Fanfic / Always Visible

Minimalist cover.

'Doctor Baselard committed a crime, I admit that this is an irrefutable fact. But has the thought ever occurred to you, that he did his deed for your own sake? Just like a whale cannot live in the ocean without plankters, so a policeman cannot exist in a society without a perpetrator.

—An example of supposedly profound judgments

Always Visible (Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre) (in the future just Always Visible) is the big (for more than 100 thousand words) fanfic by Vitaly Ivolginsky (known by the nickname raudokyubu).

According to word of god, this is based on the made-for-TV movie Omen IV: The Awakening (1991), however upon closer inspection it has little to no relevance to canon as it completely removes any Satanic details and replaces them with (pseudo) medical elements. Among other things, the work is filled with rather clumsily inserted references to the book by the Strugatsky's Hard to Be A God, which is why many moments of the work may be incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with Russian literature, and in combination with the author’s total misunderstanding of American culture, Always Visible can be an example of sillyfic.

This is mainly due to the incoherent storyline - formally the work is divided into four parts, of which two have a common POV-character, and the remaining two are told on behalf of other characters. The chronology of events is crooked to the point of impossibility (constant flashbacks do not help matters), but in brief the plot can be described as follows: in the early nineties, the Yonce family (slightly modified from York) moves into Portland, Oregon with a minor daughter named Delia, who makes friends with their neighbour Jordan Thurlow (shamelessly remade from Josephine Thueson). As the story progresses, a man ends up in prison due to strange circumstances, and the plot switches to the (rather incompetent) police inspector Galbraith (re-imagined private inspector Earl Knight), who witnesses accidents with Yonce's family, which ultimately leads to the death of the girl. The last part of the work is devoted to Galbraith's attempts to catch the killer of the baby in London, which leads to tomato surprise like Koji Suzuki's The Loop.

From the actual source - the television film Omen IV: The Awakening - the fanfic borrows only the character of a little girl (with a slightly changed surname) and the supposedly "supernatural" deaths of minor characters. Unlike the original, Delia himself is not the Antichrist, but a child with a strange illness, arousing unjustified sympathy among the other characters. The rest of the characters were also remade in an inexplicable manner - for example, a character named Jo changed his gender and from a nanny became a culturologist, and the Yonce's family is now not politicians, but pharmacists.

Against this background, the attempt to give the girl Portuguese roots (which was intended to be a tribute to the actress) - and, accordingly, filling the text of the fanfic with gratuitous Portuguese - does not look so strange. To top it all off, the author decided to give the characters a love for the British synth-pop band Depeche Mode, which gives off a Mary Sue feel. It's hard to say what Always Visible really is - a parody of The Omen or a self-sufficient work. For a parody, it dilutes the idea of the original too much (since it doesn't have a word about Satan or anything like that), for the second, it relies too much on borrowing parts of the dialogue and even some of the characters' motives.

Always Visible was written between late July and early September 2023, after which the author spent a week translating more than 140 thousand words into English. The result was first published on the 17th on its own wiki, and then on several popular fanfiction sites, full list here.

The above fact indicates that this fanfic may seem rather ignorant to native English speakers, since its style and method of presentation do not meet the requirements for written works in modern English-language prose. It is interesting that the author did not publish the original Russian text, which is why fans do not have the opportunity to make a normal translation of the fanfic.

A final interesting lexical note - the subtitle Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre is not a reference to the 1987 film of the same name, but an attempt to adapt into English the concept of departure prayer (Russian: "отходная молитва" otkhodnaya molitva) - a rite used in the Orthodox Church, performed on a Christian on his deathbed as death approaches. That is, in other words, this fanfic is a requiem for the entire horror industry, no matter how stupid it may sound.

