History Literature / TheGoneAwayWorld

* PoweredByAForsakenChild: [[spoiler:People with a rare form of brain damage see everything around them as neutral, and thus whenever Stuff comes into contact with them it itself becomes neutral -- and acquires the ability to neutralize more Stuff. Thus FOX is made. However, this form of brain damage kills fairly quickly, and it's much too rare for replacements to simply be found around -- so normal people are abducted and intentionally brain-damaged]].

->''The last-ditch plan is to [[TrojanPrisoner pretend that we're escorting a prisoner]], then cause mayhem. Elisabeth Soames pointed out that this didn't work well in ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' and can reasonably be expected to fail in the real world, which is somewhat more demanding in the field of cunning plans, and Samuel P. tried very hard to pretend he hadn't been thinking of ''Star Wars'' when he proposed it. The trouble is that although it's a lousy last-ditch plan, it is also our only last-ditch plan.\\

* TheAce: Gonzo, the protagonist's best friend.

* BarefootSage[=/=]BarefootLoon: Downplayed; one of Master Wu's eccentricities is to wear sandals in winter.
* BadassCrew: The Haulage & [=HazMat=] Emergency Civil Freebooting Company is made up of highly trained commandos with trucks. The “highly trained commandos” part came before the trucks — they’re all ex-military.

* DisguisedInDrag: [[spoiler: Dr. Andromas is actually Elisabeth. The fact that he's a her is foreshadowed a few times. Andromas is frequently said to have his face obscured by something, including a mustache, hat, and his collar. The narrator is surprised by the thickness of his hair beneath his hat. When pressed against him, the narrator says he has a lumpy body, with slender arms and narrow shoulders. While at a mall, he also pauses to inspect some feminine jewelry in a window. His name is also faux-Greek for something like “Male-Man”]].

* HeroicMime: [[spoiler: Literally. An entire troupe of them.]]

* MegaCorp: The Jorgmund Corporation.
* {{Ninja}}: The bad guys.

* PlanetOfSteves:
-->"I'm K. She's also K. We both--many of us here, actually--have the same name. Not that we're all the same person, you understand. We just use one signifier to encourage random reassessment of the nature of our relationships. We don't like to make assumptions, yeah?"

* PrecisionFStrike: "[[spoiler:Ghost Palm of the Voiceless Dragon, fucker!]]"
* ProverbialWisdom: Parodied by Master Wu on one occasion:
-->'''Wu:''' ''In unifying your chi with that of your opponent -- in aligning the breath of your life and theirs -- you will storm the strongest fortress''. There! Is that a good Secret?\\
'''Elizabeth:''' What does it mean?\\
'''Wu:''' No idea. It's a Secret. Means what you need it to mean. But now we have one, we can refuse to tell anyone about it!

* ShownTheirWork: The author has a philosophy degree and some expertise in martial arts. It shows.

* WeakButSkilled: The soft style of the Voiceless Dragon uses indirect means to defeat your enemies rather than power.
* WorldOfChaos: Everything outside the areas maintained by the MegaCorp.
* WorldGoneMad: Albeit slowly recovering.

* YouKillItYouBoughtIt: The rule of the Clockwork Hand.

* TransformationTrauma: Coating yourself in Stuff can induce InvoluntaryTransformation, and most people don't know enough about anatomy to visualize a survivable form.

* AwesomeMcCoolname: Ike Thermite, though possibly a stage name.

* GratuitousNinja: The story is set in the present day, but the primary physical conflict is between the heroes and ninjas. However, the narrator explains early on that they're not ''actual'' ninjas, but the word fits best.

* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: Dick Washburn, the Jorgmund pencilneck, is totally out of his depth when he briefs the Haulage & [=HazMat=] freebooters about the fire and comes across mostly as comical and awkward. However, the protagonist notes that he’s probably a formidable figure back in the {{Adminisphere}} of the Jorgmund Corporation, enough of a threat to its higher executives that they sent him out to be destroyed by the litigation that would ensue if the job goes badly. [[spoiler:Sure enough, when the protagonist infiltrates the Jorgmund offices, Richard turns out to be the equivalent of high nobility and earmarked for the senior board.]]

