Literature / Joy Roy

Joy+Roy is a (heavily NSFW) series of Fictionpress comedy-adventure-sort of Harem Genre stories by Great Pikmin Fan. As of August 2021, it consists of two "parallel" stories that could be read in either order and are set in the same general multiverse, -Roy: Master of Debate and Joy|: Cunning Underling. Both of them have the same general premise: a random nobody with quirky allies gets caught up in a battle between forces from Heaven and Hell after having a large mass of demons sealed within them or have a seal tied to them in some way, but they take the plot in two different directions.

-Roy takes place in a world relatively closer to our own. Life there, in the "Parallel World,"^note Nicknamed as such because, treating humans, angels, and demons as three lines, they are all parallel from one-another. (Living) humans are still in the dark about angels and demons as a whole, while angels and demons barely work with each other. is generally the same apart from two key differences: one, around 2012, things went a bit Off the Rails from real life and a new president won the election, who then fought to make it completely legal for women across the entire United States of America to be topless in public. Two, and a little bigger than that, angels and demons had influenced and shaped the Earth, but were living in the shadows unknown to humanity. One Halloween night, on his twenty-fourth birthday, one delivery company secretary Roy Geebilv is out covering for somebody when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. It just so happens that that particular point in the "middle of nowhere" is also where a mighty demon legion known as the Kabus Legion are sealed, within an angel bone on a tree. With some trickery from their leader, Lesuif, also considered one of the most powerful demons of all time, the Kabus Legion winds up sealed inside of Roy. Roy is not alone in his adventures with the Kabus Legion, as he has the aide of his two roommates, the sword-obsessed gadget-using inventor Evelin and the snarky martial artist Ashley. Plus, Ashley's wrestling and spiritual rich artist girlfriend Mindy, who lives a ways away from the trio. Yet it is not just pacifying the Kabus Legion that the group has to worry about: an underground organization of powerful angels known as the Order of Chaos is out to kill Roy, as when he dies, all the Kabus Legion demons die, and they plan to fling their spirits in to the "Soul Ocean" that lies beyond Heaven or Hell to ensure that their plan to resurrect their god Etabed won't be interrupted.

Joy| is set in an "alternate" world, the "Perpendicular World"^note Using the same metaphor where angels, demons, and humans are lines, these "lines" are intersecting, as almost all living humans know about angels and demons here. This is also the world where angels and demons relatively get along compared to their counterparts. where angels and demons work just about the same way as they do in -Roy's world (but with the "demons" being luminous and "angelic-looking" and the "angels" being dark and "demonic-looking"), but had revealed themselves to humanity about a century ago. At the same day that Roy gets the Kabus Legion sealed inside of him, Joy happens to lose the power to her home and she winds up getting the Syulk Legion "tied" to her in a more abstract spell based around things called totems. Her own messanger, or rather "Seer," is Syulk Nightfirma, a rather uptight and pretentious demon that is also the captain of her White Squad. Their leader, Rhislaujja, is also powerful and locked in an especially deep totem spell. Joy's main goal is to prevent the return of an evil goddess, Pumpkin/"The Master," from making a return to the Solar System after an unknown departure, and stop the Dackhark Shipping Corporation that works under her. Like Roy, Joy has three human allies as well: her roommate and casual friend with benefit Riscend, and two considerably less-serious and less-experienced friends in their own homes, Etinal and Skyther.

Both stories have similar themes on social satire and criticising nudity taboos and both of them are Urban Fantasy adventures about armies of naked women defeating powerful enemies. Great Pikmin Fan has cited Bayonetta, South Park, and Homestuck as major influences, and describes the stories as a mix between the three.

Chapters in -Roy are called "Seals," while they are "Totems" in Joy|. In addition to just being there to try to sound cool, it also makes for a slightly shorter naming notation — "Seal 1" instead of "-Roy Chapter 1."

Tropes Present in This Series

Tropes Present Across Both Installments; General World Tropes

• Affably Evil:
  • The Dackhark Couple is surprisingly casual for people worshipping an evil god and plotting with her to take over the world. Heck, they're even lax about fighting their enemies, as they do not treat the Syulk Legion as a serious threat despite having the extremely powerful Rhislaujja among their ranks. (Mostly because they're pretty sure the Syulk Legion won't reach the point where they'd free her.) They also genuinely love one-another.
  • Both the Ninja and Suit Squads are polite, slow to jump in to outright fighting, arrange schedules to duel the heroes ahead of time, stand by their word, and they have fairly reasonable motives. The Ninja just happen to be afraid of the demons (and angels), while the Suits just happen to be strongly devoted to their own customs and their god.
• Alien Blood: Demons and angel bleed based on whatever their class is; Gold/Cobalt-Class angels have both blood colors. Perpendicular humans and most Perpendicular fauna bleeds teal. A comment from Herbert in Totem 4 implies that "tealneck green trash" is the Perpendicular equivalent of "redneck white trash."
• All Your Powers Combined:
  • Ascending to godhood gives an angel or a demon the powers of all the classes in their species. Which essentially means both, since there is significant overlap between angels and demons.
  • Black-Class demons by default can use all the otherwise "unique" abilities of the seventy-two chromatic classes. The common catch is that they're weaker with them than the average demon of that class, but Lesuif and Rhislaujja are exceptions, being much, much stronger with all of them.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Some times, goofy characters genuinely are goofy idiots and harmless. Other times, they are not:
  • The Ninja Squad seem like goofballs, but they are the only known people — between humans, angels, or demons — to have technology capable of completely repressing a demon or angel's magic, leaving them helpless, and making them something of The Dreaded among Heaven and Hell. Then they have their first actual fight with Team Eve, making their bios pop up, and it turns out that they have the highest stats out of anything given the information sheet so far. Each. This includes a giant seagoat monster.
  • Subipian overlaps this with Beware the Nice Ones. His Power Speedo look is goofy and he's very hesitant to attack or do anything, but when he's forced to, he can suffocate you in sand.