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This is definitely the same tropes:

Trope A-B

• Abandoned Hospital: Due to the author's unprofessionalism, it seems as if there is not a soul in Portland Adventist Medical Center except for a one patient, a one doctor and a one sister of mercy. This is of course unintentional.
• Almost Dead Guy: Delia's father gets into an accident and ends up in the hospital with a head injury that leaves him almost unable to speak.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Acts 0, 1, and 2 take place in Portland, Oregon. This city rarely gets featured in media.
• The Ace: In the first and second acts of the story, Galbraith uses his position as a police inspector to impress people (by scaring them with his ID, of course).
• Adapted Out: Despite being based on the film Omen IV: The Awakening, it doesn't actually use much of its main ideas. For example, monks, Satanists and politicians completely disappeared from the work, as well as nannies.
• Adaptational Villainy: Delia's father in the film was simply a man who turned a blind eye to his daughter's antics. In Always Visible, he is essentially the one who drove a character named Jo to his death.
• Adaptational Job Change: Delia's father was a congressman in the film; in Always Visible, he became a pharmacist. A character named Jo also became a culturologist from a psychic nanny.
• Adaptation Distillation: Elements of Satanism are removed without a trace, and the influence of politics on the plot is also limited to only modest references to the USSR threat to America.
• Adaptation Name Change: It's easier to say about those who have NOT changed their name. This is Delia, Jerome and Jo. In the latter case, it is short for Jordan, not Josephine. Also, syntactically, Delia's parents' last name, Yonce, is very similar to York.
• Age Lift: Delia's father was thirty in the film, but in Always Visible he is fifty. On the contrary, the man who is investigating this girl’s case has become twenty years younger.
• Awesome, but Impractical: D.O.O.R., the supercomputer that simulates virtual reality. There is virtually no benefit from it, and when Galbraith talks about his impressions from it like a movie, scientists are clearly imbued with this idea, because this may give them a chance to use their achievements to at least some benefit.
• Arc Symbol The apricot tree in the second act, which Jordan saw in the neighbors' yard, he later sees in his dying dreams.
• Ascended Extra: Jordan Thurlow and Galbraith are based on Josephine Thueson and Earl Knight, who were minor characters in the film (albeit with significant screen time)
• Author Appeal: Vitaly Ivolginsky is Russian by nationality, so expect that a work about America will not have authenticity, but will be jam-packed with references to Russian culture, which is alien to Americans.
• Acrofatic: Delia's father is described as a huge, heavyset old man. If in himself's case this is not yet strongly evident, then when his two dopplegangers appear in the work, Galbraith becomes convinced with his own eyes how deceiving this man’s appearance was.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The very first thing you will read is a story from the perspective of a little girl. After this, the role of the POV character will be taken by two men.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: At the very end of the work, employees of the underground institute give Galbraith... A fur coat!
• All Just a Dream: All dreams that are described on the pages of the work are nightmares, no exceptions.
• Alternate Universe: On the one hand, the work tries to correspond to reality - the characters visit real places and, in addition, they read news that was relevant at the time of the events, but at the same time, the third act of the work makes you think that the protagonist ends up not in London, but in some distorted ersatz copy of it .
• Abusive Parents: Delia's father is not outright evil, but the story mentions that he once kicked his own daughter out of the table just because the girl did not say a prayer before eating.
• And I Must Scream: Delia's father has a difficult life - first his daughter is disgraced by a neighbor, and then, two years later, he has an accident, due to which he loses the ability to speak intelligently. At least the work does not say whether he died or not.
• Arc Words: "Magistratus oportet servire populo" (The Police must serve The People), a Latin proverb that Galbraith sees before he learns of Delia's death. The inspector repeats it when he is already in London in search of the girl’s killer.
• As the Good Book Says...: When Pharqraut reprimands Earl Knight, he quotes one of the Ten Commandments, specifically "Thou shalt not steal".
• Alliterative Name: Miriam Myron, mother of Jerome. In fact, this surname refers to the famous Soviet actor Andrei Mironov and the name in turn for his daughter Maria.
• Being God Is Hard: Lampshade Hanging. Delia does not claim to be a god, but she wonders how difficult it is for her to bear the burden of being God's slave.
• Blessed with Suck: It may seem that Delia has good immunity in exchange for the fact that she cannot have children in principle (due to a strange disease in the uterus).
• Bittersweet Ending: Delia is dead and her killer is on the run in London, but at least the detective investigating the case has a chance of catching the man.
• Big Bad: Doctor Baselard, who kills Delia, is mentioned in this way throughout the third act of the work.
• Berserk Button: Delia's death drives Inspector Galbraith crazy, even though he has only seen her once in his life.
• Back from the Dead: Lampshade Hanging. The fate of Delia's father is never revealed, but it is suspected that his dopplegangers are a consequence of him having died and his spirit haunting the earth. This is speculative information.
• Benevolent A.I.: In the last act of the work, the character deals with the D.O.O.R., a supercomputer that simulates virtual reality. Scientists joke that it can be adapted to create films, and Galbraith himself, impressed by his “reading session”, prophesies the death of cinema.
• Broken Record: The whacky psychic who was pursuing Jordan kept repeating the same phrase "Take a book!".
• The Bad Guy Wins: The open ending leaves no doubt that doctor Baselard has fooled Galbraith after all.
• Big "YES!": When Galbraith leaves "Orcinus Orca Osteria" in upset feelings, when asked by the waiter what he thinks about their establishment, the inspector answers this way.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Almost literally, when Galbraith visits a "Orcinus Orca Osteria" where he watches the cashier strip the foot to accept socks from crazy beggars.
• Bedlam House: The cafe "Clair'n'Tone" which Galbraith visits in London is a place that is already decorated for Christmas in October, and the food they serve is cognac with caramel syrup and Caesar salad without dressing. It is not surprising that the inspector is essentially the only visitor there.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In Pharqraut's student story, Dorian Gray kills himself because he does not want to be killed at the hands of the workers who are rebelling in London.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As in the film, Delia here is a danger to Jo, but not because she does anything herself, but only because of her suspicious parents (and the fact that she was born with problems with the uterus).
• Break the Cutie: Delia's parents traumatize their daughter when they imprison her boyfriend and make her believe he is dead, causing her to become depressed and think about Jo almost every day.
• Black Comedy: In essence, this work is a comedy that makes fun of the horror genre. The deliberately grotesque moments are meant to symbolize this.
• Bus Crash: Delia's father gets into an accident off-screen, causing him to lose his ability to think and move.

