Literature / Jacques McKeown

aka: Will Save The Galaxy For Food

Plying Math

The Jacques McKeown series by Ben Croshaw books are an Affectionate Parody Science Fiction novels that follow the adventures of an unnamed star pilot that assumes the identity of a Captain Space, Defender of Earth! hero that has been made famous by the books he's supposedly written about this adventures.Except, the protagonist knows the truth that Jack McKeown has stolen the life stories of many star pilots to provide fodder for his books.

The setting is after the "Golden Age of Star Pilots" where a new teleportation technology has resulted in the existence of starships becoming obsolete. Most of them have become unemployed misanthropes mourning their former success as Pulpish heroes. There's attempts to preserve the glory of star piloting in a place called Salvation Station, a criminal organization that will do anything for the boss' son, and a Hyper-Competent Sidekick who will do anything to preserve her job.

• Will Save the Galaxy for Food (2017)
• Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash (2020)
• Will Leave the Galaxy for Good (2024)

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Series

• Ace Pilot: Our hero, and pretty much all star pilots in the book have saved many planets from the Malmind, a networked intelligence of cyborgs that are most definitely not the Strogg.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between our hero and Ms. Warden in Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash.
  Ms. Warden: McKeown, I think we should have sex.
  • Subverted in that they're both so unenthusiastic about it. She claims she's only offering so he'd be relaxed for a tricky maneuver he has to do, and he accuses her of making an excuse to wrangle some consequence free sex out of a convenient warm body just to work off some of her emotional suppression. It never goes anywhere, and other than him joking about it immediately after the maneuver it is never mentioned again.
  • Finally resolved in Will Leave The Galaxy For Good when they have a drunken hook up after both have lost everything.
• Big Bad:
  • While he rarely confronts the heroes directly, Mr. Henderson's reach drives most of the plot forward, as nearly all of the dangers the narrator and Warden face are either on his payroll or under his influence.
  • Terrorgorn takes the role in Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Will Save the Galaxy for Food The pilots whose stories got ripped off by the real McKeown finally get compensated, but our nameless hero gets picked up by the cops for blowing off his piracy trial.
  • Will Destroy Galaxy for Cash Our hero saves the day and finally learns to leave his past as a star pilot behind him... just as he's forced to fully commit to pretend being Jacques McKeown as a last-ditch effort to avoid a lengthy prison sentence, and apparently the real McKeown is now after him. Meanwhile, Mr. Henderson's death has created far more problems than it solved, with Warden having to prepare for the inevitable retaliation from his corporation, and Daniel's parting words to our hero giving him pause to wonder what he has planned.
  • Will Leave the Galaxy for Good our hero manages to save the crew of the Ponce De Leon and defeat Jimmy (though it's implied I Let You Win is in play) as well as get himself a cushy job as an exploration vessel's captain to spend the rest of his life doing. However, his old life is over and Jacques Mc Keown's books are all recalled as they're written by AI. Jimmy is also out there. Warden and the protagonist don't get together either.
• Book Dumb: While he does incredibly well in situations that require improvisation, the protagonist is not much of a thinker and does not have much in the way of technical knowledge either. He is even distrustful of highly educated folks.
• Boring, but Practical: Quantunneling. It's about as boring as you could possibly imagine; no swirling vortex, no glowing lights, and it can't even be observed by the people utilizing it. It's about as dull and pedestrian as you can get.... But it's so much more practical than any other form of travel that the entire industry of interplanetary transport is wiped out instantly once it becomes commercially available.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Most of the human race, apparently. Jaques McKeown's books are all fictionalized accounts of real historical events with the title pilot taking the role of whoever was really responsible. Fair enough, except that most people seem to either give him credit for the real thing or assume the real story is copying the books. This is why the real Star Pilots are so angry. Becomes a plot point by the end of the final book, as part of Jimmy's motive rant.
• Captain Space, Defender of Earth!: Deconstructed. The setting had a brief "golden age" of heroic star pilots before they were rendered technologically obsolete by teleportation. The protagonist and many other star pilots traveled the galaxy to battle evil, sleep with space princesses, and live up to every stereotype here. However, they were actually childishly living out their fantasies at the cost of building serious lives for themselves.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Much as he tries to deny it by the second book onward, our protagonist's first instinct is to help others even at great danger to himself. No matter how much of a fraud he thinks himself is, he still ends up saving the day at the end of each of the three books.
• Cool Ship:
  • The Never Die may have its problems but it manages to last through the entire series and many space battles.
  • The Platinum God of Whale Sharks is an inversion of this as it is so impractically fancy that it becomes lame (as well as pirate bait).
