Fanfic / God Help the Outcasts

A fic that takes a more serious look at Monsters vs. Aliens, with more emphasis on world-building and character development than on comedy.

The fic was written by Wordmangler and can be found here. The fic also has sequels Love I Can Possess and To the Edge of Night.

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Tropes found in this fic include:

God Help the Outcasts

• Adaptation Expansion: The fic goes more into detail about the month Susan/Ginormica spent in captivity, which was mostly glossed over in the movie, and her angst about her new size and life.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed with B.O.B., who is merely called "Bob" without the acronym.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Susan gets this the hardest, as the fic covers the month between her transformation and the monsters fighting the robot probe. She struggles with her new size and being imprisoned, as well as being isolated from her family and friends. She even gets shot at due to a misunderstanding, leading to her realizing that most people don't even view her as human anymore.
  • Dr. Cockroach, despite having long come to terms with his transformation, has moments of this, such as when he reflects on the life he left behind and his crush on Susan.
  • Link gets this as well, as he admits that he's alone in the world. On top of that, he clearly feels guilty about how he killed numerous soldiers that tried to capture him during his rampage at Coco Beach.
• Adaptational Curves: Susan is much bustier in this version, as a way to accentuate Derek's shallowness in their relationship.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Derek already wasn't that nice in canon, but it's taken up a notch here. Along with focusing more on his career than anything else (even his future wife), he was apparently a bit of a Manipulative Bastard who, every time they fought, managed to make Susan think she was to blame. He also apparently only liked her for her looks, and (once Susan gets Internet access and manages to watch the Modesto News) seems completely unconcerned by her sudden transformation/disappearance. Susan calling him out and flicking him into the sky at the end was definitely deserved.
• Adapted Out: President Hathaway is completely absent, having been replaced with real-life president Barack Obama.
• Alien Abduction: Like in canon, this happens to Susan.
• Amazon Chaser: Doctor Cockroach has a bit of a crush on Susan throughout the fic, but doesn't act on it out of respect for her. Word of God states that this is mostly due to the fact that Susan's the first woman Cockroach has seen in decades.
• Beware the Superman: Discussed in one chapter when Dr. Cockroach demands Monger give Susan better living accommodations, pointing out that if Susan wanted to, the size and strength granted to her through the quantonium in her body could allow her to easily escape the prison on her own. In the later two stories, we see just how dangerous an angry titaness can truly be.
• Blessed with Suck: While the monsters aren't shy about their opinions that Susan's new size and strength are incredible, she considers it a curse. Along with all of the new difficulties that come with being bigger than most average buildings, she's imprisoned by the government and can't contact her family, friends, or fiance unless she finds a way to return to her normal size. By the end, though, she's decided that she likes herself more as Ginormica.
• Broken Pedestal: At first, Susan idolizes Derek as her perfect Prince Charming who, once they're together again, will work tirelessly with her to get her back to normal. But, as she spends time with the monsters, she comes to realize that some of Derek's behaviors that she excused weren't normal (such as the fact that he tended to ignore her feelings for the sake of what he wanted). The pedestal fully breaks when he breaks up with her due to her new size. She lets him have it at the end of the story.
• Bunker Woman: Susan, as she's the only female monster locked in an underground government facility in the middle of the desert.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: B.O.B. Along with his brainlessness, here he's also a low-level telepath who borrows other people's thoughts because he doesn't have his own. This leads to him saying things that often sound like something someone else would say.
• Darker and Edgier: While not a dark fic, the story isn't afraid to discuss some of the more terrifying aspects of Susan's situation. Namely, the fact that her body has been irreversibly altered, she can't contact her family or fiance, she's not even considered a human anymore, she's been imprisoned in a government base with all of her rights removed, and the only ones treating her like an equal are creatures that are (at first) horrifying for her to look at. The story is also more willing to address death, with several monsters having killed people during their captures/rampages and civilians dying during the robot's attack.
• Dark and Troubled Past: While the backstories of the monsters are mildly addressed in the movie, here, they're given slightly more focus... and more detail: Insectosaurus (though he didn't mean to) killed thousands when he attacked Tokyo, Dr. Cockroach was a mad scientist who tried to take over the world after his transformation, B.O.B. ate a dozen men, and Link killed dozens of people during and after his capture (although he regrets that). Monger explains to Susan that she's the only "innocent" monster he's ever caught, as she hasn't killed anyone.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: For Giant Woman. The implications of becoming a fifty-foot-tall giantess are explored, such as how things like basic hygiene, entertainment, and human contact would be much harder (namely the latter, as she could easily kill someone if she didn't watch her step).
