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Darth Wiki / Replay Value Universe

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The Replay Value AU RP was a slice-of-life roleplay set in an existential horror setting. It was based around the Sburb Glitch FAQ written by GodsGiftToGrinds (also known as grindinglyGodliest ICly). In this world, Sburb's Ultimate Reward is broken - it just kicks people into another session of Sburb, over and over and over again until they die. The players of this buggy, horrifying version of Sburb, known as Replayers, keep themselves going by making connections to each other through servers in the Ring. Some of these servers have IRC channels, and that's where most of Replay Value AU took place...

Nothing here is spoiler-tagged because there's no archive to go through; this is just a description of a setting. (In fact, this TV Tropes page was the documentation of the setting for most of RV AU's existence.)

Replay Value has had many iterations. An attempt at a forum rapidly diverged from an IRC channel established to coordinate events on said forum. The original Replay Value AU, held in a small set of IRC channels, eventually failed. There was an attempt at a reboot. Many of the people from the original Replay Value eventually set up shop in a Discord chat, and there is a low-key character-focused roleplay there. There is an uncurated AO3 tag. A particularly prolific Replay Value AU writer is writing a conversion of classic (pre-reboot) Replay Value AU to a Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine campaign and setting fan-supplement, called A User's Guide to the Apocalypse. And there is now a new iteration of the forum. An attempt to straighten out the resulting Continuity Snarl is found here.

Characters

    open/close all folders 

     Founders 

Cole (tungstenTinkerer)

tungstenTinkerer: When I say that I will submit this to the Sage HQ I don't mean this people actually will care about whether you are ok or not. I mean they will want to solve the problem because it /challenges/ them.
tungstenTinkerer PMs ventricularPipefitter: (unspoken implication: and I am totally a member of the Sage HQ lol) - #ultimatereward 9/10

Native Sage of Mist.

  • Action Survivor: Started like this and evolved into:
  • Badass Bookworm: One of the most brilliant Replayers and an expert Mist Player.
  • Fantastically Indifferent: Does this from time to time. It's been generally speaking observed that his empathy could use some improvement.
  • Nothing but Skin and Bones: Cole is thin as a rail, even if he eats regularly. The effect is somewhat made more evident by his disconcerting height (a good 6'9'')
  • Orphanage of Love: Despite being raised by several dozen scientists in lieu of a parent, he was not mistreated and turned out surprisingly well.
  • Pulling Themselves Together: Mist defensive powers work this way. When Cole shatters his "pieces" are usually bolts, nuts, screws and other small stuff made of metal. Puns ensue.
    <specificNihilism> after all
    <specificNihilism> you are nuts
    <tungstenTinkerer> Damn right I am
    <tungstenTinkerer> There is nobody as nuts as me
    <specificNihilism> you are the nuttiest - #ultimatereward 9/10
  • Power of Rock: He has a preference to giving the Secret Consort the tools needed to become a Secret Rocker, and then rocking out on the underlings.
  • Shapeshifter: Mist powers manifest as this. In effect, to the point where he will sometimes forget he is not the person (or thing) he is shapeshifting as.
  • Stuff Blowing Up
    <tungstenTinkerer> Your computing devices all suck
    <tungstenTinkerer> I have an explodoputer
    <tungstenTinkerer> it's a computer that is also an explosion - #ultimatereward 9/10
  • The Nicknamer: A Mist trait; everyone gets a nickname. (Including himself, "Cogs".)

Myra LeJean (enturbulatedOccupation)

ventricularPipefitter: "Didn't put her on a pedestal."
ventricularPipefitter: "She. She. Myra—" He stops. Composes himself. Continues with careful pronounciation on every word. "Myra LeJean was a god-damn, Skaia-blessed, genius. There was no way around amazement at what she could accomplish. But I didn't." - #reminisce 8/20

A native Waste of Mind and Posthumous Character, Myra LeJean began her Sburb career as a teenage freedom fighter/militant in a 20 Minutes in the Future New York City.

Ross Eberhardt (ventricularPipefitter)

"I have this exasperatingly stupid habit where someone crawls up inside my skull and says, 'Hey, Ross, you're going to care about my well-being,' and it's got a nasty habit of happening for only the most desperate of sessions, the loneliest of players, and the most dire of straits. [...] And my track record, when this happens, is inexplicably less shitty than it should be. So let's keep talking while I find a better reason [for you to live] than 'Ross Eberhardt has decided you're not going to die.'" - ventricularPipefitter, #ultimatereward 9/1

A native Smith of Heart, old veteran, and inexplicably the most socially adept of the Founders.

Skye Ringling (specificNihilism)

"spen h has pl yed tw nty even ses ions of [s urb]
rol ed [v ] for a fair fract on of them
[t e nul ] do sn't seem to le ve her now" - specificNihilism

Native Grace of Void. A (generally) sweet-hearted, sweet-tempered woman, Skye Ringling often acts as the conscience of SBURB.org. She works to keep her chatroom civil, safe, and welcoming, so anyone can feel comfortable there. Currently on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge out in the Ring as a Speaker to avenge her husband's murder.