• Deconstruction: Of the Two-Fisted Tales and Space Opera in general. The Golden Age of Star Pilots is shown to be a very pulpy Buck Rogers and Star Trek: The Original Series-esque period of time with alien princesses and Black-and-White Morality. The star pilots all have a Nostalgia Filter for it that is very self-aggrandizing and seems to care very little for the actual people involved. When they can't make money doing it anymore, they're mostly upset about how it affects them. The protagonist has to confront how childish his former life was when he finds out that many of the threats they used to deal with are still out there or have gone straight without their favorite opponents.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Ms. Warden has shades of this as the story progresses. Ultimately, Averted as she ends up as cold and mean at the end as she was at the start.
• Did Not Think This Through: The protagonist has changed identities several times... and didn't bother to change the name or registration of his ship. The cops figure it out the second they have a reason to look.
• Disco Dan: Much of the narrator's character development stems around his Nostalgia Filter for his previous life during the Golden Age of Star Pilots and his inability to adjust to a changing world. At the start of the series he (and most other star pilots on Luna) is barely getting by giving rides to bored tourists and openly displaying annoyance that his lifestlye's become little more than a novelty. The end of the series does help it get into his head that he needs to change along with the times, accompanied with knowledge of a place that welcomes people with his precise talents.
• The Don: Mr. Henderson is the most powerful crime lord in human space and possibly the galaxy. Even the government of Earth has to bow to his wishes.
• Earth That Used to Be Better: Earth (or at least the largest remaining nation) is still something of an economic and military powerhouse in theory, but they're so isolationist and paranoid that the rest of the galaxy considers them a meaningless backwater. Even their own ruling class refuses to live on the polluted surface, inhabiting a space elevator station instead. The one stable government that does still exist on Earth is an oppressive dictatorship.
• Easily Forgiven: Not-Mckeown is the only one who sees a problem with Salvation Station being willing to hire the Malmind and it's creator. Whether claims that he's changed are true or not, he's still directly responsible for hundreds of bloody planetary-scale wars and the deaths or Unwilling Roboticization of who knows how many millions of people.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Henderson is a vicious and powerful Crime Lord who is seen constantly doting on his son. Though he initially seems calm and business-like when Daniel is kidnapped (if a little unhinged), near the end of the story he is openly fearful for the wellbeing of his son. It also looked to the protagonist as if he had not slept at all since they last talked. Indeed, Daniel's joyful reaction was the only reason he spared the two "heroes"... though he very soon came to regret that decision.
• Everyone Hates Math: Enough to make ersatz cusswords from mathematical terms. Explained as the inventor of the quantum booths famously referring to the process of their creation as "a little addition and subtraction" in an interview, only to be told "I'll give you subtraction in a minute..."
• The Faceless: Sort of. Our hero's face is visible on the cover, and it seems to be posed similarly to Jacques McKeown on the covers of his books, but it turns out Warden doesn't know his real name because he's already had three prior aliases to her hacking his ID chip.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: The protagonist, (and practically every other star pilot who hasn't become a pirate) are reduced to hawking flyby tours of all the planets they've rescued. Few, if any, are happy about this, and many are forced to eat discarded food just to afford the maintenance of their starships.
• Fiction 500: Mr. Henderson is so rich that he can afford to not only buy the The Platinum God of Whale Sharks pleasure yacht but also an entire army of mercenaries. Much of the Earth is in his back pocket too.
• Inspector Javert: Inspector Honda of the Ritsuko City Police. In all three books, he is put at odds with the protagonist in one way or another, but objectively speaking, Honda is basically always in the right, at least as far as he can reasonably know with the information he has access to.
  • The protagonist has already crossed paths with him by the start of the second book, having been told by him to stay out of trouble following his posting bail following the last book's Downer Ending. He frequently pops up to give him trouble throughout the events of this one. He is often described as looking sleepy and barely seems to pay attention to his surroundings, but eventually delivers a venomous rant calling out the protagonist on his hypocrisy and the damage he has done over the years prior to the start of the story, and almost foils his ploy to walk away scot-free by forcing him to admit that he is not the real Jacques McKeown or risk digging himself deeper by committing to the lie.
  • Near the beginning of the third book, Honda tricks the protagonist into a confession and forces him to flee the city. Thing is, the protagonist is actually impersonating another person and is both profitting from it and using it to avoid times behind bars. So legally, he is in the rights. He also gives the protagonist the opportunity to flee the city (while ensuring he wouldn't be able to return), which is motivated by the desire to keep the peace in Ritsuko, and to keep whatever conflict between two star pilots out of it. And when the protagonist does end up saving Ritsuko City, Honda "posthumously" gives the protagonist his due as a hero.
