“We had fun and violence, and no one died. I like this group.”
Nails
An online series by B.I. Flight. Each volume consists of a “novel” that is actually four novellas detailing important events in the lives of the eponymous monster hunters. The series is updated sporadically on Flight’s website,
www.thelonelywinds.com
, as new novellas are completed. The stories take place in an original setting that is gradually explored as the series progresses.
The series is described as a “genre-bending” blend of those things the author loves: horror, action, fantasy, sci-fi, humor, etc. To date the series has only a small, but very loyal, fanbase.
This series provides examples of the following:
- Alien Sky
- Arc Words — “The Truce” and more recently, “This land is mine!”
- Badass Bookworm — Jake and arguably George.
- Badass Longcoat — Will, often lampshaded in a running gag where others describe him as looking like someone “from a bad cyberpunk novel.”
- Badass Normal — About 75% of the cast.
- Beware The Nice Ones — Nails and as of Book VII, both Cynthia and George
- Blessed With Suck Nails
- Bullying A Dragon — A literal example of this with Atla, a mysterious robed wizard-type who takes a bizarre amount of pleasure in taunting a huge dragon with immense magical and physical power and a *very* short temper
- Catapult Nightmare
- City Of Adventure
- Clothes Make The Superman — Jake’s homemade power armor.
- Cloud Cuckoolander — George.
- Complete Monster — Lots of stuff, including the setting’s vampires as a whole, along with named villains like the Crown of Thorns and Terek Domar.
- Conveniently Precise Translation
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome — Nails’s battle in Book VII.
- Dead Little Sister — Will and his quasi-suicidal determination to battle monsters even when it’s particularly hazardous after the death of his fiancée.
- Dumb Muscle — Marc.
- Extraordinarily Empowered Girl
- Femme Fatalons
- Flying Brick — Nails
- Geometric Magic
- Golem
- Guns Akimbo
- Heroes Want Redheads — Subverted, as redheaded Cynthia constantly harasses Will, who could not be less interested.
- Improvised Weapon
- Ironic Echo Cut
- Kung Shui
- Magic A Is Magic A
- Occult Detective
- Our Angels Are Different — Nails.
- Our Dragons Are Different
- Pale Skinned Brunette — The Crown of Thorns.
- Powered Armor
- Power Fist — Nails’s use of studded sap gloves.
- Red Eyes Take Warning
- Religion Of Evil — The Order of the Moonless Night.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness — George, George, George.
- Spider Sense
- Silver Bullet — Used regularly. The series takes the unusual step of addressing the problem of their ballistic performance, as a bullet minted from solid silver would not handle high muzzle velocities very well. (This troper is a bit dubious about some aspects of the justification, but commends the author for making the effort.)
- Straight Gay — Edmund and Nyrid in the mythos story “Ember and Magma.”
- Tarot Motifs
- The Dumbledore — George yet again.
- The Hunter
- This! Is! SPARTA!
- Wall Of Weapons
- Weapon Of Choice
- We Help The Helpless
- What The Hell Hero
- Who You Gonna Call
- Write Who You Know — Many of the characters are based to some degree off of people the author knows.
- Xanatos Gambit — The Crown of Thorns’s games with George. Also, arguably, the shadow war behind the Truce.
- Your Vampires Suck— Chapter II of Book II is written like a how-to for this trope.
