History Main / TheDescendants

* ''Film/{{Descendants}}'', a 2015 Disney movie.

* ''The Descendants'', a 2015 Disney movie.

* ''The Descendants'', a Disney Live Action Sitcom.

* ''Film/TheDescendants'', the 2011 Academy Award-winning film starring Creator/GeorgeClooney.

* ''Film/TheDescendants'', the 2011 Academy Award-winning film starring GeorgeClooney.

* ''Literature/TheDescendents'', the WebSerialNovel by Landon Porter.
* ''Film/TheDescendents'', the 2011 Academy Award-winning film starring GeorgeClooney.

[[redirect:Literature/TheDescendants]]

[[re*direct:Literature/TheDescendants]]

-->''They are heroes. They are people. This is their story. A comic book universe in prose.''

[[http://www.descendantsserial.com The Descendants]] is a WebSerialNovel, Written by Landon Porter. It can best be described as an all text [[ComicBookTropes comic book]], as it is presented in the form of issues, annuals, one shots and mini series just as if it was any other comic book universe.

The main series follows a group of [[{{Mutants}} superhumans]] [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual called psionics]] on the run from a the group behind a villainous SuperheroSchool called the Academy. Events conspire from there to turn them from basically a SecretProjectRefugeeFamily into a SuperTeam.

Miniseries on the site also follow characters in other corners of the [[TheVerse Descendants Universe]] such as the heroes who live in New York, or the students in a non-evil SuperheroSchool.

The entire series revels in playing with ComicBookTropes and rejecting the DarkAge of comics. WordOfGod even states that early versions were a blatant TakeThat at Marvel's [[Comicbook/CivilWar Civil War]] and that as a whole, it strives to find the sweet spot between the SilverAge and BronzeAge.

Mostly, it sticks to [[WakeUpGoToSchoolSaveTheWorld Teen Hero]] books and family themes.