  • Accidental Pun: Her last name, Ringling, was chosen because of the sounds. It can alternatively be interpreted as "of the Ring" or "little Ring". With her long-running corruption problem...
  • The Anti-Nihilist: Notably in making sure that no one is alone.
  • Badass Adorable
  • Being Evil Sucks: She does not enjoy her time as a Speaker, if her conversations with Ross are any indication....
  • Beware the Nice Ones / Beware the Quiet Ones: You wouldn't like Skye when she's angry. Even her sad disappointment makes those close to her cringe, much less her fury.
  • Black Speech: Broodfester.
  • Cooldown Hug: Gives and receives these on a regular basis, due to the corruption-thwarting properties of hugs.
  • Curtains Match the Window: Black hair, black eyes.
  • The Dead Have Names: The "memorizes all their names" variant, judging by the memorial thread she uses on the Forums.
  • Deal with the Devil: She asked James for the power she needed to take care of Heries. She got it - at great cost.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: One of her two strife specibi is fistKind.
  • Happily Married: To Mornei Eoreum.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Justified, in that the Void Berserk Trigger, [All You Do Not Know], functions in exactly this manner. She only half-remembers the barest of snippets from her pre-game life and has months' worth of memories that simply don't exist in some sessions.
  • Long-Lost Relative: Ectobiologically Ross's genetic mother.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Or at least barrel full-bore into corruption.
  • Mama Bear / Berserk Button: Especially to Void Players or her adoptive children. Hurt them and she will make you suffer.
  • Monochromatic Eyes: The rare black-eyed heroic example.
  • Monster Is a Mommy: An interesting case; as a Speaker, Skye's rampages actually have a reason: whenever someone starts shooting at her, or otherwise attacking her while she's in transit, they invoke her wrath because Shrike is clinging to her at all times. Mama Bear instincts kick in and she immediately works to keep her child safe... in the most extreme manner possible.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: In-Universe; her smile emoticon is accompanied by this, according to the other Players
    specificNihilism: uwu
    * tandemCruficix has uploaded "anotherspenihcutesound.mp3" to the memo (#replaystuck 8-14)
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Except for a few people. More accurately, it's only "Called by her nickname".
  • Orphean Rescue: Raided the bubbles and, through exploiting a Doom Cataclysm, restored life not only to her husband Mornei, but also to her two adopted daughters, Sibica and Timris, and a handful of other dreaming dead.
  • Parental Substitute / Happily Adopted: Adopted Cyma, Mareya/Maria, and Shrike and plays Team Mom to the Cataclysm and Void players. Generally mothers all the "little ones", or especially young or new replayers.
  • Power of the Void: Void Powers manifest as this. Being that she's one of the most veteran Void replayers around, she's very effective. This does not, in fact, make her immune to the influences of the Ring.
  • Sleepwalking: Just ask Ross and Violet what they had to do to keep her on Derse or in the Pondskipper. Or Cyma and Epi, when they found her wandering dreamself.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: screamingNothing.
  • Team Mom
  • Third-Person Person: It is implied that her first-session cataclysm involved (among other things) wiping out her ability to use first-person pronouns.
  • Trauma Conga Line: For a while she went through one: First, she had a session with first-session kids that was overrun by her Saccharine Doppelganger. During that session, her sister-in-disaster Myra announced her suicide through her Video Will, along with Skye accidentally helping a serial murderess and being tormented by her. Rocky interpersonal problems between the Founders didn't help, either. After that, she was a Muse of Space and had to live with cripplingly painful headaches because of the World. While she had a Hope Spot in her marriage to Mornei, things took a turn for the worse less than a month later when he was murdered by the same PK who had been tormenting her. She finally crossed the Despair Event Horizon when she realized that no one was going to be able to stop Heries, because she was preserved by the alpha timeline.
    • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Of course, most people don't run to James when they finally give in to despair. She's already massacred an entire session, and is slated to continue her rampage until Heries is no longer a threat. It's the Only Way.
  • You Are Not Alone: It has become Spenih's life goal to make sure that no other Replayer feels unloved or isolated.
  • You Are Worth Hell: The other Founders, Mornei, and her children.

Vitt Maria Bokun (genesisArtificer)

genesisArtificer: many World problems could be fixed with a well placed dinosaur

Native Seer of Space

Violet Faulkner (artisticHourglass)

Native Witch of Void, the only Founder who didn't reroll her native Mythological Role.

