A Round Robin tradition at the CivilizationFanatics Forum, each Draw Your Own Story episode is a collaboratively-created comic, usually about the CF forum. The notoriously confusing and complex plot tends to involve the authors' self-insert characters combating a villain/seeking out an artifact who/which has incredible power. Lots of explosions and military hardware is usually involved. There is a massive supporting cast, most of which are characters imported from video games, tv shows, comics, literature, and historical and real life figures, resulting in a massive Mega Crossover and/or Anachronism Stew.Also infamous for personality conflicts among the contributors (not so much nowadays) and frequent Series Hiatus.Yes, it has a Wiki. There have been 12 episodes so far, but unfortunately threads for episodes 1-9 have been deleted and live on only in memory.The available episodes include:
DYOS 10 - a story of the Avatar Wars, where people's old forum avatars rebel against their former masters;
DYOS 11 - tells about the struggle against a mysterious Hacker who closes the Off-Topic subforum, thus denying the forum users their daily dose of flame wars.
This series provides examples of:
Aborted Arc: The series is littered with these. Contributors sometimes became inactive and left their side-plot unresolved, or they'd forgotten about a side-plot or simply didn't want to continue it.
Action Girl: Seems to be a lot more of them than men.
All Nations Are Superpowers: The many world wars are driven by contributor-led factions with little mention of "neutral" countries. In DYOS 5, this resulted in a plethora of Space Filling Empires.
All There in the Manual: The Wiki started out having things that happened in comics, and now has way more information than the story itself, in plenty of cases way more than is necessary, much to the annoyance of the Wiki's Creator.
Have We Met Yet?: Averted with Ayane & CivGeneral when they were in close proximity to Major Kusanagi in 2003. They resorted to a ForcefulFake-Out Make-Out as Kusanagi walked by.
Meanwhile, in the Future: Can become confusing as the transitions aren't always marked. Made even more confounding by at least one comic set in the original timeline.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: CivGeneral, Ayane, Dr. Richtofen, Stylesjl, Martha Shepard, Qara Avethokastar, The Hacker, & all of the Zombies.
Apocalypse How: Lucifer is attempting to do a Class X-4.
Art Evolution: Most, if not all of the regular contributors have modified their styles in some way over the years, and not only the pen-and-paper crowd.
The Atoner: CivGeneral, both outside and inside the story. The Republic of Coruscant is slowly becoming this.
Attack Of The50ft Whatever: Chuck the Freaking Alien has this as a special ability. Also can be done with an Active/Industrious Beam.
Author Existence Failure: Some of the contributors, for various reasons, left the story completely at some point. Some even left the site. One contributor is thought to have died in real life.
Author Filibuster: Just about everyone at some point. Some people more so than others.
It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: e350tb and Judge_Deadd are killed before they even know they're Chosen. The Clone Guild learns the new identities and immediately embarks on a manhunt, captures taillesskangaru and literally rips the trait out of him, possibly inflicting brain damage.
Later on, it's found out he's a Chosen One again. But this time, it pays well.
Cryptic Conversation: Pretty much everyone when speaking about Mr. Toyoda, including Toyoda himself.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Jill vs. Domination3000. Jill eventually showed him the power of the glow. It was in a non-canon comic though, one of the many "Take That, annoying forumers" comics that have been written over the course of the series.
CivGeneral and Company are kidnapped and brought to Enclave headquarters where Dr. Breen tries to prompt a Face Heel Turn. Not only does he fail, but the kidnapping spurs Coruscant to launch a scary fast assault across the entire United States that drives the Enclave from the continent. Oops.
The Space Nazis anticipate a quick victory in Europe, thinking it's less unified than it really is. What happens? The invasion force wedges itself between two hostile blocs and now fights for survival.
Wesker grants Dr. Richtofen permission to travel back in time with the aim of preventing CivGeneral from rising to prominence and scuttling his evil plans. While the resulting Alternate Timeline sees Coruscant defeated early in DYOS, Wesker is captured and executed by the Sibling Empire.*
It's also suggested Umbrella was defunct and Wesker on the run for some years prior.
Doomed by Canon: DYOS 10.5, being an interquel to 10 and 11, sees this- the Combine must be defeated, the main characters must survive, most plot threads must be resolved, et cetera.
Duel to the Death: Unfortunately, our protagonist did not have a pistol.
Earth-Shattering Kaboom: More times than should be legally allowed. Earth was destroyed at least once in every thread up until the 9th one, usually multiple times. In DYOS 8, it was destroyed, replaced by a Communist version, then destroyed again.
