Despite the silly sounding title, this is Dark Fic written by freya_sacksen on live journal. It basically takes group of nerdy, fun internet personas of That Guy With The Glasses and turns them into broken but very, very badass woobies due to war and experiments. They have been split up into Factions. The main focus is on the Anti-Factionists, which consists of Spoony, Linkara, Nostalgia Chick, Angry Joe, That Chick with the Goggles, and MarzGurl.
It can be read here
. The prequel fic "I Have Heard The Voices Dying" starts here.
Seeing as how this is a verse, others in the fandom and freya herself have done other one-shot fics for it. These have a lot more pairings, can be anywhere in the timeline and to be fitting, most of them are also Dark Fic: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, I See No Wrinkles Here, Despair, Tears and Home, Lonely, Music and Forever in The Black, Till The Sun Breaks Down, Blood, Loneliness and Hope, Spun Sugar and the sequel Heavy Things, What We Are In The Dark, The Persistence Of Memory and Cold Comfort.
Not to be confused with To Boldly Flee, the fourth anniversary special that had That Guy With The Glasses literally IN SPACE!.
That Guy With the Glasses In Space has examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: The cast in general, especially if you see the characters as unthreatening in real life.
- Artificial Limbs: The majority of the cast has these, or they are cyborgs.
- * Boom, Headshot!: Alas Insano, we hardly knew ye.
- Break the Cutie: Well, yeah... The prequel's worse in this regard, as we get to see the breakage of these funny, adorable people in full detail.
- Darker and Edgier: Oh yes!
- And had an impact on the fandom too. Before this came along, the fics were all fun and light and cracky. Afterwards, half of the new fic was and is some serious Dark Fic.
- Determinator: Spoony rescues Critic and gives him the clue he needs to prevent it all happening...with a knife in his gut.
- Distressed Dude: After the battle of Santa Muerte, the Nostalgia Critic got captured by Ask That Guy and Dr. Insano.
- Dying Alone: In the epilogue, the Nostalgia Critic. Until Ask That Guy comes along with the implication of a Stable Time Loop, anyway.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Well, pretty much everyone. But Spoony deserves a special mention.
- Downer Ending: Everyone dies horribly after being forced by Ask That Guy to fight each other, there's a brief Hope Spot of Nostalgia Critic (dressed like ATG) going back in time and stopping the brawl, but then Present!Ask That Guy finds his dead body and gets the idea to start the whole thing from that.
- Well...according to the author herself, the ending is intended to be open to the interpretation of the reader, and "just because Ask That Guy plans it, doesn't mean it occurs in this universe. It just means he wants to do it."
- Faux Action Boy: Narrowly averted. In the main fic, Critic doesn't really do anything other than show up captured and fail to save everyone. In the prequel, we find out why he was worthy as a leader.
- General Ripper: The Battalion Faction is commonly viewed as having deliberately adopted a philosophy that will justify Suede's repeated attempts on Benzaie's life. Suede's dialogue does nothing to convince us otherwise.
- Hammerspace: Where in the hell do Paw's guns come from?! Even the author doesn't know!
- Hope Spot: Nostalgia Critic stopped the brawl dressed as Ask That Guy thereby ensuring the war will never happen! Everything will be okay, right? Wrong!
- I'm Standing Right Here: The Nostalgia Chick goes on about how Spoony could possibly kill himself slipping on a set of scaffolding and falling to his death, leaving Linkara in charge. She then runs down the list of bad things that could happen if that happens. Linkara is about five feet away from her when she does.
- Playing with Syringes: The whole cast has been experimented on in some way or another.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Why Nostalgia Critic goes back in time. Doesn't work.
- Shout-Out: One of the installments is named after Salvador Dalí's "The Persistence of Memory".