  • Genki Girl: Because she has all the maturity of the Muse and can talk to Echidna. Otherwise, she would be insane from isolation.
    • There is now a robot toddler companion with long hair and princess curls. Named Conan.
  • Mission Control
  • Scars Are Forever: Her face is deeply scarred. Though theoretically there would be the possibility of removing them, she's kept them anyway.
  • Take a Third Option: You either play the game, or you die. Or, if you're Vi, you Take A Third Option and tend the servers.
  • Time Master: Time Powers manifest as this.

     Dove's Characters 

Zeimah Dalyce / Cyma Dalyce (patchworkDoll)

An ectobiological hybrid that came out of a mixed native session, she's a Native Mage of Time who has struggled to fix her hybrid status because of SBURB's reaction to it. She has, slowly, begun building a group of her own from people she's met, and is learning how to become an adult.

  • Allergic to Evil: Due to an incident during her first session, she now gets "ear-bleedy" whenever she's exposed to more than a few words of broodfester or angeltongue, whether written or spoken.
  • Blessed with Suck: She's a human-troll hybrid...who rarely looks the way she wants to, experiences uncontrollable appearance shifts that can affect what's safe for her to eat and how she percieves the world, and occasionally even loses parts of her body that she's quite firmly attached to. And due to her text colour, she doesn't even get cool psychic powers out of it.
  • Cultural Cringe: The fact that she's a hybrid would have gotten her killed, back in the Alternian Empire. She's not a big fan of the hemospectrum, or most of the Alternian way of life, as a result.
  • Freakiness Shame: Cyma rarely ever looked "normal" for either species and is painfully aware of it. As much as she keept getting told that she looked fine just the way she was, she wanted nothing more than to be able to "fix" whatever was causing her appearance to keep shifting around like this.
    • Freaky Is Cool: Probably a part of why others find her attractive. It did not significantly help her self-esteem.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Unwillingly, and it causes her a lot of problems. Among other things, the game does *not* like that it can't slot her neatly into one species and will shuffle her genetics around from one session to the next in its efforts to do so. Her appearance - and sometimes her gender - is a lot more fluid than she'd like and she's rarely ever happy with what she sees in the mirror. She's also keenly aware that she wouldn't even exist if it weren't for ectobiology. While the appearance issues have been fixed, she's still a hybrid and this still causes problems such as Replay Flu lingering longer with her than it does for others - and her body working as a vector to spread illness from humans to trolls and vice versa.
  • I Am Not Pretty: She will insist this until she's blue (or purple) in the face. Tossing psybuffs at her will make her stop...at least until it wears off.
    • She's getting better about this, now that her appearance has been stabilized in a form she's happy with.
  • Impossibly Tacky Clothes / I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: She's a sweet girl, really, but she had no sense of style or taste when she initially entered the game. Her idea of "stylish" involved unlimited access to a Bedazzler and far too much embroidery.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Or at least as close as anyone can get in the Game. She's sure she'd be much happier if she could just get her species issue to resolve itself in a manner that keeps her from bouncing all over the place. This is probably a reason why the game assigned her the Mage Class.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Needlekind and fankind are her preferred weapons.
  • Orphan's Ordeal: Not that any other Replayer *isn't* an orphan.
  • Precocious Crush: She's more than willing to flirt back with Nagdra when he's around, not to mention getting very upset when people call him creepy.
  • Raised by Wolves: Her lusus was a direwolf. She has nothing but fond memories of "direwolfmom".
  • Riddle Me This: Her native class is Mage. She solved the "cannot spit it out" issue by using annoying riddles.
  • Time Master: Her native Aspect.

Bethany Roseclere (victorianaRegnant)

A young woman from a world where colour theory is far more important than in our world. A modestly successful child actress and model, currently employed as a Lady Companion to The White. Most notable for her employment and her being a "truehue" - that is, her eyes are actually the colour she's supposed to be most aligned with. As a Dark Red, she is supposed to embody Maturity.
     Karrin Blue‘s Characters 

Adhara Bayer (blueEpsilon)

Nemain Feanan (riastradSidhe)

Iridie Arazir (entanglingPoise)

Melevi Arazir (arabesqueFatality)

     Keleviel's Characters 

Khavah Kirbir (guillotineGladiator)

Laelah Kirbir (tacitTenacity)

  • Big Guy: She's a large woman, tall and muscular. She's the one who did the heavy lifting for server construction
  • Gentle Giant
  • Genius Bruiser: A tall woman, with noticeable muscles...who also coded, at least in part, the server that the setting mostly takes place on, as well as heading its repair
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Her weapon of choice
  • Nice Girl: An honestly cheerful and friendly woman who just wants everyone to get along
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Khavah's blue. While she isn't very boisterous or wild, she's a lot more extroverted, people-oriented, and expressive than Khavah is.
  • Statuesque Stunner: She's an adult troll, who stands at six foot six.
  • Team Mom: For the Founders, at the very least. She frets over all of them and offers to solve disputes as needed

"Narath" (narqouisAthymia)

NA: I don't trust people.
NA: Period

Aesura Imilic (peerlessPitfighter)

     Whilim's Characters 

Snaplock Sunblood / Lanian Oniare (snaplockSunblood)

A proud and casually violent yellowblood warlord and native Muse of Time.

