FourTemperamentEnsemble: Strangers as a whole are classified into 4 categories. Choleric strangers are aggressive, and will actively try to harm all sensitives they come across; Sanguine strangers either target specific "targets", are unaggressive but negatively affect nearby people, or are just hyperactive; Phlegmatic strangers are concentrated on a specific task and don't care much about anything else; and Melancholic strangers are described to "share" the "miseries" of humans. |
| 96 | * TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Happens in-universe. The module ''Zeroworld'' is set in a time period where strangers have become visible and interactable to everyone, and are ruthlessly exploited as a result. Olivia North's meddling and The Flood make this future come true. It also happens in the ''Behind the Curtain'' storyline which starts as a fictionalized account of how ''Goodbye Strangers'' was written but then things get weird when [[spoiler:the author is kidnapped by a group of people who claim that strangers are real]]. |
| 97 | * FunSize: strangers: ''minuet'' is an example of this, turning the first 52 strangers (plus some extras) into a "chibi" equivalent. |
| 98 | * GaiasLament: The environment is devastated in the VHZ future. Wild animals have been driven almost entirely to extinction. |
| 99 | %%* GoMadFromTheRevelation: A few entries imply this of the unnamed author and/or the strangers' victims. |
| 100 | * GenreShift: In the early days of the website, ''STRANGERS'' was primarily a MonsterCompendium with only small hints of {{Worldbuilding}} and a larger plot. Over the years the focus of the website has been shifting away from the strangers themselves and focusing more on the characters who live in the ''Goodbye Strangers'' universe and now it has a much clearer storyline and a more fleshed out world. It now has elements of many genres including QueerRomance and {{Cyberpunk}}. |
| 101 | * HandPuppet: A hidden page reveals that those [[spoiler:magenta colored strangers that pop up the website to give the reader information about ''Goodbye Strangers'']] are actually hand puppets controlled by [[spoiler:the probotaxazatonians]]. |
| 102 | * HaveANiceDeath: Each page of ''Orgone Trail'' is presented as an ending message from an adventure game, most of which are horrible deaths, although a few of them are nonsensical, such as a death from being disappointed. |
| 103 | * AHeadAtEachEnd: A few strangers have heads on both ends of their body such as the [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/elist/s_recurridaize.html recurridaize]] (which also contains at least two layers of smaller versions of itself) and the [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/red/s_miridraner.html miridraner]]. Oddly the miridraner's two head are not identical. Both heads have mouths but only one has lips. Several of the meoms also have heads on both ends. |
| 104 | * HealingFactor: Wounds applied to different strains will heal at wildly different rates, which can range from near-instantaneously to [[WoundThatWillNotHeal wounds never healing at all.]] |
| 105 | * TheHeartless: Why strangers exist is not well understood but many of them appear to be embodiments of human emotions. |
| 106 | * TheHedonist: The probotaxazatonians are hedonistic beings that lurk in another dimension that appears as a nightclub with decorations based on the worst atrocities in human history. Everything that they do is for their own pleasure. If they catch you, they will steal your thoughtform and turn it into drugs. |
| 107 | * HumanitysWake: Could arguably apply to ''Dead Cities''. |
| 108 | * HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Many strangers kill humans in gruesome ways but you can't really hate them for it because they don't really have minds in the same way that people or animals do. They can be viewed as more of a weird natural phenomenon than as villains. Meanwhile, humans extract drugs and other useful substances from strangers, use them as living batteries, and even sexually abuse them. While it is debatable if strangers actually have enough of a mind to actually suffer from what humans do to them, the ''Zeroworld'' game depicts humans as the villains for how they exploit strangers and destroy the environment with their greed. |
| 109 | %%* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: The leuridrene is this by default. |
| 110 | * AnIcePerson: The coldroni is only found in very cold places and has the passive effect of lowering the body temperature of any sensitive who gets too close to it. |
| 111 | * InterfaceScrew: The vordroni and the souvredervish's pages are affected by this in the form of comments left behind by other people that cannot be removed. |
| 112 | * InvisibleToNormals: |
| 113 | ** Only sensitives and psychics can see Strangers. Notably, sensitivity is ''not'' genetic, and individuals who belong to local minorities then to have a higher chance to become a sensitive. |
| 114 | ** North Mural's sensitive community communicates though a website called Eraserlist that can't be seen by standards. Blanks and mediums are also able access Eraserlist even though they can't see strangers. |
