Literature / Rollerskater

Rollerskater is a New Weird Web Serial Novel by C R E Mullins, consisting of four arcs: "Umbric Spring", "Rose Gold", "New Culture", and "Blood Moon". It is complete as of October 2022.

The saga follows "Socks", a university student, who invites a mysterious rollerskater known as K-Os to a Christmas party. On the way home from the party, Socks and K-Os are attacked by a stranger with powers that defy explanation. Subsequently, Socks finds himself reluctantly pulled into K-Os's weird world, pursued by dark supernatural forces that are out for blood...

The serial is available to read for free in its entirety on the author's personal website or here at Archive of Our Own. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, meaning that it will always be free to read somewhere.

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This web serial contains examples of:

• Above the Gods: In "Anxiety", K-Os matter-of-factly refers to gods as "puny".
• Accidental Time Travel: Socks first discovers his time-jumping ability after suffering a fatal injury. He finds himself "jumping back" to the moment before he was hurt, enabling him to escape injury.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: "Wistfully, the Wanderer walked the wastes."
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: K-Os's form - that of a tall human woman wearing rollerskates - is not her true form, the nature of which is beyond description. Her physical body consists of an opaque pink liquid, described repeatedly as resembling strawberry milkshake. It's actually comprised of a primordial ooze of free amino acids from a Cretaceous evaporation pond, where she first emerged into consciousness.
• A God Am I: Geb considered himself a god, and refused to die. He got his wish, but at great cost.
• Alien Geometries:
  • Chesterton's Mental World during the Battle in the Centre of the Mind at the end of the second arc takes cues from The Backrooms.
  • Socks sees the shape of time as a fractal. At least one other person, on seeing the same shape, goes insane.
  • The Blood Moon appears to most people as a red sphere visible in the centre of the sky, everywhere on Earth. Socks is the only person who is able to see that this is in fact not the true form of the Blood Moon, but the Blood Moon's shadow. In other words, the entire Earth is covered by a four-dimensional being, and its shadow appears as a three-dimensional shape in the sky.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Several, in the alternate timeline in Arc II.
  • New Amsterdam, which became our world's New York, remained Dutch through to the twenty-first century. The Hudson is accordingly named the Noortrivier ("North River"). Additionally, the Twin Towers were not attacked on September 11th 2001; however, the Rijk Staat (our world's Empire State Building) is implied to have been attacked by terrorists.
  • The Iraq War didn't happen, but the Soviets invaded Persia in the early 2000s, causing an Iran War.
  • The Sino-Soviet split never happened, so the USSR and China merged into the "SSSR" in the 1960s.
  • There's a brief reference to a "President Gore" in the early 2000s. Al Gore, of course, famously lost to George W. Bush, despite winning the popular vote.
  • The successful American Revolution, with Dutch help, inspired a wave of bourgeois revolutions in Europe, meaning that most of Western Europe consists of republics, including our world's United Kingdom.
  • Roman Londinium was burned to the ground by Boudica, and rather than be rebuilt before becoming an English settlement, it was simply abandoned, with the Greater London area replaced in its entirety by "Tamesis National Park" - "Tamesis" being the Latin name for the River Thames. As a result, Winchester is the capital of England, which it effectively was in the 7th and 8th centuries.
  • Yakov Smirnoff never existed.
• Alternate Universe:
  • The Prime Timeline of the saga is set in an Alternate History that diverges from Real Life in the late 2000s. This timeline is permanently destroyed at the end of the first arc.
  • The second arc takes place in a fractured Alternate Timeline in which the United States of America is replaced with the Federated States of America; New York is still Dutch-speaking New Amsterdam; the Sino-Soviet split never happened, meaning the "SSSR" still exists in the 21st century; London is replaced by a massive national park, and as a result of this, the capital of England - an independent republic - is Winchester.
  • The third and fourth arcs take place in a restored timeline very similar to the Prime Timeline, but umbric no longer exists, and has been replaced by penumbric and rubric, resulting in the existence of vampires. Additionally, the COVID-19 Pandemic does not take place in 2020.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The vampires have absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They only want the genocide of the human race, and will not be swayed in this goal.
• Amazon Chaser: Dolly Mixture is not shy about expressing her sexual attraction to K-Os (an asexual) and Monica Eno (a soulless gynoid) in her giant form. The woman she ends up marrying, Chelsea Rose, is also notably tall, being almost six feet tall.
• Anachronic Order: "Insider" is told non-linearly as an Ontological Mystery. It opens In Medias Res, with alternating segments explaining How We Got Here.
• And I Must Scream: The fate of people with A-positive or B-positive blood during the Blood Moon Apocalypse.
• Another Dimension: The Notherethere, a place with infinite space and infinite time (and therefore, no space and no time) located outside the multiverse. It has one permanent resident, Magpie, the mysterious man who aids Socks a number of times.
• Apocalypse How: This happens multiple times.
  • Arc I ends with a Class X-4 event in which everything is destroyed and overwritten. Arc II undoes this, but not without consequences.
  • Arc III describes this happening to Geb's society in the distant past as a result of running out of penumbric, resulting in a Class 2, and the subsequent birth of modern civilisation.
  • Arc IV ends with a Class 1, which could have gone further if the heroes hadn't stopped it. The lasting impact is felt throughout the world, and the old order collapses as a result, bringing it down to a Class 0. Nobody is that bothered by it.
• Arc Villain:
  • Umbric, in the body of Cosimo Chesterton, aka "The Grey Man" is primary antagonist of the first two arcs. It succeeds in destroying the Universe and apparently kills K-Os.
  • The Captain, SAID-MI5 and the British government as a whole are the primary antagonists of the third arc, with the vampires existing in the background. The Captain is Demoted to Dragon for the fourth arc.
  • Geb, aka the Blood Moon is the Big Bad of the final arc, with his goal being to bring about the apocalypse.
• Arc Words:
  • Another time, another place...^Explanation Indicates that the world of Rollerskater is set in an Alternate Universe.
  • Beware the Grey Man.^Explanation The name given to the Arc Villain of the first two arcs.
  • Armageddon is coming.^Explanation First used at the end of the third arc as Foreshadowing for the apocalyptic events that follow.
• Artifact Title: As the saga progresses, K-Os becomes more of a bit player rather than the main character. She is, however, still a focal target for many of the story's antagonistic factions. The saga ends with the implication that K-Os destroys herself and becomes Rollerskater. That is to say, it is implied that she becomes the story that is named for her.
• Artistic License – Biology / Artistic License – History: Geb is said by Baird to have had AB-positive blood, which is why he was able to become the first vampire. Problem with that being that Geb lived during the Chalcolithic era, and AB-positive blood almost certainly didn't exist prior to the 16th century CE.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: After defeating Geb at Avebury, K-Os ascends to a realm outside time and space.
• Arsehole Victim:
  • It's hard to really feel sorry for Alfie and his gang when Mr. Ection murders them.
  • The bully and usurper, Barnabas Mortimer, suffers a Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Ate His Gun / Driven to Suicide: After ordering the launch of a nuclear missile at his own country, the Captain suffers a mental breakdown. He kills himself by placing his gun to his chin and pulling the trigger.
