After being pulled into a future where the Chrono Crisis forums have become real and been overtaken by Square Enix and many of their comrades have been converted to mindless soldiers for the Corporation, Slaix223 and LinktotheFuture teamed up with a Resistance front to end their tyranny. Led by Corona!01, the Resistance provided a dwindling effort to help save the forum.
And so begins the Chrono Crisis/Project Ark collective story/RP Return of the Banned, and sequel Mirage of the Banned the story of the alternate future in which the forums that the story was written on, have become reality, and the fangame project Chrono Crisis, and later Project Ark, has been taken over by Square Enix (who owns the Chrono franchise; it should be noted that both have now dropped all direct references to the Chrono franchise). Square Enix controls the forum by capturing their leaders Chains of Fate and Lena Andreia, and by turning users into Banned, mindless slaves of The Corporation. The Resistance, led by Corona!01 seeks to end The Corporation's lockdown of the forum, and allow the freedom of fangames.
After the Chrono Crisis project split into the new original game Theoria, and the new fangame Project Ark in real life, Return of the Banned ends, and Mirage of the Banned begins, following the continued story on the new forum Kagero Studios where Square Enix wants to control Project Ark even though it is only a game in honor of Chrono Trigger rather than a game using their IP.
A large portion of the humor of the story consists of inside jokes and Forum Humor, but the plot is (mostly) solid for just about anyone reading it.
Return of the Banned's starting point
Mirage of the Banned
This provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob:
- While nobody has normal names on the forum, some people have more "extravagant" screen names then others, to say the least.
- Trope played with in the characters Alice and Arcc, an Aerith clone and a member whose real name is Bob.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Corona!01 infiltrates the Corporation as his female alt account Tsunami?10, often tormenting an oblivious Nomura in his altered forum.
- Celebrity Paradox:
- The worlds of Return of the Banned and Mirage of the Banned exist inside the forum, and often real threads are mentioned but all threads pertaining to the RP itself cannot exist.
- Subverted in the fact that everyone is playing themselves
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Particularly notable in members who were Badass Normal even before the merge.
- Close-Call Haircut: Alice gets one of these, which becomes an Important Haircut.
- Death Is Cheap:
- While the good guys don't kill often, it's been noted a few times that nobody dies when they die, and that they eventually just re-appear.
- Unless you're deleted. But even then...
- Algarius seems to think that only the good guys come back, and that evil people are Killed Off for Real.
- Darker and Edgier: Mirage of the Banned seems to do this, although Return of the Banned wasn't necessarily light and smooth itself.
- Deus ex Machina:
- Slaix'sRidiculouslyLongSpellsTM
- Let's not forget Future Slaix, seeing as he knows everything that happened. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say if anything weird with time is going on, he's usually the person behind it.
- Evil Weapon: Alice's staff Laevateinn may be one of these; Loki, Juso Magna's alter ego, Zeth's dirk definitely is.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: Subverted: As more and more people show up, more lines form, but that doesn't stop authors form posting at their normal speed because there is no posting schedule. However, some authors don't feel like posting often, and then we get a lot of waiting as the other lines move.
- Future Badass: Nearly everybody qualifies for this, but particularly relevant to Slaix and Link, who travel from the present to not only fight on even (and often superior) terms with the other members who have been at this for five years, but have significantly more badass future selves already present.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Simultaneously played straight and subverted with Lightning, Alice, Dr. Cid and several others
- Meaningful Rename: Aeriis becomes Alice when she determines not to be defined by her origins as an Aerith clone
- Mission Control: Timekitten. Probably not a good idea to call her a Bridge Bunny, though.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: Future Slaix told this to the Slaix from the Kagero timeline in regards to the Slaix from the Crisis timeline. Subverted as the two were actually supposed to meet.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Incredibly subverted as Yoichi Wada and Tetsuya Nomoura frequently appear, Wada being the Big Bad, and Nomura being his right hand man
- Omnicidal Maniac: Flagg (and how!); Zeth
- Playing with Syringes: The origin of The Banned, among other things. The corporation's Mad Science department has a strong tendency towards this, but Wada himself seems to enjoy it more than anybody.
- Private Military Contractors: The Band of the Hawk
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits The primary characters used to be a bunch of nerdy gamers from all across the world, who had never as much as seen eachother in person before the merge.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic Somewhat subverted. Authors tend to know how they themselves would react and talk, but any other character under their control is probably going to be affected by this.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The real life Crisis/Kagero spilt caused the alternate reality Mirage of the Banned.
- Retcon
- When Return of the Banned became Mirage of the Banned, a couple of things were changed. Most noticeably, Naive Newcomers Algarius, CSDragon and Juso Magna becoming included in the back story and having histories... and Algarius becoming Evil...
- Don't forget the whole fiasco with Schrix, either.
- Don't forget MugenSpammer ether.
- Stable Time Loop: Slaix's entire story, if not the entire story in general, seeing as it's being manipulated because of his future self.
- Superpower Lottery: A characters powers are completely up to the author, as long as Slaix 223 approves them. This allows for characters like Algarius being incredibly powerful, while at the same time others like Corona!01 and Radox get almost none. In theory, your superpowers are defined by your personality and persona, but NPCs are wildcards.
- Superpowered Evil Side:
- Zeth; Flagg
- In the case of Algarius, who is already evil, it's a Superpowered MORE Evil Side that crosses into One-Winged Angel territory while still being the Enemy Within.
- The Chessmaster: Future Slaix. Fortunately, he's only doing it to ensure the Stable Time Loop.
- Time Travel: Two of the protagonists get sent to the Bad Future by one of the protagonist's future self.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The merge is set an indeterminate time in the future and the current events are roughly five years after that.