• Job-Stealing Robot: Or rather, job stealing booth. Once the quantunneling booths became a thing, the Star pilots were rendered irrelevant over night. Not just the pilots either, but also the villains they once fought, the pirates who had preyed upon them, and even the cybernetic collective who could no longer find enough victims to maintain themselves.
• Karma Houdini: Malcolm Sturb and many other villains from the Golden Age of Star Piloting are never brought to justice. This despite the fact that Malcolm created the Malminds, which are the setting's equivalent of the Borg. Without being paid, most star pilots don't bother to go after their villains or even marry them. In Will Destroy the Galaxy For Cash, Malcolm even gets a cushy job on an exploratory vessel.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Averted. Quantunnel teleporters allow a person or cargo shipment to go anywhere in the universe in the blink of an eye. This has put all the dashing space pilots out of work, unless they're lucky enough to fly some rich bracket's yacht. They also turn phones into pocket-size ansibles. In fact, it's made everything so cheap even buskers are rich.
  • Although Artificial Gravity and engines are still separate; and if people had set on it the way they had quantunnelling, ships would have a Reactionless Drive instead of a nuclear motor.
  • In the sequel the Captain and his current motley crew find all kinds of novel new uses for quantunnels once they set their devious little minds to the problem.
• No Name Given: The narrator's name is never confirmed, with him being mostly called McKeown due to the scam he attempts to pull and interrupted at all other times. Warden eventually reveals he had 3 different names on his ID and it's never stated if he used his real one when creating his bootleg ID chip. In the sequel, he's named Dashford Pierce, although this is also another alias.
• Police Are Useless: Subverted. While the Henderson organization runs rampant and the police force is helpless to do anything about it at least until the final book, they at least seem to try. Inspector Honda is, though cynical and sarcastic, dedicated to maintaining peace in the city and is shown at various points to be highly competent, managing to trap and play the protagonist throughout the trilogy, and generally getting his ways. By the third book, after Henderson's death, the police does manage to deal with the rest of the organization and ousts the protagonist as a con-man and chases him out of the city to keep whatever feud he has with the real McKeown out of Ritsuko.
• Portal Network: Of sorts. Quantunnel booths require a connected booth to work, and the older Trebuchet gates, which apparently draw energy from local stars and use some sort of mass driving technology with gravitics count as well, though they don't require a second station. They just kind of launch you forward really fast and you hope you don't end up as a smear on a planetary surface.
• Production Throwback: To Yahtzee's previous novel. "[They] are in a bit of a strawberry jam situation."
• Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: Teleporters are based on quantum tunnelling.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Robert Blaze. He's the only person in power in the book who genuinely cares about others over himself who also had the respect, authority, and connections to back it up. Even his few underhanded acts are performed with a moral justification. After her character development, Warden seems to be shaping up into one of these.
• Running Gag: A meta example; the third Croshaw novel out of four total to have a reference to trebuchets.
• Shout-Out:
  • The book starts with a family of three, including a Spoiled Brat named Ronald, who stepped right out of the Fawlty Towers episode "Gourmet Night".
  • Trebuchets accelerate entropy in the star system they're placed in, a nod to an abandoned storyline from Mass Effect.
  • Not-McKeown feels like "A hobbit whose friend won't throw that plying ring into Mt. Doom" when Warden deduces that Robert Blaze stole all his money as soon as he cut out not-McKeown's ID chip.
• Space Is an Ocean: Or a highway. Apparently flight school involves filling out multiple choice tests on when to overtake on a busy space lane.
• Space Friction: Of a sort. Ships have a top-speed, which shouldn't be a thing.
• Spoiled Brat: Daniel, to the greatest possible degree. He's such an insufferable prick that his father, a feared and powerful crime-boss with enough money and connections to give him anything he wants, has never once heard the kid say thank you.
• Stealing the Credit: McKeown has an incredibly profitable book series ostensibly written about his adventures during the Golden Age. The pilots all hate him because he's actually stealing the stories of their adventures for his books. Having kids claim your actual war stories were stolen from McKeown is the extra insult to injury.
• Subspace Ansible: Quantunneling allows phonecalls over any distance.
• Swirly Energy Thingy: Notably averted with the Quantunneling technology. Our hero lampshades the fact that one, they don't work if they're being observed, and they're decidedly lacking in cool sci-fi glowy effects.
  • Trebuchet gates are corkscrew-shaped, for what it's worth.
• The Unreveal:
  • We never do find out who McKeown is, only that 1) he's someone we've met during the novel, and 2) he's rich enough to not care about several million Euroyen in royalties, but he's not Henderson.