• Badass Biker: Chelsea Rose, who rides a magic motorcycle that is able to talk to her, albeit in Hulk Speak.
• Badass Normal:
  • Lewis and Ollie never develop powers in the entire run, but are able to hold their own against both umbric users and the British government.
  • A villainous example: The Captain is an emotionless Determinator with no special powers at all and still poses a significant threat to the heroes.
  • Emily Bush also has no powers, but is still savvy enough to trick the Captain into thinking she poses no threat to Project LUCIFER, enabling her to free Blake Parish from his imprisonment.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • At the end of Arc I, Chesterton succeeds in killing K-Os and destroying the universe.
  • At the end of "Ghosts", The Captain succeeds in capturing Daisy, taking her out of the action for the rest of the arc.
• Batman Gambit: Callan Crucefix's plan to kill Aloysius Mayer relies heavily on Mayer gloating over his corpse. Mayer, of course, takes the bait.
• Battle in the Centre of the Mind: The climax of Arc II features K-Os battling Umbric in the centre of Cosimo Chesterton's mind. It ends with both Umbric and Chesterton dying.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Geb wanted to live forever. He got his wish, but at the cost of his body, his people, and his brother, becoming the Blood Moon in the process.
• Berserk Button:
  • Liberty Parish calls forth a Galadriel-esque fury when she is under significant threat.
  • Chelsea Rose, a trans woman, reacts to being misgendered by a Villain of the Week by duly smashing her face in.
• Bittersweet Ending: The saga ends with an apocalyptic event that kills a significant proportion of the world's population and more or less destroys the previous geopolitical order, but things are being rebuilt, and it could have been a lot worse. Fliss, Paddy, Callan, Blake and Jules are all dead for good, and K-Os has seemingly departed the world forever. However, Chelsea and Dolly are married, Liberty revives Monica, and Socks does manage to find K-Os in another time and another place, after more than a year apart from her.
• Blessed with Suck: Some chaotic powers are pretty miserable to have.
  • Naomi Carter has the ability to "block" people in real life, roughly analogous to blocking people on social media, making her entire existence invisible to people, and all record of their existence - including shared text conversations - invisible to her and the blocked party. This is shown to be absolutely terrifying for both Naomi and the blocked person, as both people retain the memories of the other. At the end of "Ghosts", she becomes overwhelmed and blocks the entire human race, which causes her to Go Mad from the Isolation.
  • Ysabel Traum from "Lotus" has the ability to enter people's dreams and take control of them simply by making skin contact while in REM sleep. This is shown to be extremely deleterious to her health, however, as while she is in the dream world she is effectively not getting proper rest. As a result, she looks physically emaciated and prematurely aged.
  • Aidan, also from "Lotus", causes any room he enters to rise in temperature by one degree Celsius per minute, meaning he can't stay in one place for long, as he starts to literally cook people to death within a matter of minutes. Already a miserable state of affairs. However, on top of this, he feels unbearably cold, shivering uncontrollably and being visibly covered in ice crystals. K-Os tries to help him get control of his powers. Ysabel Traum inadvertently kills him before she can.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: K-Os is on the side of humanity, but she is still a representation of the impermanence of all things. She sees this as neither good or bad, but simply a fact of existence.
• Body Horror:
  • In "Lotus", Ysabel takes the form of a creature called "The Unliberty", which has stringy black hair and disembowels itself, the wound in its stomach turning into a vertical mouth.
  • People with blood types that only partially match that of Geb are transformed into hideous screaming monsters. Permanently.
• Book Ends:
  • The saga begins and ends with the words "They called him Socks."
  • One of the final scenes in the saga mirrors the opening scene with Daisy and Socks, in which Socks corrects Daisy on K-Os's proper name; this time it's Daisy who corrects Socks.
• Brave Scot: Callan Crucefix is a vengeful, slightly insane Vampire Hunter with a thick Scottish accent. Despite being in his late 60s, he is a formidable foe and considered The Dreaded by some vampires.
• Break the Cutie: Naomi Carter is a good-natured woman who has the power to block people in real life, making herself completely invisible to them. When she blocks the entire human race, she goes mad from the isolation. After her return, it's clear she's still traumatised from her ordeal, but by the epilogue, she is at least on the up and up.
• Breather Episode:
  • The Short Skate "Bookseller" is a mostly heartwarming story about Monica meeting with a lonely, bitter old bookseller and softening his heart. It's sandwiched between "She" and "Her", two fairly intense instalments that deal with homophobia and transphobia, and "Influence", which is heavy on Psychological Horror.
  • The Short Skate "Innocence" takes a step back from the action to discuss Liberty's childhood and her coming into the knowledge of death. It's Foreshadowing for the death of her father in the following chapter.
• Brick Joke: At the end of Arc I, Sven Gunnarson calls Chelsea an "uppity little tart", and Chelsea tells him she likes the name and should have it made into a T-shirt. At the end of Arc II, Chelsea is seen wearing a shirt that reads "UPPITY LITTLE TART", having stayed true to her word.
• Brown Note: Harmful sensation is a recurring theme in the saga.
  • Playing music on strings made from umbric can hurt people with chaotic powers, as K-Os and Socks find out.
  • Beholding the true form of K-Os is shown to cause insanity, followed by Your Head A-Splode.
  • Ysabel Traum sees the true form of time and space and it instantly causes her to start screaming, before she suffers an aneurysm that leaves her brain-dead.
  • When Socks beholds the true form of the Blood Moon he suffers a Psychic Nosebleed and vomits repeatedly.
• The Bully:
  • Barnabas Mortimer is a rotten piece of work who picks on the timid and meek Douglas Baird. When it turns out that Baird is a vampire, it does not end well for him.
  • Alfie and his gang in the Short Skate "Alfie" are shown harassing commuters and homeless people on Manchester Market Street. Then they decide to pick on Mr. Ection. Oops.
• Butch Lesbian: Downplayed with Chelsea Rose. Chelsea is a trans woman and presents feminine, but eschews dresses and makeup in favour of jeans, T-shirts and leather jackets. It is stated in "Her" that Chelsea's choice of clothing is a result of her realising that there is more than one way to be a woman.
• Call-Back: In "Checkmate", the Captain kills a soldier who tells him that Chelsea, Daisy and Dolly escaped. The narration describes this act with the sentence "The Captain pulled the trigger." Later, when the Captain kills himself, the same sentence is used to describe his action.
• Came Back Wrong: The Grey Man is able to resurrect people as umbric.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "I've told ye once, I've told ye a t'ousand times — me name's Paddy!" (Paddy)
  • "Bike's magic." (Chelsea Rose)
• Chaste Hero: K-Os is aromantic and asexual, and is bewildered by Dolly's attraction to her.
• Cloudcuckoolander: After gaining a base pattern, Monica Eno becomes very airy-fairy, given that she is literally a newborn in an adult body. This is both Played for Comedy and Played for Drama.
