Started in August 2011, Power Academy is a Forumotion roleplay forum centering around the eponymous boarding school for teens with superpowers. A freeform tale of action, adventure, romance, comedy, drama, and tropes. Lots and lots of tropes. There's a character page here.Found here.
Academy of Evil: Played with; the Academy trains both heroes and villains, but is considered neutral ground.
Aerith and Bob: There are characters with names like James, Christine, Gill, Valerie, Grace and Alice, as well as characters with names like Swilium, Talan, Quasar, Lightning and Atiago.
Action Girl and Dark Action Girl: Generally, unless explicitly stated to be otherwise, female characters in this universe can really kick some ass.
Alternate Reality Episode: Alzeri's enchanted books can literally suck people in, forcing them to act out the story before they can leave.
Apocalypse How: Alice and her family grew up in a hellish, irradiated wasteland left over from a nuclear war, and Garrett mentions that a huge zombie epidemic broke out about 30 years prior—about a Class 1.
Bigger on the Inside: The Rec Hall. Any room can be generated instantly upon opening the door based on what the guest is imagining. Want an Olympic-sized swimming pool? Bam, you have one.
This applies to the forum in general; over time, rooms and areas are added as needed.
Bizarre Seasons / Empathic Environment: Over the course of the first three days, Power Academy has experienced a warm, sunny day, a snowy morning quickly turning into an overcast day where the snow melted, and a rainy day. Consecutively.
Although the later retcon about time's passage, with each "day" being a sort of montage of the events of a week, causes the weather to make a little more sense.
Cast Full of Bi: Played with. At the very least, there are very few characters who fall into either of the extremes on the Kinsey Scale. Aside from the multitude of bisexual characters (male and female alike) in the story, including those who mainly interact with the opposite sex anyway, there are a lot of otherwise purely straight or gay characters who tend to have exceptions. Individual sexuality is still acknowledged, making this distinct from Everyone Is Bi.
Chekhov's Gun, Chekhov's Gunman: Many plot elements are foreshadowed beforehand; long before the school uniforms were made, Valerie was seen sketching designs for them, for instance.
Aborted Arc: ...or some arcs are just dropped entirely.
Everybody Has Lots of Sex: On the second day in-universe, but eventually dialed back when things became a little too predictable. Can be justified, considering the student population consists primarily of teenagers, whether they're finding true love or blowing off steam.
The users' humorousrationale was as follows: "Snow Means Love, the snow started melting from the sun, heat and the sun equal sexuality, therefore melting snow equals libido."
Fanservice: Plentiful, and equal-opportunity—the amount of male and female fanservice is treated equally. LGBT relationships are also visible in the story as well.
However, there are no characters who serve solely as eye candy. As one of the users succinctly put it, "If you created a character solely for the purpose of fanservice, that's one thing. But if you create an attractive character and give them depth, then that's like real life, where attractive people have thoughts and dreams beyond walking about in skimpy clothes and turning people on." The general rule would then be that characters, fanservicey or not, are just treated like people.
With some characters in-story, it also seems to be deconstructed; Tala, Wendy, and Bethany are all quite fanservicey, but were artificially created to look the way they do (by male creators, no less)—a fact that haunts them to no end; breaking free of the roles set for them is a big part of their character development. See also the Alternate Character Interpretation for Lightning.
Five-Man Band: Dr. Archer gives a lecture on the trope in Team Relations 101.
Foe Romance Subtext: A triple example: Swilium originally created Wendy as his new girlfriend; she eventually turned against him. Later, she reveals to Isaac that she was modeled after Tala (who also turned against Swilium), herself an Opposite-Sex Clone of his rival Talan.
This is pretty rampant throughout the story, with other examples including Helena/Talan and Warpen/Valerie.
Genre Busting: As the description above would indicate. There are elements of adventure, comedy, romance, drama, contemporary fantasy, science fiction (particularly elements of Steampunk and Post Cyber Punk), and Slice of Life throughout.
Hard Light: Used in Timmy's holoroom and Alexei's simulator grounds.
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Isaac comments on the fact that it's snowing on the second day: "Right now, it's at the end of summer, supposedly. Then again, for some strange reason, it does feel like we've already been here for months..."
Mirror Universe: One is explored in Visitors From the Future, wherein everyone's morality is inverted (James is now an evil cultist in addition to being head of the Academy, for instance).
Mysterious Teachers Lounge: At the very least, it includes a fridge, soft couches and soothing music. A nice little space for the headmaster to share some private time with one of the nurses.
Not Wearing Tights: Played with. Although Power Academy is firmly established as a school for superheroes and supervillains alike, most (if not all) of its students and staff favor street clothes over costumes (armor,specialized jumpsuits, et al aside), avoid using codenames (except in some cases, like Lightning and her "sisters"), and generally eschew or subvert typical superhero cliches. Even the terms "superhero" and "supervillain" are rarely used, aside from joking about them.
Rule 63: An entire Alternate Universe thread devoted to it...though it later fizzled out after the Mad Science class introduced a new project for the students: building a gender-flip ray.
Sexy Discretion Shot / Lime: Enforced whenever the characters decide to have sex, per the forum's rule against writing lemons. This only applies to explicit sex, though.
Bottlecap mines and bottlecap knuckles are among Gill's inventions.
In addition to Willow's jumpsuit being blue and yellow, the serial number on the back reads v101-3.
Talan's combat armor is based heavily off of N7 armor.
Trim's spell incantations are taken from Zatch Bell
Lightning is shown to be the resident Pegasister, wearing a Pinkie Pie-themed t-shirt at one point. And in the Visitors From the Future thread, Isaac verifies his future self's identity by asking who their favorite of the Mane Six is (answering with Fluttershy).
She is also shown wearing a Pokebra to seduce Talan.
Adrian's repertoire of poisons includes Nova-6, and he later works on a potion that replicates Titan.
Time Travel Episode: Visitors From the Future, an alternate universe thread.
Triang Relations: Initially Type 5 between Aqua (a), Swilium (b) and Christine (c). Type 8 between Wendy, Tala and Isaac.
Truce Zone: The academy as a whole, intended as neutral ground between heroes and villains. Not that it stops battles from breaking out on the school grounds.
Deadly Training Area: Alexei puts his best effort to avert this in his simulator grounds, ensuring that none of the students actually die in the middle of a scenario.
Webcomic Time: Due to the play-by-post nature of the roleplay, time works very strangely in-universe.
The way time passes was later retconned from Day 3 onward. Each "day" is basically a montage of the events of an entire week.
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