Darth Wiki / Helix

Helix is the current name of a very-much-in-progress writing project by Floria. It has some overlap with The Harmonicsverse, but a different flavor and style of worldbuilding. It could be described as the Marvel Universe, on a slightly different brand of crack, with the center of the universe relocated from New York City to Seattle, and with lots of Author Appeal. Fiction set in this universe can be found here.

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The Helix universe contains examples of:

• Animal-Themed Superbeing: lots. See the Little Bit Beastly entry.
  • There's also Phoenix, who is renewed by fire and comes back from apparent death a lot, and Mockingbird, who's an excellent singer with a talent for sound imitation.
• Anime Chinese Girl: Galatea does not fit this trope (due to being third-generation American and not an anime character), but in-universe depictions often flanderize her into such.
  "Why do all the fictionalized versions of me have accents? I was born in Seattle!"
• Anti-Villain: Victoria and most of the rest of Prodigium, generally of the Affably Evil, Well-Intentioned Extremist, and/or Woobie varieties.
  • Steel Phoenix as well, who's not so much a villain as a self-designated arch-rival to Iron Maiden.
• Armor Is Useless: averted. Most people who expect to be in a serious throw-down and aren't unnaturally durable where some kind of protective gear.

• Beast and Beauty: Lazarus and Tomo, although calling Tomo a "beauty" is pushing it. (She does fit the trope by being more conventionally attractive than he is, and compared to some of Laz's other associates, Tomo's a good influence.)
• Big Eater: Differently Powered Individuals who aren't powered by tech or magic tend to have higher energy demands than normal people, and for those who aren't energy absorbers, food is the usual fuel source.
  • Speedsters, anyone with physically-based (as opposed to telekinetic) flight, anyone with Healing Factor, and many energy projectors have particularly high caloric needs if they use their powers heavily.
• Bizarre Human Biology: some mutants, most commonly those with physical power sets. Sometimes (as with Aria Limax), the weirdness is the power.
  • Atlanteans would also count, as despite their adaption to aquatic life, they're still genetically compatible with baseline humans.
• Blind and the Beast: Lazarus (implied to be horribly disfigured under all the gratuitous bandage wrappings) has an off and on relationship with Tomo. She knows that he's not "normal looking" but doesn't care.
• Cast Full of Gay: and bi, and trans.
• Cherry Blossoms: show up in the "Spring Is Late" story. It's probably symbolic of something.
• Creating Life Is Awesome: the only objection people have to recreating pterosaurs is the possible ecological impact of a new predator in the area. Nobody denies the awesomeness of the project itself.
• Cure for Cancer: there's a mutant who can do it on an individualized basis (by using her highly refined Touch of Death to target tumors).
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: averted with Victoria. She's perfectly capable of making money legitimately with her scientific talents (at least when being a wanted terrorist doesn't interfere with dealing with patents and marketing), and views her supervillainy as a form of activism, not a day job.
• Cute Little Fangs: most of the Lilim, and not uncommon among other mutants with visible mutations.
• Cute Monster Girl: most mutants whose mutations dramatically effect their physical appearance. Even the ones who aren't conventionally pretty have a certain offbeat charm.
• Dark Age of Supernames: Single-word aliases are normally the rule, but they don't normally get into grimdark territory (with the possible exception of Necromancer and Nightshade.)
• Darker and Edgier: parodied in "The Alternate Universe Where Everyone's a Jerk."
• Dawn of an Era: welcome to a new world of gods and monsters.
  • More specifically, to a world of superhumans, aliens, bioengineered dinosaurs, space travel, and shiny technology.
• Defictionalization: In-Universe. An Orphean has taken to disguising itself as a gangly, faceless humanoid and stalking amateur filmmakers.
• Deliver Us from Evil: one of Victoria's Heel Face Turns was motivated, in part, by her belief that having a supervillain with the world against her for a mother wouldn't be good for Rena.
• Destructo-Nookie: Lazarus and Tomo, not infrequently.
• Deus Exit Machina: the balance of power would shift drastically if the Alchemist didn't spend most of her time as the galaxy's most overpowered wandering tourist.
• Disability Superpower: played straight with Tomo and Pilar Pawlowski (blind characters with enhanced nonvisual senses), averted for the other disabled characters with superpowers.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: in-universe. Galatea once played Tiny Tim in her middle school's production of A Christmas Carol. This became a bit of an Old Shame for her when she grew up to be a disability activist.
• Disability Immunity: Lazarus is so damn crazy that attempting to read or control his mind causes psychics quasi-physical pain.
• Dysfunction Junction: any group of supervillains. Prodigium may be one of the most functional, and they have to deal with Elisa's emotional problems, Fernando's survivor's guilt and revenge obsession, and Victoria's (wo)manpain and occasional megalomania.
  • The good guys as well, to a lesser extent.
• Eldritch Abomination: Orpheans are a downplayed version. They're ancient aliens with physiology beyond human comprehension and capricious motives, but they don't cause reality to break down or anything like that.
• Elemental Baggage: for kineticists, whether this trope applies depends on what they're manipulating. Materials manipulators need a source of raw material, energy manipulators can create their own if necessary but usually need to burn a lot of calories.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Prodigium, as a matter of principle. They even have a token genotypical doing Mission Control.
  • Lebensborn averts this. The upper ranks consist almost entirely of able-bodied white people.
• Esperanto, the Universal Language: One of the official languages of the Republic of San Alberto (along with English, Albertan Creole, and Atlantean.) A few influential members of the founding government were Esperantists, and when you have to print all official material in three languages already, adding a fourth isn't too hard.
• Everyone Went to School Together: whether you're a middle-class girl studying child development, a scholarship student studying biology, or a genius heiress studying engineering, Northwestern Polygnostic University is the place to go.
• Expy: loads of them, often of a mashup variety. (Lynx is Wolverine meets Toph Bei Fong with a touch of Daredevil, Victoria Paracelsus is Magneto with a different Freudian Excuse and power set, Galatea Xiao is a tiny, adorable, female Chinese-American Charles Xavier, the Alchemist is a friendlier Doctor Manhattan, Naomi Lovelace is Tony Stark, et cetera.)
• Fantastic Racism/Fantastic Homophobia
  • With a side of vicious Fantastic Ableism courtesy of Lebensborn.