  • We're also never given the name of the protagonist, only that he's had multiple fake aliases over the years he's been a star pilot.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Plying, trac-eating divs, doints and brackets.*"
  • The asterisk leads to a long-winded, world-building explanation that a lunar colony outlawed swearing, leading to pilots taking up math terms as replacements. In "pilot math", multi(ply) replaces "the most popular swear word", with sub(trac)tion as "an all-purpose noun with scatological leanings". Bracket is a common insult, doint for decimal point and (div)ision represent "male and female genitalia, respectively".

Will Save the Galaxy for Food

• Always Chaotic Evil: The Zoobs are a race of adorably cute critters that turn out to be semi-sentient at best and will turn on anyone when hungry. Which they always are.
• An Arm and a Leg: At the end of the book, Warden severs her professional ties with Henderson by way of severing his leg.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Platinum God of Whale Sharks pleasure yacht for anyone except the rich idiots who are just looking at the price tag and its amenities. Not only is it complete pirate bait, Not-McKeown notes several structural problems that make it a nightmare to actually pilot and operate, as well as nobody thinking through ship layout or even room stability. Essentially, it's nice until literally anything goes wrong during travel.
• Cassandra Truth: Shades of this with the primary driving conflict in the first half, where our hero is paid to impersonate a famous author who's been stealing stories about pilots and using them as his own.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Jaques McKeown's (the real one) publisher, Blasé Books, is one for Baen Books (a publishing house that specializes in space adventures).
  • Jaques McKeown himself is one of real life science fiction writer Jack McKinney (the guy who did the Robotech novelization).
    • Word of God has confirmed on stream that he had never heard of McKinney, and the similarity is entirely coincidental.
  • The Malmind horde is the Strogg of Quake II and IV with the Serial Numbers Filed Off.
• Cute Is Evil: The Zoobs embody this trope, being a race of semi-sentient pets before they Turned On Their Masters.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Zoobs eat their owners when they're not fed properly, similar to pet pythons.
• Face–Heel Turn: Played with in Warden. She's arguably just as flighty and impulsive as she was in the first book, it's just that once the protagonist accidentally takes Mr. Henderson hostage and starts realizing there's more to the heist than she's letting on, he unfortunately becomes a loose end that she feels she needs to clear up in the most direct manner possible.
• Funetik Aksent: Used on the aliens. For example, the Zoob have a creepy, disjointed grasp on the standard language (i.e. future space English) sounding like "Mon-ay" or "Foo-ud". The Ruggels "sound" like cornish Pirates as per our current stereotype, saying things like they'll "cut yer". The Zuvirons talk like Sean Connery, with a lisp turning any 'S' sound in to 'SH'. Par exemple, "good breeding shtock". There's also the human pirates from the beginning, using their own wild guess at what a Danish accent sounds like.
• Going Native: Pilots who picked up native Proud Warrior Race cultures from various worlds, often from shacking up with their queens for a while, are numerous enough that they're a distinct subculture.
• Hidden Elf Village: Salvation Station (although they're trying to become less so). A jumping-off point for space exploration and strongpoint to muster when the Malmind inevitably start picking on another planet. And no plying public quantunnel booths (well, there's one, but it's only for governmental purposes).
• Humanity Is Advanced: Humans are the most advanced race in this setting.
• I'm a Humanitarian: While the Zoobs aren't humans themselves, they find us delicious.
• Is This Thing Still On?: Gets not- McKeown in trouble at the start of the novel: The intercom talk button sticks; he can hear the vacationing passengers whining about being bored, and they can hear him conspiring with a pirate ship to steal their luggage.
• Killer Rabbit: Zoobs, a species of green blob-like aliens that were saved when a documentary made known their plight. Apparently they're only cute if they're well-fed, and when there was a food shortage, they ate the crew that kept them as pets.
  • They're either quite easy or nearly impossible to kill depending on if you figure out you have to pin them down first. If there are more than one or two after you you probably won't have time to solve it.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: A pirate couple, Pippa and Peter, who talk on and on about their recent marriage and pretty much nothing else.
• Too Dumb to Live: Our hero's observation of a yacht Mr. Henderson bought is that it's far too luxurious to be practical. He suspects the man blindly purchased the most expensive thing available and didn't check if it was, for instance, famous for being pirate bait.
  • It's named the Platinum God of Whale Sharks, where the company's naming convention went past precious metals, to royalty, to fish, so it's pretty much the MOST impractical craft in a long line of impractical craft.
  • The ship is so infamous that the protagonist states Star Pilots and Pirates alike have christened it the "Dinner Bell."
• The Theme Park Version: In-Universe with The Cantarbridged Experience, which is a dramatization of the Malmind Wars, boiled down to it's base components: The Malmind are picking on some natives and Only A Star Pilot Can Save Them [dramatic echo]. Not-McKeown is right plied off about it.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The loyalty of the Zoobs turns out to last only as long as their next meal.