Arsonist (arsonIst)

A redblooded, low-ranking member of Snaplock's horde and native Bard of Space. Is a mild pyrokinetic, but most people just assume he's really good at setting fires.
  • Dumb Is Good: Subverted. He seems innocent and harmless at first, but then he'll wonder out loud about raiding Consort villages or something equally cruel.
  • Never Learned to Read: Solved with speech-to-text software.
  • Playing with Fire: To a very mild extent. He never even realized he had powers, instead assuming he was just talented and starting and keeping a fire going.
  • Pyromaniac: Why else would he have chosen that name?
  • Wild Child: As a child, was exiled from his hometown for arson. He and his lusus lived wild for sweeps before Snaplock recruited him.

Eminence Glasseye (eminenceGlasseye)

The greenblood ruler of a wealthy coastal city-state and native Page of Mind. Owned a sizeable collection of seadwellers before the game killed most of them. He's being really hard to trope so if you can think of any that actually work for him please add them in or at least bring it up in the chat so I know what to do.

  • Blue Blood: Notably, considering he's a troll, not literally.
  • Decadent Court: Is quite experienced in navigating these.

Icemount (eminenceGlasseye)

A seadweller in Glasseye's collection. Forcefully replaced Arsonist as the Bard of Space as part of a Denizen deal and now has the dubious distinction of being the oldest player.

Quotes

    Quotes 

RV Classic

18:31 Krat wait
18:31 Krat did something
18:31 Krat like
18:31 Krat actually, unqualified good happen?
18:31 mislaidLullaby Yes
18:31 Krat i'm scared
18:31 Zuki Ahahahaa
18:31 Krat I want it to be good but you've hurt me before, RV
-Krat, #replayvalue

TENTHE!
TACT!
-Far too many people

RV Chuubo's

“I will spare you, on one condition. You will raise no hand against me, and the same for any child of your blood. Promise me this.”
“You know I cannot promise that.”
The Deathless Queen’s expression twisted up into either a smile or a snarl, I couldn’t tell which. “Then I will have to kill you.”
I looked her in the eyes. “The prophecy will not help you. I would like to see you try.”

The Infinite Castle, dryadTornado (from the A User's Guide book)

YMMV

    YMMV 

The Game

  • Nightmare Fuel: Being that this universe involves the Sgames, there's going to be plenty of this.
    • Just about anyone can agree that both corruption sources are this.
      • The Angels' Assimilation Plot-like tendencies are horrifying, not to mention the Body Horror that characters like Rick (majesticInstability) have suffered while under the influence of the Host.
      • That an Other can turn the kind-hearted, fairly-gentle Skye into a mass-murdering Speaker isn't exactly fun, either.
    • Saccharine Doppelgangers are walking versions of this. There are people who still refuse to talk or think about their encounters with sugarplumNonplussed - and it still has a terrible legacy out-of-character.
    • Brainwashing, Torture, and the World of Sburb: in which Myra LeJean explains how, exactly, Sburb is set up as a brainwashing system.

RV Classic

  • Broken Base: Due to many reasons, the classic form of RV fell prey to toxicity, cliquishness and there was a major falling out over some pretty controversial decisions and events. The roleplay became a shell of itself for the brief time it was rebooted, becoming increasingly abandoned. While there were many fingers pointed, in the end everyone had a hand in it getting as bad as it got, ranging from untreated mental illness, dealing with terrible home situation, jealousy, using the roleplay as an outlet for trauma and other such not healthy things for roleplay. This troper just hopes that everyone was able to move on and better their lives.
  • Heartwarming Moments: Being that the roleplay heavily focuses on character interactions, these are inevitable and highly prized.
    • The Founders, as the core of the community, have been a tightly-knit family since their initial voyage into the Ring. Through thick and thin, they've kept each other together. Simply watching three or more of them interact together on a good day can give anyone warm fuzzies, much less when they band together to support a member who's struggling.

A User's Guide to the Apocalypse (RV Chuubo's)

  • Anvilicious: You can't go twenty pages in the book without bumping into a discussion of how the setting is an Allegory for child abuse. The author wrote it this way because there are few other resources or narratives about how to survive abuse while it is happening to you.
    "Replayers are an itinerant, persecuted culture: they’re told that they implicitly approve of their own abuse, and at the same time they know that this abuse is institutionalized and supported by ancient law. The only thing that keeps them sane is to connect to other people, over the Internet - and though the Replayer internet is an eternal font of drama and frivolities, it is still what keeps them sane.
    That isn’t even a metaphor. That’s literally what happened [to me]."
    — the afterword
  • Memetic Mutation: There's a list of suggested Replayer memes to use, such as a fifteen-bottle set of gourmet grubsauce, or the wrist-mounted alchemiter, or throwing ice cubes into the Forge, or putting genetic material that is not paradox slime into the ectobiology machines...