• Foe Romance Subtext: Tomo and Elisa really enjoy their battles. Since Elisa is normally more or less seething with rage and has few conventional social skills, and Tomo is a nigh-indestructible Boisterous Bruiser with Blood Knight tendencies, this may be the closest thing Elisa has to a fulfilling relationship.
• Fragile Speedster: anyone who flies with wings (as opposed to tech or telekinesis). It's a side effect of being lightly built.
• Friendly Enemy: Victoria Paracelsus with many of the good guys, particularly Galatea Xiao.
• Ghostapo: the creepy occultist-Mad Scientist lady who turned Michael Mendelssohn into Iron Seraph. Whether or not she actually subscribed to Nazi ideology, she certainly had connections with the regime, and had no compunctions about picking up test subjects at concentration camps.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: various heroes as the Good, Victoria and her followers as the Bad, and Lebensborn, the Hand of Ares, and various anti-mutant hate groups as the Evil.
• Hairpin Lockpick: Galatea had a barrette made for just such a purpose.
• Half Human Hybrids: the Soviet gorilla-hybrid Super Soldiers, although the majority of their genetic ancestry is human. They look like very large, slightly thuggish Eastern European humans in most respects, are very strong and agile, and tend to be Gentle Giants despite having been created as soldiers.
  • Many native San Albertans have merfolk (Homo sapiens aquaticus) ancestry.
• Handicapped Badass: Lynx. She's like a tiny, blind, female Wolverine.

