Darth Wiki / Almost Dropout

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• Academic Alpha Bitch: Ventura in high school had shades of this. He was never particulary malicious nor school motivated being Brilliant, but Lazy after all, but he constantly took pride in his good grades and tended to look down on anyone that couldn't have good grades with a bit of effort as either helpless morons or unable to put an effort on anything. He of course has learned the hard way that reality isn't that simple in the present day.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Ventura tends to be extremely critical and negative towards anything he does...except when he does something right or gets praised for something, where he suddenly becomes more smug and egocentric.
• A Hero to His Hometown: Ventura was very popular in his high school and has a difficult but loving relationship with his family. In pretty much any other site or group he has being in? He's either treating with indifference or downright hated.
• Base-Breaking Character: In-universe. Ryuk, Ventura's favorite character in his favorite books series tends to be divisive among audiences, with half of the fanbase regarding him as Not Badass Enough for Fans and the other half finding a complex, likable character, Ventura of course belongs to the latter group.
• Beautiful All Along: Felicia was a average looking and awkwardly dressed nerd but once she entered in university, she has a major makeover and now looks gorgeous. Zigzagged, in that Ventura had a crush with her homely-looking high school self and finds her more conventionally attractive appearence to be Generic Cuteness.
• Broken Smile: Played for Laughs. Ventura pulls one of these, every time things go south but he doesn't want people around him to notice.
• Caffeine Failure: Coffee in a small dose no longer works for Ventura, and he has to take major amounts of it, for him to remain awake, when that doesn't work, he starts mixing it with other stuff, leading him to a more unstable state that he already was.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Ventura's social skills are so bad that he struggles to say a lot of important stuff, going from asking for a cable for his headphones to expressing complex feelings.
• The Casanova: Leo, who is introduced as someone who "probably approved out of conquering enough teachers."
• Chekhov's Army: Victoria's friends, who are extremely fond of joining manifestations no matter the cause happened to be very helpful when Ventura needs to make a protest to convice his teacher to accept his final work after he failed too many deadlines.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Ventura is mentioned to have an interest in paragliding (althought had never actually practiced) and is sometimes seen watching YouTube tutorials about it. He uses one to escape a building after being cornered.
• Chekhov's Skill: Irene can make paper planes really fast which manages to become very useful when they organize a protest using paper planes.
• Cool Big Sister: Selina is one of the best and more famous lawyers in the country, who always got better grades that Ventura, is extremely intelligent and social, has achieved more that most people could ever dream to and to top it all, she's part-time detective mostly for the fun of the it. This is also an issue for Ventura as he constantly feels Overshadowed by Awesome.
• Decoy Protagonist: Valentina is the first character to be introduced, she is the Lemony Narrator of the first half of the first chapter who explains the audience who Ventura is, and is mentioned to be Ventura's best friend. Then halfway through the first chapter there's a Time Skip and Ventura becomes the sole protagonist. Valentina still appears semi-regulary but is not particulary prominent character given she has distanced from Ventura and studies in another university.
• Destructive Romance: Ventura and Ivonne.
• Disinherited Child: Irene, had a millionare family that controlled her life, in the very moment she step up to them and tells them she doesn't wanna study medicine, they disown her and has to work on her own.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: Ventura, Irene and Eduardo possess them.
• Feigning Intelligence: Downplayed, as Ventura points out there's no denial that Arce is very intelligent but he's also constantly trying to look more intelligent that he already is, constantly using meaningless Technobabble, citing philosophers he doesn't fully understand and trying to sound as smart as he can possibly be even if a a lot of what he says is non sensical.
• For the Evulz: Victoria doesn't really have any economic neccesity, she just finds fun to steal from people without them noticing.
• Fiery Redhead: Irene is a redhead and she's constantly angry and antagonistic with anyone that gets in her way or is not as competent as she is, including her own family and friends.
• Friendly Enemy: Victoria is a street singer who is secretly a thief that steals for sport. She and Ventura are constantly trying to outsmart each other and their brawls can get quite heavy.....and is ironically one of the nicer persons in Ventura's life who is also constantly giving her good life advice to overcome his issues even if it's to distract him while she attacks again.
• Girl Next Door Turned Superstar: Felicia, Ventura's First Love, who was a homely-looking and unpopular nerd during the period where they met but when they re-encounter she is a gorgeus and popular student with a equally popular boyfriend. Zigzagged in that once Ventura met her like this he feels indifference towards her.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Irene gets constantly to Ventura's questions and antics during fencing classes and is often pissed off about her family attitude and her classmates and friend's incompetence.
• Happy Ending Override: In-universe Ventura sees his life as this. He had a rough childhood being All of the Other Reindeer in his elementary school causing him to have a Friendless Background, he gets to high school and manages to become popular and quickly gain a social circle full of people he likes and cared about.....only for him to get to University where he loses contact with his older friends and fails to make new ones, basically right where he started.
• His Own Worst Enemy: While a lot of people had made his life more difficult that it had to be, is very clear that most of his issues are caused by his own lack of motivation, his poorly thoughts plans, his procrastination and his increasing depression affecting his good intentions.
