Monica Ryder is a series of short stories by Unicorndance, about a ten-year-old girl named Monica Ryder and her three friends Jenny Wilkins, Lenny Bloggs, and Desmond Clark, searching for missing people and animals.
The stories have a complex history behind them: the author first wrote them when she was fourteen and was basically a lame excuse for pretending deaths in stories never happened — essentially fanfiction before she knew it was a thing — and used characters from published stories. In addition, the characters didn't really use their brains — they just stumbled upon the missing characters, and Jenny, Lenny, and Desmond had no personality.
That all changed when Unicorndance was seventeen and a wiser (but not sadder) girl. She decided to keep the stories, but Retcon the plagiarism into using original characters instead and, in addition, she fleshed out Monica's friends.
The main characters, which shall from now on be referred to as The Team, are:
- Monica Ryder: The protagonist. A ten-year-old girl who was designed to both have the stereotypical geek look (dark hair, glasses, etc) and actually be a geek (enthuses about Desmond's toy spaceships, etc), but not be embarrassed about it. Her parents are Robert (who's deaf) and Andrea. She has two dogs: Lauren (a Border Collie) and Duncan (Lauren's son). Wears a red hair bow so that she doesn't look too much like a bazillion other characters from different works.
- Jenny Wilkins: Monica's blonde best friend who has a cat named Blossom and a baby sister named Ruby. Originally, she was just a generic best friend but after the Retcon, she became the joker of The Team and athletic.
- Lenny Bloggs: A five-year-old redheaded boy. His dad is named Joseph as a pun on the name "Joe Bloggs". He owns a Dalmatian named Buttons and a goldfish named Jack.
- Desmond Clark: A fourteen-year-old boy, Monica's neighbour, and Lenny's babysitter. Likes gardening and watching a TV show about a character named Captain Nebulon. Has two dogs: Champion and Nisha.
Tropes
- Alliterative Name: Robert Ryder.
- Brainy Brunette: Monica and Desmond both have dark hair and are pretty intelligent and strategic, though Monica's more scholarly than Desmond.
- Dork in a Sweater: Monica is a nerd and wears a navy blue V-neck sweater.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Hoo, boy...
- The biggest example of this is that the stories used to use established characters. From relatively obscure works, but still.
- Jenny, Desmond, and Lenny initially didn't have much personality.
- The Team weren't as useful or brainy as they were made out to be and mainly just found the missing characters through blind luck.
- Jack was originally Lenny's classmate's fish instead of Lenny's fish, and Blossom used to be part of The Team until Unicorndance realised how ludicrous it was having a cat tag along all the time.
- Nisha and Lenny's names were a bit undefined. The former was "Emma" in one story and the latter was "Ryan" in one story. Also, for the longest time, Unicorndance couldn't make up her mind about whether Monica's last name was spelt with a "Y" or an "I".
- Monica's clothes were slightly undefined at the beginning, too — her sweater went through several different designs before settling on a V-neck, her skirt sometimes had pleats, and her socks and shoes changed a lot before settling on black buckled shoes and generic white socks.
- Genki Girl: Both of the main girl characters are pretty enthusiastic, but especially Jenny what with being the joker of The Team.
- Nerd Glasses: Played straight for Monica, who has the generic nerd aesthetic including glasses, but averted for the rest of The Team, who are nerds too but don't wear glasses.
- Punny Name: Lenny's father is Joseph Bloggs, as a pun on Joe Bloggs.
- Red Is Heroic: Monica wears a red skirt and bow, Lenny wears red pants, Desmond wears a red shirt... Jenny is the only member of The Team not to wear red.
- Spell My Name with a "The": Monica's cousin Jonathan nicknames himself "The Free Ryder". He's even used in PlayingWith.Spell My Name With A The
