Line #63 Literature/TheTalesOfPaulTwister


1	[[http://www.paultwister.com The Tales of Paul Twister]] is a [[WebSerialNovel Web serial series]] by an author with the somewhat [[PunnyName punny name]] of [[Creator/PiersAnthony Anthony Peers]]. The protagonist used to be an [[OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent ordinary college student]] in modern-day America, until he was magically abducted to a StandardFantasySetting, and now he's [[TrappedInAnotherWorld stuck there.]] On one hand, this was not as bad as it might have been, as he was a geek who [[GenreSavvy read lots of fantasy stories]] and was able to adapt without getting himself killed. On the other hand, there's not all that much in a 21st-century skillset that's applicable to life in a pre-technological society, and he finds himself without any useful skills. All he has are his wits and the Twist, a mysterious ability to [[AntiMagic break magic by touch.]]
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3	Turns out the most in-demand use for an ability like that is breaking magical locks and seals to steal things protected by them, so he finds himself forced into a life of crime by necessity, taking upon himself the moniker of "Paul Twister", but all the while searching for ways to make something more of himself. The series involves this ongoing goal and a deconstruction of the ConnecticutYankeePlot: Being from modern-day Earth, he naturally misses the comforts of home and would like to improve upon the local technology, but ''he doesn't know how most of the technology he's used to works,'' so he has to find ways to direct real scholars and craftsmen to work out new inventions.
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5	According to WordOfGod, the series is supposed to be an "inverse urban fantasy," (with modern technological elements poking into a StandardFantasySetting rather than magical ones in a modern world,) and a major inspiration for Paul's character was Literature/TheDresdenFiles, with Paul being designed as "essentially the Anti-Harry Dresden." However, the series is much LighterAndSofter in tone, and that was "more of a starting point than anything." The series definitely shares ''The Dresden Files's'' love of [[ShoutOut gratuitous pop-culture references]].
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7	The series contains three complete novel-length stories, plus a SpinOff called ''Invisible'' involving events back on Earth, from the perspective of an [[DCupDistress unfortunately over-busty]] [[OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent high school girl]] who discovers she somehow has the ability to turn invisible. A [[ContinuityNod brief mention]] in the first chapter ties it in with the Paul Twister stories: apparently her brother knew Paul back when he lived on Earth, and was rather shaken up by his disappearance. According to the author, the first three books, in their entirety, constitute the intro to the story he really wants to tell.
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9	As of January 2022, after a long period without updates, the series is officially "on indefinite hiatus" for personal reasons, with the author shifting to work on a new story, ''Literature/IDoNotWantToDoThis.''
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11	Stories in the series (tropes for each story should go on their own pages):
12	[[index]]
13	# ''Literature/TheLayOfPaulTwister''
14	# ''Literature/TheFateOfPaulTwister''
15	# ''Literature/TheReturnOfPaulTwister''
16	# ''Literature/TheVoyageOfPaulTwister''
17	[[/index]]
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19	----
20	!!Tropes applying to the series as a whole:
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22	* TheAllAmericanBoy: Paul is essentially portrayed as a more modern, more geeky variant on this trope. It works surprisingly well.
23	* AmazonChaser: Paul definitely has a thing for big, strong women. The narration makes various references to him having been a fan of ''ComicBook/SheHulk'', he admires Aylwyn's [[AmazonianBeauty stature and her superhuman strength]] ([[FreakyIsCool and her wings]]), and he finds [[spoiler: Sarah]] harder to resist when she's in a form that makes her taller and stronger.
24	* AntiMagic: The Twist, an ability that seems to be unique to Paul.
25	%%* BigBad: Ryell, the great golden dragon.
26	%%* CoolOldGuy: Gerald Wolf.
27	%%** IntergenerationalFriendship (with Paul)
28	* DragonsPreferPrincesses / SaveThePrincess: Invoked in the silly ballad Paul composes about himself, in which he has to save a princess from a dragon, but he ends up being outwitted because [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle the princess is in another castle.]]
29	** In the second book, [[spoiler: he gets called upon to ''actually'' rescue the princess of the kingdom from captivity by servants of a dragon. He hands the quest off to Sarah because he's busy with another urgent quest for Aylwyn.]]
30	* GambitPileup: The more that later books reveal about various characters' backstories, plots, and allegiances, the more the first book looks like one!
31	* HeroOfAnotherStory:
32	** Aylwyn is always off on important quests of her own, off-camera.
33	** Towards the end of Literature/TheFateOfPaulTwister, Sarah leaves to lead a small team to [[spoiler: rescue the captive princess.]] The only thing the reader finds out about it is that it was eventually successful, but it apparently took a few months. [[InvokedTrope Paul, in his narration, says that it's not his story to tell, but maybe Sarah will explain what happened someday.]]
34	** In the fourth book, Sarah [[spoiler: interrupts Paul's narrative with a chapter of her own, explaining what she's been up to while he and Aylwyn were away!]]
35	* {{Homage}}: In case the author’s pen-name doesn’t already give it away, this is a homage to Creator/{{Piers Anthony}}’s Literature/{{Xanth}} series
36	** Paul is an {{Expy}} of Bink, the main character whose ability is to not be harmed by magic.
37	** [[spoiler: Sarah]] is an {{Expy}} of Chameleon, who changes in attractiveness and intelligence [[MenstrualMenace over the course of a month]].
38	** Ken’tu Kel is an {{Expy}} of Trent, a powerful magician who was trapped in the non-magical world.
39	** Heck, the entire world the series take place in, where the magical and non-magical worlds are separated by a barrier, is lifted from Xanth as well.
40	* IHaveManyNames: Paul uses various different handles, generally (but not always) drawn from superhero comic books. [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] to a certain degree: Each identity requires time, effort, and money to maintain, and keeping them separate (and keeping people from realizing that they're the same person) is a lot of work!