Awesome Music:

Among music used in storytelling events, characters themselves have fantastic soundtracks and playlists. Spotlight your favorites here.

Examples (split up by medium):

     The Game 
  • Adventure-Friendly World: Sburb, by design and definition, is designed to facilitate a Coming of Age Story.
  • Alternate Timeline: Splinter timelines. Of course, Splinter timelines are also *doomed* timelines by default. No one except the Time player is likely to emerge from them in one piece, and not even the Time player will survive for very long.
  • Artificial Limbs: Fairly common. Most are troll biotech.
  • Black Speech:
  • Break the Cutie: Any new player is going to be broken, *hard*, by the time they hit their second session - if not sooner.
  • But Thou Must!: Many of the game's cruelest moments are forced on the player with no alternative or active punishment for resisting. The Denizen stands out as the prime example.
  • Chaos Architecture: The Magicant's layout does not make physical sense, and the doors randomly reshuffle what rooms they point to.
  • Comfort Food: Replayers do not, technically, need to eat (the 'food' Sprites generate when healing their players, as well as the light produced by Crystalanths, is sufficient to both heal and take care of hunger) but they do so anyways. Real food that tastes good is highly prized by them, as a result.
  • Continuity Drift: From the original forums, which were considered entirely non-canon for the reboot.
  • Cooldown Hug: Used often and to great effect; the cure of choice for many ailments.
  • The Corruption: Angels and Others and Saccharine Doppelgangers, oh my!
  • Crapsack World: What SBURB actually is, although it manages to pass as a Crapsaccharine World on good days.
    "Kids and fun."
  • Crazy-Prepared: Always have a pillow/towel with you. And at least five computers. Otherwise you're the worst kind of Sboob.
  • Culture Clash: Trolls and humans (never mind all the other species that show up) have as many rough patches as they do spots where the two get along quite well.
  • Deal with the Devil:
    • Bargaining with the Beast is a downplayed example - while it is technically a deal that usually requires you to trade something important in response, it is part of the Game itself and often helps make one's session winnable.
    • Also, Horrorterror deals, which play this trope straight.
  • Dead Person Conversation: Dreambubbles.
  • Death Is Cheap: Between godtier, dreamselves, and everything else, you're not likely to stay down for long when you die.
    • Though Killed Off for Real is also a frequent occurrence and one they do have to deal with, and in theory Anyone Can Die. Players will generally know within a day or two whether a death was permanent or not, and the only method of getting back someone who's truly dead is inherently temporary.
  • Death Is Dramatic: In the case of God Tiers and their conditional immortality.
  • Decapitation Required: Decapitation results in an instant permadeath. Nine times out of ten, anyways.
  • Deus Angst Machina: The entirety of Sburb.
  • Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: For Horrorterror deals, in some cases. (At least one instance of dealing with P'Shorshasa in RV Classic has actually involved having tea with her.)
  • Divided We Fall: Working with other Replayers and being very clear about what's going on is a big deal. The game will kill you if you try to go it alone.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: As in Homestuck, Prospit dreamers can see the future in the clouds of Skaia.
  • Due to the Dead: Death may be cheap, but sometimes it's permanent. When that happens, Replayers find ways of grieving. Due to the nature of their world, however, there is rarely anything officially organized nor is there any actually formalized ritual to go by.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
    • The Others, also known as the Horrorterrors.
    • And the Angels.
    • There are some arguments that Sburb itself might qualify.
  • Eldritch Location: The Furthest Ring's space and time are twisted and warped.
  • Everything Is Online: Nearly all game constructs can be hacked using a sprite pendant, session CD, or other gamebreaking tricks. Doing so is rarely a good idea, however, unless you're trying to fix something that was already broken - as in, making your session unwinnable - to begin with.
  • Exact Words: When you make a Horrorterror deal, make sure to pay very careful attention to the wording...
  • Exotic Weapon Supremacy: The weirder and more oddly specific a 'kind is, the more damage it seems to do. Not that this stops jokerkind from being considered OP in some circles.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: When you're faced with death daily, there's no shortage of situations in which to face death together.
  • Genre Savvy: Necessary prerequisite for long-term survival.
  • Good Bad Bugs: In-Universe, finding bugs in Sburb that can be exploited for players' benefit is a popular hobby.
  • Harmful to Minors: First-time players are most likely to be teens and pre-teens. The Game will force them to kill underlings...and PKers...and maybe their friends, too, if they're unlucky enough to roll a Cataclysm class. When they allow themselves to think about it, the older vets are horrified by the fact that this thing gets aimed at children.
  • Heroic BSoD: Every Replayer's been through at least one of these.
    "Sburb Mental Disorder: Aggrievance. Also known as "I have enough of this stupid game just leave me alone". Maybe with a touch of "Why don't you just go and win this pointless session while I just stand there and weep forever". [...] "It usually stems from emotional trauma or from a minor disorder that has been left unchecked for too long." - Sburb Glitch FAQ Chapter 14
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Heroic deaths are permanent, according to Skaia.
  • Heroic Safe Mode: Many Replayers spend increasing amounts of time stuck in survival mode, to the point where it becomes normal. It's perceived as "better" than BSODing or slipping into a Berserk Trigger, but it has its own problems.
  • Hero Killer:
    • Player killers, most of whom are Ax-Crazy.
    • Several classes - most notably the cataclysm classes - have an event coded into their myth arc which has a very high chance of causing them to kill one or even several coplayers, though these are generally held to be "not their fault".
  • Hive Mind: The Angels. They can bring Players into it, too.
  • Humanoid Aliens:
    • Hobs are fur-covered dinosaurs, "like a squirrel crossed with a troodon". Their hat is that they live in clans and, when displaced from them (such as when forced to play Sburb), will build themselves another clan.
    • Birdbros are Funny Animals that are mostly avian in shape. They have wings instead of arms, with a claw on each wing-end like a bat's. They have short, "chirpy" names and are very likely to be Conspiracy Theorists.
  • Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul
    • Heroic version: "Psybuffs" can be used to alleviate some game-trauma. This doesn't substitute for a real psychological therapy.
    • Those thoroughly corrupted by the Angels will also often seem quite "happy", and attempt to spread this "happiness".
  • Improbable Weapon User: Replayers tend to use weird weaponry with a preference for what works.
