Take your average group of teenagers in any high school drama - you've got the cliques, the bratty cheerleaders, the testosterone-crazed jocks, the outsiders who are too normal to be cool, the geeks who are too far out for even the normals, the freshmen who want to fit in, the recently-transferred students who want to do the same... and then you have Tuck and his friends. He's the high-school nerd who's particularly skilled in various manners of weaponry and martial arts through necessity, whose family is equally so, who alternates between roleplaying, computers, and going out on week-long hiking trips with friends, not to mention skilled enough to take care of a number of computer jobs, but still runs up against the aforementioned cliques and jocks on a far too regular basis.Oh, and lest it seem still rather ordinary, it turns out that his girlfriend has a few quirks, and when she decides to Mind Screw the entire campus with him on Halloween, he seems far too good at being female... and that's just the start.The Saga of Tuck is a long-running, generally-acclaimed work of fiction by Ellen Hayes, exploring just how a teen would react if suddenly his life, and gender, were turned upside down in so many ways. Published periodically online since 1997 (which is when the storyline is set; a little over a year of story time has elapsed in a dozen years), it's an excellent look at how normal - and yet how very strange - a teenager's life can become.
This serial novel provides examples of the following tropes:
Afraid of Needles: Justified in that Tuck just loathes anything conclusively medical.
Beware the Nice Ones: Most of the characters are the nicest folks you'll ever meet...until you threaten one.
Blood Brothers: Tuck and Mike (Euromutt- and Chinese-American) describe themselves as brothers; literally, they performed a blood ritual and have some kind of psychic link. Tuck even says he cannot die unless his brother lets him go.
Cerebus Syndrome: The series began with a relatively light, comic tone, though there had always been a more serious undercurrent. This took a much darker turn after Tuck mysteriously begins developing breasts; while it grew lighter again for a time, later events took the series into some very deep and murky territory indeed, and many fans stopped reading - while the quality of the series remained high, it was too different for some who preferred the lighter stories. Currently, the series is on an upward swing, following the grave events set in September and October 1997.
Cliff Hanger: Rarely, usually when the main character is in serious trouble.
Or, earlier during the publication history, to solicit fan mail.
Cool and Unusual Punishment: The main character and his friends wind up pulling off many of these, but the best ones eventually got their former school principal to commit assault and battery. And remove himself from the job.
Coming Out Story: Averted. Or, the entire story to date could be seen as partially one loooooooong coming out story... including Tuck coming out to himself. But this is arguable. And argued.
Arguable... could be that he was merely sleeping off the last few months.
The Cracker: Faceless and nameless, but every time they try, they butt heads with Tuck and his family. Bad Idea.
Never described as the same person or group.
Crazy-Prepared: Tuck's family: they seem to be suitably geared and capable of warding off whatever trouble they might run into, up to and including a nuclear war. At least, when on their own terms.
Cursed with Awesome: Tuck's karma winds up with him surrounded by a dozen cute girls at a moment's notice, capable of masking himself as female, and able to hold a job he excels at without even trying... however, most folks would call this a matter of Blessed with Suck instead, so it is of course a Subjective Trope.
Five-Man Band: Averted. There is a five man band, but it's a musical (rock) band and plays music in clubs.
And they have shown absolutely no predilection for having adventures or solving mysteries.
Hermaphrodite: After all that gender-bending work, Tuck discovers that xie is actually a chimera, with both XX and XY chromosomes in hir body and ovotestes.
High School Hustler: while several of them have moments like this, Debbie is the one who fits the trope most closely.
If It's You, It's Okay: mostly averted. Travis is attracted to Valerie, but it's revealed that he thinks she's a transsexual, either post-op or on her way, which would make him straight but unprejudiced (so far as he knows). Later on, Jill, then Pam, try to date Tuck/Valerie, but Jill is only interested in Tuck.
I Just Want to Be Normal: though Tuck's idea of "normal" is not, erm, what the majority of people would call normal.
Kick the Dog: Principal Nickerson, who tends to put students in detention or completely suspend them for mental breakdowns.
tended. Heh.
Mama Bear: Tuck's mother, when Tuck is in that Convenient Coma, scares everyone except possibly her husband.
Mind Rape: Extremely hard, extremely fast. Thankfully, not permanent, though.
Moral Dissonance: Tuck's parents immediately accept their son's homosexuality, but disapprove of his indeterminate gender identity, in spite of his intersex condition. Of course, if their son would discuss it with them...
Muggles: At one point Tuck refers to a group of female underclassmen as a separate species "Homo Mundanus". Tuck and his (male) friends are extremely contemptuous of the majority of the people that surround them at school.
Nakama: possibly the Pack, but definitely Da Boyz.
Nobody Poops: Averted at least once, though not in any spectacular way.
Noodle Incident: just what did Travis do as a favor for Lisa?
Also possibly the previous babysitting job/incident Mike had with Tuck; it's mentioned a few times.
Averted other times, perhaps, as the author likes coming up with them. Examples are the panties found under Brian's desk; the shocking of a parent, the refrigerator painting, the missing air compressor (never explained, but then nobody who mentioned it knows what happened either)
Scylla and Charybdis: Made all the worse by the fact that the main character has to choose between two aspects of himself.
Secret Identity: He may not be a superhero, but Tuck vs. Valerie may well qualify.
Shown Their Work: On technology, on gender issues, on virtually EVERYTHING related to the series. The author knows her stuff, has done the research, and this shows strongly.
Shur Fine Guns: Averted; whenever the Tuckerspawn are practising on a shooting range one of their activities involves clearing jammed guns.
The Mafia: If you screw with Tuck or members of his groups, you do not come out smelling like roses. Lampshaded in various uses of the term "Omerta", meaning roughly, 'you don't go to the cops, you come to us'.
Meaning exactly, "Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of himself without police protection is both. It is as cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though his offences be against yourself, as it is not to avenge an injury by violence. It is dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers, he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself."
Transvestite: One character's father runs a support group.
Unreliable Narrator: almost all the story is written from the first-person limited viewpoint of Tucker himself. And Tucker doesn't understand a great deal about human-human communication protocols.
Wacky Homeroom: to a degree, though both the previous year's and this year's homeroom teachers try (and partially succeed) at keeping things stiffly unwacky.
is a long-running, generally-acclaimed work of fiction by Ellen Hayes, exploring just how a teen would react if suddenly his life, and gender, were turned upside down in so many ways. Published periodically online since 1997 (which is when the storyline is set; a little over a year of story time has elapsed in a dozen years), it's an excellent look at how normal - and yet how very strange - a teenager's life can become.
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