Trope C-G

• Children Are Innocent: Delia, unlike her namesake from the film, is presented as a headstrong, but still kind and even vulnerable child.
• Crazy Cultural Comparison: When Galbraith, who was born in Gloucester but left for Portland as a student, returns to England (though only to the capital), he considers himself too correct in comparison with the English. In addition, the work describes Germans who live in America, while hating it.
• Can't Catch Up: This is exactly what Galbraith complains about, who wants to arrest doctor Baselard, but cannot find him in London.
• Celibate Hero: Inspector Galbraith himself says about himself that he is an ideological bachelor and does not understand life in a family circle.
• Clueless Deputy: Galbraith, by his admission, was in vain to become a police inspector, and the story only testifies to his incompetence.
• Cartwright Curse: Both male POV protagonists have problems with women, plus Galbraith’s friend’s phrase is mentioned that not everyone is given the opportunity to leave offspring.
• Crapsack World: When reading this work, you may get the impression that London is a very terrible place, with disgusting restaurants, hotels and taxi drivers.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Unlike the film, Delia dies, and her death is unexpected even for the characters themselves, especially Galbraith. It’s not surprising, because she simply had her uterus removed...
• Creepy Cemetery: Jordan and Delia with her mom visit Columbia Pioneer Cemetery.
• Chaos Architecture: "Makoto Computerization Institute" is located - wherever you think - underground. Moreover, it is a network of winding corridors.
• Canon Foreigner: It's pointless for Omen IV: The Awakening fans to look for characters they know in Always Visible - even such obvious ones as Delia and Jo were completely changed in relation to their counterparts, and all the other characters are even more irrelevant to the film.
• Catapult Nightmare: All three POV characters - namely Delia Yonce, Jordan Thurlow and Galbraith - experience this several times during the story.
• Composite Character: The author of the work mixed up all the details of the film in such a way that it is quite difficult to figure out which character is based on whom. But we can say that Delia’s father in Always Visible combines the details of his adoptive and natural fathers from the film incarnation.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Most of the descriptions in the work concern the daily actions of the characters, which is quite boring to read. Act zero is especially guilty of this, where it is described how Delia warms her food and how she sits on the window.
• Daddy's Girl: Lampshade Hanging. On the one hand, Delia does not consider her father to be completely bad, but in fact she is only afraid to argue with him.
• Driven to Suicide: As in the film, Delia's mother kills herself with a pistol.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: The final chapters of the third act take place on December 27, 1991.
• Damselin Distress: In some ways, Delia has these traits in her, at least according to Galbraith.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Delia and Jordan Thurlow have a lot of screen time, but they ultimately die. And that's not counting the four deaths that inspector Pharqraut (who also dies) was investigating.
• Death of a Child: Delia dies in Randall Children's Hospital.
• Death by Adaptation: Delia herself dies, and it is also implied that her father also did not survive the accident.
• Body Horror: Inside Delia's womb was what an eyewitness describes as a sea urchin. It is implied that this is either a parasite or some kind of congenital disease.
• Dead All Along: Delia and Jo both die, while in the original film the former remained alive.
• Driving Question: Almost all the characters ask similar questions, especially Galbraith.
• The Everyman: It plays out curiously with Delia’s family. Just as the girl herself is essentially an ordinary child, so her father, instead of a congressman, is reduced to a simple medicine seller.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Essentially, doctor Baselard removes Delia's uterus. In some ways, this can be interpreted as meaning that he actually raped her.