• Birthday Beginning: Both stories begin on Halloween of 2018, which is Roy's birthday.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Kabus Legion are mostly assholes by the start. The Syulk Legion are mainly unempathetic, lazy jerks who care about themselves more than saving the world. Some of the human allies are prone to being egocentric and rude, especially the title duo. Yet they are going up against genocidal and/or Social Darwinist tyrants who want to flat-out kill humanity. Even the worse of the hero groups, the Kabus Legion, just wants a technically pacifistic "takeover."
• Color-Coded Characters: Every character in "Team Syulk-Kabus" is color-coded. Each demon is associated with the color of her class; dark shades for the Kabus Legion, light shades for the Syulk Legion. Each human in "Team Eve," "Team Ris," the Ninja Squad, or the Suits Squad on the other hand has a more subtle "major color," always the color of their eyes but also a color they commonly wear:
  • Roy: Yellow
  • Evelin: Red
  • Ashley: Blue
  • Mindy: Green
  • Joy: Chartreuse
  • Skyther: Rose
  • Etinal: Azure
  • Riscend: Spring Green
  • Lilith: Orange
  • Amanda: Magenta
  • Helena: Violet
  • Inanis: Cyan
  • Spaydassa: Amber
  • Clustiba: Mint
  • Diamiss: Indigo
  • Heabeat: Vermilion
• Color-Coded Elements: Each demon class has an "element," corresponding to their superpowers. And they each have their own colors. There are seventy-two "chromatic" classes in total, plus a Jack of All Stats Black class and a Master of None White class. In general:
  • Classes in the magenta-red range, red included, are the "Ground Series," and usually involves heat, fire, plasma, or movement specifically along the ground.
  • Classes in the red-yellow range, yellow included, are the "Air Series," and usually involves movement or things related to gasses.
  • Classes in the yellow-green range, green included, are the "Life Series," and typically involve more blatant or "standard" superpowers, or energy.
  • Classes in the green-cyan range, cyan included, are the "Psychic Series," and usually involve abstract forces and the like.
  • Classes in the cyan-blue range, blue included, are the "Aquatic Series." Typically they involve water, or general liquids, and "fluid motion" tends to play a part.
  • Classes in the blue-magenta range, magenta included, are the "Subterranean Series." They are usually related to earth and solids.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Downplayed. The Parallel demons are associated with darkness, and while they were genuine assholes that had tormented humanity, they were historically A Lighter Shade of Black compared to the angels (mostly because they generally lost to them), and in the present demons are the relatively friendly of the two to humans. The Kabus Legion in particular are dark-aligned, and while none of them are completely "good" by the beginning of the story, they're fairly reasonable and don't take that much to side forces with saving humanity from the Order of Chaos. Also downplayed in that the Perpendicular angels are "dark" and, generally speaking, are not nice themselves.
• The Dragon: Roxy for -Roy, Joxy for Joy|. They are the respective secondary threats of each story and fill in as the biggest active role while the proper Big Bads are absent for one reason or another.
• Evil Is Bigger: Normally, angels and demons are both human-sized. But the main villainous angels use artifacts called Power Speedos to make them gigantic, while the heroic demons tend to stay human-sized. The Labs are the closest exceptions to this, being Humongous Mecha piloted by the heroes, but even then the bad guys tend to have gigantic ships and the like of their own.
• Expy: Sam and Insa take the same gag used with Manly Dan and Tambry (respectively) in Journals of Wisdom, Power, and Courage, a badfic by the same author. Sam is a hulking, masculine beast with an extremist hatred of the majority despite being a white man himself, like Manly Dan in Journals. Insa meanwhile has brown skin and dyed purple hair like Tambry in both versions, and like Tambry in Journals she's an obnoxious bigot troll obsessed with trying to take down political correctness.
• Fan Disservice: Because the series is an ecchi harem, it tries to keep the unsexy aspects down, but it still pops up from time to time:
  • The President of the United States in the Parallel World wears nothing but a hat and a speedo. Unfortunately, he is very overweight and out of shape, and he generally looks like a fat Cheeseburger Freedom Man.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished gets averted on occasion, especially in Joy|, even with the revealing outfits everybody has. Taking note is when Joy arrives in the cave Nightfirma is sealed in, and she suffers nasty scrapes while wearing what is essentially a battle bikini. One thing making it "less bad" is the fact that she has Alien Blood, so instead of a bunch of red scratches on her ass she has teal marks, but it's still not pretty.
• Fantastic Racism: Angels and demons had been in a pretty nasty battle about this ever since they met on Earth, and humanity got dragged in to it once they evolved in to existence. Over on the Parallel World, angels have a large rule over at least Earth, with demons being seen as embodiments of evil thanks to angelic propaganda, and they're not happy about it. Humanity was used as pawns for the angels and slaughtered through sacrifice and other things by the demons, historically. In the Perpendicular World, relations between the three races is much better, but it's still not perfectly peachy.
• Female Angel, Male Demon: An exaggerated inversion. Demons are an all-female race, and angels are an all-male race. While generally the "good guys" involve demons and the "bad guys" involve angels, it's not even a blanket case of "all demons are good, all angels are bad;" it's more like both of them have good and bad people, and it's just that historically the angels had been far worse. The closest straight example to the trope is that "demons" genetically from the Perpendicular World look more "angelic," while "angels" from there look more "demonic."
• God and Satan Are Both Jerks: Across both worlds, the general rule is this: The reputation of demons is not completely undeserved. They are vicious people-eating monsters (especially in the past) armed with hideous, alien beings and are tricksters that have made deals to sucker humanity. The thing is, the exact same thing can be said with angels, just with a Light Is Not Good filter over them. (Or a Dark Is Evil filter for the Perpendicular angels.) Both races are really just loaded with assholes; "we" only see angels as benevolent because what humanity hears of them was Written by the Winners.
• God Is Evil: Both current holders of Godhood are the Big Bads of their respective story. There's Etabed, an entitled jerk who betrayed Lesuif and killed the entire Kabus Legion over in the Parallel World, and in the Perpendicular World is Pumpkin/The Master, a Social Darwinist who wants to destroy society and make a world where only the strong can live.
