Grundergram
is a « fanfiction » of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown by sillygoodness, following the events of the Lighthouse War through screencaps of the Grundergram (Instagram) accounts of various Ace Combat characters. Things quickly take a turn for the strange, as Trigger’s personality on the ground is quite different than in the sky while several figures from the past, the future and even outside of Strangereal start taking an interest in the pilot with the Three Strikes.
This fanfiction contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: Grundergram expands on a few details about Trigger, like how he got his callsign, why Mage Squadron is a two-man team instead of the four-man OADF standard or why nobody mentions the Guy in Back when he flies a two-seater.
- Berserk Button: The player Aces have quite a lot :
- Mobius One: Threaten Usea
- Blaze: Disrespect Kei Nagase or try to restore Belka to greatness
- Cipher: Claim you’re the Demon Lord
- Trigger: Sleep with Avril
- Beta Couple: Several:
- Count and Húxiān
- Blaze and The Unsung War Nagase
- Markov and Assault Horizon Nagase
- Marcus Lampert and Melissa Herman
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The LRSSG versus the Alicorn.
- The Bus Came Back: Golem and Mage squadrons come back for the furball around the Space Elevator.
- Call-Back: Phoenix notes how he had to pay for planes repairs out of his own pocket instead of his employer footing the bill, unlike Cipher. Ace Combat 2 deduced money out of the player’s reward to fix damaged planes.
- Player Characters are frequently comparing how they find themselves in the same Airstrike Impossible situations or when Trigger flies above the site of one of their former missions.
- The Cameo: Sora shows up at one point. sillygoodness stated that what inspired Grundergram was a similar fan work about Kingdom Hearts.
- Cardboard Prison: Justified. Inmates at the 444th can keep their phones and fool around on social media only because McKinsey wants to generate buzz to serve his ambitions.
- The Casanova: Trigger somehow gets ladies despite his obnoxiousness. In addition to Avril, he scores with Princess Cosette, successfully hits on Major Mc Onie and had a one-night stand with Scream when they were in highschool.
- Cassandra Truth: The fact that maybe, juste maybe, Trigger is on to something by accusing Belka of having a hand into the Lighthouse War and the death of Harling is flat out rejected by Blaze, the one person who saw firsthand how far Belkans would go for revenge. Blaze admits after their duel and some taunts from Hamilton that he let his anger and Trigger's obnoxiousness blind him.
- Déjà Vu: Trigger in the New Game Plus timeline keeps confusing everybody about how he has super-advanced planes and knowledge in what’s about to happen to him and everybody.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Blaze and Cipher befriend Trigger after they duel him.
- Flanderization: Vanilla Matias Torres starts cool and confident before turning completely unhinged. Grundergram’s Matias Torres behaves like Alex Jones on meth from the get-go.
- Hidden Depths: Trigger can be surprisingly insightful when he stops bragging or keep it in his pants even before the New Game Plus.
- Historical In-Joke: The F-104 is nicknamed Witwenmacher (German for "widowmaker") in Belka according to Jaeger. This is a real nickname, given by German pilots and journalists due to the unreliability of the plane.
- I Want Grandkids : Well, great-grandkids. Mihaly is a bit too forceful about how he wants Trigger and Ionela to get busy so more little Shilages will rule the sky.
- Internet Jerk: Trigger might be completely silent in the skies, but he behaves like a horny fratboy with a short fuse online.
- It's Up to You: The fact that anybody in the ODF who isn’t Trigger is as useful as a screen door on a submarine is endlessly mocked.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Trigger is, well, Trigger, but Cosette can't help but admit he might have a point when he claims that both Erusea and Osea are to blame for the satellites going down, since apparently nobody who planned the anti-satellite attacks thought about how the enemy would do the same.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Both Bartlett and Clown fanboy about each other; the former admired Clown when he was still an OSCAR driver, the latter was inspired by Bartlett's prowess during the Belkan War enough to join.
- Lost Food Grievance: A whole chapter is dedicated to mourn the loss of Lanza's cola.
- Nose Art : Trigger is quite the fan of it. In addition to the old colors of several former aces, his collection includes several planes with pin-up art and some others.