• Demoted to Extra: Delia's mother is a minor character here, and the author writes very superficially about her death, as if he did not care about this character.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: This is precisely the fate that Delia’s mother undergoes, who dies, just like in the film, but not at the end, but in the middle of the story. A similar thing also happens to Pharqraut, Galbraith's friend, who is suddenly killed by strange people from a black car.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mister chief inspector Schaeymoure, who not only is not surprised by what happened to his subordinate Galbraith, but on the contrary himself contributed to the fuel of paranoia.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the film, a character named Jo falls out of a window, and this was clearly Delia's fault. In Always Visible, Jordan Thurlow dies of throat cancer in prison after learning of the death of a girl with that name.
• Doomed by Canon: If we consider this work to be a novelization of Omen IV: The Awakening, then it will be obvious that the character named Jo and the mother of the girl named Delia will inevitably die during the plot. In the second case, even the method of death is exactly the same.
• Dumb Struck: Jordan Thurlow goes to prison after meeting Delia. Since his mother dies before this, in the end this person no longer cares what he wants from life.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Since doctor Baselard's connection to the Makoto Institute is never confirmed, it can be assumed that the remaining nameless silver-haired specialist is his best student, who carried out his whims in fooling Galbraith.
• Excuse Plot: To be honest, the plot of the work doesn't make much sense, basing its purpose in the characters' thoughts but not in their actions. The death of Delia's mother is the most obvious example of this - this character dies simply because it happened in the original, and soon everyone forgets about her.
• Episode Zero: The Beginning: The work begins with act zero, which actually increases the number of parts to four.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: Materials on the Pharqraut's case, which Galbraith receives in the first act and begins to read in the third.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": This happens to a nameless, silver-haired specialist from the "Makoto Computerization Institute", to whom the author gave an unusually large number of lines. This character himself justifies himself by saying that since he is just a pathetic performer, he is not worthy to be called by name.
• Fetus Terrible: According to Nelissen, what the doctors cut out of Delia’s uterus could hardly even be called a parasite.
• Le Film Artistique: Literally. In the first act of the work, Galbraith watches Peter Fleischmann's film Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein in an bootlegger cinema.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Delia dies because her uterus is removed. Compared to the gory deaths from the original film, this seems rather over the top.
• Flashback: The entirety of Zero Act is essentially Delia's memories of what happened to her two years ago.
• Facial Horror: The face of the second doppelganger Delia's father, whom Galbraith sees in London, has a gray tint, causing the inspector to think that it is in fact an actor in make-up.
• Funny Background Event: When Galbraith places an order at "Orcinus Orca Osteria", beggars come in and first ask the cashier for money and then try to sell him socks.
• Fate Worse than Death: When Jordan Thurlow is suspected of molesting Delia, he thinks to himself that will he be good rather be killed outright than put through the knives of a bureaucratic meat grinder.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: The final chapters of the third act turn a detective story with a touch of mysticism into a fantastically unreliable story about a supercomputer that is being developed deep underground by Japanese scientists.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In Galbraith's eyes, this is exactly how doctor Baselard.
• Gratuitous Latin: "Magistratus oportet servire populo" (The Police must serve The People).
• The Grotesque: The tumor that was removed from Delia's uterus looked, according to Nelissen, like a sea urchin. Galbraith notes about himself that it was apparently red.
• The Generic Guy: Doctor Baselard is described as a simple and unremarkable guy who somehow incomprehensibly manages to fill vacant positions first in the hospital of Gloucester and then in Portland.
• Genre Shift: The original source was a story about a devil child. The work itself transforms this first into a drama about the suffering of a girl, then into a detective story about the investigation of her murder, and in the end it all ends with a fantastic story about virtual reality.
• Gender Flip: A psychic nanny named Josephine Thueson in Always Visible turns into the male culturologist Jordan Thurlow, Delia's neighbor.
• God Is Evil: Unlike the film, there are no elements of Satanism, but there is Galbraith's phrase that "God's got a sick sense of humour" (which is a verbatim quote from Depeche Mode).