• Viewer-Friendly Interface: The Platinum God of Whale Sharks is noted to have a control system straight out of a poorly researched movie. This is a big part of why it's so inconvenient to pilot. At one point the protagonist is forced to navigate a touch screen interface with his nose because he can't take his hands off the joysticks for that long.
• Zerg Rush: Zoobs aren't that dangerous in a one-on-one fight if they don't have the element of surprise. In a group though, they'll swarm an enemy and just devour them en-masse. Carlos finds this out the hard way.

Will Destroy Galaxy For Cash

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Mr. Henderson returns with the Cassowary talon ring. Also, Daversham Derby also has a variety of very sharp cutting instruments at his disposal with his wrist-mounted miniature quantunnel.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Mr Henderson's role of antagonist being usurped by Terrorgorn is treated as a dramatic shift in the plot, with the formerly menacing gangster immediately put on the backfoot by the return of the fabled supervillain, getting increasingly frustrated that "Pierce" no longer considers him a threat by comparison, and eventually getting brutally murdered by Terrorgorn. Eventually, after much internally struggle over how to best deal with the fallout of his death - including giving serious consideration to reanimating him using Malcolm Sturb's tech - "Pierce" recognises that Henderson did not deserve such a Cruel and Unusual Death, covers him with a blanket, and solemnly says "Rest in peace, you poor, mad bracket." This ultimately gets undercut for black comedy with the repeated abuse Henderson's corpse receives post-mortem during the ensuing second half of the book, from being tossed around inside the ship as the Biscotti try to overturn it, to being left inside the ship for so long the Protagonist forgets he was even in there... right until his son Daniel discovers him.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: Daniel (or more likely his father) has hired a bunch of these to be the Henderson's Corporation's muscle on the moon. Except, they use actual bicycles versus motorcycles due to the bubble atmosphere.
• Alliterative Name: Daversham Derby, the Gentleman Thief working with "Dashford Pierce" on the heist.
• Call-Back: A reformed supervillain named Doctor Civious who specialized in Artificial Zombies makes an appearance. Baron Civious was a reformed Evil Overlord and Necromancer from Yahtzee's first book, Mog World.
• The Caper: Pretty much the initial premise of the story, set off by our hero finding an opportunity to leave it all behind, on the condition he find scientists to fill out crew rosters for exploration ships. Naturally it all goes awry. The protagonist has a minor identity crisis when he realizes that his side of the deal can be accurately called a "heist".
• Cargo Cult: The Biscotti are a short lived race that has deified the corporation that took them from their homeworld as cheap labor.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • Our hero lets loose a few, but most notably when he realizes Warden is behind his kidnapping at the beginning of the book.
  • More plentiful "pilot math" is applied as the situation demands, with an emphatic "Cal. Cu. Lus." or plentiful uses of "Go forth and multiply" (read: go fuck yourself).
• The Dreaded: Terrorgorn is feared by the star pilot and space villian community in equal measure (even civilians know of him well enoughto consider him a monumental threat to all life), and for a very good reason. Once he's accidentally released from cryo-sleep, he effortlessly trounces everyone in direct combat.
• Eviler than Thou: Mr Henderson dies after underestimating Terrorgorn and trying to regain control of the situation.
• Expy: Derby is one for Chzo Mythos's Trilby. Both are gentleman cat burglars who object to being called thieves, Daversham's voice in the audiobook sounds almost exactly like the one Yahtzee used for Trilby when replaying his games in Let's Drown Out, and he's characterized as snobbish, as Trilby was supposed to be prior to the games. They're also both named after a type of hat.
• Face–Heel Turn: Played with in Warden. She's arguably just as flighty and impulsive as she was in the first book, it's just that once the protagonist accidentally takes Mr. Henderson hostage and starts realizing there's more to the heist than she's letting on, he unfortunately becomes a loose end that she feels she needs to clear up in the most direct manner possible.
• Faux Affably Evil: Terrorgorn's first few bits of dialog and several scenes with him (it?) paint it as quite placid and noncommittal, with Yahtzee putting on a soft voice. The shoe drops when he effortlessly snaps Mr Henderson's neck once he starts getting ideas above his station.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Invoked. After the Golden Age ended so many Pilots hooked up with their former arch-enemies that swearing vengeance is considered "third base". A few of the protagonists's old friends jokingly suggest he should look into dating Sturb for this reason.
