History DarthWiki / TheEighthGradeWars

Why the trip has been scheduled for Thanksgiving Break instead of Spring Break, why almost every eighth grader is going on that trip, what would happen if a plane full of two hundred students crashed in the middle of a forest, this rumor about a Forest Basement that traps people and their souls (also known as a Hell complex)...\\
And this is why fate should not be tempted. The plane crashes in the wilderness, killing several people even before it starts falling. The children have to work together to survive. Nature isn't that big of a problem, despite the freezing temperatures, harsh winds, and the fact that the climate changes every few hundred feet. There are people out to get the middle-school kids, and they waste no time killing anyone they see.

There are seven books in this series: ''The DC Trip'', ''Culprit Revealed'', ''The Laboratory'', ''Infection'', ''Last Chance'', ''Broken Heart'', and ''The Final Battle''.

* AnArmAndALeg: Samuel loses a foot to Violet's ankle rope trap. It's referenced in the 6th anniversary drawing of ''Webcomic/SWAPEnsemble'' when he looks down at his detached foot.
* AnyoneCanDie: Most of the kids die, and some of them are really near and dear to Tierney. Not even Tierney herself is exempt.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The entire lab and its 25 Safehouse branches, created by Rowena in an attempt to survive in the Forest Basement. There are gardens, steady water supplies, fresh clothing... several types of clothing for occasions that would never happen in the wilderness, training machines for fighting evil people who will never come, research stations to find the nature of this Hell complex, and much more. The students are dumbfounded by this all.

* BittersweetEnding: The majority of the students are killed at some point of the story, and most of the survivors have crossed the Despair Event Horizon. However, the survivors get to resume their normal lives, albeit with holes in their hearts where hundreds of people used to be.
* CryingWolf: Rose lies a ''lot''. Tie falls for it too many times, so she refuses to believe when Rose tells her she is DeadAllAlong.

** Tierney thinks she bled to death during a rough battle in ''The Final Battle''. It turns out she fell off a cliff in ''Broken Heart'', but she doesn't realize she's dead until the others spell it out for her. She thought Rose pulled her up, but both of them were spirits at that point.

* DeusExMachina: At the end of ''The DC Trip'', rescue planes show up, ready to take the survivors home. {{Subverted|Trope}} in the next book, when the planes are shot down, killing almost everyone.

* DistressBall: Just about everyone will receive it at some point, but Denize, Kaylene, Samuel, and Philip get it the most.

** Tierney's friends insist that Evelyn doesn't like her. Tierney decides to test this by inviting Evelyn to her birthday celebration. The plan falls through when Evelyn admits she only accepted the invitation because it would be better than spending time in day care with the boys.
** Rose pretends to be Tierney's friend when they are alone but is rude and dismissive towards her otherwise.

* HappyEndingOverride: ''The DC Trip'' ends with rescue planes flying down to save the children. ''Culprit Revealed'' begins with the planes being shot down and Joy (among others) dying in the crash.

* HeroicBSOD: In ''Culprit Revealed'', when Liane punches Maria, saving Tierney's life, she stands traumatized for a second, then sprints toward her doom.

* ImpracticallyFancyOutfit: Tierney and Rose discover a wardrobe with fancy dresses that fit them perfectly and decide to wear them out in the wilderness.

* KillItWithIce: In ''Last Chance'', Tierney and Justine make it back to the lab while Justine is soaked in freezing water. Tierney leaves Justine's room for a moment to get a change of clothes and returns to find that Justine has been effectively frozen. Tierney considers that ice magic might have been involved, but she thinks it's more likely that someone tampered with the thermostat.

* NoGuyWantsToBeChased: Samuel feels uncomfortable with Tierney's advances. She stops when he sends her a strongly worded memo referencing this trope. When he brings up a lesser-known crush she has on a guy he presumably barely knows, she is appalled by his hypocrisy and will have nothing to do with him.

* OffWithHisHead: When Samuel and James go out alone, James is decapitated and Samuel barely escapes with his life.
* PartingWordsRegret: Tierney never speaks to Evelyn again after their falling out. She regrets not trying to patch things up, but she was still too angry to say anything to her as she watched her die. She then told Eliza to run for her life and regretted not apologizing instead.

* RealitySubtext: Tierney and Evelyn were supposed to [[RedemptionEqualsDeath make up before Evelyn charged into the cockpit to find out what was wrong and die]], but the author was mad at her friend for six months after the argument. A week simply would not have been enough time for Tierney to approach Evelyn for forgiveness. Instead, Tierney finds a heartfelt apology postcard after the events of the 8th Grade Wars.

* TheReveal: In ''Broken Heart'', Tierney learns that this is a cursed ground. Everyone who dies becomes a ghost and can only be seen by other ghosts or people who entered ''after'' the ghosts have died. The fact that she can see her friends means she is dead. She did not die when she was slashed all over, but when she was shoved off the cliff.

