Webcomic / Lucidstuck

Lucidstuck is a webcomic created by the intrepidPioneer, previously hosted on the MSPA Forums before their mysterious disappearance during the Omegaupdate, now hosted on Eagle Time forums, featuring the antics of our protagonist, Derrick Willford and his adventures through out the dream world where he must take his place as the Prince of Fear in the Land of Murder and Moonlight. He soon meets his best friend Lucia, who he had thought to be dead for several years, and several "Reaper Kids" all while meeting several other dreamers who all have their own unique titles as well.

The first forum thread can be found, here and the latest can be found here If you don't want to have to search through the reader's theories for the pages, the mirror can be found here, although some of the coding and links may be broken.

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Lucidstuck contains examples of:

• Arc Words: "Isn't it obvious?" Apparently the boss of the Reaper Kids instructed them to give this reply whenever someone asks his identity.
  • "We were terribly wrong about the Princess" has also been repeated a few times.
• Arch-Enemy: Lucia and Alice never got along with each other ever since they first met, while the former went with Derrick to visit him in his home. As a matter of fact, Alice dislikes Lucia so much that she got several people to harass Lucia during school and also lies to Derrick by telling him that Lucia had died after she had a mishap with her step-father's gun.
  • Later it is revealed that Everything we've seen in the story takes place in a "Construct" by the original Alice, who made Lucia's life in the construct difficult through her illusion powers and through her own construct self. Lucia's stepfather isn't even real!
• Beach Episode: At one point, Lucia, Garreth, Skully, Lexii, and Uilos decide to take a break from fighting monsters and spend some time on the beach, complete with the girls wearing Fanservice-y outfits and the boys being shirtless. Later on, the trope name is mentioned when Derrick is told about it the following night.
• Body Horror: A lot of the monsters have this. It gets even worse when you find out that they used to be people.
• Brother–Sister Incest: It's implied that Alice's feelings for Derrick are more than just family. She later confirms this.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Implied to be happening between Derrick and Lucia. A darker, one-sided version exists between Alice and Derrick.
• Cool Chair: Ira gains the ability to turn into one and is used by Lucia to heal herself simply by sitting down on her.
• The Corrupter: Lil Mal.
• Corrupt the Cutie: This might be happening with Lucia.
  • Happens later with Lexii, though she gets better.
• Crapsack World: The dream world is definitely this, it is a place filled with several monsters who are all out to steal the bodies of the dreamers, illusions that can lure people out and trick them once causing Derrick to get impaled with a giant tendril that came from the ground. As well as, doppelgängers there to trick you by turning into your loved ones. Needless to say the dream world is not a happy place in the slightest sense.
• Creepy Cute: Raziel is "just a poor misjudged plushie". Some of the monsters also count.
• Cute Monster Girl: Ruu-Andaros, not just for her design but also her her mannerisms. There's also Miho, who is based on an OC of one of the creator's friends.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Derrick and Lucia both like black. Lucia's conjuration is also a shadow creature, who happens to be very friendly and cheerful. The reapers are all allies despite being dressed as, well, reapers. All but one of them, at least...
• DreamLand: Derrick and his friends are lucid dreamers.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Played with. Derrick must kiss Lucia in the real world to wake her up before her life support is turned off and she dies. However, it is Lucia herself that tells him this in the dream world, and it turns out that just a kiss on the hand is enough for this to work.
• Equippable Ally: Reggie, Ira and DT can change into all sorts of useful things.
  • All conjurations and realm attendants have an ability they can unlock that allows their respective dreamer to equip them.
• Eye Scream: While it's unknown whether Lucia purposefully or accidentally shot herself in the head, or if it was someone else who did it, she survived, but one of her eyes was damaged. After she wakes up, she wears an eyepatch.
  • There's also Ahn, whose left eye is bandaged but the blood is still visible.
• Familiar: All the kids eventually get a conjuration, created from an object from the waking world.
• Fog of Doom: The fog in the Forgotten Forest causes illusions and eventually loss of memory. The fog in the Misty Marshes is just regular fog, though.
• For Want Of A Nail: There are quite a lot of instances where the reader's commands make a difference. For example, if Emily had not been saved from dying, she wouldn't have been able to use her powers to turn Uilos back into human form in the past, meaning that he would have still been a monster in the present.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When Alice is finally given a proper introduction, she becomes aware of the reader's attempts to command her. She even looks directly at the reader when she starts to hear the commands. Later on, she directly addresses them...
  • When Lexii is corrupted by Lil Mal, the readers are unable to help her by giving her commands because the doll changes them to corrupt her even more. They have to command another character to get through to her.
• Grand Theft Me: This is what happens if you die in the dream world and don't make it back to your sleeping body in time - a monster can possess it and wake up in your body, taking control permanently, while you are left to remain in the dream world and eventually become a monster yourself.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: It is eventually revealed that the whole story is a cycle of one of these within a "Construct" created by Alice (who now goes by Daydream) as an attempt to prevent Lucia from accidentally killing Derrick. Garreth, Lucas and Emily are all aware of the Construct, with Lucas trying not to get too attached to his conjuration because he apparently gets a different one each time. Emily has also died in every cycle until now.
• Gut Feeling: The conjurations are able to sense allies or hostiles. Ira seems especially sensitive.
• Head Pet: Some of the conjurations and realm attendants will ride on their guardian's heads if they're small enough.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Jay Williams? Andre Mumford?
• Improbably Quick Coma Recovery: Lucia spent 8 years in a coma, but was able to sit up and move with no problem after waking up, and could even attend school the very next morning! It even gets lampshaded at one point. Possibly justified because of the Construct; if she was in a coma for that long in the real world, she would most likely have a slower and more realistic recovery.