Not to be confused with [[Film/TheDescendants the 2011 film]].
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This series provides examples of:
* AffablyEvil: Most villains. Even the demons are polite. That does not mean they're ''nice'' however.
* AliceAllusion: Vorpal. Besides her CodeName, her friend Mr. Voice calls her Alice for lack of a real name to call her by.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Subverted. One issue actually riffs on the idea in its name, but in the end, the girl decides that she likes the quiet guy.
* AllThereInTheManual: Zig zags a bit. Reading only the main series is fine, and you get 99% of the stuff. However for all the small trivia about the future world, the prelates, faerie and everything else you need to not only read all the side stories, but the Q&A thread on the forums has stuff in it not answered anywhere. The [[TabletopGames RPG]] played on the forums (and set in the same universe) has some additional information too, but it's already more than [[ArchivePanic 3'000 posts long]].
* AlphaBitch: Lily Goldenmeyer and with the new school comes Betty [[PrehensileHair "Rapunzel"]] Sinclair
* AntiVillain: Vorpal, clearly. Liedecker to a lesser degree.
* BadassNormal: Liedecker manages to fight a [[spoiler:freaking demon]] to a standstill. But the cake goes to [[spoiler:George]], who single handedly stops Rehenimaru's plan, and ''without'' any kind of weapon or battle training. Doubles as BadassGrandpa too.
* TheBechdelTest: Lampshaded in one conversation that has been 100% about dating and boys, capped off with a character mentioning that she's probably going to fail the test she's studying for, administered by a Professor Bechdel.
* BigBad: Simon Talbot and Project TOME
** Morganna might yet turn out to be an even Bigger Bad.
* TheChessmaster: Brother Wright
** Simon Talbot is starting to show signs of this too.
** And Thunderhead.
* CityOfAdventure: The fictional city of Mayfield, VA.
* CodeName: Academy students had a tradition of giving themselves these. It's also implied that British psionics working for the government also have them following the pattern of Verbing Noun.
* CrypticBackgroundReference: The characters often reference villains who haven't appeared in the series.
* CuteMonsterGirl: Freaque, Rehenimaru, and Joy Duvall. If it's female and non-human, it will be one of these. Of course, YourMilageMayVary on if they're that cute.
* DarkChick: Shine and to a lesser extent, Impact
* DeathByOriginStory: Whitecoat's favorite professor
* DifferentlyPoweredIndividual: The superheroes are called "prelates" by the media, but many of the heroes (as per the page quote) [[GenreSavvy know exactly what they are]]. At one point, a character asks when it will be okay to call bad guys supervillains.
* {{Eagleland}}: Starts out looking like a Type 1 largely because the series is very US-centric until Volume 5. But FridgeLogic sets in when you realize that none of the core conflict would even exist without massive corruption and/or incompetence in the US government.
* EnemyCivilWar: Most apparent with the Brother Wright/Project TOME split, but [[spoiler:Morganna/demons and demons/demon baboons, too]]. This seems to be a way of life in [[AnotherDimension Faerie]].
* EnemyMine: Even demons intent on hunting down and consuming the emotions of humans don't like Morganna.
* EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys: Ape Knight and a horde of demon baboons that appear in [[strike:one]] two issues.
* EverythingsBetterWithPlatypi: Morganna keeps one around for the poison.
** And for a GreenDay [[WaxingLyrical reference]].
* {{Expy}}: Liedecker is essentially [[{{DCAU}} Diniverse Luthor played sane]] and much, much more dangerous.
* GadgeteerGenius: Laurel and Tink, Warrick's non-powered girlfriend.
* GenerationXerox: played with, ''a lot''. Cyn and Warrick more or less are Alexis and Ian as kids, and thanks to [[HumanPopsicle stasis]] they even have the ''same'' roommate. In the "possible future" issue they even get their own super-group in the future. However it looks like they're not going to end up together, an the more CharacterDevelopment there is, the more what looked like a GenerationXerox at first gets less and less xeroxy.
* GenreSavvy: Warrick swings between this and WrongGenreSavvy from issue to issue.
* GreatBigBookOfEverything: The Book Of Reason, and presumably the rest of The 4 books, spontaneously grow new material. Even in digital copies.
* IHaveTheHighGround: Warrick, most heroic fliers. During the finale of Volume 1, the heroes call the villains out from a rooftop.
* InstantRunes: Occult uses these during the 4 arc. Notable in that she has to prepare them ahead of time to get the 'instant' effect.
* InTheHood: Occult wears one. It casts magical darkness over her face.
* InvoluntaryTransformation: Seems to happen a lot to tertiary characters: Freaque, Wolf, the poor sod the Mauler [[spoiler:possessed]]...
* IWasJustPassingThrough: Odd heroic sample with Hope 'helping' Vorpal with some smugglers when she just wanted to get to a transceiver.
* KidSidekick: strangely enough, for all the gold and silver age feeling, deconstructed. The whitecoat does not want Damascus around, and finally has a chat with his parents to stop him doing reckless things and enroll at the academy to train.
** Even more deconstructed with Kay and Occult, since they're both kids.
* LaserGuidedKarma: usually done in a positive way. All the people misguided or forced into villainy manage to get an happy end of one sort or another. It does help that most of the antagonists are overall positive characters.
* MagicalGirl: Occult is a MagicWarrior
* MetaOrigin: Most heroes and a good number of the villains are [[{{Mutants}} psionics]].
* MindControl: Both Avatar and Thunderhead's [=MOs=]. Morganna doesn't hesitate to apply it when needed.
* {{Mutants}}: Called 'psionics' here. An interesting case in that while psionics are born with their powers, those powers are the result of [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke experimentation]] during WorldWarTwo
* MysteriousWatcher: we had to wait for 49 issues before discovering who 'George' was.
* NinetiesAntiHero: deconstructed, any character that has the motivation and personality of one is a straight up villain here. See Samael: His [[TakeThat defining characteristic]]? [[RobLiefeld Pouches]], lots of pouches.
** His fandom seems to share his views, in the [[TabletopGames PbP RPG]] they're playing on the website's forums one of the characters comments on a hulking man with tiny feet and, of course, pouches.
** Even [[AliceAllusion Vorpal]], who is the most woobish of the villains, gets a ShutUpHannibal by the ''KnightInSourArmour'' Hope, of all people.
* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: Juniper has moments of this, casually commenting one things like how easily she could simply be shot and killed ''immediately'' after Cyn had a hallucination about all of her friends being killed horribly.
* {{Orichalcum}}: The nearly indestructible metal orihalcite and its refined form, orihalcon.
* OurMonstersAreDifferent: Trolls and Demons especially.
* ParentalAbandonment: Mostly averted. We've met almost all the main characters' parents and know why they're allowed to stay at Freeland House.
** Played straight in Cyn's case. Her family drove her out with their abuse over her BigEater tendencies 'costing too much'.
* PublicDomainCharacter: Morganna. Only not really.
* RougeAnglesOfSatin: Rare, but all the more grating for it.
** The author has gone back and done a lot of editing, so at least it isn't a case of TheyJustDidntCare.
* SecretIdentity: Played with. The BigBad knew their identities from the start, their families mostly find out early on, but they still maintain their secret identities because of all the ''new'' enemies they've made.
* ShoutOut: Many. Especially the names of Alloy's sentient, metal tentacles, [[SluggyFreelance Isp and Osp]].
* ShowWithinAShow: ''Malady Place''. Many of the characters are fans and the first act of the pilot is in the extras area.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Firmly on the idealism side and consciously taking a stand against cynicism.
* StartOfDarkness: The ''Liedecker: Life and Times'' miniseries is this for Liedecker and ''Rise of Morganna'' shows this for Morganna in flashback.
* SuperHeroSchool: And how! The Academy, the Brunswick School, Voice's School, the Liedecker Institute
* SuperHero
* SuperpowerLottery: Some people control universal forces, some people... are prematurely bald.
* TakeThat: The briefly seen villain Wartorn more or less *is* Mark Millar and paraphrases Millar as a justification of his villainy.
** His real name is 'Mark Miller' in French.
* ThouShaltNotKill: Constantly. It's rare to even have a ''villain'' kill someone. Not for lack of trying on their parts, though. Morganna seems to be immune to this rule.
* TomeOfEldritchLore: The 4, each of which contain the source code for the universe's local magical laws. All have their own force of will, are extremely dangerous, and perhaps most worryingly, can be photocopied or digitized with both copies retaining those attributes. One of them is called [[OhCrap the Book Of Madness]].
** The Book of Passions in seems to think it's perfectly okay to sic monsters on its ChosenOne.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Liedecker. He's managed to get the heroes to name a school after him!
** Not him, his father.
* WaxingLyrical: At least once per volume.
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Not to be confused with the 2011 film.

