Trouble Island
is the final Script Fic of the "Calvin and Hobbes movie" trilogy by garfieldodie, and also a part of the Calvinverse.
Calvin and Hobbes find themselves facing an old foe, so they attempt to escape their campsite... but something's up with their parents.
A rewrite has been completed.
The original provides examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: Calvin and Hobbes use the air ducts to get in Retro's ship.
- Anime Hair: Lampshaded - "You bet your spiky hair it's real."
- Big Bad: Retro again.
- Big "NO!": Calvin, after Hobbes is "un-imagined".
- Retro does one in Chapter 10.
- Brake Angrily: Shortly after the below Long List.
- Break the Cutie: Calvin, thanks to Retro's speech.
- Call-Back: To Can You Imagine That?:Retro: You may have ruined one part, but I can make a new Imaginator. I can make more pills. I have the technology, the know-how and the cool car. You may try to stop me, but you know you won't.
- Cassandra Truth: Finally subverted with Uncle Max.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Part of Chapter 5 has Calvin listing all the things he and Hobbes had done - both in the original strip and garfieldodie's previous fics.
- Crapsack World: Retropia.
- Disney Death: Hobbes, ala Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie.
- Doomy Dooms of Doom: Chapter 3 - "The Vacation Spot of Doom".
- Egopolis: Retropia (one of Retro's possible names for Earth under his command).
- Extreme Omnivore: "The couch was pretty comfy though. Tasty, too."
- Fainting: Lampshaded.Hobbes: You know, if you feel the urge to pass out on the floor in shock, feel free.
Uncle Max: I think I will. Someone get behind me. - Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Calvin actually uses the first two words in Chapter 3.
- Incredibly Lame Pun:With one last ditch-effort, pardon the pun, our hero takes out his blaster and fires repeatedly at the aliens.
- Inkblot Test: Calvin undergoes one.
- Long List:Calvin: Yeah, except for the poison ivy, dry spam, cold waters, lumpy sleeping bags, wild animals, dampness, blistering sun, blistered ankles, cuts and bruises, shortage of real food, endless rain, mosquitoes, malaria, hypothermia, pneumonia, your dumb character speeches, your dumb early-bird thing, gutting the fish, getting stuck on a boat with you yammering, the bad running distance from the tents to the canoe, the intolerable winds that occur at noon, your inability to make a campfire, actually eating what's in the duffel bag, losing half the luggage on the way home, the creepy guy at the canoe rental shack, the idiotic campfire songs, the no TV, and the fact that you can't camp to save your life, there should be no worries.
- Mr. Imagination: Deconstructed somewhat.
- Mythology Gag: Chapter 1 is almost entirely composed of these.
- No Indoor Voice: Lampshaded."WHOA!" Calvin shouted.
"WHAT WAS THAT?" shouted Hobbes.
"I DON'T KNOW!"
"MAN, WAS IT EVER FAST!"
"YEAH, I CAN BARELY SEE IT NOW!"
"I THINK I LOST MY HAT!"
"ME TOO!"
"WHAT SHOULD WE DO?"
"I DON'T KNOW!"
"HEY, WHY ARE WE YELLING?"
"BECAUSE, WE— I dunno." - Nothing Is the Same Anymore: In a good way. Though the Imaginator is destroyed, people now realize Calvin's imagination and thus treat him a little better.
- Overly-Long Gag:Hobbes: I'd say it's a tree, just like that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one and that one…
Calvin: Not that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that and that. I meant that! - The Plague: Retro's pills induce this.
- The Power of Rock: Ala Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie, though it's a full band this time.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:Retro: Of course not! You're an idiotic child. This tiger isn't a real tiger. He's a toy powered to be real by your imagination! That's why I did the whole Dr. Griffin thing. If I separated you two and helped you realize what a lie your life has been, you'd lose confidence in yourself, and I'd eliminate you once and for all.
- Shout-Out: "They just went where no man has gone before".
- "You said Mickey Mouse wasn't real, and there he was at Disney Land".
- Several people note Retro's Three Stooges-esque Anime Hair.
- Sickly Green Glow: Anything with the pills produces this effect.
- You Are Grounded!:Dad: You're grounded. When we get to the campsite, you can't leave the tent.
Calvin: YAY!
The Rewrite contains examples of:
- All Just a Dream: Cavlin's parents come to this conclusion regarding the story's events after getting hit with the Reset Button. However,
Fridge Logic soon kicks in as both of them realize that they had the same "dream"...- At least for Mom, the trope is Zig-Zagged in the epilogue, where she gets to have one last talk with Hobbes that may or may not be her last.
- Anti-Climax: Retro is defeated rather pathetically in this version, though in context it works. In the original version, which didn't share The 'Verse with Swing123, Retro was The Big Bad and Trouble Island was meant to be the Grand Finale to garfieldodie's trilogy. Here, Retro hasn't been seen since Calvin's first adventure which was established in The Collective as taking place several years ago. In between that time, Calvin and his friends have had a LOT of harrowing adventures that have given them plenty of experience dealing with mad scientists and dangers much worse than just a guy with an imagination device. As such, Retro's plans fall apart at the halfway point, and the rest of the fic is spent with Calvin and the gang backing him further and further into a corner until he's forced into an escape pod that will send him to a high-security prison that will make escaping nigh impossible. Not the most epic of final confrontations, but then again, it's not meant to be their last battle with Retro...
- A Storm Is Coming: Chapter 10 ends on this chilling note as Retro's escape pod swerves off course from its original destination and starts heading towards Zok.How and why this happened would be revealed later. For now, only one thing was known.Retro's pod was no longer enroute to the prison planet that would have locked him away and spared him a much more horrible fate.A certain red planet hung in the distance like a beacon. Ominous, threatening, unnerving...The pod headed for the planet.The final game pieces were being put into place.
- Bait-and-Switch: Like in the original version, Retro attempts to use the Imaginator to trick Calvin into believing that Hobbes, along with all his previous adventures, were never real... only for the next chapter to open up and show that it did the exact opposite, where Calvin's parents become aware of all the sci-fi craziness around them, along with being able to "see" and communicate with Hobbes for the first time. Retro is just as shocked as the reader.
- Better than a Bare Bulb: Once Calvin's parents become adjusted to the Imaginator's effects, they spend a good chunk of time Lampshade Hanging practically everything about The Calvinverse.
- Calling the Old Man Out: All of Calvin and his father's grievences come to a downright explosive collision in this story, having been built up since the rewritten version of Can You Imagine That?. To elaborate, Dad drags the family to their awful vacation site once more, but Calvin— take note that this is the rewritten version of Calvin that's been through A LOT more than his original-verse counterpart— is having none of it, calling out his Dad for always doing things he wants to do with no input from his wife or son, overriding Dad's condescending arguments to the point where the latter finally snaps. Mom manages to intervene before things can get worse, but by that point Calvin is so fed up with everything that he storms off in disgust.
- Mythology Gag: When asked by Calvin's parents about the existence of talking animals, Hobbes mentions playing poker with raccoons while Calvin was in the scouts, referencing the super-early Calvin and Hobbes "proto-strips" when Bill Watterson was trying to sell it to syndicates.
- Weirdness Censor: The trope itself is brought up in the fic by Calvin's parents after the Imaginator goes off, citing it as the possible reason why they could never see Hobbes before.