* ThereAreNoGoodExecutives: A recurring theme, explained by Darwinian means: to properly do the job of a corporate executive means giving up some degree of humanity. The protagonist has a whole taxonomy of pencilnecks, graded according to how much humanity they retain vs. how much of themselves they’ve given over to the machine. [[spoiler:Befitting the theme, the head ninja and the CEO of the Jorgmund Corporation are the same person, and when he isn’t busy with either job, he’s catatonic.]]

->''The last-ditch plan is to [[TrojanPrisoner pretend that we're escorting a prisoner]], then cause mayhem. Elisabeth Soames pointed out that this didn't work well in ''StarWars'' and can reasonably be expected to fail in the real world, which is somewhat more demanding in the field of cunning plans, and Samuel P. tried very hard to pretend he hadn't been thinking of ''StarWars'' when he proposed it. The trouble is that although it's a lousy last-ditch plan, it is also our only last-ditch plan.\\

* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: [[UnfortunateNames Dick Washburn]], the Jorgmund pencilneck, is totally out of his depth when he briefs the Haulage & [=HazMat=] freebooters about the fire and comes across mostly as comical and awkward. However, the protagonist notes that he’s probably a formidable figure back in the {{Adminisphere}} of the Jorgmund Corporation, enough of a threat to its higher executives that they sent him out to be destroyed by the litigation that would ensue if the job goes badly. [[spoiler:Sure enough, when the protagonist infiltrates the Jorgmund offices, Richard turns out to be the equivalent of high nobility and earmarked for the senior board.]]

* InvulnerableKnuckles: [[spoiler:Humbert Pestle]] has these on one arm due to his training regimen of repeatedly breaking the hand and letting it heal until it's just a big lump of knotted bone which he can hit stuff all day with. [[RealityEnsues This also means the hand is useless for anything else, like picking up items, feeding and dressing himself, and other normal hand sorts of things.]] This is noted as being particularly menacing, as it means he cared more about being a living weapon than being a functioning human being.

->The last-ditch plan is to [[TrojanPrisoner pretend that we're escorting a prisoner]], then cause mayhem. Elisabeth Soames pointed out that this didn't work well in ''StarWars'' and can reasonably be expected to fail in the real world, which is somewhat more demanding in the field of cunning plans, and Samuel P. tried very hard to pretend he hadn't been thinking of ''StarWars'' when he proposed it. The trouble is that although it's a lousy last-ditch plan, it is also our only last-ditch plan.\\

The rest of the plan is quite good, and if it works the way it is supposed to, we will do very well, and we won't need the lousy part. On the other hand, it almost certainly won't work like that, because plans don't. It will twist, creep, change, swivel, and mutate, until finally we're flying on sheer bravado and chutzpah, and hoping the other guy thinks it's all accounted for. You don't make strategy so that there's one path to victory; you make it so that as many paths as possible lead to something which isn't loss.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gone_away_world.png]]

* BadassCrew: The Haulage & [=HazMat=] Emergency Civil Freebooting Company is made up of highly trained commandos

* ThereAreNoGoodExecutives: A recurring theme, explained by Darwinian means: to properly do the job of a corporate executive means giving up some degree of humanity. [[spoiler:Befitting the theme, the head ninja and the CEO of the Jorgmund Corporation are the same person.]]

* RagnarokProofing: Played with and ultimately subverted. It's stated that the Pipeline -- being responsible for humanity's very survival -- is the most secure, triple-redundant, built-to-last thing ever constructed, tested, built up and tested again, and that there's no way it could possibly be on fire. It is, of course, enthusiastically burning away.

%%* EccentricMentor: Master Wu.

%%* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: The oath taken at Jarndice University.

* DisguisedInDrag: [[spoiler: Dr. Andromas is actually Elisabeth. The fact that he's a her is foreshadowed a few times. Andromas is frequently said to have his face obscured by something, including a mustache, hat, and his collar. The narrator is surprised by the thickness of his hair beneath his hat. When pressed against him, the narrator says he has a lumpy body, with slender arms and narrow shoulders. While at a mall, he also pauses to inspect some feminine jewelry in a window]].

* InvulnerableKnuckles: [[spoiler:Humbert Pestle]] has these on one arm due to his training regimen of repeatedly breaking the hand and letting it heal until it's just a big lump of knotted bone which he can hit stuff all day with. [[RealityEnsues This also means the hand is useless for anything else, like picking up items, feeding and dressing himself, and other normal hand sorts of things.]]