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Subverted. One issue actually riffs on the idea in it's name, but in the end, the girl decides that she likes the quiet guy.
* AllThereInTheManual: Zig zags a bit. Reading only the main serie is fine, and you get 99% of the stuff. However for all the small trivia about the future world, the prelates, faerie and everything else you need to not only read all the side stories, but the Q&A thread on the forums has stuff in it not answered anywhere. The [[TabletopGames RPG]] played on the forums (and set in the same universe) has some additional information too, but it's already more than [[ArchivePanic 3'000 posts long]].

* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: Juniper has moments of this, casually commenting one things like how easy she could simply be shot and killed ''immediately'' after Cyn had a hallucination about all of her friends being killed horrible.

* ThouShaltNotKill: Constantly. It's rare to even have a ''villain'' kill someone. Not for lack of trying on their parts though. Morganna seems to be immune to this rule.

* {{Eagleland}} Flavor 1: apparently brits are brutal enforcers, China is more communist than ever, with chinese immigrants being criminals, japan being unopen, and the US is a utopia
** Now a mixed case, as the US was sending covert military vehicles into Brazil, and 'accidentally' attacked a civilian area.
*** Not so much an accident as 'shockingly negligent of the effects of the attack'.
** The series doesn't really discuss countries outside the US all that much outside of how they deal with psionics. The above examples are outright wrong though. the UK is only mentioned as being home to a SuperheroSchool that was sneaking kids out of the evil American SuperheroSchool and the only criminal Chinese immigrants we see are members of the Tongs in New York, which are a thing in modern times too. No mention is made of China being communist. Similarly, Japan is portrayed as having a strange attitude toward superheroes, but the extent of them being 'unopen' is in the fact that they are said not to be likely to appreciate our heroes starting a super-fight on their soil. France on the other hand is shown to be frightening in its treatment of psionics.

*** Calling descendants government property seems communist to ThisTroper.
**** Slavery isn't exactly a defining trait of communism. That was probably a not so subtle TakeThat at Marvel's Civil War to boot.

* TheLibby: Lily Goldenmeyer and with the new school comes Betty [[PrehensileHair "Rapunzel"]] Sinclair

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<<|WebOriginal|>>
<<|WebSerialNovel|>>

** Now a mixed case, as the US was sending covert military vehicles into Brazil, and 'accidently' attacked a civilian area.

* AffablyEvil: Most villains. Even the demons are polite.
** Probably not most. Of the four main villains, Brother Wright seems like this, but is actually just being manipulative and Talbot just has a cutesy sense of humor. Morganna certainly isn't this and that just leaves AntiVillain Liedecker.