Trope H-P

• Here We Go Again!: If you read the work according to the chronology of 0-1-2-3, then this can happen due to the fact that if in act zero there was the story of Delia, then in the first there was already the story of Galbraith, and according to the story, the second act will look like a re-release of the zero act.
• Homage: If not for its legal status, Always Visible could be considered a reinterpreted novelization of the film Omen IV: The Awakening.
• Hell Is That Noise: When Galbraith arrives in London, he notes that after Portland, the streets of the capital of England are so noisy from cars that he gets the impression that turbines are buried under the asphalt.
• In the Back: In Galbraith's nightmare, doctor Baselard appears behind his interlocutor, mister chief inspector Schaeymoure, and it is eventually revealed that it was in fact a performance with a wooden mannequin.
• Invincible Villain: More precisely, elusive. Doctor Baselard manages to escape from under Galbraith's nose and gets lost in London. To make matters worse, Portland police see no point in catching him.
• Idiot Ball: When Galbraith miraculously arrives at doctor Baselard's apartment, he takes no action to capture him, instead watching him escape right before his eyes.
• Ideal Illness Immunity: The work does not say how things were with Delia’s health, but considering that she sat without any problems all night on an open window in one chemise, she apparently does not complain about her health.
• In Name Only: The only characters from the film who retained their names - namely Delia, Jerome and Jo - were completely redesigned.
• The Ingenue: Delia gives Galbraith this impression.
• Jump Scare: Used in both of Galbraith's nightmares, with the kleister monster and the wooden mannequin respectively.
• Kill the Cutie: Two words - Delia's Gone.
• Large Ham: Pharqraut, friend of Galbraith. He himself appears in fact only in three chapters, but the inspector remembered his funny phrases for a long time, even when he was in London.
• Linked List Clue Methodology: At the end of the story, Galbraith solves a small puzzle, the first two clues of which were essentially indicated in the materials of the case of his late friend.
• Like Father, Like Son: It is noted that Delia is as angry as her own father, which makes the latter delighted.
• Love at First Sight: This is precisely the driving force of the plot - Jordan Thurlow and Galbraith develop feelings for Delia when they see her for the first time for themselves.
• Manchild: Jordan Thurlow, who chose to work as a culturologist because he really dislikes work.
• Mama Bear: Delia's mother looks like this to her neighbor Jordan - she is the one who forces her husband to arrest the man, thinking that he was molesting her child.
• May–December Romance: Delia's father is somewhere in his fifties, and his wife is twenty years his junior.
• Mind Rape: The entire third act looks like this - everything that happens around Galbarith seems to be deliberately trying to drive the inspector crazy. The author of Always Visible was inspired by Karen Shakhnazarov's film Zerograd when he wrote this part of the work.
• Mind Screw: The entire work carries this idea.
• Messianic Archetype: Galbraith considers himself this way when Delia dies. He believes that he is simply obliged to punish doctor Baselard (despite the fact that he himself let him get away from under his nose)
• Madness Mantra: A whacky psychic who tries to sell Jordan a book by running after him like a mongrel and repeating "Take a book!".
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Galbraith does not believe in miracles, but what he encounters cannot be described in any other way. Because of this, the poor inspector has to rack his brains in almost every chapter.
• Mythology Gag: The hotel Galbraith checks into when he arrives in London is called "Stait of Snow Lake", a reference to the actor Brent Stait, who played a pimp in the film Omen IV: The Awakening.
• Meaningful Name: Delia Yonce's own name is explained in two different ways in the work - as Always Visible in Greek and as an epithet of the Greek goddess Artemis. It is ironic that the characters consider the first option to be obviously incorrect.
• Mood Whiplash: Intentionally used as an homage to "Jacob's Ladder" in the scene where Galbraith encounters three arguing Afro-Americans, followed by a hallucination that nearly leads to the inspector's death.
• Motive Rant: When Galbraith catches Baselard red-handed, he decides there's nothing wrong with preaching to the criminal. Guess what? The doctor escapes!
• Mr. Exposition: Delia's mother tells Jordan Thurlow (and readers) about how she met her second husband, who helped conceive her daughter.
• My Greatest Failure: Galbraith blames himself for Delia's death because he could not disobey mister chief inspector Schaeymoure's orders to leave her family's home, which results in the poor baby falling into the hands of an incompetent F.B.I. agent.