The Empire: Combine Empire, the Enclave, the Greater German Space Reich, The Second Galactic Empire, and Transatlasia, to some extent.
Mr. Fanservice: Commander Laes when splattered with glitter
Evil Brit: Albert Wesker (other British characters avert the trope).
Forever War: Not so much one war eternal as a perpetual stream of new enemies. CurtSibling is probably the closest example, striving for world supremacy in every story he was featured in.
Frothy Mugs of Water: Stylesrj's team drinks fruit juice instead of regular alcohol at parties. The intoxicating effects could be claimed on a sugar rush.
Gas Mask Mooks: The Combine and Umbrella Soldiers as well as the Space Pirate foot soldiers.
Genre Shift: Mainly CivGeneral who went from a mercenary-like character into a leader of his own nation simply to counter the excessive powergaming found in the Dark Ages of DYOS. Recent episodes now show him reverting back to his mercenary roots.
This also can apply to sudden changes in the plot or an individual's plot going from an action sequence to a Survival Horror.
Demonstrated most poignantly by lord_joakim's abrupt change from campy comedy to psychotic quasi-Mind Screw. And back.
Stylesrj every other month with the Narrator plots
taillesskangaru's entire Gem storyline, notable for being almost completely devoid of any attempt at humour, and for featuring lots of blood.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: Justified due to the PG atmosphere the forums has in its rule set. One of many examples: Ayane and Faye were wrestling and got into a few suggestive positions.
Hollywood Hacking: CivGeneral's characters are firm disciples, and a few confront the Hacker in a Cyberspace setting. CivGeneral fights the anthropomorphism of his hate in a virtual reality environment.
Killed Off for Real: A few people actually have died and remained dead, although the only dead among the self-insert characters are e350tb and Judge Deadd
Klingon Promotion: choxorn became the leader of the Zombie Apocalypse after vaporizing the original leaders with a Kill Sat. Mythmonster briefly became the leader of Apolyton after shooting the previous one in the head, then forgot about that plotline as a result of his update schedule of "almost never"
Lost Episode: DYOS 1-9. The contributors still have a few individual comics from those threads, though, and upload some of them to the side-threads at times.
A good chunk of DYOS 10 is missing, too, due to CFC's Uploads and Downloads Folder being hacked and deleted in 2008, taking a large amount of the comics for the thread with it.
More recently, archives of parts of the missing threads were found.
Medium Awareness: Exploited by nearly everyone, especially Thorvald, choxorn and taillesskangaru. Memorable examples include Krieger leaving DYOS 11 to fight in the prequel, Zheng He pondering whether he's in a tragedy or a comedy, and tailless going meta to escape a hostile space fleet.
Mega Corp: Umbrella Corporation and, arguably, the Clone Guild.
Talon Company probably counts, and Toyoda is inferred to run one.
Meta Fic: Commonly demonstrated in "Narratorspace", "The Reality Warpers' Club", and "Ask that Ninja".
Mind Screw: The Thear arc. Didn't help that E350 lost one of the pages and was too lazy to redraw it, resulting in an As You Know.
Mood Whiplash: With so many different participants, it's inevitable that consecutive comics won't always carry the same tone.
Multinational Team: Among the characters are nearly every European and East Asian nationality that exists, and a few that don't. Also true of the story writers, whose present and past ranks include around 15 Americans, 4 Canadians, 5 Australians, 2 English, a Scot, 2 Danes, a Norwegian, 2 Swedes, a Pole, an Asian-Australian, a Pakistani-American, and some people with an unknown nationality.
No Name Given: Most self-insert characters are only known by their username, which rolls into Only One Name for a majority of self-insert characters. Though some over time were given surnames, like Stylesrj, or opted to adopt their spouse's name, like CivGeneral. The hacker in DYOS 11 is known simply as the Hacker.
Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Defied in the cruellest irony imaginable: a nuclear-armed Tupolev bomber sets off to strike an Enclave oil rig from Hiroshima.
Sometimes Stylesrj makes a big explosion and explains that it's not a nuke, but an N2 mine.
Nuke 'Em: The above example is only one of hundreds...
Omniscient Council Of Vagueness: Used often when the contributor doesn't want to spoil something or just hasn't thought of anything thus far.
One of Us: Everyone who is writing this story, some more so than others, is one of us.
Only Six Faces: Frequently occurs in CivGeneral's comics, but then, it's a limitation of the medium. Amusingly, the same face model was used for both the Chancellor of the Republic (good guy) and the CIA Deputy Director (bad guy).