• I Hate Past Me: Double subverted. Ventura regards his high school self as the best version of himself because of how many awesome things he did, how social became and mostly because it was the one time in his life he remembered enjoying life. As the story progresses and Character Development kicks in, he starts to realize he wasn't that great of a person, constantly ignoring the issues of other persons because his life was for once fine like it was and overall being too prejudiced towards people who he regarded as less intelligent. As such while he does still miss many things of his high school self, he has come to disown a lot of actions or inactions in this period of his life.
• The Insomniac: In heavy contrast with his Sleepy Depressive state while he's trying to work, when Ventura tries to sleep on his own, he tends to fail miserably.
• Intergenerational Friendship: The 20-years old Irene, The 22-years old Ventura, The 26-years old Eduardo and the 29-years old Victoria.
• Iron Butt-Monkey: Ventura, who has being hurted for more things that any human being could possibly pass for, but given none of them are Played for Drama, he's back like it was nothing in the next chapter.
• Kafka Comedy: The entire series revolves aroung a university student trying his best to approve his subjects, only to be constantly screwed both by his own issues or outside of his control factors.
• Knight of Cerebus: The story already starts with Ventura's life being on a prety rocky point but things go From Bad to Worse when he starts his relationship with Ivonne.
• Ladykiller in Love: Leo, an old friend from high school who was quite the casanova is revealed to have being in love with Valentina for a while. They get together off-screen, much to Ventura's surprise.
• Loving a Shadow:
  • Ivonne fell in love with Ventura back in high school for being one of the few persons to be respectful towards her issues and didn't fall into the rumors around her, but as they start dating in university, it becomes very obvious they have nothing in common, that neither of the two like the other and that the only reason they keep each other around is because they are desperately lonely.
  • Likewise Ventura's crush on Felicia back in high school was based on her nicer aspects, while completely ignoring the least pleasent aspects of her personality that make her unpopular with the reimaning classmates in the first place.
• More Experienced Chases the Innocent: The more experienced Ivonne was a Hopeless Suitor to the inexperienced Ventura during high school.
• Must Have Caffeine: At the start of the story, Ventura is so sleep deprived, he needs a full thermo of coffee to even stay awake enough to continue in his day to day. As the story progresses, it gets worse.
• Oblivious to Love: Ventura wasn't aware of Ivonne's feeling until they re-met years later.
• Offscreen Romance: Valentina and Leo had started dating since the last time they both saw Ventura. This is what makes Ventura realize how much stuff in his life has changed.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Played for Drama. Ventura has being a student of excellent grades for most of his life but when he has a breakdown he fails every single subject he had in one semester, leading to everyone to qualify him as a Lazy Bum, this is one of many factors that has lead him into the mess of a person he's in the present.
• Peerless Love Interest: Felicia to Ventura and Ventura to Ivonne.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Eduardo, who's a fairly decent guy who happens to be constantly making offensive comments and sees nothing wrong with stalking.
• Reformed Rakes: Leo who was a major casanova during high school but now considers Valentina his One True Love.
• Show Within a Show: The book series The Space Lord Wizard of the Pirate Wardrobe
• Sleepy Depressive: Ventura struggles with finishing simple activities or his university work because he's constantly tired and sleepy no matter how much he has sleeped the last night. Its a bit of a zigzagged trope as his inability to do things for his sleepy state is what caused his more depressive state in the first place.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Irene gets pissed off with Ventura for his inexperience in fencing and constantly doing the wrong movements in fencing...but the only reason she has to deal with that is because they were paired together out of being the two worst fencers in the whole class.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Arce is Loved by All among the university staff and student body for his cool attitude and overall philosophic persona, Ventura however finds him to be a pretentious dude that's trying too hard to look cool and intelligent and can't understand why everyone finds him awesome.
• Stalker with a Crush: Eduardo is introduced as spying on an ex-classmate he had a crush on. One awkward conversation with Ventura backfiring is what makes him decide to never do it again.
• Sticky Fingers: Victoria tends to take Ventura's wallet without him noticing. To her surprise, Ventura also has this ability when he steals her harmonica.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: The biggest reason Ventura hasn't dropout of university. Despite his overall exhaustion and lack of motivation to keep studying, he feels completely out of place in his native city, with all of his friends studying in other cities and everyone remaining either working or not having time to see him, that mixed with a lot of the places he uses to visit being gone or unrecognizable leads to him feeling more depressed to be in his native city that he feels in Khulia, which is why he keeps coming back there.
• There Is Only One Bed: Ventura and Irene suffer this issue when they are forced briefly to live together. This only lasts one chapter however, as Ventura improvises a bed with a sleeping bag and some pillows.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Lesaro. Arce's best friend is revealed to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing that took advantage of the money of the project being at name of Ventura to wasted to his own benefit after he asked him to retire it for him given he didn't have a credit card to receive the money. While he doesn't put the blame on Ventura he managed to manipulate the story so it looks like is no one's fault and he can still remain popular and making Ventura pay for his inconcience.
• Would Hurt a Child: Subverted. Given she would never go that far but Irene does consider it multiple times.