• Mood Dissonance: Apart from the moment of Delia's death, in all chapters the characters just sleeping, eating, and shirking work. However, the author presents this as if it were something completely out of the ordinary.
• Mysterious Waif: The mysterious young mute guy with whom Galbraith flew to London meets and follows the inspector several times. He doesn't have a single line, and no one seems to see him except Galbraith himself.
• Mystery Fiction: In essence, the work is somewhat similar to a classic story in the style of Jules Maigret, but with the addition of horror cliches (which are nevertheless ridiculed).
• Non-Action Big Bad: In fact, doctor Baselard appears in the book exactly once, but this does not prevent him from looking to Galbraith like a certain professor Moriarty.
• Noodle Incident: Pharqraut case with four late persons with Greek names. It unfolds off-screen, and in fact has absolutely nothing to do with the plot (except to be a hint that Delia's name is also of Greek origin)
• Posthumous Character: Jordan's mother, who died five years before the events of the story, is mentioned several times, and Galbraith reads the case of his dead friend, which involved the investigation of four dead people.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Doctor Baselard has a surname similar to one type of dagger. Guess who is person and what he did? That's right, he was first a surgeon and then a gynecologist, and in both cases described in the work, he kills his patients!
• "Not So Different" Remark: It is implied that Inspector Galbraith and criminal Jordan Thurlow are essentially not much different from each other, mainly because they both have affection for Delia and consider her an ideal.
• No Communities Were Harmed: The story takes place in real Portland locations, and the third act references London's famous Heathrow Airport.
• No Name Given: The characters Galbraith, Schaeymoure, Pharqraut and Baselard are never named, only referred to by their last names. The same goes for Delia's father, no one addresses him differently than mister Yonce.
• Off with His Head!: Interestingly shown in Galbraith's nightmare, where doctor Baselard blows off the head of Schaeymoure's wooden mannequin.
• Our Demons Are Different: Roughly speaking, there are no demons at all in the work, but one of Galbraith's nightmares describes a creature born from kleister, which is very similar in description to Pinky from Doom 3.
• Once More, with Clarity: If you read act zero AFTER the main three, it turns out that the episode when Delia reads a fairy tale at apartment of Jo's friend is repeated twice in the work, only if in the second act a brief synopsis is given, then in act zero it is told in detail about this.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Portland police see no point in investigating Delia's murder. Galbraith only miraculously manages to obtain documents to fly to London to begin the pursuit of doctor Baselard.
• The Pollyanna: Delia Yonce
• Pun: Often used in the text.
• Parental Neglect: Delia recalls that when her father kicked her away from the table at age five, her mother did not interfere and simply silently submitted to her husband.
• Pietà Plagiarism: When Pharqraut is killed in front of Galbraith, the inspector holds his friend's corpse in his arms until the orderlies take him away
• Plot Threads: Acts zero and Two follow the Yonce family, and acts One and Three follow Police Inspector Galbrath.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Doctor Baselard, who kills Delia and immediately leaves Portland to hide in the wilds of London. In fact, he only appears in the last two chapters of the first act, and then he exists only in the characters' lines.
• Precision F-Strike: When Nelissen talks about finding something like a Fetus papyraceous inside Delia's uterus, Galbraith responds with an "Stupid and unscientific bullshit".
• Product Placement: The work mentions Tandy's microcomputer.
• Psychic Powers: It's never explicitly stated, but when Jo first sees Delia outside the window, he perceives her gaze as "the gaze of a hundred people" and compares it to spears.
• Papa Wolf: It is Delia's father who is responsible for the character named Jo ultimately dying.
• Perverse Puppet: Galbraith's nightmare mentions a wooden dummy of Schaeymoure, which doctor Baselard made in order to simulate communication with the mister chief inspector (and ultimately blow off his head)
• Please, Don't Leave Me: This is exactly how Delia reacts when Galbraith urgently leaves her house.
• Persecuted Intellectuals: Jordan Thurlow's character is portrayed as a well-read bookworm who had the misfortune of meeting a girl whose parents accused her boyfriend of molesting their daughter.