• Dehumanization: The earlier parts of the fic show Susan struggling with the fact that, technically, she isn't a human anymore. The Army later starts giving her privileges to make her more relaxed and less miserable, but it's clear to her throughout most of the fic that she's a monster in their eyes.
• Disney Death: Like in canon, Insectosaurus is shot with an alien weapon and presumed dead.
• Driven to Suicide: During her absolute lowest point, Susan briefly wishes she was dead and even tells Dr. Cockroach to "kill [her]". Thankfully, he manages to talk her out of it by comforting her, and she never gets to that point again.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Link frequently makes comments or jokes that get this reaction.
• Extreme Omnivore: B.O.B. can (and will) eat anything. Applies to Dr. Cockroach as well, considering how he eats garbage.
• Fantastic Racism: Even after Susan and the monsters save San Francisco from the alien robot, they're treated with fear and mistrust: Susan's parents (while they accept her right away) are terrified and distrustful of the other monsters, and Derek breaks off their engagement due to Susan now overshadowing him.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Link (literally). He was frozen for twenty thousand years in a block of ice and was thawed out by scientists. Dr. Cockroach apparently had a difficult time trying to teach him about how to behave in modern society.
• Gentle Giant: Susan and Insectosaurus are the biggest monsters in the facility... yet they'd never (intentionally) hurt an innocent person.
• Giant Woman: Susan/Ginormica.
• Gilded Cage: After Dr. Cockroach makes Monger see that the prison could use a few upgrades to better accommodate Susan, he has it remodeled to what it looks like in the Halloween special. Susan invokes this trope by outright calling it a gilded cage (although her emotional state does improve a bit due to the change in scenery).
• Harmless Freezing: Link spending 20,000 years in an iceberg didn't seem to hurt him at all.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Link, when he gets a close look at Susan's face for the first time, makes a comment about how he never realized how unattractive human faces were. Susan, who's already feeling insecure about her appearance due to her transformation, runs off crying. Link honestly didn't know better, and looks/acts guilty for a while after.
  • After Susan is shot in the leg due to a misunderstanding, Dr. Cockroach tries to treat it lightly by calling it her "first angry mob" and saying that it simply comes with being a monster. Needless to say, this is not what Susan needed to hear right then.
  • B.O.B. can be this trope simply because he lacks the ability to actually think. Susan never holds any of his transgressions against him because he honestly doesn't know any better.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite being their captor and warden, Monger clearly cares about the monsters more than he's willing to let on. He makes sure that they have what they need to live a reasonably comfortable life in the prison, and stands up for them if any of his soldiers mistreat them.
• Kindhearted Simpleton:
  • B.O.B. has no brain and can be very Literal-Minded. Still, as Susan points out, he doesn't have it in him to be mean, and is easily one of the sweetest monsters in the facility.
  • Insectosaurus seems to have the intelligence of an average dog, but is more than happy to hug/comfort Susan when she has a breakdown (which she appreciates, as he's the only one who can hug her anymore).
• Laser-Guided Karma: Derek gets one much like in canon. He breaks up with Susan after she becomes Ginormica, as he cares about his career more than anything and having a Giant Woman for a wife would hurt it. Once she and the other monsters defeat Gallaxhar, however, he tries to get back together with her so he can get an exclusive interview. She pretends to care for a moment...then tells him he's the reason their relationship fell apart and flicks him into the sky (where he lands in B.O.B.).
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Cockroach
• Mess on a Plate: Most of Susan's meals, since most foods are too small to have texture for her, end up looking like this to her.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • While taking a walk outside, Susan sees a few little girls and tries to help one with a scraped knee. The nearby soldiers believe that she's hurting the little girl, and open fire on Susan. Monger has to intervene before they finally stop.
  • The monsters save the city from the robot probe... and yet people still look at them with fear, suspicion, and hatred.
• Noodle Implements: Most of Dr. Cockroach's experiments involve these, ranging from pizza boxes to used coffee filters to twisty ties. How he manages to use these items is never explained, but they usually end up doing what he needs them to do.
• Older Than They Look: Dr. Cockroach's mutations slowed down his aging, as he's one hundred years old and still has the energy and mental ability he had sixty years ago.