• Hide Your Children: To make the sexual nature of the story much more easy to bear^note Also, Fan just hates young characters in general, children and even teenagers are rarely seen. None have appeared in Joy| at all as of Totem 6, and in -Roy it takes until Seal 9 before two teenaged demons make an appearance in Hell, which the narrator proudly points out is the first time any underaged character has ever appeared in it.
• Homosexual Reproduction: Demons and angels reproduce homosexually, this results in them having same-sex couples for parents as the default. Adoptions and the like are the major exceptions.
• Humongous Mecha: Angels and demons have had them for thousands of years. They're often called "Labs" because the smallest and weakest of them are mostly used as laboratories for making things, and are terrible in combat when compared to the bigger and better angelic/demonic weapons. Angelic Labs typically look like giant naked metallic men, while demonic Labs typically look like giant naked metallic women.
• Intentionally Awkward Title: All of the chapter titles in both stories are quotes said by a given involved character, and most of them involve either sexual content or a sexual-sounding term. Note that since in Joy+Roy the characters are much less shy about sex than the average harem cast, whether those titles are referring to actual sex acts or simply come off as sounding awkward out of context is actually about 50-50, rather than 0-100.
• Ironic Name: The surnames of the Ninja Squad are all "demonic" or "ominous" in some way, and they are greatly opposed to the demons. The surnames of the Suits Squad are all based on some sort of mythology or "light deity"-like being, and while they worship their god, they are opposed to the radient demons of the Perpendicular gang.
• Irony: In general, the "main" demons (except both White Squad Captains) and the major angel antagonists are themed around the Seven Deadly Sins or the Seven Heavenly Virtues, but act in the opposite of them in many ways. To a lesser extent, other characters have shades of this.
  • Daygelz is named after the "Dagaz" rune, and Dagaz is even the name of one of her mothers. Dagaz can be taken to represent purity. Daygelz herself is one of the lewdest characters in the entire series, and is extremely brash and hot-headed.
  • Azmelditas is the daughter of Asmodeus, patron demon of lust. Azmedlitas is not a paragon of chastity herself (in fact, she's the closest the Boss Demons have to someone who is not an inversion of their sin/virtue, simply because Fan doesn't want to write a completely prudish member of the group), but she clearly cares more about work and getting things done than about fulfilling lust and the like.
  • Lesuif is connected to pride, being the daughter of the demon Lucifer. While Lesuif gives herself a massive and ominous image, she's really more humble than that, and all she really wants is for her friends to be happy instead of something like world domination or even being worshipped.
  • Uinearus is the daughter of chastity patron "angel" (actually demon, just a Perpendicular one) Uriel. She's a porn star and easily one of the most sexual members of either legion, and that's saying a lot. When Joy is told that Uriel is one of her mothers, she's downright shocked that a "mega-prude" like her ended up raising someone who would become a porn star.
  • Rhislaujja is one of the daughters of patron "humility angel" (again, demon) Raphael but she prides herself in being a Showy Invincible Hero.
  • Hyumultahs is supposed to be an "angel of humility." He is actually an extremely arrogant, careless asshole who thinks of himself as more important or powerful than Etabed himself, a god, and has an obsession with his image.
  • Subipian is supposed to be a sort of "angel of pride," and looks like he could pass as a "demon of pride" if not for how angels and demons work. He is very cautious and shy, and is constantly underplaying his own abilities.
  • A huge element to Roy and Joy's respective patron demons, Daygelz and Nightfirma, is that they would have been a lot happier if they were swapped. Joy would have gotten along with Daygelz right off the bat much better than Roy does, and Roy and Nightfirma might have gotten along better too.
• Master of All: Lesuif and Rhislaujja. Normally, demons of their class do have all the "class-based" powers of the rainbow, but they are so weak with those powers that most of the best qualify under Jack of All Stats. Lesuif and Rhislaujja, on the other hand, are orders of magnitude more powerful than the best demons of each of the classes, and fall under this trope instead.
• Light Is Not Good: Downplayed. Parallel angels are luminous figures and go with the expected ways angels are portrayed, as being light beings. They were also historically violent, oppressive assholes, and even in the present day they still hold power over both Earth and Hell. The major antagonists of -Roy, with the exception of Roxy, are all Parallel angels. Also downplayed in that the Perpendicular demons are light-aligned, and while historically they had been bad, the Syulk Legion of the current age is good, and they are much better aligned than their Kabus Legion Parallel counterparts.
• Number of the Beast:
  • This is considered the absolute smallest number of demons or angels required to be considered a legion or a host by their dictionary definition, and said definition is one that people have ignored in favor of a higher standard. To sell that the Kabus and Syulk Legions are both Ragtag Bunches of Misfits, they just barely meet this standard, while all the other legions and hosts they know of are much larger. This is further sorted by seventy-four "squads" of nine each, so each legion really has seventy-four members of note, with the followers being their background mooks.
  • When the Ninja Squad's stats are revealed, their averages turn out to have a lot of 6s in them, and they each have a whopping 666 "Life."
• One-Gender Race: Demons are all female, and angels are all male. Both have Homosexual Reproduction, and as a result every angel or demon by default has two mothers or fathers. The closest odd "exception" is that Perpendicular demons look angelic on average, and Perpendicular angels look demonic on average, but even then they share more in common with their Parallel namesakes. (Perpendicular and Parallel angels have the same classes, etc.)
• Our Monsters Are Weird: Heaven and Hell's wildlife is just bizarre. It has been mentioned that Hell has its own "rats," which are gigantic and have eyeball... things attached to their anuses. One of the first Angelic Creatures seen in -Roy are Minor Confections, which can be loosely described as flying rabbits with teeth on their eyelids that produce candy. When the Parallel Hell is shown properly in Seal 9, multiple Beasts are revealed at once, and all of them are flatout strange.