* BadassNormal: Liedecker [[spoiler:manages to fight a freaking demon to a standstill]]

* MysteriousWatcher: it's been more than [[strike:24]] [[strike:36]] 40 issues and we still don't know who 'George' is

The main series follows a group of [[Mutants superhumans]] [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual called psionics]] on the run from a the group behind a villainous SuperheroSchool called the Academy. Events conspire from there to turn them from basically a SecretProjectRefugeeFamily into a SuperTeam.

The main series follows a group of [[Mutants superhumans]] [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividuals called psionics]] on the run from a the group behind a villainous SuperheroSchool called the Academy.

The series swings between being a love letter to comic books, reveling in traditional ComicBookTropes, and a deconstruction of the DarkAge of comics. WordOfGod even states that early versions were a blatant TakeThat at Marvel's [[Comicbook/CivilWar Civil War]]. Luckily, it stays mostly in the vein of the love letter, mostly to [[WakeUpGoToSchoolSaveTheWorld Teen Hero]] books and family themes.

A character sheet for this series can be found [[Characters/TheDescendants here]].

The series can be found .

-->''And no, I don't call it 'enhanced strength'. We, as a society, have called it super strength for well over a century, ever since the first graphic novels featuring characters sporting it appeared in the 1930's. I don't see the point in changing that now, just because in the past thirty of forty years super strength is a reality thanks to psionics being born and cybernetics taking big leaps forward and the media thinks that's a reason to make it sound scientific.''\\
''I'm super strong. I'm not 'enhancedly' strong or whatever crap they want to call me.?''
-->-- '''The Whitecoat'''

The Descendants is a WebSerialNovel, Written by Landon Porter. It can best be described as an all text [[ComicBookTropes comic book]], as it is presented in the form of issues, annuals, one shots and mini series just as if it was any other comic book universe.

The main series currently has four volumes, each with it's own rough StoryArc:

'''Volume 1: Welcome to Freeland House''' deals with introducing the main characters and how they [[CharacterDevelopment go from refugees to heroes]] and their relationships with the supporting cast. Along the way, the primary villains, [[VillainWithGoodPublicity Vincent Liedecker]], [[TheChessmaster Brother Wright]], [[EvilSorcerer Morganna]] and [[BigBad Simon Talbot]] are introduced and revelations are made about the nature of the setting's [[StockSuperpowers psionic powers]].

Volume 1 is thus far the only volume to end with a definite SeasonFinale, with the others usually ending with a BreatherEpisode.

'''Volume 2: Magic and Machines''' follows up on the aftermath of Volume 1 and works to expand more on the world and culture of the setting. It also introduces new enemies such as enemies from [[AnotherDimension Faerie]], and the ChurchMilitant group, The Sineaters. The Volume ends with [[TheMagicComesBack magic returning to the world]]

'''Volume 3: The Bright, Bright Summer''' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, including a BeachEpisode. It also follows the main characters as they deal with new magical threats while protecting and recruiting kids for a new SuperHeroSchool. The volume winds down with the foundation of the school, the students of which are [[SpinOffBabies the subject of a separate set of stories]]

'''Volume 4''' is currently in progress and thus far the issues all seem to be standalone stories, but the title of the volume was recently revealed to be '''Confluence'''. Notably, there's been a ScrewDestiny subplot involving one of the main characters.

The series can be found [[http://www.descendantsserial.com here]].

* ArchiveBinge: Even updating with only one chapter (4-6 chapters making up an issue), the main series has fifty issues in it before you even get to the minis, ones shots and other content.

* NightmareFuel: Fellgaze's power places anyone that looks into his eyes under the effects of this. While under the effects of it, Cyn sees all her loved ones slaughtered messily while Vorpal experiences her parents and herself dying of a plague.
* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: Juniper has moments of this, casually commenting one things like how easy she could simply be shot and killed ''immediately'' after Cyn had the above hallucination.

* TheBechdelTest: Passes, but lampshades it in one conversation that has been 100% about dating and boys, capped off with a character mentioning that she's probably going to fail the test she's studying for, administered by a Professor Bechdel.

* InvoluntaryShapeshifting: Seems to happen a lot to tertiary characters: Freaque, Wolf, the poor sod the Mauler [[spoiler:possessed]]...

**And for a GreenDay [[DWaxingLyrical reference]].