• Close-Enough Timeline: Arcs III and IV take place in a timeline very similar to the Prime Timeline depicted in Arc I, as a result of an imperfect Reset Button at the end of the second arc.
• Coat Full of Contraband: In "Havoc", Socks is offered drugs by a man who pulls a bag of them out of his jacket.
• Crazy-Prepared: Callan Crucefix. See Dead Man's Switch and Thanatos Gambit.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Danny St. James sees the true form of K-Os and goes insane, then his head explodes.
  • Ella Foe bursts Derrick le Prince's internal organs, then incinerates him while he's still conscious.
  • Little Alfie's parents have all their blood turned into umbric and are stabbed with it from the inside out.
  • Chelsea Rose crashes a propeller plane into Chroma, resulting in her being shredded into tiny pieces in the process.
  • Most of Amber Stork's victims in "Carnivore" are torn apart as though by a wild animal.
  • The unnamed talent show judge in "Spontaneous" has a fire start inside his chest cavity and as a result, he spontaneously combusts while alive and breathing.
  • Ferdinand of the Circus dies when his body is forcibly extruded through a metal grating by a falling weight. Painful, but mercifully quick.
  • Barnabas Mortimer dies after having his heart ripped out of his chest and eaten in front of him by Baird.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • At the end of Arc II, K-Os spends an entire chapter fighting and killing Umbric in Cosimo Chesterton's body, which turns out to have taken a couple of seconds in real time, tops.
  • At the end of Arc IV, K-Os holds back on fighting the Blood Moon because she fears her own death, but when she does fight it, she wins almost instantly on account of the fact that the Blood Moon has put itself into a weak position.
• Dark Fantasy: The saga features frequent depictions of graphic violence in common with Horror while still being very obviously a Fantasy work.
• Darkest Hour:
  • At the end of Arc I, K-Os is apparently killed by the Grey Man and the universe is destroyed. Socks flees the universe using his powers, leaving the fates of the other heroes uncertain.
  • At Arc IV's climax, Douglas Baird tricks K-Os into releasing the Blood Moon from its status as Sealed Evil in a Can, and it proceeds to cause the apocalypse. Almost every named character suffers a major loss as a result.
• Dead Man's Switch: Callan straps a suicide belt of bombs around his waist and hooks it up to electrodes that he sticks to his chest. When his heart stops, the bombs go off.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: K-Os gradually softens over the course of the arcs, though never loses her grumpiness when it comes to dealing with humans.
• Demoted to Dragon: The Captain attains this status after Dolly Mixture maims him in Wiltshire.
• Determinator: The Captain will stop at nothing to complete his mission. Even after being maimed by Chelsea and Dolly, he still manages to shoot his second in command to prevent a nuclear strike.
• Different States of America: In the Alternate Timeline depicted in Arc II, the United States of America is replaced by the "Federated States of America", while old New York is still New Amsterdam.
• Distant Finale: The final scene in the "Aftermath", the epilogue to the entire saga, takes place about a year and a half after the end of the main story.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Barnabas Mortimer is hinted to be a vampire from "Carnivore" onwards, making his ascension to the premiership seem to be part of a vampire plot to take over the British government. However, in "Revelations", he is revealed to be Human All Along. Unfortunately, this information comes a little too late: the actual vampire mole in the government, Douglas Baird, tears his heart out, killing him instantly.
• Disney Villain Death: Mr. Ection dies after falling from the top of the tallest building in Manchester. His remains are described as resembling a pinkish puddle.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: K-Os is not a death-god, per se, but she is the personification of entropy, which makes aging and death inevitable. She sees this as neither a good, nor a bad thing, but simply a fact of reality. Her enemies are usually people who cannot face up to this reality and will do anything to delay or prevent it.
• Double Agent:
  • Fliss acts as a double agent for K-Os by defecting from K-Os's side to the umbric users' side. However, it turns out that she actually did defect, underwent a Face–Heel Turn, and is now working for the bad guys. Dolly, her ex, does not take this news well.
  • Paddy plays this straight in "Checkmate". He apparently betrays his allies after being forced to by the vampires, but in actual fact, he called in Callan Crucefix - the biggest bane of vampires besides penumbric - to give the heroes an out. The reveal of the betrayal costs him his life.
• Downer Ending:
  • "Recuperation" ends with Daisy becoming angry with Socks over Jules's death and ending their friendship.
  • "Motley" ends with Dolly telling K-Os she will never forgive her for what happened between her and Fliss.
  • "Death" ends with K-Os dying, taking the entire Universe with her, and leaving most of the cast to an Uncertain Doom.
  • "Ghosts" ends with The Captain capturing Daisy and interning her by force, and Naomi Carter, whose unstable powers allow her to make herself completely invisible, disappearing for good.
  • "Rubric" ends with all the cast forced to go on the run after a narrowly avoided nuclear attack on Wiltshire. To make matters worse, Barnabas Mortimer has just been made Prime Minister.
  • "Checkmate" ends with half the cast captured, the other half on the run again, Paddy's death, and the Lucky Devil, which has been a fixture of the series since the second chapter, being utterly destroyed. This serves to show that the climax of the saga has arrived.
• The Dragon:
  • Chroma acts as this to Chesterton in Arc II.
  • Douglas Baird is revealed to be the Dragon to the Blood Moon in the latter half of Arc IV.
• Early Instalment Weirdness: In the first couple of chapters, K-Os is clearly supposed to be a human being with powers, rather than something else. This is later Retconned in-story.
• Eldritch Abomination / Humanoid Abomination:
  • K-Os herself can be considered a somewhat friendly one of these. A man, upon beholding her true form, is driven insane. Additionally, she seems indifferent, at best, to human affairs, except where they obstruct her. However, she is also shown to have spent long enough living among humanity to have gained some faith in them.
  • Umbric, seen at the end of the second arc, is the antithesis of K-Os, and resembles a monstrous humanoid covered in red eyes. It fits this trope to an even greater extent when it goes One-Winged Angel.
  • The Blood Moon, aka Geb, the former philosopher-king of a forgotten civilisation. It is described as a force of pure, insatiable hunger, and is perpetually starving. K-Os describes it as "the death that does not die". In "Armageddon" it is revealed by Socks that the sphere other characters see in the sky is not the Blood Moon's true form - rather, that's just its shadow.
• Ensemble Cast: The saga starts out predominantly following Socks and K-Os, but from about halfway through the first arc onwards, Socks and K-Os spend less and less time in the limelight, and other characters get major Character Development as a result.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
  • The Captain's birth name was literally erased from the records. He is known only by his title for the entire duration of the run and his birth name is never revealed, nor is it known to any of the characters.
  • Several Project LUCIFER figures are also unnamed in a similar way, including the Project Director, the Project Coordinator and the Armed Forces Liaison. The Project Director's name is eventually revealed to be the rather mundane-sounding "David Smith".
• Eye Colour Change: After Ella fronts for the first time outside of playing guitar for the band, the body’s eyes change to iridescent silver, a change which stays even when Daisy returns to fronting.
• Eye Scream:
  • In "Beginnings", K-Os stabs Tanizaki in the eye.