• Hatedom: The Alchemist, in-universe, as sort of a counterpoint to her (unwanted) worshipers. It's split between those who think she needs to stop throwing her weight around and let regular people run their own lives, and those who think she's a lazy neglectful slackass for not helping out as much as she theoretically could.
• Heroic Build: averted more often than not. Characters' body types range from tiny and wiry to Stout Strength.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: averted in Valkyrie II's home timeline, in which someone did manage to prevent Hitler's rise to power and the Holocaust (but not World War II).
  • Specifically, an adult Grimoire summoned a TARDIS out of a Doctor Who tie-in novel.
• Homage: the treatment and powers of Rena and her "sisters" mirrors the diclonius, although their appearance and biology is a bit different.
  • One of the villages in San Alberto has a few things in common with Innsmouth, although it's not played for horror.
  • Victoria's biologically-based system for converting vegetable peelings into petroleum is an OILIX reference.
  • More loosely, to Chris Claremont's take on the X-Men. Strong sexy women, Victoria's treatment as a sympathetic Well-Intentioned Extremist, the occasional Gratuitous Foreign Language, lots of talking...
• Horny Scientist: the director of Canada's Cold War era Super-Soldier project had a thing for Cat Girls and Action Girls. This may have had something to do with why the program kept an interest in Tomo Kojima and Lucy Fraser as long as they did, despite the former's blindness and the latter's cheerful psychopathy.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Lazarus and Tomo (romantic), Kensei and Amalthea (platonic).
• Intergenerational Friendship: Victoria and Siegfried.
• Large Ham: Victoria when she first successfully recreates a trilobite.
  "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Mortality, entropy, time itself cannot stand in my way! My little arthropod friends, you are witnessing the dawn of a new era!"
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Galatea Xiao and Victoria Paracelsus. Galatea is petite, cute, believes in non-violence, prefers to work through negotiation and influence, and runs a school for mutant children. Victoria is a radical political activist with Mad Scientist tendencies whose powers are more physical in nature. They both have long hair and wear pretty dresses.
  • Marcella (Girl Next Door) and Viviane (Creepy Good) would also qualify as light and dark respectively in every way except sex. Marcella is the more sexually experienced one (with men and women) and Viviane is a Celibate Hero.
• Little Bit Beastly: fairly common for mutants, often combined with themed Combo Platter Powers of varying degrees of usefulness.
  • Reptiles: Shoshannah Diamond (coelurosaur, generic giant reptile), Cameron Lynne Hayward (lizard)
  • Mammals: Tomo Kojima and Lucy Fraser (feline)
  • Birds: Khadijah Chaudhri (raptorial)
  • Mollusks: Jake McTavish (octopus), Aria Limax (slug)
  • Insects: Luna (lepidoptera)
• Living Lie Detector: Tomo and Pilar can do this through their Super-Senses, Victoria through her mutant ability to read vital signs.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: played straight for most of the long-haired female-identified characters, with the exception of Lucy Fraser. Shiro Paracelsus is more of a Badass, but does have a few Real Men Wear Pink traits.
• Meaningful Name: San Alberto is named after Albertus Magnus, patron saint of biologists.
• Mouthful of Pi: all identification serial numbers in-series are based on the Pi sequence - for instance, Loki was known as Agent 159 before she defected.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: subverted by the Meliai, who are four-armed Insectoid Aliens but normally peaceful.
• Mundane Utility: very common, in fact, a power that's only good in combat is considered a minor case of Blessed with Suck.

• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Lebensborn, although with the eugenicist/"purify the Master Race" aspect emphasized more than the racism. (In other words, they're more hostile to mutants with "sub-par" powers than to genotypical humans who aren't currently standing in their way.)
• Organic Technology: Victoria loves this stuff.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: wererats are actually small humanoid urban fey who can shapeshift into rats.
• Perky Female Minion: Pre-Heel–Face Turn Daemonette and Chameleon fill this niche for Prodigium. Hellcat is occasionally a more violent version when she's on a team.
  • Sonia inverts this, as the snarky, undemonstrative female assistant to a hyperactive Cloudcuckoolander.
• Person as Verb: Doctor Termena at one point refers to Eschenbach "get[ting] his Mengele on."
  • "John Galting" is also used as a term for a Character Filibuster.
• Playing with Syringes: involved in Tomo, Lazarus, and Elisa's backstories, to various extents.
• Power Nullifier: a few martial artists (notably Daemonette) can temporarily disable some superhuman (mutant or otherwise) powers by hitting Pressure Points. Efforts by various Sinister Secret Agencies™ to turn this into a permanent depowering process have failed, but there has been some progress in treating Power Incontinence with glorified acupressure bracelets.
• Prehistoric Monster: averted. None of the species Victoria recreates are dangerous to humans (because Victoria, for all her Mad Scientist tendencies, wouldn't make something she considered likely to eat her), and some of them, like Archie, are sort of cute.
• Pride Parade: mutants eventually get one. The official Mutant Pride symbol is a neon green double helix.
• Proud Merchant Race: the Meliai, a race of (relatively) friendly alien Bee People.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: according to Lazarus, getting someone to have sex with you through implied threats of violence makes you scum, but getting someone to do your paperwork and boring chores this way is amusingly sociopathic.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: averted, mostly in the areas of assistive technology, alternative energy, and space exploration.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Ada Eisenhardt's grandfather. Ada mentions that prematurely graying hair and being good at making things out of metal both run in her family.
• Rule 34: mutant porn exists in-universe.
• Shout-Out: Matt Murdock and Terezi Pyrope make a cameo appearance as blind pre-law students in "When Shoshannah Met Galatea."

