Wrighton: Strange Memory
is a roleplay on the Neopian Times Writers' Forum, which began June 2017 and ended in October of the same year.
Wrighton: Strange Memory contains examples of:
- Afraid of Blood: Audo Mulligan. When someone accidentally reopens the cut on their foot and it starts to bleed again, he begins to panic.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: Liz and Bloody Mary. Liz explains though that she's been practicing to retain memories after she comes back, and is able to recall vaguely what happened when transforming nowadays.
- And the Adventure Continues: What the alien ancestors were hoping would eventually come out of their Memory Gambit. It works out exactly as intended in the end, with some of the Wrightonians continuing the ancient adventure and some staying behind to hold down the fort at home.
- Animal-Eared Headband: Ani's trademark accessory.
- Big Fun: Fionn; fat, friendly and loveable.
- Bilingual Bonus: Anyone who knew the Dutch word for ship likely knew about a certain reveal rather early.
- Creating Life: Liz's alien ancestor, Theo, was one of many beings artificially made on her home planet.
- Cool Shades: Audo's got some of these.
- Crazy Homeless People: Edward Fox is a benign version of this trope.
- Domed Hometown: Not at first, but this is what kicks off the plot. It's a windshield for the spaceship buried under Wrighton.
- Dressed to Heal: Atif Khouri wears his doctor’s coat and carries a medical bag with him as he explores the mysterious tunnels beneath the town.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Very elaborate. Played with, as we eventually learn it wasn't intended to be underground.
- Elective Mute: Ani Hemsworth is one. She stopped talking a few years before canon, only to start speaking again after the plot got kicking.
- Emergent Human: Scip, although he's pretty far along in understanding and practicing social cues. He still has his moments, though, especially since he's had less experience with humans specifically.
- Fling a Light into the Future: The Original Crew’s plan – lock their memories safely away until they can be unlocked centuries in the future, when (hopefully) those who gain the memories will have the necessary knowledge on how to defeat the Beast.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Velia Briar, although no one knows it until later.
- From Stray to Pet: Squip is this. Ani found him wandering around Wrighton, and decided to adopt him.
- The Game Come to Life: Velia has the pleasure of transforming into her favorite Piximite, Diamond Dust Dracomite.
- Ghost Memory: According to the goderators, the "Memory Cloud" can cause any given crew member's memories to be transferred to any random native of the town. Direct descendency from the alien in question is irrelevant. Which is fortunate since otherwise S'siri's memories would have been lost forever, as she was revealed to have never had descendants.
- Grave-Marking Scene: Audo Mulligan, in the epilogue.
- Growing Wings: Happens to Holly by surprise in answer to a prayer.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Harper’s dad is an alien.
- Home Sweet Home: The story's central theme, although this doesn't become explicit until the end of round five.
- Intrepid Reporter: Beatrice Bizelli and Kathleen Morrigan, who eventually strike up a sort of friendship.
- Intrigued by Humanity: Both Scip and the Boss express the idea that humans are difficult to understand, and in the later case, intriguing to watch.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Explained to be why a sentient spaceship doesn't have specific pronouns: "it" would be most accurate, but nobody felt comfortable calling a clearly sentient being "it", and the being in question simply didn't care either way.
- I Work Alone: Recurring with Audo Mulligan, seen most notably at the dinner party.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Scip has been noted to have a fondness for cats.
- Loads and Loads of Races: Modern Wrighton alone features humans, grey aliens, vampires, selkies, sirins, merpeople, djinni, sapient shapeshifting sea monsters, space chinchillas, and Bloody Mary. Add to that the ancestor aliens and you also get grunokki, chif'rrr, kvalgulaar, tesarians, artenskiad, visten, ramblers, sun dragons, coangi, morrigan, edibas, mantis-shrimp-aliens, naga-aliens, and Theo's non-verbal-written-language-only creators. All of which get at least some development and context in the story. It's no wonder the goderators started a thread explicitly to be a race-guide.
- Long-Lost Relative: Fionn turns out to have one in the form of his grandmother's brother.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Velia Briar. She sucks the life out of plants, not humans.
- Memory Gambit: Implied by the initial note to be in effect, and eventually, more comes out: the Player Characters, in the distant past, agreed to it to save themselves and the entire ship from some sort of calamity connected to the Beast.
- The Men in Black: Showed up in the past to warn Kathleen and Caden Glenn not to talk about the spaceship rubble they found. In present times have yet to show up, as far as we know.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Audo's Epic Quest to find the Holy Coffee Maker of Ancient Lore.
- Mysterious Backer: People in Wrighton are rather mixed on whether to trust Scip or not, for a variety of reasons, and the police actually attempt to arrest them for disturbing the peace. They maintain a polite and friendly manner, however, and seem to be trying to help the heroes. Even after their true intentions and origins are explained, there is a lot of backlash from the townspeople.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The Beast, as it is essentially just an amalgamation of the original crew's desire to run with little sapience; not intentionally setting out to harm, but if left alone, it would ultimately destroy the ship and crew.
- Parrot Pet Position: Squip, despite being a cat, has been known to ride around on Ani’s shoulders.
- Percussive Maintenance:
- Suggested by the Boss when Kathleen asks for pointers on how to start the alien ship.
- Jon employs this for real on one of the puzzles, though it's a slight subversion in that he was hitting the puzzle too knock several of the pieces out of it, just to make the point they were detachable to Harper and Alexis.
- Parrot Pet Position: Squip, despite being a cat, has been known to ride around on Ani’s shoulders.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: A favorite tactic of Fionn when he's in seal form. Such that when people are sad he'll deliberately invoke this to cheer them up.
- Pointless Civic Project: No matter how strange things get, the Town Hall authorities insist on getting that cheese tax figured out.
- Purple Is the New Black: Sharron Bizelli explains that her and Beatrice's blue hair is from a black hair mutation. Turns out, though, that they may have inherited this from their alien ancestors, making it something of a Power Dyes Your Hair.
- Refusal of the Call: Ayo and Fionn both attempt this, but unfortunately for them, The Call is not taking no for an answer. Ayo in particular flat-out tries to skip town. Both eventually come around, at least partially.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ayo, having had just about enough of Wrighton's increasingly dangerous shenanigans, decides to take off. They do return, after a nice heart-to-heart.
- Sealed Good in a Can: Scip fits this rather nicely – he was, after all, trapped in a spaceship underground for 2300 years.
- Single Line of Descent: Averted and Justified. The mindprog for the ancestor can only be stored in one person, hence why only the Sixteen carry that officer's memories. However, everyone who is a native of Wrighton has an alien ancestor's memory, as it can easily skip a few generations or go down another family branch.
- Selkies and Wereseals: Fionn, after weeks of speculation, was eventually revealed to be this.
- Sexy Sax Man: Subverted. Despite playing the saxophone, the fat, often scruffy Fionn is not someone most people would consider sexy. His younger self, fresh out of the sea, on the other hand...
- Space Nomads: The Original Crew was basically this – which is what sparked the whole conflict about settling down versus continuing exploring.
- Sunglasses at Night: Audo's got such Cool Shades that he wears them to the late night dinner party.
- Talking to the Dead: Audo talks to his grandfather’s gravestone in the epilogue.
- They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: Audo's main struggle when interacting with the others, trying to hand wave away any tragic memories, but it becomes all the harder to maintain when light is shed on his facade, poking holes into it.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Played with, in that the characters' discovery of being tomatoes happens over the course of a few days. A straighter example is Audo Mulligan who learns of their involvement later on (and initially doesn't believe it as a result.)