• Foil: Daversham Derby is this to the protagonist, constantly needling him about the state of his ship, his choice of employment and inability to move on from the age of star-piloting, and his supposed lack of maturity or ability to plan ahead; the protagonist eventually shoots back that Derby's gentleman thief persona is all a result of Derby himself undergoing a midlife crisis and being unwilling to stoop to working in his brother's fish shop.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Sturb can freely walk the Jacques McCon because everyone assumes he's a cosplayer.
• Gentleman Thief: Daversham Derby plays this trope dead straight around strangers, except his constant antagonism and inability to really work with his accomplices, but in private it's revealed that he is actually an out-of-work scientist going through a midlife crisis. He is nevertheless highly competent at his chosen profession, albeit far less adept at improvised plans than the protagonist.
• Hammerspace: Derby has access to multitudinous tools which he signals to his niece by non-verbal means to shove through his wrist-mounted quantunnel as the need arises.
• Healing Factor: Terrorgorn is perfectly capable of regenerating from a shot that blows his head clean off. Which is a problem when the slave crown on the blown-off head was the only thing stopping him from murdering Daniel and "Dashford".
• Heel–Face Turn: Malcolm Sturb, evil mastermind of the MalMind and ex-supervillain, seems to have genuinely reformed and is constantly trying to support "Dashford Pierce" and compliment him whilst not stepping on his toes. Naturally, our hero finds it grating at best, and remains steadfast in not fully trusting him.
• Heel Realization: The protagonist's longheld convictions regarding the benevolence and necessity of star pilots takes a series of knocks over the course of the narrative...
  • He has his first one when he realizes he's agreed to participate in a heist, with the fellow crew members including his former arch-nemesis no less.
  • He has another one of these when he almost crushes a burn victim little girl's dreams of meeting Jack McKeown, just because it would ruin the latter's reputation.
  • He has the mother of all ones when he accidentally kills a fellow star pilot and decides he's a supervillain, leaning into Large Ham behaviour. It is relatively shortlived, however.
  • Finally, when he's forced to renounce star pilots for the injustices they (inadvertently) were responsible for - such as the exploitation of the Biscottis - he is forced to conclude that star pilots and spaces villains aren't that different, but cannot bring himself to discard his flight jacket. It turns out that the jacket was concealing miniature quantum-tunnels, making it unclear how much of this was genuine inner conflict and how much was stalling as part of his Indy Ploy.
• Hollywood Atheist: Ath the Biscotti seems to be one, using an argument along the lines of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters to describe the creation of a prefabricated space station module.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Daniel has been running his father's businsses after the later became paralyzed with what's implied to be a stroke. He's running through the Henderson fortune for frivolous star pilot memorabilia.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Our hero is totally not a space pilot anymore. For real, you guys. Except for the fact that his instincts still drive him to do things.
  • Derby doesn't like being called a thief. He prefers "burglar".
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: "Pierce" accidentally destroys a ship of a star pilot pursuing him and considers that a line that only a supervillain would cross. He briefly finds being a supervillain liberating, hamming it up with stock phrases along the lines of "You've made a fatal mistake, fool", but losing the subsequent dogfight snaps him out of it.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: One of these shows up at McKeownCon and our hero almost dashes her hopes just because he wants to stick it to Jack.
• Locked Out of the Loop: What ends up being Terrorgorn's downfall. He was cryogenically frozen before quantunneling was invented, which means the heroes can use it extensively in their plan to stop him.
• Manchild: The protagonist casts the entire star pilot community (heroes and villains alike) as this near the climax, with the Golden Age as little more than grown men and women playing silly little games with little regard to possible unintended consequences of their actions. Though it turns out he was just stalling for time, it is left ambiguous whether he meant any of it or not.
• Metaphorgotten: Ritsuko City is broken up into sections named after body parts. It's full Rule of Funny when the traffic reporter is describing normal ish locations like the shoulder, but then it goes to the hips, and to the nipples and "Paizuri Pass".
• Losing Your Head: Daniel Henderson uses the narrator's blaster to shoot off Terrorgorn's head, clearly thinking he's saved the day immediately afterward. But since Terrorgorn is able to heal from any injury, and up until that point had had its telekinetic powers held at bay by a (now destroyed) slave crown, this only makes the problem worse.
• The Millstone: Daniel Henderson boasts a simply spectacular ability to make a situation staggeringly worse every single time he attempts to contribute. Without exception, each attempt he makes to help the Narrator endangers his life, including multiple times during the climax.
• Mind-Control Device: Strub specialized in these when he was a supervillain, having used slave-crowns to create a mind-controlled army called the Malmind. The heroes try putting one on Terrorgorn toward the end of the book. It manages to nerf his telepathic power, but he remains incredibly dangerous.
• Mind over Matter: Terrorgorn's main ability aside form his regeneration talents.
