Fanfic / Sea Change Series

An epic (570 thousand words) story of Flynn Fairwind and Mathias Shaw after their Relationship Upgrade in the World of Warcraft tie-in novel Shadows Rising. This is not an exhaustive list of the tropes that appear, but give us time!

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Abusive Parent: Pathonia Shaw, in spades. Being raised from literal toddlerhood to be a thief, spy, and assassin is not actually awesome.
• Assassin Outclassin': Flynn handily thwarts Lord Tony Romano's attempt to murder him in an alley.
• Badass Adorable: As a vulpera, i.e. a gnome-sized fox person, Hayaji is very cute by human standards. He's also a well-known, successful pirate.
• Badass Boast: Flynn gives one while fighting off an assassination attempt, and a second-hand one when he's press-ganged.
  Flynn: "I'm Captain Flynn Fairwind, of the Bold Arva. You look like a clever bloke. You might have heard what happened to the last ship that tried to take me prisoner." (What happened was Mathias.)
• Badass Crew: The crew of the Bold Arva are generally normal people; only a few of them even have class levels (Flynn - rogue, Thurin Firebeard - priest, Luvias Wildshore - druid). But they're all good at their jobs and capable of moments of awesomeness, even Billie the Cabin Monkey.
• Badass in Distress: Flynn, when the Bold Arva is waylaid by pirates.
• Bar Brawl: Flynn accidentally sets one off in the Grim Guzzler. Not that that's difficult.
• Battle Couple: Both of the boys are formidable combatants singly, and fight together to great effect.
• Berserk Button: Flynn will readily agree that pirates aren't good people and that he lied, stole, killed, and otherwise caused mayhem. Imply that he's a rapist, however, and you'd best be ready to fend him off.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Kul Tirans tend to be taller than humans from Stormwind, and the men are rumored to be proportionally better endowed. This in itself isn't a problem; the issue arises when people start assuming that it's the reason Mathias is interested in Flynn at all.
• Bisexual: In World of Warcraft proper, Flynn's Ambiguously Bi; he'll flirt with the PC regardless of gender, but is only seen expressing active interest in women. Thanks to Shadows Rising, however, we now know he's cheerfully willing to sleep with anyone who's interested.
• Blood from the Mouth: Mathias, after being run through by a vrykul javelin.
• Blue Blood: Lord Tony Romano resents working for Mathias and resents it even more when Mathias gets involved with Flynn, a nobody former pirate who isn't even from Stormwind.
• Boarding Party: A bunch of hozen board the Bold Arva and are handily fought off.
• Brain Freeze: Mathias gets this when he drinks cold water too fast after overexerting himself.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Mathias usually thinks of Pathonia by name even before the revelations about her role in his early life. In this case it's an expression of lack of affection, rather than of respect.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Mathias doesn't drink alcohol very often, he's not a big man, and he has about two ounces of fat on his entire person. This bites him in the ass at Grixx and Relly's wedding. Fortunately nothing bad happens except for an epic hangover.
• The Cavalry: When Flynn and Mathias are ambushed by a large group and things are looking dire, Tincery Lightblade comes to their rescue. Both more and less traditionally, Sir Finley Mrrgglton leads a charge of murlocs on battlecrabs to the boys' aid when they're being overwhelmed by naga and Red Blade vampires.
• Child Soldier: Mathias is effectively this.
• Childhood Friend Romance: It all happened well before the series began, but Mathias's relationship with Edwin Van Cleef is mentioned to have been this; Mathias had a crush on the older, more charismatic Van Cleef.
• Combat Pragmatist: Rogues in general tend to be willing to do what it takes to get the job done, and neither Mathias nor Flynn is an exception. They will both cheerfully pick locks, sneak around, and lie through their teeth in pursuit of objectives, and Mathias extends his pragmatism to his entire job.
• Corporal Punishment: You weren't expecting that Pathonia didn't beat Mathias, were you?
• Cover Identity Anomaly: Detheroc repeatedly pretends to be Flynn when Mathias is on his rescue mission, but does not recognize Mathias's companions, who Flynn knows well.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Somehow, having been orphaned at seven, working for an abusive street gang for two years, and becoming a pirate before achieving puberty, only to be betrayed by a shipmate as an adult, is the less dark past.
• Dead Sidekick: The pre-story death of Amber Kearnen affected Mathias deeply.
• Death Is Not Permanent: Some Azerothans are "deathless"; nothing but old age will permanently kill them. People who know about their condition tend to go into adventuring, but the only way to find out is to die and come back.