A notable Lampshade Hanging occurs in choxorn's conversation with Tanaka. Ironically, Tanaka's model was unique.
Stylesrj once was president of France (It's a Long Story) and he spent very little of it leading.
Someone once remarked that Thorvald was vying for the King Richard award for most time in office spent outside the country.
Private Military Contractors: Mr. Toyoda's Security Company, CivGeneral's Brotherhood of Steel and S.T.A.R.S. factions, Stylesrj's Space Mercenaries, Talon Company.
Punch Clock Hero: Most of the FWA troops would rather be fishing.
The Quest: the central plot of most DYOS threads, though the story often became so chaotic the original goal was forgotten.
Real Life Writes the Plot: Tons of examples, sometimes even other fictional things writing the plot. A recent one was the volcano in Iceland with an unspellable name delaying an invasion of France (It Makes Sense in Context)
Redemption Quest: Some of CivGeneral's sideplots are this in DYOS 11, representing the fight against his inner daemons and atonement for his attitude in the past.
Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Two of CivGeneral's past bullies, Bryan and Melinda, are Umbrella's goons. Word Of God states they are based on an amalgamation of the kids who bullied the poster CivGeneral in the past.
Security Blanket: Taillesskangaru in place of Linus in one of the "Why Haven't Contributor Drawn Comics Lately" comics.
Self-Deprecating Humor: All the writers do this, rather frequently, except for CivGeneral, and even he's starting to do it some now.
Self Insert Fic: Pretty much every major character is a self-insert. The exception is whoever e350tb's main character is at the time- he uses characters from Nickelodeon cartoons as his main chracter(s) instead of himself. He had a self-insert like everyone else for two seconds, but said self-insert was killed in his first comic.
Series Hiatus: DYOS occasionally suffered from this due to contributors being busy with real life.
Standard Female Grab Area: Subverted with Marsha Conrad. Don't ever try to grab her arm or you will find yourself flat on the floor.
Stalker with a Crush: Jessica Daibijin is Stylesjl's Axe Crazy Stalker. Her plans of cutting out Stylesjl's heart with her axe are on hold though until the current plotline is resolved.
Statler and Waldorf: doing what they do best. Cameoed as Space Nazi soldiers during the invasion of Britain in DYOS 10.5; in DYOS 11, they're perched at the bow of a pirate ship à la Muppet Treasure Island.
Stomach of Holding: Gnowel Lawgiver and her High Cleric Juline Sane both have these.
Symbol Swearing: Justified mainly due to the main rules in CFC. Some resort to using Censor Boxes even to the point of playing with the trope just for laughs by censoring the word "cake" and other non-swear words.
Happens again later in, when Sandy ends up on the wrong side of an Emergency Roboticiser. Happily for the plot, her mind is intact.
United Europe: A subversion that tries to play itself straight. The continent is split longitudinally between the Eastern Union and Free Western Army, who work very closely with each other. No Iron Curtain here, folks!
Very Special Episode: Happens around Christmas time with special edition comics. A few lampooning comics consist of other posters from the forums. Almost all of the special episode comics are considered non-canon.
Stylesrj recently did a parody of a whole bunch of Soap Opera Special Episode themes.
Webcomic Time: Often occurs due to the frequent hiatuses- comics months apart from each other can, in-story, take place within the space of a few minutes.
Now true of wherever the hell the Zombies' secret base is, although it IS a secret, and it's mostly only this because choxorn updates about once every 4 months these days.
Who Writes This Crap?!: choxorn sometimes complains about something in the story, at which point he's reminded by someone else that he's the one who's writing this crap.
World War II: Among the supporting cast are Erwin Rommel, Bernard Montgomery, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Patton, and just about the entire Soviet and Nazi leadership at one point or another.
Zombie Infectee: Averted HARD by CivGeneral: the other characters realize before he does, he certainly doesn't deny it, and he's treated and cured before symptoms begin to manifest.
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, each Draw Your Own Story episode is a collaboratively-created comic, usually about the CF forum. The notoriously confusing and complex plot tends to involve the authors' self-insert characters combating a villain/seeking out an artifact who/which has incredible power. Lots of explosions and military hardware is usually involved. There is a massive supporting cast, most of which are characters imported from video games, tv shows, comics, literature, and historical and real life figures, resulting in a massive Mega Crossover and/or Anachronism Stew.Also infamous for personality conflicts among the contributors (not so much nowadays) and frequent Series Hiatus.Yes, it has a Wiki
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