• Patchwork Map: This is what the Hells and Heavens look like overall, as opposed to the standard Fluffy Cloud Heaven or Fire and Brimstone Hell. They're cluster combinations of various extreme environments, generally suiting the "major" classes of angel or demon. When Team Eve enters Hell for the first time, they see some icy fields and glowing green forests close by, with only stretches of black wasteland seperating them. This is not helped by criminals using their powers to constantly reshape the land.
• Punny Name:
  • The island(s, counting both its Parallel and Perpendicular instances) of Vioslant is named off of combining violet, violent, and island. It fits all three of these: it is indeed an island, both instances are connected to an infamous Violet-Class angel and they both invoke a bit of purple in their theming, and there is also a theme of violence in at least the Parallel one. (The Order of Chaos have a base there, and they are somewhat like the embodiment of the "violence is fine, nudity is not" Double Standard.)
  • Combine the names of the two main legions. "Syulk" + "Kabus" sounds a lot like "succubus."
• R-Rated Opening: Both stories have not-worksafe content on their first chapters. -Roy has Roy meeting a naked Lesuif, with Daygelz covering up a view of her with her legs spread out. And then he masturbates a little later, and Daygelz spends the beginning of her physical first appearance with his semen on her. (As do all the Kabus captains upon release.) Joy| immediately begins with Joy giving Riscend oral sex.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Almost everybody. Pretty much every character doesn't mind going around completely nude, in spite of or in most cases fueled by spiting nudity taboos. Daygelz in particular is downright aggressive about it.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Parallel POTUS resembles Cheeseburger Freedom Man (blue skin, red and white hair, American flag apparel), although his personality is an exaggerated Southern stereotype.
  • The 85 types of photomagic/things people can "see" (not just light) is confirmed to be a reference to the jing in Avatar: The Last Airbender, with Daygelz and Roy's blurb it being similar.
• Succubi and Incubi: In the Joy+Royverse, "demons" and "succubi" are synonymous. Succubi are not some kind of sub-type of demons, they are demons. "Incubi" actually refers to angels; both species are incredibly horny. Neither of them literally feeds off of emotion, but they can benefit greatly from... sexual fluids. As well as non-sexual fluids, or really anything from a human, as angels and demons in the distant past have eaten humans before. No member of either the Kabus or Syulk Legions have eaten people, but their enemies might have.
• Take That!: It's by Great Pikmin Fan. There is a bit of this on both stories.
  • The intent with the Kabus Legon's White Squad's battle against "Well Man" and the sex traffickers early in -Roy is supposed to let the readers know right away that this is not going to be the sort of harem story where the female leads are Faux Action Girls that get raped or nearly-raped and have to have the male lead come and save them. No, Roy would have been absolutely fucked if he went out there; Daygelz and her group instead curb-stomp and humiliate the gang. Even when they (or, more often, the Perpendicular group) do suffer from some setback or lose a fight it's never rape-y, and never even really sexualized. This is an "ecchi" series where the sexy scenes come from the women winning. Similarly, unlike most fanservice that relies on Clothing Damage being done to the heroines, in Joy+Roy the female leads want to be naked while the villains are trying to put clothes on them.
  • The entire series is essentially a "fuck you" at some of the more objectifying and "old-fashioned" harem/fanservice-filled series, or ones with poor writing that lead to bad implications, while still being heavily sexual to show that criticising poorly-handled fanservice is not the same thing as hating nudity and sex. Rather than glorifying Clothing Damage and embarrassment and having most of the fanservice coming from the characters being in some sort of distress, the heroes want to be naked while the villains are trying to put clothes on them. The Cute Monster Girl characters have several moments that remind you that, yes, they are vicious demons, they're not "cute helpless and naive" and struggle to learn Earth's ways (in fact, the opposite happens in the Parallel World: the humans have to learn demon and angel customs while the demons and angels know way more than them). Actual sex happens rather than characters shyly beating around the bush; in fact, Joy| opens up with a sex scene, and sex is how the plot of both stories moves forward. The series defies the usual sexy romcom tropes like Accidental Pervert (the closest it gets to having that is Roy walking in on the Ninja and Hyumultahs, and even that plays with it). The characters are too mature to constantly angst about or obsess over their breast sizes. Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male and Double Standard Rape: Female on Male are both averted: Roxy is a toxic and violent friend/teammate while Joxy clearly sexually harasses her teammates (or at least Subipian), neither of which are played for laughs, and both are meant to be seen as legitimately terrible people. The only time "heroic character hits another" happens and is played for laughs is Roy, a man, attacking Daygelz, a woman, in the first chapter of -Roy, and he had the excuse that he was scared out of his wits, had no idea what was going on, and she technically did break in to his home. Daygelz and Nightfirma, among other harem members, are far from idealized submissive idealized 1950s housewife/obedient maid material. Roy is the opposite of a usual dense harem protagonist, being quick to understand things, actively pursuing (and getting) sex, having a heavy interest in politics and social justice, and instead of women blindly flocking over to and liking him, he's The Friend Nobody Likes by the start.
  • Nightfirma wastes no time going over the "infamy" of Minecraft's original creator after he left it the moment the game comes up. It's a downplayed example, as this is generally seen as more of Nightfirma being Nightfirma, and Muuviedah even says that the current team themselves has distanced themselves from him so it's not really worth bringing up.
  • Both the first Virtue of the Parallel side of the series and two of the major villains of the Perpendicular side of the story are based on The Simpsons characters to some degree: Hyumultahs resembling Ned (and being a reference to his Flanderization — he's Season 1's "face" of the religious extremist group the Order of Chaos, along with Roxy, fitting what Ned became after his character was exaggerated), and Herbert and Honey Dackhark being loosely based on Homer and Marge Simpson, respectively. Fan also makes it no secret that he believes the show had a decline in quality, and decided to have some of the earliest faces the heroes fight be themed around it.
• Token Good Teammate:
  • The Kabus Legion is a case where their leader is this. Lesuif is one of the few captains that was always on humanity's side, and is only acting as though she wants to take over the world to boost the morale of her demon friends. She is by far the softest of them when it comes to understanding the humans and siding with them. Especially compared to Daygelz, the designated "main" demon, who also softens up but it takes the entire opening two-parter for her to do so.