• Placebo Effect: A variant. To give Susan hope, Dr. Cockroach begins a series of experiments that he tells her may help her return to a normal size. While they do help him learn a bit about how the Quantonium has altered her body, they don't tell him anything about how to reduce her size, nor did he ever expect them to. When he eventually tells her the truth, she's hurt but understands.
• Precision F-Strike: While trying to both keep the robot from crushing her and keeping people from falling off the bridge, Susan loses patience and curses at B.O.B. to move the dividers.
• Quintessential British Gentleman: While he doesn't look like one anymore, Dr. Cockroach is the most polite and cultured of the monsters. At one point, he evens makes a promise to Susan by giving his word "as an English gentleman".
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The group consists of a fifty-foot-tall woman, a mad scientist with a cockroach's head (and diet), a prehistoric fish-ape, a sentient gelatinous cyclops, and an insectoid kaiju.
• Resized Vocals: Unlike in the movie, Susan's voice is now much deeper to go with her new size. Justified as her voice box is much bigger too, so her voice would naturally sound deeper.
• Riding into the Sunset: Discussed and invoked at the end. When the monsters start to fly back to the base, Monger steers Butterflyasaurus in the direction of the setting sun. Dr. Cockroach points out that they're going the wrong way, but Monger insists that heroes always go into the sunset, and that they'll change direction when they're out of sight.
• Ship Tease: It's implied (or outright stated) that Dr. Cockroach has a crush on Susan, but won't act on it out of respect for her.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Unlike the movie, the jokes take a backseat for the sake of Character Development and drama.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Susan first wakes up at the base, she's still mildly high from the tranquilizer and starts comparing her situation to a scene in Alice in Wonderland.
  • To the original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Apparently, the events of that film took place in the same universe as this one, with Monger actually taking part in the attempt to capture/kill Nancy Archer. It's for this reason that he's being careful with Susan, and Cockroach has to verbally reassure him that Susan is not Nancy.
  • A few lines said by characters are direct quotes from M*A*S*H.
• Stockholm Syndrome: Implied with Dr. Cockroach, who's been at the facility the longest and doesn't feel the need to escape anymore. He eventually describes himself as "fully institutionalized". He says that part of the reason why is because the Army encourages his experiments (as some of them are useful weapons), and he's allowed to spend as much time as he wants every day on his work. He admits though that he's still unhappy about being imprisoned, and attempted escape multiple times.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Gallaxhar escapes the explosion of the ship after Susan gets the Quantonium back.
• Take That!: The author's notes state at several points that certain scenes were written to deconstruct certain tropes found in 1950s sci-fi films (such as the trope of the monster always falling in love with the leading lady).
• Telepath: Dr. Cockroach believes that B.O.B. is this, as he sometimes says things that sound as though they're what someone else wants to say. He believes that, since he doesn't have brainwaves, he borrows other people's.
• True Companions: The monsters. They all have different appearances, abilities, and personalities, but they'll do anything for each other.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Link has this with pretty much everyone.
• Weight Woe: Susan is shown to be a bit cagey about her size, as she decides to leave her weight out when describing herself, and reacts negatively to Dr. Cockroach mentioning her being around twelve tons.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • After a misunderstanding gets Susan shot, she spends the next twelve hours in her cell and seems to be contemplating suicide. Dr. Cockroach tells her that, while she might not be happy to be there, the monsters are happy that she's there, and that they accept her, size and all.
  • After her break-up with Derek and the monsters accidentally ruining the Murphy's party (and their yard), they all feel pretty depressed until Susan reminds each of them of their strengths, and tells them that they are worth more than what society thinks of them.
• You Wake Up in a Room: This is how the fic starts, with Susan waking up, her head spinning, in a cell in the Monster Containment Facility.

Love I Can Possess

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Susan tries to blow it off, but the fame she gets from stopping Gallaxhar's plan and saving a hospital from another alien robot starts to go to her head, to the point where she dismisses Link - who is suffering from jealousy over her successes - as just a sidekick.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • It's offhandedly mentioned that B.O.B.'s eye was created by Dr. Cockroach using an ostrich egg.
  • More of Gallaxhar's species are seen in the form of the Panthalassa Security Force, with Gallaxhar himself confirmed to be a renegade who went against them. It's also established that the Sensual Spandex Susan wore when she was taken to Gallaxhar's ship is a quantonium entanglement skin, designed specifically to allow the quantonium to be extracted from her body.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Susan and Dr. Cockroach were fairly platonic in both the movie and the first fic, but here they are shown to have a mutual attraction towards each other.
• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. Dr. Cockroach's backstory involved him torturing Nancy Archer to death to get her quantonium. He also tried to create a cockroach army and Take Over the World. However, by the present, he deeply regrets his past actions and is determined not to let Susan turn out like Nancy.
• Bittersweet Ending: Susan and the monsters succeed in saving the president and mending relations between Earth and the Panthalassans, but Mary is dead, and Susan's rampage in Las Vegas has led to her and the other monsters becoming feared by the public once more. Susan also has the quantonium permanently bonded to her body, ensuring she can never lead a normal life again, but she's content with her new life and relationship with Dr. Cockroach.
• Canon Discontinuity: Due to the author's hatred for it, the 2013 animated series is completely non-canon to the fics. Exemplified in the last few chapters where it's explicitly stated that Susan cannot go back to her normal size again, a clear Take That! to the series giving her the ability to do so.
• Cast from Lifespan: Played for Laughs and heavily downplayed: the process to permanently bond the quantonium to Susan's body - preventing it from ever being taken out again - cost her... several seconds of her life.
• Cyborg: As a Mythology Gag to Susan mistaking Monger for a cyborg in the original movie, Monger is actually transformed into a cyborg aboard the aliens' ship.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Link gets jealous over Susan's fame and popularity, which only increases when Susan, high on her popularity, dismisses his complaints as his usual fragile ego and calls him a sidekick.
  • Susan starts to get jealous of Mary when she sees how easily the latter is able to bond with Dr. Cockroach, who Susan has started to crush on herself. Fittingly, the chapter where this occurs is also called "The Green-Eyed Monster".
• Handicapped Badass: It's pointed out early on that Susan is technically considered physically disabled on the basis that her size prevents her from doing most things that normal humans can do, and she can't survive without the base providing her with food and other accommodations tailored for her size. That said, she's still an extremely strong, near-invincible 50-foot woman, so it's a fair trade. During one section where she goes on the run in the desert, she struggles to survive after several days in the wild and likely would have died had the Panthalassa Security Force not abducted and healed her when they did.
• Heroic BSoD: After coming down from her rampage (during which she almost killed Dr. Cockroach), Susan is shown to be deeply regretful, to the point where she regrets becoming Ginormica to begin with and even lets the Panthalassa Security Force extract the quantonium from her body without a fight.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Susan - a 50-foot tall woman - and Dr. Cockroach - a short insect man - discuss the possibility of getting intimate at the end of the fic. They do in the sequel.
• Hotter and Sexier: The first fic was fairly chaste, with the moments involving Susan getting nude being played non-sexually. Here, however, more emphasis is put on how attractive she is (particularly to Dr. Cockroach) and she is shown to be somewhat of a tease. Dr. Cockroach is also shown to have a six-pack as a side effect of his cockroach experiment.
• I Choose to Stay: By the end of the fic, Susan has come to realize her size is part of who she is - even with everything she's lost as a result - and chooses to have the quantonium permanently infused into her body with no hope of removal by the final chapter.
• Made of Iron: Dr. Cockroach survives being stomped on by an enraged Ginormica, albeit heavily injured and ending up in a coma. Justified in that his half-cockroach biology and resilience experiments he concocted with B.O.B.'s DNA allowed him to tank the hit.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: Even during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Susan never harms an innocent civilian, something explicitly noted in the author's notes. She directs all of her rage towards killing the soldiers who shot Mary, smashing various buildings, and almost crushing Dr. Cockroach to death.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Chapter 14 introduces a vampire named Lady Mary Stuart. She was born in 1771 and has to drink human (or primate) blood to survive, but lacks the traditional vampire weaknesses like sunlight (which only causes minor discomfort), garlic, or crosses. She also doesn't need to breathe, has a reflection (unlike most vampires), and can't turn others into vampires by biting them. Later on, it's also revealed that the transformation caused her oxytocin levels to drop as she aged, eventually rendering her unable to feel love.
• Papa Wolf: Susan's dad is pissed when he pieces together how his daughter was treated by the government.