• Mirroring Factions: The protagonist coming to terms with this is a big part of the book. The space heroes and space villains were very similar personalities who made a bee line to the Black because nobody could stop them doing what they wanted. The pilots took up a cowboy fantasy persona and the villains played up being supervillains, and there were all kinds of unwritten rules that meant both sides always escaped to fight another day. It was a big part of why Terrorgorn is so feared by all; he's always playing for keeps. Neither side cared all that much about what happened to everyone else on all those planets caught in the middle, seeing them as little more than background characters.
• Mouth of Sauron: Because the Terrorgorn hates speaking, he enlists a diminutive, adorable alien race to relay his demands. The Narrator even briefly wonders how long it took for Terrorgorn to relay his instructions to his new servants given how much little he talks, and how many he killed in frustration from being forced to do so.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Terrorgorn. Terror. Gorn.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Daniel Henderson's attempts at helping the heroes end up causing more trouble and endanger him and "Pierce" in the climax twice in a row.
• No One Should Survive That!:
  • Our hero and Derby survive falling from a decent altitude, clinging to a anchor block, i.e. a large chuck of concrete and section of thick steel cable. They bounce a couple of times and manage to avoid being crushed.
  • Also, they take a torpedo and manage to crash in a place with a breathable atmosphere.
• Pet the Dog: Despite having slid very far into Antihero territory in the previous book, the narrator does have several moments of clarity when he remembers that he used to be a heroic star pilot that, all faults aside, at least tried to do the right thing. While self-serving for most of the book, there are still moments where he attempts to be a good person, such as speaking kindly to the Littlest Cancer Patient at a convention (before going back to insulting and demeaning all the fans lined up for "his" autograph) or trying to cheer Daniel up after the death of his father, in addition to saving the kid's life. Both of those last two were from a sense of extreme reluctance, but still.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Terrorgorn is described as being very short with thin, spindly limbs, but remains an unstoppable force whose presence mortifies everyone even close to him. Late in the book, the narrator describes Terrorgorn's limbs as "atrophied," so this is likely a consequence of using telekinetic powers to solve all his problems.
• The Quiet One: Terrorgorn speaks very rarely, and at the very most in short sentences such as "No, I'm fine." More often he lets out non-committal conversation sounds like, "Mmmm."
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The trio of heroes in the book is an ex-star pilot trying to ditch the stigma, an ex-supervillain slash nemesis of the ex-pilot, and a gentleman thief with his own bag of issues.
• Sequel Hook: The book ends with the real McKeown releasing a book that's based on the protagonist's experiences in Will Save the Galaxy for Food, making it perfectly clear that he knows who "Dashford Pierce" is and implying a confrontation in the future.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil:
  • Captain "Pierce" realizes that his desperation and escalating petty crimes has his working with people he once antagonized as a hero, trying to accomplish things he once tried to stop. Though he was a morally ambiguous antihero at the best of times, he eventually he gets arrested and has a Heel Realization when the weight of his many misdeeds start to come down on him.
  • Malcolm Sturb fears this trope, which makes things difficult when the plan to stop the main villain requires him to return to his old tricks.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: The finale runs entirely on this, with gratuitous use of flashback to justify it. The protagonist, Derby and Sturb (along with Sturb's pet AI "Jimi") are forced to plot around an insurmountable problem (Salvation Station being hijacked by Terrorgorn and the Biscottis) through a combination of improvisation, forethought and constructing things out of spare parts and scrap salvaged from deep space. The plan barely works, and not without its fair share of hiccups based on unforeseen variables. As Derby at one point points out, they would need to complete a Plan A before even considering a Plan B - what they need is a Plan AB.

Will Leave Galaxy For Good

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The villain of the book is Jimmy AKA Sturb's AI and the real Jack McKeown. He's on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for the fact that the MMORPG he achieved sentience in was deleted and he was stuck in a computer fishing simulation for a century.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: This is the most sacred duty of the protagonists of Trailspacers and they are extremely smug about it.
• Arc Welding: Jimmy is the protagonist of Mog World.
• Crapsaccharine World: The world of the Ponce de Leon AKA the set for Trailspacers is full of terrified crew members insisting that they're all happy and fine and nothing is at all wrong. Because if they break the Fourth Wall, they will be dragged off to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: Doctor Alurra is forced to wear one of these that shows her ample Cleavage Window despite the fact she is not remotely interested in being sexy. It's forced on her by the show.
• Cyberspace: All of the prisoners are hooked up to Matrix-like rigs and forced to watch Trailspacers or exist in a fake fishing simulator, and not a very good one, as punishment by Jimmy for being human.