  • Of the main Dackhark group, Subipian. Herbert and Honey are Affably Evil but are absolutely not the sort of people you would want to become enemies with, and they will not hesitate to summon a whole army on someone. Joxy is a Monster Clown that loves terrifying others and proudly seeks to help an evil god end civilization as everybody knows it, and she's a creep in general. Pumpkin herself is that evil god. Subipian, on the other hand, is a much more reluctant guy who mostly does what he does because he feels that he needs to as a sworn servant of the current god, and he is hesitant to actually do those things. Totem 6 reveals that Joxy has to bully him to really get things done.
• Urban Fantasy: Both stories involve a battle of angels and demons and with explicit magic that can defy the laws of physics. Both are also set in the late 2010s, involve mecha and other technology, and social media plays a large role.
• Vague Age: The Virtues and Sins are the only major characters without any clear age figure given, just "immortals around for hundreds of years." Everybody in the Kabus and Syulk Legions, their human companions, Roxy (same age as Roy), and Etabed (attended the same high school as Lesuif, same year) are 24 or 25. Joxy is technically a 1 year-old, being a robot just built in 2017. Even Dave, Ermit, and Marjorie are put somewhere around the "middle aged" range. While the Virtues and Sins fall under Really Sevenhundred Years Old, just how long they have been around is never made clear. They could be anywhere from being "just" a century to being alive around the Middle Ages to even being older than that.
• Would Hit a Girl: Everybody. Roy shows zero hesitation to attack Daygelz when he first releases her in his room at night out of a panic, and that's something Daygelz actually praises shortly after the fact. Heck, the bad guys have a good amount of men among their ranks and the good guys consist of plenty of women; it would be boring if they restricted battle to Designated Girl Fights. On the flip side, the Big Bad of the Perpendicular story and both Dragons are women so it would complicate things if Roy refused to fight either. And speaking of Roy, just like the three human women in his friend group, his own designated "Ninja Squad rival" (Lilith) is a woman, and he's outright expected to fight her.
• World of Ham: The main characters are relatively sane, but the side characters are nuts. Of particular note is when Joy's group go to a random convenience store to get Muuviedah cigarettes; the cashier yells everything in all caps and in a pseudo-middle ages fantasy-type of poetic speak. The narrative immediately tells the reader that he's a one-off.
• Written by the Winners: It is heavily implied that the main reason why angels are widely worshipped in the Joy+Royverse, mostly in the Parallel World where humanity at large does not have definitive knowledge of them and the demons, while the demons are seen as vile forces of evil is because in the original fight between angels and demons, the angels won and oppressed the demons. Religious texts as a result near-universally condemn them. The story proper goes on to say that both species were giant assholes, and so was humanity to a degree.

-Roy: Master of Debate

• Ax-Crazy: Sam. His first appearance outside of a brief glimpse in his home is him literally throwing an axe over at a mall door completely unprovoked.
• Badass Boast: Daygelz pulls one off in the name of demonkind after Sam pissed her off by refusing to let her speak one too many times about demons not being pure evil. The bold text is all part of the story, as she is also saying this the Voice of the Legion.
  Daygelz: OKAY YOU FINITE-LIFESPAN NONMAGIC IGNORANT SOCIAL JUSTICE LITTLE SHIT, IT'S ONE THING TO BLAME EVERYTHING ON THE DEMONS LIKE HEAVEN HAS BEEN DOING SINCE BEFORE YOU PUNY MORTALS HAVE EVOLVED THE ABILITY TO SHARPEN STICKS, IT'S ANOTHER TO FUCKING INTERRUPT ME WHENEVER I TRY TO SAY ANYTHING PROVING MY INNOCENCE. I DON'T KNOW WHAT KIND OF SHITTY HAREM ANIME YOU'VE ROTTED YOUR BRAINS WITH, BUT I AM A REAL CAPITAL-D DEMON, FROM CAPITAL-H HELL. NOT A FUCKING TEN YEAR OLD WITH BAT WINGS. YOU CAN'T JUST SIT BY AND TEASE AND INTERRUPT ME AND ACT LIKE HEAVEN HAS THE FINAL STAY WITHOUT ME PUTTING UP A FUCKING BATTLE THAT WILL DWARF THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS. ONE GLANCE AT MY HOME WORLD COULD GIVE YOUR BEST HORROR DIRECTORS NIGHTMARES FOR ALL ETERNITY, AND HALF OF YOU WILL END UP THERE EVENTUALLY. THE VERY LEAST YOU CAN DO IS LISTEN, WITHOUT GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO PISS ME OFF, BECAUSE TRUST ME, THAT IS THE LAST FUCKING THING YOU WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW. I HAVE PUT UP WITH FAR TOO MANY HUMANS WHO INSIST THEY KNOW ABOUT HEAVEN AND HELL WHEN ALL THEY HAVE TO GO ON IS LIES. LIFE. WILL NOT END WELL. FOR THEM.
• Boomerang Bigot: It's a Running Gag that anyone who shows bigotry or just a general distaste towards people of a certain group is a member of that group, or at least one group they shit on.
  • As of Seal 9, almost every single Parallel character who "punches up" and constantly feels the need to either vent against cisgendered white men or just generally talks shit about white people is in fact a cisgendered white man themselves. Roy, Sam, Sam's flunkies, Hyumultahs, and that guy on the news. (Although the latter two are very obviously faking it for attention.) Nightfirma is Ambiguously Brown (and a demon at that) and a woman, but she's also over on the Perpendicular World and her dislike is heavily downplayed compared to Roy or Sam, who would not shut up about it. Likewise Roxy is a stereotypical man-hater who also made quips about white people, but does not speak out about it that much, and she is white herself.
  • Insa is a mountain of these things. She is a Female Misogynist, a white supremacist who is also Ambiguously Brown, homophobic despite being attracted to women, and hates fat people despite being obese. All of these at the very least. She also dispises the mentally ill despite being one of the craziest characters in the entire story.