  • Dolly blasts the Captain in the face, which destroys his left eye. He wears an eyepatch for the remainder of the story, covering the empty socket.
• Face–Heel Turn: Fliss switched sides and became The Mole prior to the events of the story, but this isn't revealed until "Motley".
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Downplayed in "Insider". Much of the action takes place "inside" Monica Eno's internal matrix, but because she is a penumbric homunculus, it's not quite the same thing as being injected into a human bloodstream, or swallowed. Liberty even dismisses the idea that she and Socks have been miniaturised, but rather states that they have been transported to a kind of pocket universe.
• Fembot: Monica Eno is one of these. Officially, she's a "penumbric homunculus", but in practice she's a clockwork android.
• Fertile Feet: Plants tend to spring up wherever Liberty Parish treads. They tend to be grass and weeds, rather than the usual decorative flowers associated with the trope.
• Fighter-Launching Sequence: Blake Parish sees one of these after RAF fighter jets are scrambled to intercept him.
• First-Episode Twist: The first chapter plays out as a Slice of Life story set at a university for its first third. Then, suddenly, it turns out that there's a lot more to K-Os than it seems. From then on, it becomes a New Weird story.
• Forced Transformation: The Blood Moon's influence mutates anyone with Geb's AB-positive blood type into a vampire. Anyone with blood that is only partially compatible (AB-negative, A or B type blood) is turned into a horrific monster that is fully aware of what has happened to it. Only people with O-type blood are spared.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: The main ensemble alone consists of six characters who all get varying degrees of time in the limelight.^note Socks, Daisy, K-Os, Harri-Bec, Dolly Mixture, and Chelsea Rose This later doubles to twelve.^note With the addition of Liberty Parish, Blake Parish, Emily Bush, Monica Eno, Callan Crucefix and Nasmeen Osmani That's not even counting major villain factions and other side characters, all of whom have their own ongoing subplots.
• Funetik Aksent: The Blood Moon speaks almost entirely in phonetically-spelled growled threats. For example, it addresses Socks as "ZDEEVUNN OKSSFERRD".
• The Gadfly: Chelsea Rose. She seemingly exists mainly to annoy other characters, be they friend or foe. She gets better as the saga goes on.
• Giant Woman:
  • Monica Eno has the ability to turn into a Humungous Mecha giantess as part of her "Hallelujah Capacity", which she does in a Big Damn Heroes moment towards the end of Arc III. Dolly is quite impressed, to Chelsea's chagrin.
  • In "Influence", Harri-Bec appears to resolve the installment's seemingly irresolvable deadlock by becoming a giant in psychic space and physically tossing "Lucy" out of London.
• Go Mad from the Revelation:
  • In "Oscillations", Danny St. James beholds the true form of K-Os and is driven mad. Then, his head blows up.
  • In "Lotus", Ysabel Traum is shown a Brown Note in the form of a fractal image of time while invading Socks's mind, and it destroys her brain, leaving her in a vegetative state.
  • In "Armageddon", The Captain suffers a mental breakdown after witnessing the Blood Moon and launching a nuclear weapon at Wiltshire. He shoots himself before he can face the consequences.
  • In the epilogue, the Director of Project LUCIFER is revealed to have suffered a nervous breakdown after Blake Parish escapes, and is found muttering "nine o'clock" to himself over and over.
• Granola Girl: Discussed. Chelsea repeatedly refers to Liberty as "Hippie Girl".
• Green Thumb: Liberty Parish can make plants grow on command. She also has Fertile Feet, which means she can't stay indoors for too long, otherwise plants start to grow through the floor and damage the foundations. This is because she is the aspect of Ur that was given to the Earth.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: How Mr. Ection is ultimately killed - he forces himself to obey the logic of his own Toon Physics world and dies as a result.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Chelsea Rose. She has albinism, which affects her ability to see. She rides a motorcycle using both the bike’s magical properties and her hearing to ride.
  • Socks, after losing his arm.
• Healing Hands: Liberty Parish can heal through touch. Injuries from which an injured person cannot recover remain fatal, as happens when she tries to heal her father. She is, however, able to revive Monica Eno.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Paddy double crosses the vampires to give his allies a chance to escape, and is killed as a result.
  • Callan Crucefix dies getting his revenge for his brother's murder.
  • Monica Eno dies protecting Socks and Harri-Bec from rubric monsters, using up the chaotic energy that makes up her base pattern to do it.
  • Blake Parish absorbs all the force of a thermonuclear warhead airbursting, counteracting the deaths of five-thousand people by dying five-thousand times in an instant. When Liberty finds him, he's barely recognisable.
• Heroic Safe Mode: After Monica dies in his arms, Socks becomes determined to destroy the Blood Moon. His Tranquil Fury is so intense that the Blood Moon, which has spent the entire story intimidating Socks, is frightened by it.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Tanizaki is stabbed with his own knife.
  • Mr. Ection dies after applying Toon Physics to himself - he runs off a cliff and looks down, then holds up a sign that reads "YIPE!" before falling. He does not survive the fall.
• Hulk Speak: Chelsea's bike speaks exclusively in stilted, brutish speech to indicate that it isn't as smart as a human. It always refers to Chelsea as "Pretty Mistress".
• Human All Along: Barnabas Mortimer, despite looking like a vampire, is fully human. Douglas Baird, who pretended to be timid and bullied by Mortimer, was actually the one manipulating things in the vampires' favour behind the scenes.
• I Have Many Names: "K-Os" is ostensibly a back-formation from the name "Katherine Osbourne", but throughout the saga she is also known as The Threnody, The Effigy, Trinity, Jane Doe, Catherynne Wheely-Boots, Lilac, Eris, Tiamat, The Envoy, The Woman, She, and The Goddess, among others. She is also referred to consistently as "The Rollerskater".
• Immune to Bullets: Socks’ left hand is immune to umbric, including bullets made from it.
• Insistent Terminology: It's not "magic", it's "ontological manipulation". It's not a "soul", it's a "base pattern". And it's not "telepathy", it's "the strings".
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): New York is replaced by New Amsterdam in the second arc. People there speak a variety of Dutch known as "Amerikaans" as a first language, similar to French-speaking Canada in Real Life.
• It's Personal: The reason for Callan Crucefix's suicide mission at the vampires' mansion: The vampires residing there killed his brother in 1964, and he wants them dead.
• Killed Off for Real: Jules, Fliss, all the umbric users, Cosimo Chesterton (and Umbric), Gabriel Seymer, Warrant Officer Carlson, Paddy, Callan, Barnabas Mortimer, The Captain, Blake Parish and Douglas Baird do not survive the saga.
• Kill the Cutie: Monica dies very suddenly in a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of "Apocalypse". Socks is left utterly distraught, and is filled with a new resolve to destroy the Blood Moon once and for all.
• Knight Templar: The Captain is motivated solely by his dedication to British national security and to the British monarchy. Being forced to launch nuclear weapons at his own nation proves too much for him, causing him to shoot himself.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The illustration for the story hosted on the author's blog features K-Os in the getup she wears from the end of the second arc onwards, thus spoiling the survival of her apparent death at the end of the first arc.