  • It Gets Easier: Yes, your second Denizen is going to be easier than your first. Yes, you will have to kill Player Killers before they kill you. That's just how it works. There is no veteran who has not killed sentients in order to survive. And that's before you start getting into the whole "are imps and other underlings intelligent" argument.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: The vast majority of veterans. The morally sound veterans, that is.
  • Light Is Not Good: The Angels. But the Others are almost as dangerous.
  • Long-Distance Relationship: Inevitable, over the longer term.
  • Made of Explodium: Computers explode. All the time. This is Discussed in the Chuubo's sourcebook; a guest writer says that this is why you shouldn't ever implant computers.
  • Magic Music: If you don't already know an instrument or have some basic skill at singing, you're going to have to pick it up and fast if you want to use fraymotifs and player commands.
  • Meaningful Name: Pesterchum/Trollian handles usually are pretty meaningful. Some trolls have names with meaning as well.
    • A troll's eight-eight is always intended to be meaningful.
  • The Most Dangerous Video Game: The premise. Unfortunately for those who try to Win to Exit, the Door is broken.
  • Multi-Mook Melee: The mad dash to the first Gate is this.
  • Non-Linear Character:
    • Unlike in Homestuck, this is mostly averted, thanks to timetrav encryption (which enforces linearity of communication).
    • Time players have the ability to rewind and skip around in their timelines, creating both stable and unstable time loops. Their time shenanigans usually stay quarantined to the sessions they're in, though.
  • Older Than They Look:
    • Everyone who isn't still in the process of aging out of the awkward "puberty" stage does not, physically, get much older than "mid-to-late twenties", between Life players, dreamself revivals, and god-tiering. This is at least partially because physically older players have a higher tendency to get killed "dramatically" by the Game.
    • Some aliens live a lot longer (and age much slower) than humans do.
    • Averted if you have been Doom for long enough; god-tier Doom players age at the normal rate, unlike every other god-tier.
  • Organic Technology: As in Homestuck itself, this is the aesthetic of most Alternian technology.
  • Orphan's Ordeal: Every Replayer has lost their guardian or lusus. It's a frequent topic of conversation.
  • Our Souls Are Different: The "Shiny" that Heart Players can manipulate is present in every Player, being, object, or game abstraction. The only known exception is Saccharine Doppelgangers.
  • People Jars: You can find these in the Veil Labs holding carapace warriors.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: Some data points of the fic were changed to suit roleplay and to balance things.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Played With, with trolls. Many troll replayers are glad that the game freed them from their oppressive, martial-focused civilisation. Some, however, still believe in the ideas preached by the Empire.
  • Quest Giver: Consorts are the "unmarked so you will need to talk to everyone" version. Players tend to find ways of marking the consorts who give quests, to make it easier on themselves when it comes time to turn them in.
  • Room Full of Crazy: Replayees will often have the most bizarre things written on their walls...
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Alternian and Beforan trolls, as in Homestuck.
  • Seen It All: Played with. The longer you are in the game, the less things will suprise you. However, there still are situations that leave even the most experienced veteran slack-jawed.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Angels are inside the Underworld, sealed behind indestructible bedrock. Until you go through the quest chain to open the Underworld.
  • Sentient Cosmic Force: Whisperings all have agendas and personalities, although they are very subtle.
  • Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: Varies wildly, but contains a darker blend of comedy/horror than in Homestuck.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: The favored speech pattern of most intelligent characters in this world, as inherited from Homestuck proper.
  • Speak of the Devil: There are some horrorterrors, such as P'shorshasa in RV Classic, that will come to the memo when their name is spoken. Less sinisterly, there are many players who have pings set up that will alert them when their names or handles are mentioned.
  • Starfish Aliens:
    • The Angels, as in one of their inspirations.
    • Hoppers/hoofdogs are an Sburb-playing species that are vaguely dog-shaped, with hooves on their back feet. They communicate almost exclusively through telepathy, which stunted the development of their language - when they try to write or speak, they use the word "thing" in place of almost every noun, which makes it very difficult to communicate with them.
    • The book speculates that other Starfish Aliens could have their own versions of Sburb, with incomprehensible goals and game mechanics.
  • The Stars Are Going Out: Inverted. The end of the session, and encroaching session decay, is signaled by stars appearing - instead of stars, they're actually Horrorterror eyes.
  • Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Averted. SGAMEs generally don't warn for truly dangerous situations, and one can meander into an Atomyk Ebonpyre with almost no health. Played straight with pre-session situation - a player is destined to start the game, and circumstances will ensure they would survive. Then again, they don't arrange for survival in one piece, and some players that try to exploit the probability are in for a nasty shock.
  • Technicolor Eyes: Eye color, matches text color, matches player pendant and crystalanth color.
  • The Multiverse: Countless Earths, slightly less countless Alternias, and a smattering of other alien species.
  • Total Party Kill: Many veterans have been the Sole Survivor of a sessionwipe.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The players have to scrape and struggle for every scrap of information about big things like the setting, the game's rules, etc, and their knowledge is both limited and imperfect. Unless they want to make a Deal with the Devil for knowledge, of course.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: In the RP's canon, trolls are allergic to cinnamon.
  • Weirdness Censor: Replayers end up replacing other players who failed. This means that people who do not fit the description of the replaced individuals end up needing to fill their shoes. To facilitate this, apparently no one notices the fact that someone's teen son has been replaced by an adult alien woman.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: After you've been replaying long enough, nothing about the Game is surprising anymore. Giant monster-thing that looms over you and insults you? Normal. Wacky zany critters that tell you to behold their robes? Whatever. Bashing imps' heads in with a fancy santa? Yawn.
  • You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The Others. It fits their general Lovecraftian-horror aesthetic.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: The Reckoning will always happen and the game will always destroy the civilization that's reigning on the planet the players enter from.