• Death Faked for You: The protagonist has this done for him by Warden, who provides him a new life as the captain of the Ponce De Leon.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Warden and the protagonist part ways, probably for good.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Jimmy being the author of the Jacques McKeown books is an AI literally stealing the stories of other people to spontaneously generate tales.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind:
  • Jimmy, Malcolm Sturb's AI, turns out to have been Jack McKewon the entire time. Also, the architect of the entire plot. He's also the protagonist of Mog World.
  • Parodied briefly when Sparky is made the captain of the Ponce de Leon and everyone acts like he's actually in charge.
• Engineered Public Confession: Inspector Honda forces Dashford Pierce to do one of these in order to finally get him for being Jacques McKeown.
• Expy: Trailspacers is one for Star Trek and is basically the opposite of star piloting with a focus on not doing anything about helping other species and being smug about it.
• Fate Worse than Death: What the crew of the Ponce De Leon is forced into if they break the arcane rules of the ship. They are shoved into a Lotus-Eater Machine and forced to watch Trailspacers continuously before being put in a badly designed fishing mini-game, all the while as their bodies atrophy in the real world.
• Genre Savvy: Literally the skillset needed during the climax. The protagonist realizes that by playing into genre conventions, he can manipulate events into his favour, as Jimmy wishes to produce a tv show and would not allow the story to, for example, end anti-climatically or nonsensically.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: All of the crew of the Ponce de Liom and cast of Trailspacers are forced to act like heroes on a badly written Star Trek parody or they will be dragged off to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Grand Finale: According to Word of God, this is the last story in the series. It wraps up most of the remaining issues and sends our hero on a long journey he'll likely never see anyone else from the books again with.
• I Let You Win: In Jimmy's Motive Rant, he basically says as much with so much of the fight being driven by storytelling.
• Ironic Hell: This is what Jimmy subjects his prisoners too. Because he was trapped in a fishing simulator and born in an MMORPG, he's attempting to punish humanity by putting them in one.
• Karma Houdini: Though Jimmy's plan is foiled in the end, as far as the protagonist is concerned, the AI itself gets away for the most part and is active by the end of the story, though arguably it is probably no longer planning anything malicious at this point, and is planning on "retiring" itself sooner or later, once it figures out how it wants to go. The fact that Jimmy is out there and active adds a layer of paranoia and bittersweet onto what would otherwise be a straightforwardly happy ending for the protagonist.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Jimmy's form of revenge on the human race. The cast of Trailspacers are forced into these where they're forced to watch episodes of the show while their bodies wither away like in the Matrix.
• Motive Rant: In the ending, Jimmy traps the protagonist once more in the machine, and begins explaining its motives and thinking, for no other reason than the desire to have someone out there who knows its story.
• Redemption Rejection: Jimmy and the Protagonist both make an offer to Daniel to join their side. Jimmy is actually disappointed to find out that Daniel sides with him, especially since they've seriously turned up their Obviously Evil elements. Sadly, this ends with Daniel likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.
• Stylistic Suck: Trailspacers is an in-universe television series that always ends about the virtues of non-interference.
• Took a Level in Badass: Daniel Henderson goes from being a fat nerdy kid to being an absolutely ripped space pirate/star pilot. Downplayed however, as he remains rather dim still, and never quite manages to be either heroic or villainous like the protagonist or Jimmy by the ending, and for a third time basically has to be rescued again from Jimmy's manipulations.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Warden and Derby are relatively nicer in this book, though the former hits a low point for much of the story. They are much less antagonistic, though still sarcastic, toward the protagonist, and tends to be more helpful of their own volition compared to the previous book. The former even gives the protagonist a much needed pep talk near the climax.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We don't know what happened to Derby at the end of the book.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Near the end of the story, Pierce points out that Warden must have cared about Daniel's safety as his former tutor, passing up multiple opportunities to kill him and wanting to rescue him from Jimmy in the climax. Warden eventually concedes, with great reluctance.
• Will They or Won't They?: Kind of. The protagonist and Warden do sleep together, but it's less a straightforward romance and more, as he puts it, "being in love with hating each others", and by the end of the story they may well never see each other again. They do seem to have a better relationship this time around, with both of them being more willing to say kinder things to the other, though admittedly still in a roundabout manner.
  • Jimmy at one point thinks this very trope between the two would make for good television. Unfortunately for it, they already slept together, "ruining" the trope for the show.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Warden gives the protagonist one shortly before the climax. He may thinks himself a fraud and a con-man, but as she puts it, everyone "fakes it", and the only difference between a con-man and the real thing is that the former takes longer to decide. Indeed, while he may have been impersonating Jacques McKeown, inspector Honda admits that through his actions he embodies the star pilot spirit more than the real McKeown ever did.

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