• Laughing Mad:
  • Danny St. James laughs insanely after beholding K-Os's true form.
  • The Captain, of all people, begins laughing uncontrollably after launching a nuclear weapon at Wiltshire, dooming thousands of people to die.
• Left Hanging: We never find out what happens after a jogger becomes infected with "Lucy" after Harri-Bec throws her out of London.
• Ley Line: The strings work as "psychic pathways", similar to ley lines. Certain areas are considered to be nodes of power in the strings. Trafalgar Square in London and Avebury in Wiltshire are among them, figuring greatly into the story's climax.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: The Lucky Devil is a pub that moves around London, altering streets as it moves.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Dolly Mixture is a very feminine lesbian, wearing makeup and sporting a wardrobe of pretty clothes.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle:
  • In the first instalment, Socks wakes up to find that he’s misplaced his Timberland shoes. He also loses his Reeboks near the end of Arc I.
  • Dolly loses a shoe in "Rubric," but regains it when Socks reverses time back to a "save point" thanks to Magpie. She then uses the same shoe to clock the Captain in the side of the head, once again losing the shoe.
• Magic A Is Magic A:
  • Mostly averted. The magic system in Rollerskater is extremely soft, to the point that it's practically liquid. This is probably because characters derive their powers from a breakdown in usual physical laws, rather than magic being a physical law, as in other works of fantasy.
  • Played straight in "Carnivore": Despite the presence of supernatural elements in her world, Harri-Bec initially refuses to believe that vampires exist, even acknowledging that within the story's world, Count Dracula is a fictional character. As it turns out, however, they are horribly, horribly real.
• Magic by Any Other Name: "Chaotic powers" and "ontological manipulation".
• Masquerade: Following the "Episode", in which everyone on Earth loses a week due to timey-wimey shenanigans, the British government puts in place the Secret Anomalous Investigations Division of MI5 (or SAID-MI5), who act as Masquerade Enforcers.
• Meaningful Name:
  • K-Os.^Explanation Homophonic with "Chaos".
  • Dolly Mixture.^Explanation "Dolly mixture" is a type of very sweet fondant candy sold mainly in the United Kingdom. Dolly's powers let her turn sugar into a fissile material like uranium or plutonium.
  • Amber Stork.^Explanation Anagram of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.
  • Martin S. Martinez.^Explanation His name sounds like it is spoken twice, which reflects his Self-Duplication abilities.
• Mental World:
  • Daisy and Ella have a world inside their head. In its first description, Daisy is sitting on a school chair and able to see what’s going on in the outside world through a CRT monitor. When she exits the headspace, she, at least at one point, crawls through the television. After Jules dies, the two see a representation of his body in the table in the headspace, with a CRT monitor on his head, showing a dead channel. This space changes to fit the needs of the plot, first to resemble a beach with black sand, and then to resemble a nice Versailles bedroom that eerily has no doors.
  • K-Os battles Chesterton in his bizarre, fractured mindscape at the end of Arc II.
• Mind Manipulation: All characters with chaotic powers can do this to some degree. Socks calls it a "Jedi mind-trick".
• Mind Virus: "Lucy", a sentient memetic hazard released by the British government to try and kill Socks and Dolly. We never find out what happens after she escapes into the wider environment...
• Monster Clown: Mr. Ection wears clown makeup, and has Reality Warper powers.
• Mortal Wound Reveal:
  • In "Motley", it’s revealed that the screams Alfie slept through were those of his parents being stabbed. From inside their own bodies.
  • When Paddy is attacked by vampires in "Checkmate", he is shown to be mortally wounded not long after.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Blood Moon (aka The Devouring, The Howling Maw, The Destroyer, Formless-and-Empty, Crawling Chaos).
• New Weird: An epic saga which borrows tropes from Slice of Life, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror, set in a world very similar to our own, but for the presence of chaotic powers, magical robots, talking motorcycles, vampires, and Eldritch Abominations, all while taking various aesthetic influences from Surrealism, Postmodernism and Western esotericism. Yep, it's New Weird alright.
• Nightmare Sequence: When her attempt to get information out of Socks by giving him a wet dream fails, the Captain authorises Ysabel Traum to initiate a "limbic-system potentiation attack", which involves her taking a monstrous form that engages in extreme Body Horror.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The "Arsonist" mini-arc in Arc III features the immolation of a TV talent show judge and the attempted assassination of a famous media billionaire, neither of whom are named directly, but whose identities are implied.
• No Ontological Inertia: All of Geb's thralls are destroyed after K-Os annihilates him. Justified in that they depended on his blood pattern to go on existing, and without that single point of failure, they are obliterated.
• Not Quite Dead / Only Mostly Dead:
  • The umbric users killed in previous instalments are all returned to life by the Grey Man at the end of the first arc.
  • K-Os herself apparently dies at the end of the first arc, but returns at the end of the second.
  • K-Os apparently dies again at the end of the final arc, but appears once more to Socks in the closing paragraphs.
  • Monica Eno dies fighting off the mutant rubric monsters at Tottenham Court Road. She is later revived by Liberty, who chooses to raise Monica as her daughter.
• Not So Stoic: The Captain orders a nuclear launch on Avebury and immediately suffers a nervous breakdown, going Laughing Mad before shooting himself.
• Nuclear Option: Protocol Omega allows the at-will launch of a specially-adapted Trident missile at a target in Britain, with the specific intention of neutralising anything that happens to be under it when it goes off. The protocol specifically calls for a 100-kiloton W76 thermonuclear warhead to airburst 1km above the Earth's surface, thereby minimising fallout and casualties on the ground, while maximising localised destruction. This is not taken lightly at all and is considered a last resort option, when all other options to contain and control the situation have been exhausted. Protocol Omega is initiated twice in the saga: First at the end of Arc III, in which the launch is aborted Just in Time by The Captain, and again at the end of Arc IV, in which the missile is launched and the warhead does detonate over Wiltshire, but Blake Parish prevents it from killing anybody or doing any damage, at the cost of his own life.
• Older Than They Look: Ysabel Traum looks thin and prematurely aged due to her dream-powers, presumably because she can't really sleep.
• Old Master: Callan Crucefix is in his late 60s, having been twelve years old in 1964. Despite this, he's a pretty formidable fighter, having been a Vampire Hunter since at least the mid-Seventies.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Umbric loses control of its form at the end of Arc II and becomes a screaming mass that tries to kill K-Os and little Cosimo.
  • This is what happened to Geb after his brother went to war with him. He ended up trapped in the form of the Blood Moon forever, immortal but formless and starving.
• One-Word Title: Rollerskater, which is an unconventional spelling of what is normally two words: "roller skater"; or hyphenated: "roller-skater".
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • K-Os herself is only known by her nickname, which is ostensibly a back-formation from her full name, "Katherine Osbourne". Subverted in that her full name is also a false name, as what K-Os actually represents is unnameable.
  • The nickname "Socks" is actually a clipping of Socks's legal name, "Stephen Oxford", but almost nobody calls him that.