  • Ron has a paranoid conspiracy theory about fat people taking over the world, and even thinks that if you become fat enough you're not even really human any more. As with Insa, he himself is obese.
• Butt-Monkey: Dave. He's often subjected to slapstick that is fairly out of place even by the standards of this story, he has a poor track record of winning anything, and whenever he's in a fight expect him to be taken out right away. It does not help that Roy absolutely hates his guts and does not want him around.
• The Comically Serious: Roxy is pretty much the only character in either story that takes the plot completely seriously, no matter how absurd it is. The heroes are snarky and joke-y as imaginable and the other villains have a huge amount of Bond Villain Stupidity involved.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Ron. He's a bizarre nut that believes in even more bizarre things, such as chocolate being pumped in to water to poison humans to become fat enough to become part of a different species, all as part of a Space Lizard plan.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Any tme the Kabus Legion fights something that's not a Virtue, Roxy, or some other major villain. The White Squad — who are also considered to be the weakest of the squads — completely beats and humiliates a sex trafficking ring in the second chapter, after they demonstrate that shooting them with ordinary bullets has very little effect.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Joy| was barely even planned until after a good chunk of the beginning of -Roy was already done, so it is more consistent right from the word "go." But the earlier chapters of -Roy specifically have a few odd traits that stick out, even after a large edit that tweaked up the first half of the first arc and heavily rewrote the beginning:
  • The first few chapters had a more abstract magic system in line with a more typical fantasy, with things like the phase of the Moon mattering in spells and inducing Laser-Guided Amnesia requiring to draw up a special circle. Around the introduction of the chromatic squads, it became more in-line with Great Pikmin Fan's other stories like Ordinarily United and the like, where there is generally one "set" type of magic that is pretty consistent and could be used to make anything. Since the spells mentioned in the beginning were fairly important, they couldn't just go away or be easily re-written, so they became The Artifact.
  • Seals 0, 1, and 2 went through the trouble of giving each squad's eight followers a quick introduction that hints at a personality or gimmick of theirs. Fan quickly found out that introducing the squad captain just by herself in almost every chapter would be pretty difficult to do along with furthering the plot, let alone giving a quick glimpse at eight more characters per chapter, so this was dropped. Seal 3 had the Lab's scanner simply name Bizhial's followers without going in to any details, and for the most part the chapters after that has the followers be small cameoes at best and All There in the Manual at worst, the latter just being known for a name and a "Title" near the end. The followers of the "main" demons will still have just a little more character to them, but not by as much as the captains.
  • In the original version of Seal 0, Roy was written as more of a typical Butt-Monkey harem protagonist, and had being unlucky as his schtick. Later chapters and the major edit to the first half of Season 1 removed the whole "unlucky" part of his character and made him more of a jerkass holier-than-thou Internet warrior, to try to make him a more original harem protagonist.
  • White-Class demons used to have shapeshifting as their unique elite mode power, something that Daygelz took advantage of often especially in the first two chapters. This was changed so that they would be closer foils to Black-Class demons; Black-Class demons could use all the powers in all revisions, but after the shift White-Class demons had no unique powers but were stronger on average with their base magic, making them more of equals and opposites to one-another. Shapeshifting was re-assigned to the ability of one of the seventy-two chromatic demon classes (the exact class is unknown as of Seal 8 and Totem 5), and every single one of Daygelz's shape-shifting shenanigans was editted to be something else.
  • The Kabus demons were originally 402 years old, about as old as the United States, and implied to be the same age as the Virtues. During the major rewrite, this was changed so that they were 24/25 along with the human heroes, to reduce pointless complexity and avoid any potential issues with what is potentially (since they still look and act like adults in their mid-twenties) a huge age gap. The Virtues (and Sins written after) are still super-old, but they have a Vague Age; they are among the few characters in the story whose exact age is currently unknown.
  • Since Roy frees demon squads on orgasm, the Prologue in general and the end of it specifically had a theme of "sexy things would keep tempting Roy," which was dropped completely after Roy bluntly asks Daygelz if she wants to have sex, they do have sex, and decide that in general they would have fun releasing the demons by making each following captain in line bed with him. After Roy loses his virginity to Daygelz, he is never "tempted" in to releasing the squads again and every single following release happens in a controlled environment and with no trickery from the Kabus Legion or otherwise.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Roy is introduced as the only person at his work place, apart from his boss, actually doing any work, showing that for all his flaws shown later he is at least hard-working and honestly devoted to things. His boss hesitantly asks him to fill in for somebody and he does it, jumping at the call when he finds out it's in a rather conservative neighborhood. Once he's there, he comes across a small charity for a religious organization, and then starts going on a rant to him about how there is no God and something about how awful the intentions really are... but he fumbles himself and just awkwardly drives off as soon as he can, showing that he's arrogant and holier-than-thou but harmless and can't really stand his ground. It also sets up Dramatic Irony, as the story heavily hints that he, an atheist, will wind up having an army of demons sealed inside of him.
  • Evelin gets two, each in a different Prologue chapter. Her first is when Roy picks her to call when he's stuck in the middle of nowhere. She's already seen working on something, and when she finds out about Roy being stuck in the wilderness, she leaps out of their apartment window, parachutes down, and lands in a Cool Car. Both the car and the parachute have swords built on them despite having no seeming purpose. This shows her general over-the-top invention side and how she makes all kinds of cool gear, even if it can be needlessly excessive. Then in the second chapter, she gets her Big Damn Heroes moment where she saves Roy (and the entire Kabus Legion by proxy of the "He dies, they die" part of the spell) from a shadow ball by Hyumultahs, despite knowing little to nothing of him. She rides up in a motorcycle, slices the ball in half, and then has the guts to slowly walk up to a Power Speedo-form Hyumultahs while loudly shouting at him saying that he does not deserve to be a messanger of a god. For context, Hyumultahs with his Power Speedo is about five stories tall and even Daygelz, a powerful demon from Hell, is absolutely terrified of him. Eve takes him on in a fight anyway, showing that her Large Ham is not just for show and that she is a legitimate badass willing to stand against anybody.