41	* InvoluntaryShapeshifting: Poor [[spoiler: Sarah]], randomly transforming to a new form every day!
42	%%* LimitedWardrobe: Aylwyn. And also Syrixia.
43	* LovableRogue: Paul, natch. Also Patrick Hill, to a certain extent.
44	* MagicVersusScience: Averted. Paul actively encourages magical research to find ways to augment and complement his technological research.
45	* MechanicallyUnusualClass: Paul occasionally thinks of himself and the world around him in terms of TabletopGames, and his Twist power qualifies as this trope.
46	* OmniscientMoralityLicense: Ryell behaves this way. Her followers call it "the way of the dragon" to do thing that, on the face of it, [[MoralEventHorizon look horrible]], but turn out to [[IDidWhatIHadToDo prevent even worse tragedies]] and [[TheNeedsOfTheMany save far more people than they harm, in the long run.]] Paul doesn't buy it, rejecting the basic premise that the dragon can accurately predict what would have happened had other choices been made.
47	* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Aylwyn is a [[AmazonianBeauty tall, strong, beautiful]] [[ThePaladin Paladin]] (which apparently is exclusive to Celestials) with big angel wings, a SummonToHand FlamingSword, and a CoolHorse. She's noticeably the least snarky of the main characters, and borders on SpockSpeak sometimes, but she's definitely not emotionless. The Paladins are from the Celestial Realm, a different world, and have some sort of agreement with the nations in which they can act as a semi-autonomous, extraterritorial police force, within strictly-defined limits.
48	* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Ryell (and apparently the other dragons) look like standard Western dragons, but they're powerful enough that even the strongest of characters are extremely wary of provoking them. They actively meddle in world affairs, work to suppress warfare and the development of military technology, and [[spoiler: separated the magical world from Earth back when gunpowder was invented.]]
49	* PostModernMagik: Paul applies concepts of modern science to magical problems, most notably generating the energy needed to overcome a magical barrier by [[spoiler: crashing a car through it at a very high speed, which brings a whole lot of kinetic energy with it.]]
50	* PowerGlows: As an angel, Aylwyn's body is always shining subtly, and she becomes brighter the more of her power she's using.
51	* ProudToBeAGeek - Paul defines the term "geek" in the most positive language possible without doing severe injury to the truth.
52	* SpoonyBard: Averted: bards may not be the strongest warriors or the most powerful mages, but they're are very powerful opponents because of their understanding of human psychology, and useful in a medium-scale or larger fight due to their ability to use magic to communicate and coordinate things for their side.
53	* StatusQuoIsGod: [[AvertedTrope Thoroughly averted.]]
54	** Paul's stated goal is to do all he can to help the world he finds himself in to progress. It started out as a StandardFantasySetting, (which, according to April, was mired in a [[TheDungAges Dung Age]] and infested with [[EldritchAbomination extraplanar horrors]] when she showed up, which she spent a lot of time, effort, and magic helping to clean up,) and he's already helped them invent the battery, the electric motor, the germ theory of disease and the printing press.
55	** At the end of the second book, [[spoiler: Paul loses the ability to automatically speak and comprehend the local language, and so he has to actually learn it, which he spends a good deal of the next book struggling with.]]
56	** At the end of the third book, Paul decides to offer a serious cash prize to whoever can invent a process for industrial steelmaking, which, according to him, is the last element they need to kick off the Industrial Revolution.
57	** The third book sees [[spoiler: Ryell being killed, then coming back because [[MyDeathIsOnlyTheBeginning she had planned for it]] but [[DePowered in a greatly weakened form,]] and [[BigBadDuumvirate under the control (or at least the influence) of Ken'tu Kel.]]]]
58	** The fourth book opens with [[spoiler: Aylwyn marrying Paul]]!
59	* ThereIsAnother: Paul wasn't the only person from Earth to be magically abducted to the other world.
60	* TranslatorMicrobes: Paul has ''something'' which is never elaborated on, that mystically performs this function for him ever since he was taken from Earth. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] left and right, and also used as a plot point: because he hears everything as English whether he wants to or not, he has no way to learn the local ''written'' language because he has no concept of the spoken language it's based on. [[spoiler: This changes once he has the ability taken away.]]
61	* TrappedInAnotherWorld: The basic premise is a normal guy from our world getting transported to a fantasy world.
62	* AWizardDidIt: In a comment, the author mentioned that the most likely explanation to any PlotHole readers think they found is either that [[UnreliableNarrator there's more going on that Paul is aware of, (or someone lied to him,)]] or A Dragon Did It. Considering that dragons have massively powerful RealityWarper powers, this is actually a plausible explanation.
63	* WorldOfActionGirls: Among the Companions, Paul is tall, in good shape, and reasonably athletic, but no good at all in a fight, preferring to solve problems with [[ScienceHero brains]] or [[GuileHero trickery.]] Gerald is a heavyset wizard whose focus is on healing and theoretical magic, and Patrick is a bard who communicates and helps coordinate things. The two heavy hitters are Sarah ([[BlackMagicianGirl blaster]]) and Aylwyn ([[AmazonianBeauty amazonian]] [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Celestial]] [[ThePaladin Paladin]]). In the second book, we find that the Princess of the kingdom of Cleron is a high-ranking officer in the Royal Knights, and when Paul recruits a whole encampment of bards to help [[spoiler: stop a revolt]], most of them seem to be male, but the only one who actually kicks any bad guys' asses is the enigmatic Amber.
64	* WorldOfSnark: Everyone from [[FirstPersonSmartass Paul]] to the villains has a [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal strong streak of snark]] to them. Aylwyn least of all, but even she has her moments.

Context Literature / TheTalesOfPaulTwister