  Carl: You're only a child. Surely they're going to take that into account? They just tossed you in the deep end, didn't they? My God, they really did, you know! My little girl gets mutated by an alien technology and the first thing the damned government does is lock her away and tell her she's a monster? No, dammit! They damn well had this coming! It wasn't that alien goop that made you a monster, it was the bloody army! Locking you away, isolating you, forcing you to fight robots and aliens and putting an untrained girl through hell! I'm not going to let them do this to you! I'm going to raise such a stink! Write to the press, Congress, the Senate, the President! And we're getting you a real lawyer! Not some army pencil-pusher! We're going to fight this thing, and we're going to win!
• Plot Tailored to the Party: The final setpiece aboard the aliens' ship requires the usage of all the monsters' skills: Link's swimming, Monger's flight, B.O.B.'s ability to absorb things and shapeshift, and Ginormica's raw size and strength.
• Revenge Porn Blackmail: A variation in that he skips the "blackmail" and skips straight to leaking them; out of spite for Susan humiliating him at the end of the first fic, Derek leaks nude pictures of her to every source he can think of. This results in him being blacklisted from the industry, courtesy of Monger.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Susan goes on a destructive rampage in Las Vegas when Mary is shot and killed by soldiers.
• Sacrificial Lion: Roughly 8 chapters after being introduced, Mary is shot to death, causing Susan to go on a destructive rampage to avenge her. The author notes that Mary was always intended to die as a means to continue Susan's character development.
• Shout-Out: It's mentioned a couple times that Susan used to have a Puss-in-Boots plush when she was a kid.
• Take That!: Monger compares the idea of Susan being able to change between her normal human size and her quantonium-enhanced giant size to a "silly cartoon". This is mocking the 2013 cartoon, which actually gave Susan the ability to do so (and which the author hated, feeling it detracts from the point of her character).
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Susan tries to stay humble and friendly, but the praise she gets for stopping Gallaxhar (which later gets worse when she stops another alien robot at great risk to herself), her ongoing conflict over whether she wants to be the normal-sized Susan or the giantess Ginormica (along with the thoughts of all she's lost and gained), and what she believes to be a Love Triangle between herself, Dr. Cockroach, and new addition Mary, causes her to start becoming increasingly egotistical, arrogant, and snappy towards her friends. Following her rampage in Vegas, however, she undergoes a Jerkass Realization and humbles up significantly.

To the Edge of Night

• Adaptation Expansion: Gallaxhar's backstory is finally told in full, with no interruptions, in Chapter 33. It's revealed that he was actually an alien hybrid born in a culture that heavily discouraged crossbreeding. When his girlfriend wanted to have children, Gallaxhar decided to blow up the planet to stop his secret from getting out.
• Back from the Dead: Susan actually dies after a prolonged assault from the military in Chapter 32. However, Gallaxhar resurrects her so she can witness his ultimate victory.
• Bastard Bastard: Subverted; when Susan angrily calls Gallaxhar a "bastard" over his plan to take over the world, Gallaxhar simply assures her that his parents were married.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Gallaxhar runs into this hard during his plan to torment Susan and steal her quantonium. He repeatedly goes out of his way to keep her alive so she can witness his triumph over her, even though he has her dead to rights numerous times. It gets especially silly when Susan actually gets killed by the military, and Gallaxhar actually resurrects her just so he can torment her some more.
• The Bus Came Back: Gallaxhar, who escaped in the first fic, returns in the flesh. He is still intent on getting his revenge against Susan.
• Canon Character All Along: Xalthazar, the monsters' pompous alien friend introduced near the end of Love I Can Possess, loses all but two of his legs (which are completely useless in Earth's gravity) and is forced to use a hoverchair to get around. This makes him the fic's equivalent to Coverton from the 2013 animated series, who also had two useless legs and relied on a hoverchair to move.
• Clone Degeneration: Gallaxhar's clones of the public figures are shown to be much dumber than the humans they're based on. It's implied to be an inherent effect of cloning in general, explaining why Gallaxhar's own clones were dumb enough to mistake the monsters for them in the original movie.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Renee is designed to contrast with Mary in a variety of ways, especially regarding to how they interact with Susan. They're both teenage girls who became supernatural creatures (Mary a vampire, and Renee a ghost) at the age of fourteen, but that's where their similarities end:
  • Mary had already been a vampire for approximately 200 years before the fic started and never aged, while Renee becomes a ghost roughly 10 chapters into To the Edge of Night. As such, Mary is already well-used to her new life, while it takes a while for Renee to get used to hers.