• Ontological Mystery: "Insider" opens with two characters who resemble Socks and Liberty waking up in a strange white room with no memory of who they were before that moment. The instalment then goes on to explain how they came to be in that situation.
• Our Souls Are Different: Souls are referred to as "base patterns" and represent a person's unique identity. Base patterns can be destroyed by memetic hazards, and can also live on in some capacity after the body dies. They can also be created, as Monica gains a base pattern via Socks and Liberty.
• Our Time Travel Is Different: Time in Rollerskater is not depicted as a "time vortex", as in Doctor Who, but as a dense thicket of events, referred to as the "root system". Time is shown to be rhizomatic in structure, non-hierarchical and chaotic, with no event taking causative privilege over another. Time is also fractal. Only Socks and Magpie can really comprehend it and how to travel through it.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires in Rollerskater are strong and require constant feeding on blood, as is tradition. However, they are not repelled by garlic or other classic vampire-banes. They can easily be mistaken for a normal human being. They also do not have to be invited in to a building in order to enter it. Their weakness is penumbric, which damages their bodies in a similar way to the traditional depictions of sunlight and crucifixes, and a sufficiently powerful force (such as a bomb or a freight train) can obliterate their bodies. One cannot be turned into a vampire by being bitten, and vampires invariably kill their prey. Also, the transformation into a vampire is a willing one. At least, until the Blood Moon arrives on the scene...
• Outside-Context Problem: Pretty much nobody in the main cast thought vampires were real. Except, of course, for K-Os, who assumed they were extinct. They weren't.
• Physical God:
  • K-Os appears to be one of these (and was even named "Eris" and "Tiamat" at earlier points in her life). However, she claims to be something beyond a god, proclaiming gods to be "puny".
  • Liberty and her father, Blake, are small in stature but have Superman-level strength, strange powers, increased longevity and no need to sleep or eat, owing to the effect of their symbiotic relationship with penumbric and the strings.
  • The People of the Valley became as gods thanks to the properties of penumbric. When the penumbric ran out, Geb and his followers became the first vampires, in an effort to preserve their godhood.
• "Pop!" Goes the Human:
  • Just before Socks passes out in "Beginnings", he sees K-Os use her Power Incontinence to blow up Tanizaki.
  • Dolly’s ability allows her to start a chain reaction using the glucose naturally found in human blood, which ends with Fliss blowing up, at least within her Blossom World.
• Power Incontinence:
  • In the first couple of arcs, whenever K-Os gets blood on her skates she loses control of her powers. This seems to be fixed once she gets the Sword of Jerusalem.
  • After seeing the true shape of time, Ysabel Traum causes a "psionic criticality" that destroys the brain of every conscious being within a certain radius, and leaves her brain-dead.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Liberty Parish is always barefoot. With the exception of her final appearance, in which she wears a pair of thin shoes at Chelsea and Dolly's wedding, at the venue's insistence.
• Pun: Quite a few.
  • Harri-Bec's name is a pun on Harry Beck, designer of the London Underground map.
  • Dolly Mixture's nom de guerre is a reference to dolly mixtures, a type of candy sold in the United Kingdom.
  • Ella Foe's name is a pun on "LFO", which stands for "Low-Frequency Oscillation".
  • "Terminal Felicity" is a pun on "terminal velocity".
  • Monica Eno's name is the result of Socks mishearing her request to "Please designate moniker".
  • Mr. Ection's name is a pun on "misdirection".
• Present Day: The saga is mainly set in a time period roughly concurrent to when it was written. More specifically, the first chapter takes place in December 2018, just a few months before the first chapter came out. The first arc takes place from late Winter to Spring 2019, while the second takes place over the course of one week in Spring 2019. After a short Time Skip, the third arc takes place from Autumn to early Winter 2019. The fourth and final arc takes place in the first half of 2020, albeit without the COVID-19 Pandemic. The epilogue takes place at various points between Summer 2020 and Autumn 2021, ending in Autumn 2021.
• Psychic Nosebleed:
  • Liberty suffers these when taking on particularly strenuous tasks in the strings.
  • Ysabel Traum and Socks both suffer these when she invades Socks's dreams. Ysabel Traum suffers a particularly profuse one when she has an aneurysm after seeing the fractal shape of time.
  • Socks suffers another nosebleed when he beholds the true shape of the Blood Moon, something nobody else can see. It also causes him to vomit.
• Psychological Horror:
  • "Influence" features Lucy, a Mind Virus that infects people upon hearing a certain sequence of words, creating a hopeless and paranoid atmosphere, particularly from the perspective of poor Monica, who has the mind of a child. She is finally defeated by Harri-Bec intervening.
  • "Lotus" features an extended Dream Sequence that becomes a Nightmare Sequence. The antagonist of the week, Ysabel Traum, has the ability to invade a person's dreams by touching them. The nightmare she inflicts on Socks is rife with Body Horror and Surreal Horror.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Mr. Ection is obsessed with old cartoons, has a profound lisp as well as a rhotacism, and is depicted stamping his feet childishly when things don't go his way.
• Pun-Based Title: The title of the chapter "Insider" doesn't make much sense until you realise that it sounds like "inside her" - much of the action takes place inside Monica Eno's internal matrix.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Chesterton's plan to kill K-Os and create a universe without entropy results in a rigidly deterministic universe and leaves him in a severely weakened catatonic state. Even once he regains his senses, he's still left on the back foot, because K-Os planned ahead.
• Reality Warper:
  • Terminal Felicity has some of the strongest chaotic powers in the entire saga, able to create entire pocket realities. This proves to be bad news when she makes a Face–Heel Turn.
  • The Circus are an entire squad of Reality Warpers, consisting of Mr. Ection, Pretty Priscilla, Martin S. Martinez and Ferdinand. It turns out that they are the result of debris left over from when Terminal Felicity was killed, as it left such a huge scar in reality that not even two universal resets could undo the damage.
• Really 700 Years Old: K-Os is sixty-six million years old, which makes her older than the Himalayas, including Qomolangma / Mount Everest. She also had rollerskates before they were even invented. Don't ask how that works.
• Red Herring:
  • Socks's Spider-Sense makes him think a guy looking at him weird in a queue for Daisy's show is an umbric user. Turns out he just has a Coat Full of Contraband and wants to sell him some drugs. It turns out that Socks's Spider-Sense was accurate. He realises who the real umbric users are just a second too late.
  • Barnabas Mortimer is in fact not a vampire - it's Baird who is The Mole.
• Riddle for the Ages: What is Magpie's whole deal? Nobody will ever know.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Callan's whole life has been one long rampage of revenge for his brother's death, but it reaches a whole other level when Paddy dies.
• Robo Speak: Monica refers to herself as "this unit" and responds affirmatively to orders with "This unit will comply." This is later averted when Socks and Liberty inadvertently give her a base pattern.
• Rollerblade Good: Surprisingly downplayed. K-Os rarely does any skating tricks. She's a great dancer, however.