| 115 | * KudzuPlot: Strangers, being a non-chronological ScrapbookStory that spans several decades of in-universe history, is prone to this. The June 2020 home page update does something to nail the chronology and worldbuilding elements down, but still coyly leaves quite a few threads loose. What is Blue Hell? What caused the red flood? And what in the world are mattress camps? |
| 116 | * LifeImitatesArt: In-Universe. A few varieties of stranger only started appearing after somebody made them up. This is the case with some of the strangers in ''Zeroworld''. They were original designs for the game, but would later start appearing in the VHZ future. |
| 117 | * LivingDrawing: A few stranger strains appear to be living or semi-living drawings. One example is the satsumon, which is just a stranger-shaped ChalkOutline. And the contrivodrone just appears as a cartoony drawing of a stranger. The contrivodrone can't actually move, but it can make sounds and can temporarily mess up your spatial awareness. It can easily be killed by erasing it. |
| 118 | * LudicrousPrecision: "Exactly 16.7778% of sensitives who survive close zarodroni encounters report a phenomenon known as zarosorivritis or zaro zzyx", which means several million sensitives encountered and survived a zarodroni encounter, with exactly 167,778 being afflicted each million times. |
| 119 | * MakeThemRot: The gangridrene caused any dead flesh around it to quickly rot. This also effects living sensitives. 40 minutes in the presence of a gangridrene is fatal. Luckily it isn't super durable or strong so it can be defeated quickly. |
| 120 | * MegaNeko: The matadrome is a cat-like stranger that is shown to tower over buildings. The megameoms are weird aliens that seem to be a mixture of cat, angel, and cyborg. They vary in size from "giant" to "astronomic." |
| 121 | * MindScrew: The existence of Strangers in general can be considered this, and some Strangers ''cause'' this. |
| 122 | ** Some of the more divergent strangers are examples of this too: the dorodroni is literally just a stranger-shaped hole in the ground extending to an infinite depth... and can't be fallen down or interacted with in any other way. The contrivodrone, likewise, resembles a chalk drawing of a stylized stranger, and can be killed by the presence of its likeness. |
| 123 | %%** The fact that we (or the author of the modules) knows what the tartreede does when it interacts with others of its strain [[spoiler:despite the entry itself assuring us that only one has ever generated.]] Or that some strangers have extremely long lifespans and yet somehow the writer knows how long they live even when those lifespans are much longer than how long strangers have actually been known. |
| 124 | %%*** It is actually because the writer of the modules is the AuthorAvatar. |
| 125 | ** The "Noninveterate"[[note]]"Inveterate" means "has habits/interests that are long-established and unlikely to change"[[/note]] class from the Red Module ramps the weirdness up to eleven. |
| 126 | * MirrorMonster: The trasodroni looks almost just like a puddle at first, but looking into it will lose the ability recognize their own face. And depending on how long you look into it, you'll either be able to recognize your face again or never be able to recognize your face ever again. |
| 127 | * MostWritersAreWriters: In an abstract way, yes, the interviewed character in ''Walltown'' is a writer. Specifically, they used to work for a company that [[spoiler:created artificial strangers]]. Cue snipes about the creative process and how overused the "-droni" suffix is. |
| 128 | * MyBloodRunsHot: The [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/primer/s_miduradroni.html miduradroni]] is filled with gas 50 times hotter than the surface of the sun, but somehow the heat only affects objects that directly touch the miduradroni and it is very selective about what it heats. It will instantly metal certain metals and will cook dead animal material but is safe for a person to touch. For some reason, the entry does not say much about what happens if a miduradroni is ruptured. |
| 129 | * MythArc: Seems to be slowly growing one of these as the modules start connecting to each other. |
| 130 | ** ''Zeroworld'' takes place in a world where strangers are both [[spoiler:common knowledge and heavily exploited for commercial reasons]]. |
| 131 | ** ''Walltown'' is almost a direct follow-up to ''Zeroworld'', involving a character only referred to as "subject" who used to have a job [[spoiler:creating artificial strangers for companies]]. |
| 132 | ** In addition, ''Walltown'' has in-universe files that namedrop ''Primer'' as an in-universe catalog of strangers, as well as a few of the "sources" in it. |
| 133 | * NoBodyLeftBehind: Just how strangers seem to spontaneously generate from nothing, they also leave little to no traces behind when they die. This is because strangers do not fully exist in standard reality. Pieces of dead strangers can be brought into reality by the touch of a laminate-sensitive though, but they will quickly degrade if they resemble the strange that they came from too much, so bringing a completely intact stranger corpse into reality is basically impossible. |
| 134 | * NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: ''Space Madness'' mainly takes place in a fictional city called North Mural. It is stated to be the third largest city in northeastern Pennsylvania and is the third largest city in the state. |
| 135 | * NoMouth: Many strangers do not have any mouth at all, or only have a mouth-like marking in its place. |