  • Roxy's character as a cold-hearted Dragon is fully established in Seal 0 Part 2, where she, after spending six years acting as a friend to Roy, has no problems suddenly shooting him in the face when she comes to his workplace.
  • Dave is introduced as Evelin's partner in their sort of independent agent/"bounty hunting" job and makes his first appearance in her Big Damn Heroes moment... but unlike Eve, Dave is swatted away almost immediately, which is played for laughs. He's clearly the Butt-Monkey of the story.
• First-Episode Twist: The two-part Prologue has a lot of plot developments that are meant to be surprising on a blind read, but Fan casually reveals on even his profile.
  • Roxy is working for the Order of Chaos, which also turns out to be real and not just some story made up by the edgy Daygelz to justify her anti-censorship crusade. Up until the end of the chapter, where she pulls out a remote with the Order's symbol on them, she is built up as a member of "the harem," albeit a jerkass also Locked Out of the Loop. (As she was the only one of Roy's four female friends to not walk in on the White Squad.)
  • Daygelz has a Heel–Face Turn and starts genuinely working for the humans. This does not fully happen until the end of the second chapter — before that, she's an outright enemy (if a harmless one, to the innocent) of Team Eve and humanity as a whole, then she grudgingly works with them to fight back against the attack from Hyumultahs and Roxy. After this happens, the entire rest of the premise is about befriending the other demons much like they did with Daygelz.
  • Lesuif being Good All Along is another major twist that happens midway through the second chapter when she starts speaking telepathically with Roy. Before that happened, she was presented as a malevolent demonic ruler who genuinely hated humans, and Daygelz — who believed that was the case — did not help soften her image at all. The look in to her mind at the end of the second chapter, revealing that she's far more excitable and cheery than what she presents herself as even to Roy, was written as a twist back then. But Lesuif having no ill-will towards humanity is a driving force of the whole "redeem the demons" story — she pretends to so that the other members who genuinely do hate humans would look up to her and see her as strong, and/or come to the conclusion that humanity isn't all that bad and doesn't blindly support the evil angels on their own instead of blindly following Lesuif.
• Four Temperment Ensemble: Of "Team Eve:"
  • Roy is Chloreric; quick to enter arguments, yet a devoted and empathetic hard worker, he's just arrogant. He is also more introverted than the usual standard for the temperment, and in fact has the smallest social circle of the four.
  • Evelin is Sanguine; the loud, hammy, energetic optimist of the group.
  • Ashley is Melancholic; calm yet snarky and cynical, fairly laid back. She is far more social than the usual standard for the temperment, and in fact has the largest social circle of the four.
  • Mindy is Phlematic; a free spirit and alternates with Ashley in being the most level-headed and calm of the four,
• Hate Sink: Etabed spends the beginning of the story with his components separated, so there isn't much of him to hate by then. Roxy at least tries to go for an invoked Evil Is Cool angle, being a genuinely capable badass who gets stronger as the series goes on. But there are some characters that are much easier to hate:
  • Hyumultahs is little more than an asshole outright. He's a sadistic dick to Daygelz (he attacked her home when she was a child and apparently applied censor paint on her mothers) and almost every scene he's in has him insulting someone either to their faces or behind their backs. When he's introduced, it becomes very clear that while the Kabus Legion are human-haters and card-carrying jerks by the beginning, the Order of Chaos are easily worse and are the real villains of the story.
  • Insa is a bigot in just about every way imaginable (most of which are to what she is) and a hypocritical doxxer who wants Roy beaten and possibly killed for something he was in the middle of apologizing about. There's very little to her other than being completely awful and, unlike her foil Sam (who himself teeters the Hate Sink line), she's not even genuinely strong or intimidating to at least give a "cool in a threatening way" vibe, just a cowardly jackass. The biggest entertainment value from her comes from how she constantly fails and flips out due to the sheer degree with which she's out of touch with reality.
• Lesser of Two Evils: This is the main reason why "Team Eve" even wants to help the Kabus Legion out in the first place. They unwillingly get stuck between the Kabus Legion and the Order of Chaos, and know enough to figure out that if one of the sides wins, they will have enough power to end the world. Humanity going up against either of them entirely without the help of other demons or angels wouldn't work, so they pretty much have to win one of the sides over to liking humanity. They pick the Kabus Legion since they are relatively more reasonable, and their hatred of humanity at least has a Freudian Excuse, whereas the Order's leaders are only doing as such because they're power-hungry assholes that want to be on top for the sake of it, unconvincingly believe they're in the right in that demons are bad just for existing, or both. The Ninja Squad feel this way about the Order of Chaos being the lesser of evils, although not because they think their members are nicer (they're not nicer and the Ninja do not think they are), but because Etabed is under a far more strict seal situation so it would be harder to have him, thus Lesuif is the bigger threat that they'd need to team up with an outside party to fight.
• Mugging the Monster: "Well Man" and the sex traffickers vs the Kabus Legion White Squad. The former had no chance at all to fight them^note Technically their statistion says that they had about a one percent chance instead of none, but still and wound up getting curb-stomped as a result. He is seen in Seal 9 trying this again when he escapes prison and enters Hell, attempting to capture two teenage demons... who sap out his life.
• Running Gag: Daygelz's terrible knowledge of human pop culture due to her barely caring so long as nudity isn't involved. When laughing off Roy's wishes that he was "just born better" and doesn't need to study or train with magic, she outright says he's no "Goku Potter or whatever he's called" with barely a hint of irony. She also assumes Liar Liar is a violent gore-fest despite knowing absolutely nothing about it other than that it came from America.
• Secret Test of Character: This is how Lesuif's overall mission works. She's merely putting up a front of hating humanity as a way of supporting her legion. She wants them to come to the conclusion on their own that humans are not that bad, and also to stand up to her. In effect, she's a semi-militant leader whose biggest dream is to have her followers think they're disobeying her wish to fight for freedom and equality, and instead fight for what she actually believes is freedom and equality.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Roy thinks of himself as a major Internet hero and a force fighting against bigotry. He really isn't, he's just a ranty jerk who is genuinely pretty (book) smart and devoted to work, but those are about where the positive things that can be said about him ends. He also sees himself as an aggressive person who would never back down, but he consistently chickens out when faced with actual danger, or even against someone harmless he doesn't like when meeting face-to-face (evident with his reaction to the religious charity at the beginning).