• Rotating Protagonist: Starting with the second installment, we follow the story from the point-of-view of a character that is not Socks. "Interstate", the second installment of the second arc, is the first installment to feature neither Socks, nor K-Os, as POV characters.
• Rotten Rock & Roll: The Light Havoc are an evil Shoegaze band, consisting of Derrick le Prince, Danny St. James and Sven Gunnarson.
• Running Gag:
  • K-Os repeatedly refers to the nickname "Socks" as a "stupid name".
  • Whenever her bike does something amazing or improbable, Chelsea Hand Waves away the explanation with "Bike's magic."
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Blood Moon was sealed away by its brother, Great Ur. However, it is powerful enough that it can communicate with (and threaten) beings like Socks through the strings, even while sealed away.
• Self-Duplication: Martin S. Martinez has this ability, with the caveat that he can only make so many copies before they become degraded and weak. One character likens this to a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, each successive duplicate losing detail. Additionally, the copies are psychic projections, and as such they leave out distinguishing marks that don't fit Martinez's idealised conception of himself, meaning that the heroes can identify the original Martinez by looking for the one that has a flawed appearance.
• Shapeshifting:
  • On occasion, K-Os is known to assume the form of someone else as a disguise. She is also shown to change her outfit to suit the times she lives in.
  • Chroma is able to change her appearance to that of anyone else. She disguises herself as K-Os in "Time", but Socks figures out that it's a disguise because she's simply too jovial to be K-Os.
• Shout-Out
  • The saga's Arc Words, "Another time, another place..." are borrowed from the Opening Scroll of the Canadian version of Rock and Rule.
  • Tanizaki's name is a shoutout to Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, who wrote an essay on aesthetics entitled In Praise of Shadows.
  • Socks says in "Anxiety" that he thought K-Os was an alien, expecting to find a TARDIS hidden somewhere. He also refers to K-Os's Mind Manipulation as a "Jedi mind-trick" in the same chapter.
  • Socks refers to his Spider-Sense powers as his "Spidey-sense".
  • In "Recuperation", K-Os says she’s good at fitting into tight spaces. Socks responds with "Ooh, matron!"
  • Fliss's "Blossom World" is a reference to The Beach Boys' song "Good Vibrations".
  • Chesterton's Mental World at the end of Arc II takes clear influence from The Backrooms.
  • The Jerusalem Arsenal is a reference to the hymn "Jerusalem" by William Blake: The Bow of Burning Gold, Arrows of Desire, Spear of Clarity, Chariot of Fire and Sword of Jerusalem are all lifted from the lyrics in the second verse.
  • Blake Parish's name is also a reference to William Blake.
  • The Director of Project LUCIFER directly quotes Paradise Lost when observing Blake Parish's condition. Additionally, the name of the project is a reference to that Lucifer, to whom Blake is directly compared.
  • Among the Names to Run Away from Really Fast given for the Blood Moon are "Formless-and-Empty" and "Crawling Chaos".
  • Mr. Ection pursues Daisy and Nas through a world of canyons and sandstone cliffs, while taking the form of a coyote. He even dies in Wile E. Coyote-esque fashion, by running off a cliff and looking down, holding up a sign that reads "YIPE!" before falling, dying on impact.
  • Mr. Ection refers to the cartoon world as his "toy world", which is a nod to the Cardiacs demo album of the same name. Additionally, Ection is based visually on Tim Smith◊, the frontman of Cardiacs.
  • Towards the end of "Her", Chelsea quotes Simone de Beauvoir's famous assertion that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Dolly is surprised that Chelsea has read Beauvoir, and Chelsea admits she found the quote on Facebook.
  • The fourth arc features numerous references to "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats. It turns out they're the psychic trigger to bring Naomi Carter back into the world.
• Slice of Life: While the saga features a lot of High Concepts, it borrows a lot from the slice-of-life genre. Chapters like "Anxiety" and "Bookseller" feature no action at all and are mainly focused around interpersonal drama, dialogue and experience rather than big action pieces.
• Soul Jar: Daisy/Ella’s guitar holds the spirit of Jules.
• Spider-Sense: Due to his nascent Time Master powers, Socks can feel when bad things are about to happen. He even calls it his "Spidey-sense". This doesn't mean he can't misinterpret the instinct, however.
• The Spook: The Captain. He is nameless, having had his birth records and entire life history expunged. He is stoic to a fault, and nobody knows of his life before joining the British armed forces. Multiple characters on all sides of the story's conflict mention that he gives them the creeps.
• Stable Time Loop: Socks's survival to the end of the saga relies on his future self saving his past self, via Magpie. Yeah, it's that kind of story.
• Sudden Name Change:
  • In-Universe example: Socks's parents named him Stephen Joseph Oxford...except, they actually named him Stephen James Oxford. Socks is the only one who remembers this, and even his birth certificate has changed.
  • Another In-Universe example happens when Socks enters the Notherethere, forgetting his name. He is referred to exclusively as "The Wanderer" until he regains the memory of his name.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Captain is run over with a motorbike by Chelsea and is shot in the face by Dolly Mixture. This blinds him in one eye and also leaves him with severe injuries that he never fully recovers from, including walking with a limp and requiring an inhaler due to suffering a collapsed lung.
• Surrealism: The very first supernatural thing that happens in the saga is that the main characters get attacked by their own shadows. It only gets weirder from there.
• Split Personality: Daisy and Ella Foe are two distinct people sharing the same body.
• The Stoic:
  • K-Os rarely shows any emotion besides "mild annoyance", but very occasionally cracks a smile or laughs.
  • The Captain plays this straight. He never shows emotion, to the point that his skin is unnaturally smooth. When he begins laughing uncontrollably in his final chapter, you know his number is up.
• Taking You with Me: Callan didn't intend to escape Aloysius Mayer's castle with his life. He destroys his old enemy in a suicide bombing.
• Telepathy: "The strings", introduced in Arc III, are a kind of network in "psychic space", that links all sentiences together, similar to Ley Lines. With enough practice, a person can use them to communicate with others over very long distances.
• Terminally Dependent Society: The Great Geb's empire was dependent on penumbric to exist. When all the penumbric within the empire's borders ran out, Geb went insane, and ended up becoming the first vampire.
• Thanatos Gambit:
  • The end of Arc II reveals that K-Os had a plan for if she was killed by Chesterton - namely, she splits herself into three fragments (The Threnody, Trinity and Effigy) and distributes them over three different points in space. She haunts Chesterton as the Threnody, which goads him into attacking her with the Sword of Jerusalem. The Threnody then uses it to reunite the three fragments, returning her to her true form.
  • Callan Crucefix knew that Aloysius Mayer would kill him, so rather than try to fight him, he instead strapped a suicide belt of bombs around his waist and let Mayer kill him, so the bombs would go off when his heart stopped.
• This Cannot Be!: Chesterton utters this the moment K-Os comes back to life, just moments before she curb-stomps him.
• Time Abyss: K-Os is sixty-six million years old, having come into existence at the end of the last geologic period. She was present when Homo sapiens first evolved and took their form to live among them in the knowledge she would one day have to sacrifice her life to save them.