| 136 | * NonMaliciousMonster: While some varieties of stranger, especially those of the choleric temperament, attack and kill humans, many varieties cause harm with only their presence unwillingly or without their awareness. Although since strangers don't have much of a mind it is a stretch to call even the very aggressive ones malicious. They have emotions but their intelligence is extremely limited and they don't have free will or a sense of self. |
| 137 | * NonMammalianMammaries: A few stranger stains have disturbingly human-like sexual characteristics even though strangers do not sexually reproduce and have NoBiologicalSex. Most commonly you will see strangers vaguely imitate feminine TertiarySexualCharacteristics. Strangers that mimic human SecondarySexualCharacteristics or possess actual genitals are less common. |
| 138 | * OffWithHisHead: One of the modules, ''Hollow Crowns'', is chock full of this. Each page, except for the last one, features a decapitated stranger with a different crown on each one, which was done as an art project by Bracey Wray, and also an attempt to create a machine to let him and Default escape from reality. |
| 139 | * OfficialFanSubmittedContent: There used to be a stranger module for strangers designed by fans called ''Radials'' but it has been removed. The strangers it contained are not considered canon. |
| 140 | * OminousMusicBoxTune: Dovadroni have incomprehensible, music box-like voices; however, they're one of the relatively benign strangers. |
| 141 | %%* OneHitPointWonder: Could arguably apply to the cevidroni, whose flesh is so weak it loses its tail and mouth after generation. And they don't grow back. And when it tries to attack sensitives, it damages ''itself'' instead. |
| 142 | * OurMonstersAreWeird: Strangers has been attracting attention on the internet because of its unique, slick, often disturbing creature designs. While the appearance of a Stranger varies wildly from strain to strain, they all build upon the same general body plan: outwardly resembling something of a cross between a crocodile and a worm (though some incorporate avian, amphibian, or dinosaur-like traits as well), save that their "eyes" are actually markings on their skin, as noted above. Most strains have exactly two eye markings, located exactly where you'd expect them to be, although this can vary. Internally, a Stranger actually possesses no organs, amounting to little more than a skin-tube containing some substance or collection of materials or objects that varies wildly from strain to strain, with no two strains having the same contents. Depending on the degree to which a given strain possesses a functional mouth, it may or may not connect to the body cavity to some degree. The size, shape, quantity, and even presence of arms or legs varies wildly from strain to strain, and in some strains, from individual to individual. Frequently a strain will also possesses some unique off-the-wall physical feature, such as the condroni being [[ExtraEyes covered in eye markings]] or the covecroni having cutting implements embedded in it's head. The strain that comes closest to boiling the body plan down to it's basics would probably be the [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/module_primer/s_coldroni.html coldroni]]. |
| 143 | ** Additionally, no Stranger possesses anything that could be called reproductive organs, and a select few posses a reproductive process, instead simply spontaneously arising abiogenesis-style in ways and under environmental conditions specific to each strain. It's heavily implied however that they are actually manifesting ''into'' our reality from some other reality. |
| 144 | * OurSoulsAreDifferent: The equivalent of a soul in this setting is called a thoughtform. Humans and animals both have thoughtforms, but gain their thoughtforms through different processes. Animals naturally develop their own thoughtforms, while most humans bond with a free thoughtform during fetal development. A human who develops their own thoughtform is called a blank. While blanks are not able to see strangers, they can sense other things that normal humans can't. A blank's thoughtform extends beyond their body, which causes strangers to disperse since a stranger can't intersect with a thoughtform. Oddly though, animals apparently can see strangers, but are mostly immune to the effects that strangers have and tend to ignore them. A psychic is a human with a bifurcated thoughtform that exists in reality and one or both of the hells at the same time, which allows them to see strangers like a sensitive but gives them additional abilities. A psychic and a blank being in close proximity to each other can have weird effects on them due to their contrasting thoughtforms. A ghost is a thoughtform that does not have a body. While ghosts are intelligent, they cannot gain new memories. Strangers do not have a thoughtform, and because of this they don't appear to actually have a proper mind even though they display emotions. The nature of ghost strangers is unclear. Entities from the Fade, such as gosdragons, do not have a thoughtform, but instead have a nurenform, which have very different abilities than a thoughtform. Nurenforms gain power to affect reality as they transcend from the limitations of their body, while thoughtforms mainly expand their awareness of reality as they transcend and don't gain significant power. What other sorts of entities have for a soul has not been well described yet, although the Alphabetarians can assimilate thoughtforms into themselves and the Probotaxazatonians can also steal thoughtforms and use them as drugs. A human who loses their thoughtform becomes an empty. |