• The Social Darwinist: Lebensborn and the Hand of Ares, in different ways.
• The Sociopath: Alexa Lestrange and Lucy Fraser.
  • Lazarus is sometimes referred to as such, but he is capable of meaningful emotional attachments and, on occasion, remorse. He's just impulsive, "morally confused," and uncomfortably comfortable with violence.
  • Possibly Loki, as well, although her tendencies in this direction are due more to being raised to be a Double Reverse Quadruple Agent than any innate predisposition.
• Spirit World: the Astral Realms, which are oddly like a psychically-accessible version of Second Life, with less loading and porn.
• Spy Drama: many of Loki's adventures. Stale Beer-flavored in terms of the level of cynicism, but served in a martini glass, with a twist of lime and a shot of absinthe.
  • When other major characters get in on the action, the tone is generally mildly hallucinogenic Dirty Martini.
• Squishy Wizard: most telepaths, compared to other mutants and DPIs. They're not necessarily any squishier than a baseline genotypical human, but telepaths' Required Secondary Powers don't normally give them any additional physical resiliency, telepathy is useless at blocking most kinds of physical damage, and mind-reading isn't very good exercise.

• Superpower Lottery: the Alchemist can control matter at an atomic level (the source of her name), as well as teleport, completely control her physical form, slow down or speed up her perception of time, and survive in a vacuum. She's capable of turning the world's nuclear arsenal into cotton candy. (And has.)
  • On a slightly more down to earth level, Galatea Xiao and Victoria Paracelsus. Grimoire has the potential, particularly if she ever learns to make constructs from scratch.
• Superpowerful Genetics: mutants!
• Sweet Tooth: the Meliai, due to being descendants of nectar-drinking insects.
  • Luna, which may have something to do with her lepidopteran traits.
  • Genius Sweet Tooth: Galatea Xiao, and many other telepaths. Telepathy burns a lot of glucose.
• They Would Cut You Up: is a legitimate concern for mutants in some circumstances.
• Time Travel: involved in Kensei's backstory, and is responsible for Valkyrie II's alternate timeline.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomo and Shoshi, respectively. Although Tomo and almost any other woman in the cast with whom she has significant interactions could count.
  • Among the students at the Academy, fraternal twins Swift (super-speedster athlete) and Grimoire (psychic bookworm).
• Touched by Vorlons: many non-mutant supers got their abilities through contact with some kind of powerful mystical being or alien.
• Trans Equals Gay: Victoria ran afoul of this assumption when she was young, and her dad saw his "son"'s feminine tendencies as the reason to make a Cure Your Gays attempt. Never mind that Victoria's never actually been romantically interested in guys.
• Ugly Cute: in-universe, this trope winds up biting Concerned Citizens for Genetic Purity in the ass. Their slideshow of visibly mutated children (intended as a "this is what your grandkids could look like if the mutant threat isn't contained" scare tactic) sets their audience awwwing instead.
  • Archie◊, Prodigium's reconstructed-pterosaur mascot.
  • Lucy Kropotkin and her fellow gorilla-hybrids.
• Unfortunate Implications: in-universe, merfolk, therianthropes, and superpowered mutant humans are real, which creates some potentially problematic aspects to certain speculative fiction tropes that aren't an issue in our universe.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Shoshi, Khadijah, and Emmanuelle might attract attention from people who aren't used to them, but people seem surprisingly blase about Lazarus running around in a full-body ninja mummy outfit and carrying a dojo's worth of pointy objects.
• Unwanted False Faith: there is a small cult that worships the Alchemist, with no encouragement from her.
• Urban Fantasy: most arcs focusing on Rosewood Investigations.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: in-universe, Elfen Lied is commonly seen as some kind of political commentary on "the mutant problem," although there's no definitive conclusion as to what point the creators were trying to make.
• World of Snark: the official sport of this universe seems to be "banter."
• World War II: involved in the backstories of Miss Victory, Iron Seraph, and Siegfried Lorenz.
• Write Who You Know: Jake and Anders were loosely inspired by two of the author's male friends.