• Light Is Not Good: Locad is very bright, in contrast to lomam's darkness. Lucia, Derrick, and the reaper kids all note that they are unnerved by this.
• Manipulative Bastard: It's a toss up between this and The Chessmaster for Alice. The key reason she doesn't particularly like or trust the "Observers" whispering commands to her or those around her is not because she thinks we're evil, but because we're an unknown factor that could interfere with HER plans. The readers have agreed she's far too untrustworthy to make any further "deals" with after our first attempt ended in her telling Lexii to be wary of and not listen to "whispers in her mind", and Daydream goes so far as to essentially state this outright.
• Medium Awareness: In the latest updates, Alice is becoming aware of the readers' commands. It turns out that Garry has this ability too. Daydream literally made a small dummy that could "filter through" the reader's/observer's questions so she could talk to us directly.
• Monster Allies:
  • Derrick decides to let Ruu-Andaros in the party, since she seemed friendly (and was ridiculously strong).
  • Mephita and Ahn have been befriended as well, though their trustworthiness remains uncertain.
• Murder by Mistake: Before the construct was made, Lucia tried to kill Alice for unknown reasons, but the Unknown Entity tricked her into killing Derrick instead. Alice made the construct to find a way to prevent this, believing at first that Lucia killed him on purpose.
• Prehensile Hair: A monster known as Daesdyne is able to grab things with her hair.
• Self-Proclaimed Liar: Alice as Daydream talking about how she used to be and do things. Though her methods don't always strictly involve lying- so long as you're doing what she wants...
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Derrick makes a fancy collection of outfits.
• Shipper on Deck: Lexii is thought to be shipping Lucas, Garreth and Derrick with one another and also tends to write fanfiction with pairings of her choice, and is once told that she would most likely be a good match maker in real life as well by one of her readers. She also keeps a hidden document of all of her ships, somewhere on her computer. Another example of this trope stems from one of the reaper kids by the name of Wynter, who actively ships Derrick and Lucia
  • Reggie seems to be shipping Derrick and Lucia, too, although he's much more subtle about it.
• Shoot the Dog: Daydream/Alice says she's had Emily killed in almost every cycle until now (When the readers interfered) because the Unknown Entity has used her against the other characters in the original timeline and earlier cycles. However, she also took the chance to torture Emily and let her die slowly and painfully because of her crush on Derrick, which Alice was jealous of.
• Stages of Monster Grief: Unfortunately, it seems most have reached the last stage.
• Stepford Smiler: Lucas seems rather cheerful for someone who's had to go through thousands of versions of the construct, and also had to kill his construct self each time to take his place. Oh, and he has an unrequited crush on Alice, despite knowing about everything she's done as Daydream, including sexually abusing her own unsuspecting brother, yet he still can't help how he feels. He shows more of his true self whenever he's alone, or with people who are aware of the construct.
• Survival Horror: The story takes place in a game (the stats being the most noticeable aspect). With all of those often very powerful the monsters out to get them, things can get quite scary.
• Swamps Are Evil: The Misty Marshes.
• Switching P.O.V.: Usually the story follows Derrick, but sometimes other characters claim the spotlight.
• Terror Hero: Derrick is the Prince of Fear, scaring his enemies is one of his abilities.
  • Also subverted: Derrick has abilities that trigger when he gets scared.
• Turning Back Human: One of Emily's abilities, "Redemption", can turn boss monsters into a human form (but only if they want it). So far she has done this to Uilos and Lethos, the former of which was once a guardian himself.
• The Unfettered: Perhaps the most charitable view one might take of Alice.
• The Unreveal: One of the reapers tells Lucia about how she came to be in a coma and how soon she will die unless the Prince (Derrick) saves her. Towards the end of the dialogue on that page, he is about to tell Lucia how she must be saved, but the next page skips to after he has told her.
  • However, Word of God said that a kiss from the Prince is what will wake her before it was properly revealed. Eventually, Lucia tells Derrick herself.
• Was Once a Man: The monsters are people (and animals) that have died or had their bodies stolen by other monsters.
• Webcomic Time: So far, about a week or two has passed in the comic, which has been going on for over six years. Lampshaded at one point when Daydream says it felt like the current dream had been going on for about a year (which it had).
• Wham Line:
  • When the perspective changes to Alice for the first time, she follows a few commands. But then...
    Alice: Darko, can you feel that? That weird hint.
    Alice: I've never felt it before until now, but it's almost as if... I want to do something.
    Alice: But the thought isn't mine...
  • After finding out that Reggie knows more than he lets on, Lucia asks him more about it, and he tells her something that completely changes how the story has been viewed up until now:
    Reggie: We are in a construct.
    Lucia: What?
    Reggie: What you know right now, is smoke and mirrors.
  • When Emily finds herself in Daydream's Event Horizon:
    Daydream: I'm in love with Derrick.
    Emily: But he's your brother!
    [...]
    Daydream: The sick part isn't that I'm in love with Derrick. The sick part is... I did something bad to him.
    Emily: What? What did you do?
    Daydream: I... I... I took his virginity.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Time works differently in the dream world, so characters don't have to worry about not waking up in time for school. Somehow, Lucia still managed to tell she'd been there for eight years though.
• Younger Than They Look: The Reapers are all children of various ages (with the oldest being 16) who died or are close to death, but it's revealed that some of them died as infants or even younger than that. Specifically, Veneri was aborted, but appeared in the dream world as a young girl rather than a baby or fetus.
• Your Favorite: The game knows Derrick likes his marshmallows, using them as the form of a special item that, when eaten, can wake him up, which is useful if he ever finds himself in a situation where only waking up from the dream can save him. Apparently Alice likes them too, and they likely appear for her as well.

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