| 145 | * OxymoronicBeing: Strangers do not posses a thoughtform. A ghost is a thoughtform that isn't connected to a physical body. Somehow, ghost strangers also exist in the same space as regular ghosts. So how does something be a thoughtform and not have a thoughtform at the same time? |
| 146 | * PaperPeople: Several strangers have flat bodies. The zinvinzidrinzi are mostly flat strangers that only manifest between the walls of buildings. The socioponzy appears to actually be made from an oversized sheet of lined paper cut and folded into the shape of a stranger. The drosodroni and a few related strains look like empty sheets of skin shed from another stranger. The holodrone and its relatives are strange intangible strangers that only a few atoms wide. A few non-stranger monsters also appear to be flat when viewed by a human. The Alphabetarians and Animalarians look perfectly flat and are always facing towards the viewer like a 2D sprite in a 3D game, but they actually are higher dimensional beings that you can't perceive the full form of. |
| 147 | * PostReleaseRetitle: The website originally was just called ''STRANGERS''. It was later expanded to ''Goodbye Strangers and the Fearful Frontier'' and then shortened to just ''Goodbye Strangers''. |
| 148 | * PsychicAssistedSuicide: The [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/elist/s_trezzedari.html Trezzedari]] makes nearby children walk into traffic. |
| 149 | * RecursiveReality: ''Goodbye Strangers'' is a NestedStory with three levels. What should be the top is ''Behind the Curtain'' which a fictionalized account of how ''Goodbye Strangers'' was written. The main setting of the story is called North Mural, which is where ''Space Madness'' takes place. ''Zeroworld'' is a FictionalVideoGame that exists in North Mural and depicts the BadFuture world of VHZ. [[MindScrew But somehow, ''Behind the Curtain'' also exists within VHZ.]] Several pages such as the one for the [[https://strangers.atrocityland.com/enter/site/module/elist/s_recurridaize.html recurridaize]] also have advertisements for ''Goodbye Strangers''. |
| 150 | * StarfishAliens: The strangers don't even follow the laws of physics, much less of earthly nature. |
| 151 | * {{Synchronization}}: Tomodaris always manifest in pairs. Any injuries that are inflicted on one affect both of them. Each Tomodari also imitates, but not perfectly, whatever sounds are heard by their twin. |
| 152 | * ThemeNaming: |
| 153 | ** You're going to see a lot of strangers with the '-droni' suffix. |
| 154 | ** WordOfGod states that there's a pattern to the suffixes: they're mostly chosen based on sound, but as the numbers get higher, there's more "atypical" ones like -dretzi and -croni and strange ones like -lo and -ro. The es and lume appear to be the two exceptions to this rule, lacking suffixes entirely. |
| 155 | * TooDumbToLive: The ambidroni is one of the most harmless and fragile strangers, yet a few people have died as a result of trying to suck it up through a straw and choking to death on it thanks to a social media challenge dubbed the "Ambidroni Straw Challenge". |
| 156 | -->'''Chuck Rockwell:''' The ambidroni makes you cry while you're sleeping, but other than a wet pillow in the morning, it's just a friendly and shy stranger that can't hurt you and doesn't seem to want to anyway. All the same, please don't lay on the floor, try to suck it up through a straw, and then choke to death when it gets lodged halfway down your windpipe. You wouldn't think we'd need another warning about this but [[WorldGoneMad that's the kind of crazy mixed up world we're all spinning around in]]. |
| 157 | * TooManyMouths: The zondroni has three mouths stacked vertically. |
| 158 | * TorturedMonster: Many varieties of stranger, especially the ones of the melancholic disposition, live very miserable existences. The tindromi is trapped inside of its own armored skin and can never move but is constantly struggling. The buledroni is always sad and doesn't do much besides constantly crying. |
| 159 | * TheUnmasquedWorld: [[spoiler:Every module set after the discovery of extrusion.]] |
| 160 | %%* TheVamp: Lindroni are essentially this towards men. Towards women (though they don't usually target women) and lindroni who don't "fit" (including being old), they're much more brutal. |
| 161 | * VanHelsingHateCrimes: The ''Zeroworld'' video game is highly critical of companies using strangers for profit. The Pokédex-like entries describe the ways that strangers are suffering because of humans. |
| 162 | * WeaksauceWeakness: Some Strangers don't react well to certain substances, like water or sunlight. Notably, the simdroni can be killed by ''noise.'' |
| 163 | * YourSoulIsMine: The Alphabetarians and Probotaxazatonians can both remove people's thoughtforms. Probotaxazatonians use them as drugs. |
| 164 | ---- |
| 165 | ->"THE FLOOD WATERS MAY BE RISING: [[FloodedFutureWorld Bulletins warn of ocean waves thousands of feet high...]]" |
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