     Individual Classpects 

Certain Classes and Aspects have their own Elemental Powers and associated tropes.

Rain

Space

Time

  • Alternate Timeline: Splinter timelines, by default. Of course, Splinter timelines are also *doomed* timelines by default. No one except the Time player is likely to emerge from them in one piece, and not even the Time player will survive for very long.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: There are many timelines. Only one is Alpha.
  • Exposition Beam: The Time player can touch one of their doomedselves (dead or otherwise) to get the memories of what happened in the Splinter timeline.
  • My Skull Runneth Over: What happens if you use certain Time abilities to acquire memories from a Splinter timeline without the psybuffs needed to cope with them. It's why Mist players are strongly discouraged from fogging their Time players or "samming" Time abilities.
  • Non-Linear Character: Time players don't *do* linearity. Even if they start out wanting to, the game makes it so that they have to do loops and shenanigans in order to make sure things work out 0kay (or as 0kay as anything gets in this game).
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Time players get a passive ability that allows them to get the memories of their deceased doomed selves. This includes the memories of how the doomed self died.
  • Retroactive Preparation
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: One of the Time player's Duties, if things go badly. Deliberately engaging in behaviour that causes Splinter timelines is will make them extremely displeased with you; some Time players have been known to react by tossing timecorpses at the offender until he or she knocks it off.
  • Stable Time Loops
  • Time Master: Well, duh.
  • Time Stands Still: An endgame ability.
  • You Already Changed the Past
  • You Cannot Change The Future