• Deceptive Legacy: And how. Pretty much the only true thing Pathonia ever told Mathias about his parents was that they were dead.
• Defrosting Ice King: Flynn is one of the very few people Mathias feels like he can be vulnerable around, and that sense of safety is bringing out a lot (a lot) of long-buried trauma. It's also forcing him to acknowledge that he's a person who not only has needs and desires but is allowed to.
• Dressed to Plunder: Flynn wears a dramatic long coat and a sash, and has pierced ears and long hair.
• Drinking Contest: Flynn has one with his old friend Marcus the paladin. He wins, which should not surprise anyone; Kul Tirans canonically have a higher alcohol tolerance than mainlanders.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After escaping piracy, Flynn falls into a not-entirely-healthy relationship with booze in an attempt to avoid noticing how rough his life is. Once his circumstances get better, so do his drinking habits.
• Dual Wield: As rogues, Mathias and Flynn both do this; Mathias favors daggers and Flynn uses cutlasses. Flynn also carries a pistol as backup.
• Ethical Slut: Flynn enjoys sex and will have it with pretty much anyone who's able to consent. At least until he gets involved with Mathias, at which point he becomes happily monogamous.
• Evil Matriarch: Pathonia Shaw, who is not just Mathias's grandmother but also head of the Assassin's Guild and later SI:7, and is unquestionably evil.
• Family of Choice: Over the course of the story Mathias realizes that the crew of the Bold Arva consider him to be one of them and that they are the family he never had. Flynn comes to a similar realization, though it's a bit less momentous for him because he's at least had friends.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: Mathias's discovery that Jorach Ravenholdt is his uncle, that the deaths of his parents didn't happen as he was told they did, and that in fact he himself unwittingly killed his father.
• Facepalm: Flynn has something of a loose association with the concept of holding his tongue and he's occasionally a wee bit impulsive. Mathias facepalms about this regularly, physically or verbally.
  Mathias: "Why are you like this?"
• Fire Keeps It Dead: Jorach Ravenholdt burned Pathonia's body so it couldn't be raised as undead, self-willed or otherwise.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Pathonia wanted Mathias to take over from her to the extent that she started training him as a rogue while he was still a literal toddler.
• Friendly Target: Mathias is afraid that getting involved will make Flynn into one of these, and to some extent he's right.
• Give Me Back My Wallet: How Flynn meets Billie.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Flynn's father was probably this.
• Good Parents: Thurin and Loira are excellent parents.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Outlaw rogues like Flynn can summon a grappling hook to sling themselves around. They don't actually have a pistol or other implement, but the ability acts like the trope.
• Grave-Marking Scene: At the end of "Like the Tides, Return," Mathias visits Amber's grave for the first time - though undoubtedly not the last.
• Hangover Sensitivity: Mathias's hangover the day after the goblin wedding includes light sensitivity. Since he's in a desert city, this is seriously unfortunate.
• Happily Married: They don't get along perfectly and their relationship takes some strain purely from their respective more-or-less horrific backstories, but Mathias and Flynn are solidly in love and not going to split up any time soon.
• He's Not Coming: Truly one of the most chilling phrases you can hear a comrade utter, under the correct circumstances. In this case, an escape had gone wrong and one person stayed behind to give the others time to get clear.
• He Won't Come For Me: Flynn is convinced that Mathias won't be able/permitted to pay the ransom and tells the rest of the crew they need to resign themselves to being marooned.
• Healing Potion: Healing potions exist, but they're mostly first aid rather than a long-term solution.
• Heel–Face Turn: Hayaji enters the narrative as a pirate holding the crew of the Bold Arva for ransom, but by his last appearance he's having a drink with Flynn.
• Hide Your Lesbians: Averted - an entire story revolves around Grixx and Relly's traditional goblin wedding.
• Hideous Hangover Cure: Averted. The Peacebloom Remedy Flynn makes Mathias drink both actually works and doesn't taste terrible.
• Holiday Episode: "The Family You Choose" revolves around the Feast of Winter Veil, the Azerothan midwinter festival. Mathias mentions that in previous years he mostly knew it was happening because someone always brought a vaguely citrus-flavored brick into the office.
• Hollywood Healing: Averted; it takes Anduin himself to save Mathias in the wake of his javelin wound, and even so he spends several months recovering and has a set of massive scars. No one suggests this is unusual or surprising.
• I Am Not My Father: Once the revelations about Mathias's family hit, he dislikes being compared to Pathonia to the degree that he doesn't want to even use her surname anymore.