• Time Master: Socks becomes one of these by the end of the saga and it is implied he will eventually learn how to stop the flow of time.
• Time Skip: Between Arcs II and III there is a skip of a few months. There is also a short skip between Arcs III and IV of a few weeks.
• Time Stands Still: Magpie saves Socks and Liberty this way in "Rubric". It turns out that he learned it from Socks's future self.
• Title Drop: Most chapters featuring K-Os have at least one character referring to her as "the Rollerskater", which is always unconventionally written as one word.
• To Be Continued: "Another time, another place..." is used in this way at the end of each instalment. At the end of the first arc, it's replaced with " no time, no place…", while for the second arc, it's switched to "Another place, another time..." to signify the Alternate Timeline.
• Toon Physics: Mr. Ection's powers let him summon Looney Tunes-esque gags like falling anvils and even entire cartoon worlds. The effect of dropping an anvil on someone's head is, however, gruesomely realistic. As it turns out, Ection must himself obey the "laws" of cartoon physics, and is ultimately killed as part of a Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress gag.
• Touch of Death: Umbric is supposed to have this effect on people with chaotic powers. Even soundwaves vibrating off of it can be harmful.
• Trans Relationship Troubles: Mostly averted for Chelsea Rose (a trans lesbian) and Dolly Mixture (a cis lesbian), but the inherent difficulties cis/trans couples face are exploited in "She"/"Her" by Pretty Priscilla, a Villain of the Week who is able to force them both to say things they would never actually say to each other.
• Trans Tribulations: Chelsea Rose suffered gender dysphoria from a young age and had a turbulent upbringing, transitioning to female in her mid-teens. Her trans identity is later weaponised against her by a Villain of the Week. It does not end well for the offender.
• Uncertain Doom: The end of Arc I leaves most of the principal cast caught in the blast as the Universe is destroyed.
• Urban Fantasy: A lot of the action takes place in modern English cities like London and Manchester. Harri-Bec is the "Spirit of London Transport", making her a kind of genius loci, the de facto steward and protector of London. It's revealed in "Shout" that other English cities have their own resident "Spirits", such as Demeter Lincoln in Manchester.
• Vampire Hunter: Callan Crucefix is an expert at killing vampires. His older brother, Euan, was killed as an adolescent by vampires living in the Scottish Highlands. Taking his brother's advice: "Ye cannae go through life feart" ("You can't go through life afraid"), he became the single biggest bane of vampires behind penumbric and Great Ur.
• Villainous Breakdown: Happens several times.
  • Umbric suffers one when K-Os turns Cosimo Chesterton against it, causing a One-Winged Angel transformation that almost destroys K-Os.
  • The Project Director freaks out when Dr Bush frees Blake Parish from captivity. He first takes a soldier's sidearm and tries to use her as leverage to threaten Parish into compliance. Blake instead takes a third option and neutralises his gun with his powers, causing him to fall into a catatonic state. The last we hear of him, he was apparently left murmuring "nine o'clock" to himself over and over.
  • The Captain is forced to launch a nuclear warhead at his own country. Given his devotion to British national security, this proves too much for him, and he kills himself on the spot.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Chelsea and Harri-Bec enjoy verbally sparring, but they do genuinely care for each other's wellbeing.
• Your Head A-Splode: Danny St. James accidentally beholds K-Os's true form. It first causes him to Go Mad from the Revelation, then his head blows up.
• Was Once a Man:
  • Cosimo Chesterton was a normal human boy until Umbric groomed him and took his body to serve its own ends.
  • Geb, who destroyed his body through powerful magics, becoming the Giygas-esque Eldritch Abomination known as "The Blood Moon".
  • People with blood types that only partially match that of Geb are transformed through his influence into hideous monsters described as resembling scabs.
• Weather Manipulation: Blake Parish can manipulate the weather, including the ability to make it rain indoors. This is because he is the aspect of Ur that was given to the sky.
• Wedding Finale: The epilogue ends with Chelsea Rose and Dolly Mixture's wedding.
• Weirdness Censor: A lot of weird events happen in the saga, which normal side-characters tend to just ignore. By the end, this stops working, and it results in political changes all over the world, including the overthrow of the British government and monarchy.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Oscillations" features the first time in the saga that a major, non-villainous character dies, and Daisy discovering her powers.
  • "Death" features the death of K-Os, the impact of which has reverberations for the rest of the saga, even after her resurrection.
  • "Carnivore" introduces the threat of the vampires into the saga, and ends with the implication that someone in central government is a vampire in disguise.
  • "Ghosts" plays out like a normal chapter, right up until Naomi Carter decides to disappear for good, leaving the Captain to take Daisy into custody instead.
  • "Revelations" features the return of Naomi Carter, followed by a massacre which takes place on Trafalgar Square in London, followed by the imposition of martial law by The Captain, followed by Douglas Baird being unmasked as the vampire mole in government, who proceeds to kill the Prime Minister and run away with his body.
• Wham Line:
  • When Socks has a realisation too late in "Havoc":
    The spotlights were all focused on him now. On his guitar. On his plectrum. His plectrum made of—
    made of—
    MADE OF—
  • In "Armageddon", Socks sees the true form of the Blood Moon, informing Harri-Bec:
    "That’s not what it really looks like. That’s just its shadow."
• Who Shot JFK?: Discussed in "Recuperation": Ollie asks if K-Os killed JFK.
• Would Harm a Child:
  • The Grey Man threatens a little boy to get him to comply, and murders his parents as punishment for failure. He is himself a victim of the evil that took over his body as a child.
  • Mr. Ection gleefully murders several teenage boys who decide to pick on him, and (temporarily) gets away with it, because he's on official MI5 business.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Any wound caused by umbric to anyone other than a Normal.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • Chroma pretends to be gravely injured in "Reunion" to gain the upper hand in battle. It works, at least, until Chelsea Rose flies a plane into her, shredding her to bits.
  • Pretty Priscilla tries this in "Her", which allows her to regain control of her scythe. Fortunately, Chelsea's bike arrives Just in Time, rendering Priscilla into a burned scorch mark on the ground.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form:
  • K-Os is the personification of entropy. Anyone who beholds her true form will Go Mad from the Revelation. Socks, due to his unique relationship to time, is the only one who can behold it and be unaffected by it.
  • The Blood Moon's true form is not actually the Blood Moon - the Blood Moon is a three-dimensional shadow cast by the Blood Moon's true shape, which occupies a higher dimension of space. Once again, only Socks is actually able to behold this, and it causes him to suffer a Psychic Nosebleed and vomiting, due to his body being physically unable to cope with it.
• Your Vampires Suck: Invoked by Amber Stork, who enters a church uninvited and proceeds to destroy a cross with her bare hands, thus illustrating that the Weaksauce Weaknesses of other vampires do not apply to her. She also states that she is unaffected by garlic, silver, and other traditional vampire-banes. As it turns out, Rollerskater's vampires do have their own Weaksauce Weakness - it's just that it's a material that is pretty scarce and hard to find.

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Another time, another place...