     RV Classic 

  • Aerith and Bob: By necessity, given so many players. Exacerbated further by troll names.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Zeimah, through a Deal with P'Shorshasa caused the details of everything Benedict did - and details about Ben himself - to become forgotten and blurred. This means that no one in the session he died in clearly recalls him, and the effect is rigged so that it slowly spreads and makes sure that everyone eventually forgets Benedict.
  • Creating Life Is Bad: Thinking about getting pregnant (or otherwise acquiring children of your blood) will get you screamed at by most of the community for being sadistic.
  • Healing Potion: ballisticSpectacle, in tandem with integratedInfiltrator, came up with lifeshakes (as well as a whole host of ghost-imaged goodies for Replayers to eat). These items have saved lives, since the only other reliable means of healing one's self is to go to a Crystalanth or appeal to one's Sprite (which has usually vanished a couple months into the game (and generally can't get down to your land anyways)).
  • Mana Potion: Pluckshakes, created by the same people who made Lifeshakes. Pluck regenerates slowly, so this is very valuable.
  • Misery Poker: A favorite pastime.
  • Power of Trust: Major heartwarming moments, including the time a Player was reclaimed from Angels by their moirail.
  • Rule of Empathy: Those who argue for Heries ICly will often conveniently gloss over her high body count, since many of the ones she killed weren't part of the Sburb.org community.
  • Sacrificial Lion: Stan, twenty-seven session veteran, Myra's best friend, and died a Death by Despair (well, a death by having cratered his roleplay coefficient, which is very closely linked to stats effectiveness but also emotions). Not originally brought in to demonstrate that Anyone Can Die.
  • Scandalgate: The cracking open of the Seer Network (courtesy of epinephrineElectrified leaking their entire archives) was immediately dubbed Seergate by everyone else.
  • World of Snark: Too many examples to cite on this page.

     A User's Guide to the Apocalypse (RV Chuubo's, "the book") 

  • The Alternet: An extensive "Replayernet" of servers in the Ring.
  • Anachronism Stew: The author likes the aesthetics of 1990s computing, which means that old-style BBSes, IRC chats, and modern websites coexist.
  • Brand X: On the Replayer internet, there is a knockoff Image Board, a knockoff of Reddit, a knockoff of Tumblr, a knockoff of Internet rationality...
  • Captain Ersatz: A few characters have been replaced due to the writer not having permission to use them.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: The book uses cosmic horror themes as an Allegory for child abuse. Oddly enough, this isn't because of the Others or Angels (even though both are classic Lovecraftian monsters). The cosmic horror is actually built into the structure of Sburb itself - because Sburb threatens to kill you if you don't adhere to the behavior expected of your Classpect, and will break you if you try to escape.
  • Decon-Recon Switch: First, the bleakness of the setting of Sburb is introduced and hammered in. Then, the book goes on to explain how people manage to live in the Crapsack World anyway - by making social connections and finding Purpose In Life. Where it ultimately ends up on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism is... ambiguous.
  • Don't Try This at Home: The educational section about how to use roleplay to explore emotions contains a disclaimer that doing so could result in unearthing destabilizing amounts of emotion, and thus could be too dangerous to attempt from inside the abuse. Then the author points out that she is in no position to actually demand this, having done so herself, and provides a different set of safety rules for those circumstances.
  • Encyclopedia Exposita: There is a quote for nearly every chapter and section heading. While some are drawn from various real-world literature (quite a few are from HitherbyDragons actually), most are fictional. "Sources" for these fictional quotes include in-character blog posts, a "Gamebreaker's Glossary", various self-help guides in the style of game FAQs, and even an in-universe novel series written by one dryadTornado.
  • E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: Apparently Skaianet produced almost every computer operating system and computing device since the 1980s. In every universe.
  • It's A Small Net After All: Zig-Zagged.
    • Averted in terms of size; PrototypeTowers archives large swathes of presession Internets, and while the size of this archive is never actually stated outright, it's large enough that a "swarm" of hundreds of thousands of servers is needed to hold it all.
    • On the other hand, the population of the "Replayernet" is only about 2,000 people.
  • Footnote Fever: Inherited from the game it's a sourcebook for.
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis: For the most part, the book is "written" by two characters from inside the universe. However, the author is directly credited for a few entries that would be impossible for the characters to write (because of Corruption risk or what-have-you).
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: There are a few notable differences between RV Chuubo's and the original Replay Value/Glitch FAQ, to make it more playable. For example, Sand is now an Aspect focusing on Rules Lawyering, rather than lying, so that having a PC roll Sand doesn't make the party explode.
  • Purpose-Driven Immortality: Inverted to horrific effect. If you become a Death Seeker, you will be unable to die. It is only those who don't want to die, or who accept death as a simple inevitability, who end up dying.
  • Recursive Fanfiction: Based on RV Classic, which in turn was based on Sburb Glitch FAQ, which in turn was based on Homestuck.
  • Restraining Bolt: The Ancient Law, which prevents many of the more intelligent and powerful Non Player Characters (including Derse carapaces, the Denizens, and the Horrorterrors) from interfering with normal, functioning sessions of Sburb. (If it weren't for this, for example, Derse would murder the Dreamers in their sleep.) If your session of Sburb is no longer "normal" and/or "functioning", many of these restrictions are removed. The results are... unpleasant.
  • Space Whale: Ringbeasts, which float through the Furthest Ring and are immune to Corruption. They are a very rare sight, but you do not want to bump into one when you're traveling the Ring.
  • Technobabble: Be honest. Did you understand the Info Dump on timetrav encryption?

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