• Stereotype Flip: Downplayed. The joke about Battle Couple Mindy and Ashley's forms of combat is that they act in ways that would fit one-another's stereotypes — the Latina Ashley uses martial arts, while the Asian Mindy uses wrestling (while not specifically Mexican wrestling, the idea came from that). The downplay is how neither of them act or "flip" stereotypes otherwise.
• Their First Time: Downplayed; Roy is in his mid-twenties but was still a virgin up until having sex with Daygelz. In Seal 1. He actually has sex with Daygelz (who is his age but is not a virgin), but it is awkward and very anti-climactic.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Most of the other villains are in this for themselves, but Roxy genuinely believes that she is doing the right thing by eliminating demons from influencing Earth and making sure an asshole god is brought back to full power.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Roxy averts this. Once she has a chance to shoot Roy, she does so, without even saying a word. Other times the story goes out of its way to explain why she doesn't, usually that the powers of the other demons would keep Roy safe from her, so simply shooting him in the head like she tried back when only the White Squad was out was not an option.
• The Worf Effect: Seal 0 Part 2 has the Kabus Legion White Squad curb-stomp a gang of sex traffickers who wanted to capture them, despite being outnumbered and not having cars. Shortly after that, Hyumultahs shows up, who quickly brings fear in to even Daygelz, showing how much more powerful the Order of Chaos' top enforcers are combared to some random thugs and the Order's very own mooks.

Joy|: Cunning Underling

• Bizarro Universe: Most of the story is set in one. Even ignoring the whole "angels and demons living with humanity" nail, everything is off slightly. Mostly in color: humans bleed teal, angels are dark, demons are light, plants are purple and blue, and rocks are more colorful than usual. Travel between the two worlds is possible but somewhat hard to do, the easiest source is magic from an extremely rare angel class.
• Country Matters: Hyumultahs calls Evelin a cunt just after he drops in the Perpendicular World from the events of -Roy's prologue. This and a few other moments implies that he pretends to be clean and "politically correct" when around Roxy, but drops this completely the moment he knows she's not in the picture.
• Darker and Edgier: There's still humor, but Joy| is much closer to a serious story than -Roy, with less social satire and emphasis on media and more of an actual "defeat this corrupt organization" plot. The heroes are also not nearly as good at combat as their Parallel foils, so they fail more often on average. Comparing the Prologue is an easy way of showing that things aren't quite as Bayonetta-esque in the Perpendicular story: Roy's encounter with the Kabus Legion might start "unsettling" but it quickly goes to humor. Joy meeting the Syulk Legion happens in a much more threatening environment (not that the plains in the middle of nowhere are completely pleasant, but it's better than a pitch-black cavern), and Joxy comes off as much more openly threatening to Joy than Roxy to Roy, as that was back when he thought she was a friend. The exposition text in -Roy happens while the Kabus Legion are absolutely curb-stomping a gang of sex traffickers; with Joy| it happens while the group is losing to some lowly Dackhark mooks.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Suit Cities act on this. You graffiti, even when you were ten? And/or you disrespect the current god in any way? Death penalty.
• For Want Of A Nail: The biggest difference between the Perpendicular and Parallel Worlds, palette and some lifeforms aside, is this: What if angels and demons revealed themselves to humanity around World War I instead of keeping themselves a secret to the present day?
• Godiva Hair: Deliberate in-universe example, Joy's father doesn't wear anything, but his beard by default often enough covers his genitals. He styles it that way. Otherwise the trope appearing is rare, partly because the story does not shy away from full nudity in the first place, and partly because Fan hates the trope in general.
• Insane Troll Logic: Joy's gang manages to convince Subipian that he shouldn't just flood their Lab with sand and kill them because it would be copyright infringement. It works and gets him to back off fighting them until he can come up with a more "original" way to take them down.
• Lens Flare Censor: Nightfirma's "outfit" is this in universe. She uses her light magic to create bright beams of light over her crotch. And her breasts too, despite public toplessness being legal, out of tradition. This is a Deconstructive Parody in that everybody finds it annoying and blinding.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Subipian is a downplayed example. He is a legitimately threatening angel who can use a Power Speedo to enter a form where he can effortlessly make sandstorms, but he's a huge pushover and he's very, very easily fooled.
• Monster Clown: Joxy, The Dragon of the story. She's a robot that purposefully dresses in a freaky clown mask and takes pride in scaring other people; her Establishing Character Moment is ambushing Joy in pitch-blackness, alone apart from Nightfirma talking to her telepathically.
• Mundane Fantastic: As humanity had over a century to get used to angels and demons, magic stuff like the Labs and the like are commonplace. Hell, DMVs on Earth — not just Heaven or Hell — accomodate for Labs and the like, and it's relatively easy to get a Humongous Mecha. (You just need to afford one and be able to wait two days.)
• Obviously Evil: For a delivery company, the Dackharks heavily telegraph themselves as the bad guys. Even if one lets their "dark"-based surname slide on account of that just being their family name (and even then, since dark is seen as good and light is seen as bad in the Perpendicular World, this might not be considered a bad thing in Perp), they still have an ominous purple and blue color scheme and their base is suspicuously out in the middle of a desert with nothing around for miles.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Totem 5 opens up with one. Herbert is about to have sex with Honey, but the narrator remarks about being on "narration auto-pilot" and cuts away. In this case, it's not because it's sex, since the series does not shy away from that — it's because the two are apparently really, really bad lovers, to the point where reading them having sex would be unenjoyable. In fact, the story cuts to a different sex scene. Between Etinal and Skyther.
• Tom the Dark Lord:
  • The Master's true name is Pumpkin. She is also a god and capable of using every single demon class power on steroids.
  • The leaders of the corrupt Dackhark Corporation are named Honey and Herbert.