Clairen, the mysterious New Transfer Student.
Lovers of Aether is a free spin-off of the indie fighting game Rivals of Aether, originally released as an April Fools joke in 2019. Set in Aether Academy, the player takes on the persona of a faceless student that's hoping to ask one of their classmates, consisting of the Rivals main cast, to be their date at the Homecoming Dance.
Tropes present in Lovers of Aether:
- Adaptational Jerkass: The Lovers version of Maypul is a Class President who's gone full dictator. Literally: she wants to declare war on other schools, insists on a "fair and democratic election" in which she blackmails the class, co-opts the player into "eternal servitude" to her if given the chance, and even wears some sort of merit badges as a Chest of Medals. Eventually it's revealed that she's being tutored by Principal Loxodont, which explains it.
- Ambiguous Gender: The player's. The game avoids using pronouns to refer to you at all, and you can date any of the 12 non-guest characters without issue.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: Everyone but Elliana either wears more clothing and/or is made bipedal to fit the high school setting, which gets lampshaded heavily.
- Art Shift: This game almost exclusively uses illustrations by the character designer for the 4 canonical DLC characters, rather than pixel art like the fighting game does.
- Dating Sim: The player's goal is to successfully ask someone to the Homecoming Dance.
- Emo Teen: This version of Forsburn, complete with angsty poetry about how "Dads just don't get it".
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player chooses their name at the start of a run.
- High School AU: The setting of the story is Aether Academy, which all of the main Rivals characters attend as students, with more minor characters playing other students or instructors. It's very clearly a parody of the trope, however, with the characters (themselves exaggerated) fitting neatly into clichés the setting is known for (Forsburn is an Emo Teen who writes moody poetry, Maypul goes from mere confident self-appointed defender of her home to an Academic Alpha Bitch, Wrastor is an arrogant Big Man on Campus, etc.) and in general playing all these clichés up to eleven for a laugh.
- Mythology Gag: Orcane at one point takes the blame for something he wasn't responsible for. Again.
- New Transfer Student: Clairen is transferred to the player's class at the start of the story.
