Memories of Alkaline
is a Surreal Fantasy Web Serial Novel written by Otneimica. Currently a work in progress, it's hosted on both Archive of Our Own and Wattpad, where Otneimica regularly edits and updates it.
The story is framed as a recounting by the narrator of their memories of Alkaline, a young girl with sparkly silver hair that lives on Quark Island, a tropical island located in a realm that's very different from the real world:
Both the ocean that surrounds it and the sky that hangs over it are magenta; the sand is as cool and as smooth as butter; the trees have rainbow-colored canopies and trunks that twist and turn every which way; the mountains are huge piles of spices; and the Sun that shines down it all is a giant light bulb.
Alkaline's life on this strange island is as carefree as you can imagine: she spends her days exploring everything the place has on offer, competing with her friends in "sand-skating" races, using her unique purification powers to heal those who're injured or troubled, and getting into battles with the resident Wicked Witch Calcia. But while the island's an overall peaceful place... that doesn't mean it isn't without its dangers.
And soon, Alkaline will see just how dark and serious life on this silly little island can be...
As stated above, Memories of Alkaline can be read both here on Archive of Our Own and here on Wattpad.
However, according to Word of God, it is now on indefinite hiatus.
Memories of Alkaline provides examples of the following tropes:
- Bizarrchitecture: Alkaline's house. It's a pyramid made of "tungwood"—a pink, sticky material with the consistency of gum—and built on the top of the canopy of a tree that's "not too short, but not too tall".
- And then there's Calcia's house, which is an igloo made of red ice that somehow doesn't melt despite it being built on what's essentially a tropical island. (Though that may be just Calcia's magic making it so it doesn't melt.)
- Cartoon Creature: The majority of the island's populace are these. Alkaline and Calcia are the only humans (well, humanoids).
- Cloudcuckooland: Quark Island and the world surrounding it. A magenta-colored, fruit punch-flavored ocean; sand as smooth as butter; trees with twisty trunks and multicolored canopies; a giant light bulb in the sky for a Sun...
- Color Motif: The story regularly calls attention to colors, as most of the characters are associated with one: Alkaline sports chalk white skin; Lanthan's made of red rock, while Calcia wears a red bodysuit; Noble Oble's made of purple gases; Iron Meister's a yellow furball; Aluminok's a blue-scaled anaconda; the rabbits of Lop Glade are all magenta; and the Black Sugar Spire is, well, black (and the only thing on the entire island that's black).
- Crapsaccharine World: Alkaline and her friends may call it home, but Quark Island is clearly a very dangerous place.
- Dark Is Evil: The fittingly named Black Sugar Spire, which has the honor of being the only thing on Quark Island that's black and is seen by the island's inhabitants as something better off avoided.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Black Sugar Spire, a massive tower in the center of the island and is so big and tall that it can be seen from anywhere on the island.
- Fictional Sport: Sand Skating, which involves staking on the island's smooth, butter-like sand and racing to the finish line. Alkaline skates on the sand to regularly get around, and even Lanthan does it sometimes (though he can't go as fast as Alkaline since he's made of rock).
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter is titled "Memories of [Character, Location, or Landmark]", referencing how the story is someone recounting their memories of the island and the people and things they encountered on it.
- Island of Mystery: Quark Island is as surreal as it is mysterious.
- Level Ate: Quark Island. The ocean surrounding it is fruit punch, the sand is butter, the mountains are spices, and the "tungwood" Alkaline's house is made of is actually gum. It's subverted, however, with the Evil Tower of Ominousness Black Sugar Spire: despite its name, it's not food. In fact... nobody knows what it's made of.
- Make My Monster Grow: Calcia uses her magic to make unwilling creatures mutate and grow to immense size.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Black Sugar Spire. Nobody knows anything about it and may never go anywhere near it. Calcia, however, seems to be quite interested in it...
- Rock Monster: Lanthan, though there really isn't anything monstrous about him and is Alkaline's best friend.
- Sand Is Butter: Quark Island's sand. It's never outright stated to be butter, but considering how it's described and how many of the island's aspects are food-related, it probably is.
- Theme Naming: The characters are named after elements: Alkaline (Alkali metals), Lanthan (Lanthanides), Noble Oble (noble gases), Calcia (Calcium), etc. The adds to the surreal nature of the work since it comes off as random due to the setting being an island made of food.
- Turns Red: A very rare non-video game example: The creatures Calcia transforms with her magic turn red.
- Watch Out for That Tree!: Subverted with Alkaline. She gets around by skating on the trails and patches of sand littered around the trees, but whenever she gets close to a tree, she grabs hold of its trunk and swings around it, then lets it go to gain even more speed on the sand.
- Weird Sun: The Sun that hangs over Quark Island is a giant light bulb. It gets dim to signify noon, flickers to signify evening, and turns off to signify night. That, and it's apparently within the planet's atmosphere instead of being in space, lightyears away from it.