Trope Q-Y

• Quest for Identity: In some ways, Jordan Thurlow and Delia herself are asking these questions.
• Room Full of Crazy: By genre standards, there's nothing all that special about the room Galbraith rents at the "Stait of Snow Lake", but given that there are no chairs, a bed infested with bugs, and a broken lock, it might as well be that.
• Running Gag: Galbraith walks around with a mustache because he just can't shave - no matter how hard he tries, he always cuts the skin on his face.
• Religious Horror: As such, there is no horror in the work at all, but one of Galbraith's nightmares mentions a dark room in which mister chief inspector Schaeymoure read him a strange speech about believing in a criminal, after which it turns out that all this time it was a wooden mannequin made by doctor Baselard.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the film, Delia had almost no contact with Jo's character's friend and the person who was investigating her. In Always Visible, she instead visits Japhet Byrnes, Jordan Thurlow's friend and develops trust in Galbraith when she sees him for the first and last time.
• Riddle for the Ages: So what exactly was in Delia's uterus? And why did Galbraith see visions? Is the first connected with the second, or was Galbraith simply on drugs (as he himself thinks in the first act)?
• Rube Goldberg Device: D.O.O.R. is a supercomputer into which scientists downloaded a lot of information just so that it could simulate a virtual personality inside itself. There is no benefit from this.
• Small Role, Big Impact: To be honest, Delia does absolutely nothing to develop the plot - but as soon as this girl died, events immediately began to move at a waltz pace.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Delia's mother commits suicide for no particular reason. It looks like the author just wanted to flatter the authors of the original film.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: A sequel is a big word, but the third act (which is actually the fourth part) takes place not in Portland, North America, but in London, England.
• Setting Update: The film Omen IV: The Awakening took place in New York. Always Visible instead moves the main location to Portland, Oregon, with the final act moving to London, England.
• Shared Universe: It is mentioned that Delia's family lived in New York before moving to Portland, which could be interpreted to mean that Always Visible is actually a sequel to Omen IV: The Awakening.
• Shower of Angst: Jordan Thurlow and Galbraith take a shower in different chapters of the work.
• Stairs Are Faster: It is curiously played out in the last chapters of the third act, when employees of the underground university lead Galbraith down the stairs for the reason that if they took the elevator, they would not have time to introduce their guest to the situation.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Delia Yonce and Jordan Thurlow.
• Symbolism: The story literally says that Delia sits on the left side of the dinner table because it symbolizes that the daughter is the heart of her father.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: As a police inspector, Galbraith takes advantage of his position sometimes even without any reason - the first chapter of the first act is the most striking example of this. It is ironic that in the third act he no longer has power, because the American policeman in England can no longer rule like he does at home.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The main reason why Galbraith cannot catch doctor Baselard is the inspector’s own incompetence, because first he goes into the doctor’s apartment, and then allows him to calmly leave from there. After this, it is quite funny to hear Galbraith's thoughts about how the doctor was supposedly elusive.
• Self-Inflicted Hell: It is implied that Galbraith is going crazy as the plot progresses.
• Solve the Soup Cans: Used in Act Three when Galbraith first guesses Delia's name from individual letters, then converts them into numbers and ends up with the number 8. This makes no sense, as the Inspector himself says, although this number matches the age at which Delia met Jo.
• Tomato Surprise: The last part of the third act takes place in an underground institute where scientists are working on creating a computer that simulates virtual reality. This is very out of touch with the main narrative.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: It is implied that Galbraith clearly does not see the incident in a normal state and that he is close to a breakdown - especially towards the end of the third act.