* TooDumbToLive:
** In ''The DC Trip'', Evelyn rushes straight to the cockpit and gets a shard of glass in her eye. Eliza refuses to leave her side.
** After Rowena explicitly tells everyone not to go out without a qualified 8th Grader, Samuel and James decide to sneak out and go exploring. Maria decapitates James, and Samuel barely makes it back alive with a huge gash in his back.
** After Tierney and Samuel's one-sided fallouts, Violet sets a simple trap for Samuel knowing he will wander out again. The trap nearly kills Samuel, and Tierney walks away when she sees him.
* TragicKeepsake: Many of them lose their meaning as a symbol of Tierney letting go of her old friends.
** Tierney gets little gifts from her friends sometime before they die. She loses some of them along the way, symbolizing how distant those friends really were from her.
** Her Swiss-army knife serves as a reminder of all the pain and hardships she went through during her time in the Forest Basement. Her refusal to throw it away mirrors her refusal to forget the 8th Grade Wars no matter how much she wishes she could.
** When she finally gets home, she finds birthday gifts from Evelyn and Eliza: video games that she really wanted. The gifts come with apology cards. While she enjoys the games through high school, she loses interest in them over time. Meanwhile, she loses the cards in an abyss of papers that eventually gets filed away.

* {{Tuckerization}}: The students' first names are their real-life counterparts' middle names if known.

* WeHardlyKnewYe: One of Violet's friends gets stabbed in the back shortly after she steps out of the plane.

* NoGuyWantsToBeChased: Deconstructed. Samuel feels uncomfortable with Tierney's advances. She stops when he sends her a strongly worded memo referencing this trope. When he brings up a lesser-known crush she has on a guy he presumably barely knows, she is appalled by his hypocrisy and will have nothing to do with him.

* ProneToTears: Tierney finds herself crying very often early on due to academic and social mishaps of varying severity. Deconstructed by the end, when she feels like she has cried herself dry and worries that she would appear to lack empathy for not crying in reasonable situations.

* DeadAllAlong: Tierney thinks she bled to death during a rough battle in ''The Final Battle''. It turns out she fell off a cliff in ''Broken Heart'', but she doesn't realize she's dead until the others spell it out for her. She thought Rose pulled her up, but both of them were spirits at that point.

** In the epilogue, Tierney's parents reveal that she has been diagnosed with autism, and she thinks they never told her because she never questioned why she practically grew up in speech therapy. This leads to mixed feelings about her identity later in life.

* AnyoneCanDie: Most of the kids die, and some of them are really close friends. Nobody, not even Tierney, is exempt.

* KillItWithIce: In ''Last Chance'', Tierney and Justine make it back to the lab while Justine is soaked in freezing water. Tierney leaves Justine's room for a moment to get a change of clothes. She returns to find that someone tampered with the thermostat, making it well below freezing temperature, and Justine has been frozen solid.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Subverted. Tierney has very odd ways of dealing with her friend issues and mentions that she has been in speech therapy all her life. However, a private program rejects her at first because she answers almost every question normally. The epilogue reveals that she has been diagnosed with autism at a young age but didn't find out until well after the events of the 8th Grade Wars.

* MuggleWithADegreeInMagic: Downplayed. Tierney goes to a martial arts dojo that also teaches young musicians how to control their powers before they develop. When she gains powers in the Forest Basement, her skill is on par with other fourteen-year-olds at the dojo.

* RecessiveSuperGenes: The gene that MagicMusic latches onto is recessive, so a MuggleMageRomance produces a carrier who is incapable of using magic, unless the muggle in question is already a carrier. However, the "magic" gene has a high mutation rate allowing carriers to be born from parents who lack the gene.

* SuperpowerfulGenetics: The ability to use MagicMusic is hereditary, because the magic latches onto people with a particular genetic makeup. Tierney lacks the gene but can use MagicMusic in the Forest Basement because the magic isn't as picky in that realm.

* TrainingTheGiftOfMagic: Charisse, an acquaintance in Orchestra, briefly discusses how she needs to focus on two or three specialties in order to develop her MagicMusic most effectively. Tierney goes to a dojo that helps her develop her non-existent powers, which makes her adequate when the Forest Basement grants her powers. She trains at Rowena's facilities to further improve her skills, but she can't keep her powers once she exits the Forest Basement.

* RecessiveSuperGenes: An old theory is that MagicMusic does not manifest in the offspring of magic/non-magic couples, but it does in magic/carrier couples. Carriers could supposedly come from non-magic couples, which weakened the theory of recessive magic genes.

* SuperpowerfulGenetics: The ability to use MagicMusic is hereditary, but the genes themselves don't carry magical affinity. Instead, the magic latches onto people with a particular genetic makeup. Tierney can use MagicMusic in the Forest Basement despite lacking the genes because the magic isn't as picky in that realm.

* TrainingTheGiftOfMagic: Charisse, an acquaintance in Orchestra, briefly discusses how she needs to focus on two or three specialties in order to develop her MagicMusic most effectively. Tierney later trains her MagicMusic at Rowena's facilities once she gets it, but all the skills she developed turn out useless once she exits the Forest Basement; she has no magical affinity and only got those powers as a gift exclusive to the Forest Basement.

* TheVerse: Shares a universe with ''Webcomic/SWAPEnsemble'', ''Back to the Basement'', and ''Literature/BehindClosedDoors''. Tierney is the school district's music director in the former, but she is already dead in the latter two.

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Tierney and Evelyn had one since second grade, complete with break-ups.

* PubertySuperpoower: The ability to use MagicMusic manifests at the age of 14 for those who have it. Even Tierney has to wait to use it as her Forest Basement gift.