- EXALT Operative: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What the hell are you people?Zhang: As Watkins said to me, we are the losers who are also winners.
A Let's Play of XCOM: Enemy Unknown on the Something Awful forums by Speedball. In addition to covering Enemy Unknown and its expansion Enemy Within, it also ties in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified while fleshing out the squaddies into fully fleshed out characters.
Archived here
. Original thread here.
This fic contains examples of:
- Adult Adoptee: General Van Doorn adopts Eva after she is rejected by her family.
- Amazon Brigade: Almost! By coincidence, the vast majority of the squaddies (especially the better ones) are women (although Cammy was originally male).
- Adaptational Expansion: Deepens the story by focusing on the squaddies.
- Battle Couple: Multiple. Bar-Lev and Leroy, Queen and Cammy, Eva and Hugo...
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: The Sectoid Commander inflicts this on the team during the raid on the alien base. Cammy gets the worst of it, but is aided by a mental clone of Allen.
- Becoming the Mask: Bar-Lev was originally sent to XCOM by Israeli intelligence. However, she eventually becomes more loyal to XCOM than her superiors and stops communicating with them.
- Blood Knight: Several.
- General Van Doorn takes this to ridiculous levels.
- Latisha Watkins is a bit more subdued, but is still way more gung-ho than the rest of the team (except Van Doorn).
- Yoko and Annette are extremely eager to get some payback for what the aliens did to them.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Hogan, who seems to believe that he's Hulk Hogan. It's all a cover as he's actually a spy for EXALT.
- Clone Angst: Yoko discovers that she isn't a Japanese woman put into a Belgian woman's body by the aliens, but a mental clone of a Japanese woman put into a Belgian woman's body, compounding her identity crisis. She starts going by Zero instead.
- Exact Words: On one mission, Zinchenko suggests to a Thin Man that they fight "like honest men" without guns. The Thin Man agrees, not realizing that Zinchenko really loves grenades.
- Four-Star Badass: General Van Doorn, who fought off several aliens before XCOM rescued him, and later joins the squad.
- Gender Bender: Cammy and Allen have their bodies switched while undergoing genetic enhancement. Cammy eventually decides to stick with her new appearance (and even adopts female pronouns). A lot of that has to do with her genetic enhancements, but she also suggests that she might be genderfluid. She later refers to herself as transgender.
- Heroic Sacrifice: While Cammy is the Volunteer, Latisha ends up being the one to sacrifice herself to save the world, her daughter included.
- Hurricane of Puns: One mission takes place on a dam. The inevitable ensues.
- Mama Bear: Latisha Watkins, Cammmy's mother and a veteran soldier.
- The Mole: Hogan turns out to be an agent for EXALT.
- Only Sane Man: Zhang plays this role.
- Race Lift: Happens in-universe as accidental exposure to Meld causes several characters to have radical changes in hair and skin color, such as the Israeli Bar-Lev looking like a black woman with bright red hair.
- Ragtag Band of Misfits: The Commander deliberately invoked this trope, wanting people who would think out of the box rather than a bunch of by-the-book soldiers. The team soon take pride in this, calling themselves "The losers who are also winners."
- Shotgun Wedding: Hilda asks Cammy to marry her right before the start of a mission. Not proposes - she did that already - but to have the actual wedding right now. Cammy says yes, the Commander performs the ceremony, and they then head into battle wearing white armor.
- Shout-Out: EXALT are a pastiche of Cobra and Comic Book/Hydra, using the creed of "Hail Exalt!" while their leader's portrait is literally Cobra Commander.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: A common reaction to the Thin Men's attempts at psychological warfare.Thin Man: How much of you is really you? How much of you is other people? How much of you is us?Cammy: How much of you is GRENADE!?
- Warrior Therapist: Dr. Gomez is a very literal incarnation of this trope, using her knowledge of psychology to counter the Thin Men's attempts at psychological warfare.