  • Mary is a cool-headed British vampire who never swears, while Renee is an hot-tempered American ghost who constantly swears.
  • Mary was forcibly imprisoned in the base by the military after killing countless people for fun, while Renee chose to stay in the base of her own volition with Susan's encouragement.
  • Susan initially hated Mary and developed a rivalry with her under the belief that the latter both had an easier life than her (which Mary harshly denies) and that the latter was trying to steal Dr. Cockroach from her, and it takes a while for them to properly open up to each other. By comparison, Susan is far more friendly to Renee from the onset and tries to act as a Cool Big Sis towards her.
  • Mary acts as a sort of mentor to Susan, helping her out of her spiral of self-pity and see the benefits of her new form. By comparison, Susan is the one acting as a mentor to Renee, trying to help her out of her depressive spiral and get used to her new form.
  • Mary ultimately dies after being shot by soldiers, while Renee survives the entire story and ultimately gets a happy ending.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: After being sucked out of his ship's airlock, Gallaxhar has to choose between freezing to death in space or letting himself get cooked alive by the sun. After what's implied to be a long, torturous few hours, he picks the former.
• Death by Adaptation: Farmer Jeb, a minor character from the Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space special, is skinned alive by the mutant pumpkins.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After three stories worth of trials and tribulations, having her body mangled by alien robots, being repeatedly tortured, suffering heartbreak and loss numerous times over, and even being killed at one point, Susan finally regains her freedom, becomes a respected, beloved intergalactic war hero, and ends the story as a much stronger, happier person.
• Engineered Public Confession: Dr. Cockroach forces Gallaxhar to confess to having pretended to be the Vallbaran Ambassador in a bid to kill Ginormica and destroy all of humanity.
• Evil Counterpart: K. Z. Meihem is an evil version of W. R. Monger. While Monger is a hero who cares for the monsters deep down despite his gruff facade, Meihem is a full-on General Ripper who wants nothing more than to see Ginormica suffer for killing his nephew.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Susan and Renee discuss the possibility that they met each other even before the latter became a ghost, as Susan's family used to get pumpkins from Farmer Jeb (Renee's father) and so they may have even seen each other at some point.
  Susan: I remember your mother, you know. Our family always got its pumpkins from Farmer Jeb, and I remember seeing her there as well.
  Renee: You know, you probably saw me, too.
  Susan: I guess I might have. Isn't that weird? To think that we might have seen each other, and even talked, years before we ever actually met?
• Friend to All Children: While adults justifiably fear Susan after her rampage, children still love and idolize her as their hero, and she in turn remains protective over all of them.
• Hates Being Alone: Susan already disliked feeling alone to begin with, but after being separated from her friends and tortured for what's implied to be weeks, she ends up suffering PTSD at the thought of being left alone again.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: After her rampage in Las Vegas, Susan and the other monsters have become feared by the public once more.
• Hijacked by Ganon: The Vaalbaran Ambassador turns out to be none other than Gallaxhar.
• Mama Bear: When Susan is suffering a Heroic BSoD over being forcibly isolated and mistreated by the military, what finally gets her out of it is learning that Renee is still in the military base and being tortured. Despite being sedated and addled with tranquilizers, she fights through it and goes on another rampage through the base to save her.
• Mythology Gag: Susan's Halloween costume is the zombie cheerleader outfit she talked about wearing (but never got the chance to) from the Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space special.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Renee is a teenage ghost girl who was apparently killed by the mutant pumpkins in a way that caused her to become an incorporeal being instead of simply vanishing. She phases through most objects except things she perceives as entirely secure, such as the ground or her old swing set, and she can only eat food that's been cremated in such a way as to generate a ghost version of it. Over the course of the fic, she also discovers she has many of the traditional ghost powers, such as possession, light generation, and the ability to grab solid objects.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: When Gallaxhar is about to kill Ginormica by kicking her off the ledge of his ship, Renee saves her by possessing Gallaxhar and forcing him to jump out of the ship's airlock.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Renee swears a lot in the chapters following her introduction, which is heavily implied to be a result of her struggling to cope with essentially losing her old life forever. She mellows out later on, but is still more foul-mouthed than the rest of the cast.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted; it's mentioned early on that Susan is seeing a councillor in the base to cope with the guilt of killing several soldiers during her rampage in Las Vegas.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Gallaxhar meets this end, courtesy of Renee possessing him and forcing him to jump out.

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