• I Let Amber Kearnen Die: Mathias blames himself for a whole lot of deaths he couldn't actually have prevented, but Amber's is the one that eats at him the most.
• I Will Find You: Flynn and Mathias promise to do this after death, if necessary.
• Immoral Journalist: Vera Van Dooble works for a gossip rag and is much more interested in juicy scandal than accurate reporting.
• Impairment Shot: Flynn's POV in the wake of his drinking contest with Marcus is distinctly drunk around the edges.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Mathias is run completely through by a vrykul javelin. To make matters worse, it's cursed.
• Interspecies Adoption: Billie is human; her adoptive family is made up of dwarves. No animals are involved, however.
• Interspecies Romance: Flynn's deckhands Grixx and Relly are a goblin and a gnome respectively.
• It Tastes Like Feet: Mathias's description of KajaCola, a popular drink among goblins, is "It tastes like fruity rocks."
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Mathias is a fan of Hemet Nesingwary's work and has a fan's reaction to meeting Nesingwary's son and getting to participate in a hunt with him. Given that it's Mathias, Flynn is probably the only one who notices.
• Kraken and Leviathan: Flynn and his crew have to fight a Giant Octopus off during a salvage job.
• Lovable Rogue: Flynn, in pretty much every particular.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Averted. Mathias runs a large organization of competent people and some of them do important plot things on-'screen'. At one point Flynn gently twits him for thinking he does have to do everything.
  Flynn: "That's what your mates are for, love. I know you know how to delegate. Set your watches and stand by them."
• Make an Example of Them: Mathias probably could have rescued Flynn and the rest of the crew from Hayaji without blowing the pirate ship to smithereens, but having done it means that Flynn's much safer in the future.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Mathias mentions that most assassinations are done this way.
• Metaphorical Marriage: For political reasons the boys spend some time as 'matelots' before getting legally married.
• Mile-High Club: On gryphonback, no less.
• Murder by Inaction: Mathias wants to leave the few survivors of the pirate ship explosion to drown; Flynn insists on turning around to fish them out.
• Murder in the Family: Alissa's mother ordered her killed, and her father did the killing.
• Must Have Coffee: Caffeine is Mathias's drug of choice, as is not terribly surprising for someone with a high-stress job who also doesn't get enough sleep.
• The Mutiny: Flynn had to flee one led by his first mate, thus ending his career as a pirate.
• Necessarily Evil: Mathias considers his job to be justifiable only because he's working to keep people safe, and thinks of himself as a bad person. But it's what he's been taught to do his whole life, it has to be done, and no one would be better able to do it.
• Nightmare Sequence: Mathias has lots. They are based on his fears and things that actually happened to him, but with a heavy dose of dream logic and symbolism.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Peach the manafiend is, to Mathias's great displeasure, Flynn's sidekick during the trip through Stranglethorn. He causes more than a little trouble, with one thing and another.
  Peach: "I absorb."
• Not Afraid to Die: When he meets Flynn, Mathias is definitely in the grips of this due to his experiences during the Legion invasion on top of the unrelenting shitstorm of his earlier life.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Flynn does this to avoid danger from his old life when he returns to Kul Tiras after abandoning piracy. He relies on a combination of Handsome Lech and Playing Drunk.
• Orphan's Ordeal: The first part of Flynn's story is very very much this, and the reason he became a pirate.
• Panthera Awesome: Our heroes are attacked by one on their trip through Northern Stranglethorn.
• Parental Betrayal: Alissa's parents were the direct causes of her death.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Mathias holding Flynn after Flynn is injured by the Red Blade; Flynn carrying Mathias back to Stormwind after he's skewered by a javelin.
• Pirate: Flynn used to be one. As he points out, it wasn't all rum and parrots.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: In the game, Outlaw rogues have an ability called "Roll the Bones", which generates random buffs in combat by means of giant intangible dice that roll on the ground around the PC when it's used - Flynn is even seen using it a few times when in combat alongside the player, as in the treasury heist. This has been adapted into Flynn enjoying playing (and winning at) dice. Mathias thinks he regularly cheats; Flynn wavers between claiming he's just lucky and protesting that he's not cheating, he's adjusting the odds in his favor.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Flynn went out of his way to avoid brutality as much as possible in his pirate career. Hayaji's the same way.
• Price On His Head: Harlan Sweete died before the story began, but the Irontide fleet he founded sticks around, and they want Flynn in a big way. It's not resolved until quite late in the series.