• Time Skip: It plays out in a strange way in the third act, when Galbraith gets into a taxi and ends up moving forward two months, with everyone around thinking that the inspector himself simply does not remember the current date.
• Techno Babble: Almost all of the final chapters of the third act are of this nature, as the computer specialist brings the clue to the clueless police inspector.
• Take That!: In the third act, from Heathrow Airport to the "Stait of Snow Lake" Galbraith was driven by a taxi driver, who starts a conversation with the passenger on the topic of how modern literature panders to the base instincts of the audience and cites Stephen King's "Carrie" as an example, quoting a line from the very first page of this work. This passage itself is a reworking of the short quote "Like Carrie setting fire to the prom powerful?" that was said by a random character in the movie Omen IV: The Awakening, who inspired this work.
• Uptown Girl: This is the main reason why Jerome does not reciprocate Delia's feelings. The broker's son believes that the pharmaceutist's daughter does not deserve anything other than hypocritical treatment.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Delia's father is described as a huge, lumbering man who has been compared to a gorilla, while his wife is twenty years his junior and quite beautiful.
• Unreliable Narrator: All three POV characters are guilty of this.
• Uncanny Atmosphere: Fully relevant to the final chapters of the third act, where Galbraith visits an underground institute somewhere on the outskirts of London.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Doctor Baselard. In the sixties, he accidentally kills a woodcutter in Gloucester, but this does not stop him many years later from getting a job at Randall Children's Hospital. And to make matters worse, when he eventually escapes Portland back to England, the American police see no point in pursuing him.
• Verbed Title: It’s a stretch, but the name itself is Always Visible.
• Vagueness Is Coming: The very first thing you read is Delia's nightmare of five men killing an invisible man. This is a foreshadowing of what the story will tell later about her friend Jo, whom society has effectively "made invisible" from her own eyes.
• Violation of Common Sense : In the third act, Inspector Galbraith receives a phone number from a London taxi driver, but when he calls it, it ends up in his home police department in Portland. This is followed by a scene where he gets into a taxi and travels forward two months in time.
• Wall of Text: Three hundred or so pages, in which there is little dialogue, but a lot of pseudo-philosophical reasoning about what the author has no understanding of at all - that’s what this work is.
• Would Hurt a Child: It is described that when Delia was five years old, her father kicked her out of dinner just because she did not say a grace.
• The Watson: This is exactly what Galbraith and Schaeymoure's relationship looks like. It is not surprising, since the author copied both heroes from the images of Yuri Solomin and Vasily Livanov in the role of Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes, respectively.
• Wham Line: Galbraith's dialogue with Matt MacLaren about something being found inside Delia's uterus that is not pregnancy. "No, it wasn't pregnancy, this is something else"...
• Whole Episode Flashback: In fact, the entire zero act is a detailed analysis of the events described in the second, with the only difference being that if in the latter case the reader followed Jordan Thurlow, then in the zero act the actions are described on behalf of Delia herself.
• Window Love: Jordan Thurlow falls in love with Delia after seeing her by chance in the window when she just moved into his neighbour house.
• Worldbuilding: Lampshade Hanging. The action itself takes place in real-life places, but the author adds strange and unrealistic details to emphasize the madness that surrounds the protagonists.
• You Are Too Late: Galbraith slept through the day when doctor Baselard began that fateful operation, which is why the inspector did not have time to save Delia.

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I'm disgusted when people don't look before they leap.

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