- Not So Above It All : While Bandog was never averse to take part in the betting among the Spares when he isn’t shitting on them, he openly lets Full Band fuck around McKinsey’s computer and mock him as long as everyone can get a laugh out of it. Also, he apparently keeps "juicy" pictures of Avril and Cosette on his computer.
- The usually serious Razgriz grill Blaze to hell and back when they learn Bartlett wanted to nickname his best pupil "Booby" in homage to his favorite race car driver, instead of "Kid". Funnily enough, Blaze is nicknamed "Booby" in the Japanese version of The Unsung War.
- Official Couple: Trigger and Avril.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The second Megalith battle. One one side, Hamilton, Grabacr 1 and the ZOE drones are holed up in a rebuilt Megalith. On the other side, a reformed Razgriz composed of Blaze, Archer, Brownie and Tabloid lead the attack with Phoenix, Mobius 1 and Galm Team as reinforcments and Bandog as AWACS support,
- One-Steve Limit : Played straight until, somehow, all Kei Nagases in the series pop up and start bickering, much to the confusion of Razgriz squadron including The Unsung War Nagase.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know things are getting serious when Trigger stops messing around with random planes and starts behaving like a real pilot.
- Rage Breaking Point: New Game Plus Trigger eventually has enough of Mihaly and his granddaughters roasting him that he equips an F-15 like the rest of his squadron and tears apart Shilage Castle in a rampage far worse than in canon. The rest of his own squadron has to stop him while the Erusian cast of characters are implied to watch in Stunned Silence.
- Reality Warper : Pixy. He uses V2 to keep rebooting the timeline of Strangereal until everybody gets rid of borders or if things get too out of control, such as Trigger getting possessed by Hugin and Munin or the LRSSG questioning Mihaly's Plot Armor.
- Remember the New Guy? : Averted. Mihaly gets dogpiled by all the former Player Characters every time he mentions his legendary ace status.
- Running Gag :
- Trigger getting roasted by all of the LRSSG or Ionela.
- Trigger calling out the whole Osean army (save Menhir 7) for being completely useless unless he’s around.
- Dr Schroeder’s name gets misspelled.
- Electrosphere Nagase trying to upload everything on the Internet.
- Long Caster trying to nab some of Talisman's burgers.
- "Markov." "Colonel Bishop.", followed by a complaint from Assault Horizon Nagase about this is why her relationship with Bishop petered out.
- Shout-Out :
- Hugin and Munin are a reference factory, quoting the Think Tank, the Team Rocket, Jeffrey and the "Eggman pisses on the Moon" copypasta in their speech patterns.
- Basilisk Team have their pizzas delivered by Peter Parker.
- Trigger has his own version of the Navy SEAL copypasta.
- Clown's real name is Ricky Booby and he's a former OSCAR pilot.
- Show Within a Show : Opposites Sides Of The Same Coin, a romcom about a trio of contractors and their love lives and rivalries. Cipher and Pixy can’t help but notice how some of the plotlines are similar to events they lived during the Belkan War… Explained later when they find out the series' producer is PJ.
- Spared by the Adaptation :
- Andrei Markov went back to Russia after the events of Assault Horizon instead of dying above Washington, but still has trouble coming to terms with the death of his wife. He gets better after starting dating Assault Horizon Nagase.
- Allen Hamilton crawled out of the SOLG control center and kept to the shadows as an agent of the Grey Men. Time will tell if this time, Blaze will finally put him down for good.
- PJ survived at Avalon and became a TV producer in Belka, creating shows inspired by his service during the war and the events he witnessed.
- Brownie and Tabloid both survived; the former managed to eject after Mihaly shot her down and was captured by the Eruseans, then managed to escape, while the latter slipped away after the Lighthouse battle. Both joined Razgriz squadron.
- Averted with McKinsey, who gets murdered when the new penal unit he commands revolts.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Several characters take the opportunity to shitpost on social media while flying in a plane, or even in the middle of a dogfight. Especially the drones.
- Wrench Whack: The only thing (aside from being in the sights of another Player Character) that brings Trigger down a peg or two, courtesy of Avril.