• Professional Killer: Mathias is actually an assassin, and in fact the head of the Stormwind Assassin's Guild.
• Protectorate: Aside from Flynn himself, Mathias's protectorate includes Anduin personally, the kingdom of Stormwind, the Alliance as a whole, and in fact the whole damn planet.
• Raised by Grandparents: Or, in Mathias's case, single grandparent.
• Ransom Drop: Having the ridiculously huge ransom he demanded delivered to him doesn't go as well for Hayaji as he'd hoped.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: While Flynn couldn't be referred to as evil at any point, he was a pirate; he killed people, stole as a matter of course, and held entire crews for ransom. Nonetheless, when one of his crew was caught raping a prisoner, Flynn beat him to a pulp, gutted him, and threw him overboard for the sharks.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Cyrus Crestfall knows about Flynn's pirate past and holds it over him in order to induce him to do under-the-table jobs. He does pay, but given that piracy carries a death sentence in Kul Tiras and he also knows that Flynn is at least mostly reformed, it's a rather nasty move.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Flynn and Mathias respectively.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Mathias is rumored to be dead in the wake of his near-fatal javelin wound, and gives an interview to a journalist to allay people's fears.
• Repression Never Ends Well: Mathias spends most of "Scars" trying to hide the story of his imprisonment in Felsoul Hold from Flynn. It causes a lot of stress on their relationship.
• Rescued from the Underworld: At the beginning of the Shadowlands storyline, a number of people from Azeroth are abducted and taken to the Maw - pretty much literal Hell, the place where unredeemable souls go to face eternal punishment after death. One of them is Flynn. Mathias goes after him.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Mathias gets through his plan to rescue Flynn from pirates in a state of mostly-Tranquil Fury, but the end result blows up a very large ship and kills the vast majority of its crew.
• Royal Brat: Caylem 'Menethil' isn't actually royal, but he thinks he is and he's definitely a brat. And a human supremacist to boot.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: When propositioned by someone he's had sex with before, Flynn turns them down, specifically citing his relationship with Mathias.
• Shower of Love and Two-Person Pool Party: The boys have sex in a shower or tub fairly often.
• Slain in Their Sleep by way of a Slashed Throat: How Mathias performed his first assassination. Because he'd been ordered to use his dagger, his victim was a grown man, and he was ten.
• Special Guest: Folks who play on certain servers may recognize a few of the characters.
• Stoic Woobie: Mathias isn't stoic so much as he doesn't really realize how shit his life has been and how desperately unhappy he is.
• Storyboard Body: Flynn likes to get tattoos to mark significant events in his life.
• Street Urchin: Flynn, before he headed off to Freehold, and Billie before Flynn rescues her.
• Take This Job and Shove It: Mathias has spent his entire life working for Stormwind and its rulers, and can't imagine what he'd do otherwise. When Flynn is abducted to literal Hell and he's denied permission to mount a rescue, however, Mathias finally loses it and quits. His boss attempts to pull a Resignations Not Accepted, but fails.
• A Taste of the Lash: Flynn is flogged by the pirates who have captured him as punishment for one of his crew acting out.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Surely some method could have been found to rescue Flynn and his crew from the pirates that didn't involve blowing up the pirate ship?
• Title Drop: At one point Flynn quotes the Shakespeare poem that the phrase "sea-change" derives from. (It's the one that starts "Full fathom five thy father lies".)
• Umbrella Drink: The drinks served at the goblin wedding are specifically noted to have umbrellas in them.
• Unholy Matrimony: Pathonia and Waltion weren't superpowered (more than any other person in the Warcraft universe), and they probably weren't legally married, but they were two evil people who were lovers and who delighted in doing evil things together.
• We All Die Someday: Flynn points this out when Mathias worries about one or the other of them dying in the course of their jobs. He says it's a reason to be together as much as they can now.
• Wedding Episode: "One Night in Gadgetzan" is about Grixx and Relly's traditional goblin wedding; "The Only Free Choice" revolves around Flynn and Mathias's wedding and honeymoon. The honeymoon technically counts as a Hot Springs Episode, taking place at a hot springs resort.
• Worf Had the Flu: Flynn, personally, is a badass. The Bold Arva is not, which is how she and her crew ended up in the clutches of pirates. The time Flynn just ran down a dark alley alone and ended up press-ganged, however, was more a case of Distress Ball.
• Worth Living For: Getting involved with Flynn makes Mathias wonder if surviving to retirement might not be worth it after all.
• Would Hurt a Child: Both Flynn and Mathias have adults like this in their pasts.

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