"What the hell kind of pirates are wolves who use jetpacks and have a dragon?!"
—Carson, summing up the tone of the story in a nutshell.
The Pirates Covered in Fur
is a novel written by Tyk 5919 for the 2015 NaNoWriMo challenge.
When Captain Lyle Krinkor, the leader of an army of pirates, leads an attack on Diamond City, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits band together to fight them all off. As the group travels around the city fighting off the captain's forces, they must decide whether or not they should stop the captain and his forces for good, or if they should leave their hometown for the sake of their own safety.
This novel provides examples of:
- Anyone Can Die: Named characters are killed off with little warning. Even major characters from Michum and Rob's groups are eventually killed off, despite surviving seemingly impossible situations for a majority of the story.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Michum and Tully, especially in chapter 14 when they fight Pryllic and Lyle.
- Bittersweet Ending: Very bitter, but not a complete Downer Ending. Millons of people are killed, and the military decides to bomb Diamond City in order to stop Lyle's army. Deacon, A-Hole, Corporal Skellish, and Michum and his entire gang all perish. But Captain Lyle and his lieutenants are all killed, Rob and Margot survive and are rescued, and they later find out that hundreds of other civilians were rescued from the city before it was bombed.
- Bookends: The story begins with Michum and his gang in the skate park, still teeming with life, and his friends happy and carefree. It ends in the same skate park, but with Michum all alone, the skate park in ruins, and all his friends dead.
- Bring My Brown Pants:
- After Michum chops off Lyle's paw, he tries to crawl away from him and promptly shits himself.
- Earlier, Lyle mentions that Kinzly wet his pants when he started to stab him.
- Decoy Protagonist: The prologue chapter focuses on a goat named Tutley as she tries to prevent Lyle from acquiring the robotic dragon. She's killed before the real story begins in Diamond City.
- Despair Event Horizon: Wounded and alone, Michum doesn't even try to escape Diamond City after the bombing starts. Instead, he heads back to the skate park and accepts his fate.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Tully dies in Michum's arms in the penultimate chapter.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: A-Hole is randomly, and unceremoniously, shot in the head by Teri. Rob, Margot, and Deacon mourn him for half a second, then quickly forget about him.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The pirates invading Diamond City are wolves. Wolves are covered in fur.
- Fartillery: Along with being a Lightning Bruiser, Dolan can also emit gaseous fumes to fog up his surroundings and disorient his foes.
- Foreshadowing:
- Early on in the story, Tully jokingly remarks that the military is going to nuke Diamond City because it's overrun by too many pirates. While they don't resort to using nukes, they do inevitably bomb the entire city.
- In the same chapter, Kelly doesn't want to stay in the city because she doesn't believe that a group of beasts with no weapons training can defeat Lyle's army. While Michum does succeed in killing Lyle, the whole gang is killed in the process, and they fail to save the city.
- Hero Killer: Captain Lyle. He's directly responsible for killing off the Decoy Protagonist and four of the main characters, and he seriously wounds another.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Downplayed. The wolves never aim straight, and most of the heroes manage to scurry past them with no problem. Despite this, several characters are wounded (and in a couple cases, killed) by a random stray bullet.
- Off with His Head!: How Captain Lyle kills Pryllic after he fails to defeat Michum and Tully.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The weapon Lyle and his pirates steal is a giant, sentient, robotic dragon.
- Plot Armor: Michum and Rob's crews manage to fight off Lyle's pirates and/or triumph over massive gunfights and battles that get other, minor characters killed. The armor vanishes two-thirds of the way into the story, and the main cast starts dropping fast.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Joey and Ajax's deaths made it very clear that anyone can and will die.
- Sacrificial Lion: Once Kinzly, along with Kelly and Carson were all killed, the story made it clear that the characters' Plot Armor had been nullified.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Despite their efforts, Michum and his crew fail to stop the military from bombing Diamond City, and none of them escape the city alive.
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Regardless of the story's premise, the protagonists usually take everything seriously, and never take anyone's deaths lightly. Nevertheless, the protagonists still manage to crack a few jokes and sarcastic remarks here and there, despite their predicament.
- Soft Glass: Averted. The characters have to strike at glass multiple times to break it, and take necessary precautions to make sure it doesn't cut them.
- Underdogs Never Lose: Michum and his gang have no weapons training, are outnumbered, and are nowhere near as experienced as Lyle's pirates. Nevertheless, they still take on Lyle's gang head-on, and refuse to give up. They all end up dying, and their efforts to save the city prove to be pointless.
- Undignified Death: Lyle, in spades. He ends up being stabbed several times, having his paw, tail and genitals cut off, shitting his pants and then blubbering and begging for mercy, before being thrown off a high building and splattering on the ground.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The story's silly for the most part, but whenever Captain Lyle shows up, he usually leaves a trail of bodies behind him.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Dolan, Lyle, and Carson are all shirtless for the entire story.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Some of the minor named characters are killed off after very little is revealed about them.
- Wham Episode:
- Chapter 10. Kelly fails to stop Marcus from activating the bomb. Captain Lyle shows up at the harbor and proceeds to kill Kelly, Carson, and Kinzly by himself, just as the bomb goes off.
- Chapter 11. The bomb explodes before Rob and his group escape the city. At the same time, the dragon attacks and destroys the bridge, killing Deacon and Skellish in the process.
- Chapter 14. Michum and Tully finally confront and fight Lyle. Michum defeats and kills him, but Tully, having been fatally wounded by Lyle, dies in Michum's arms. The chapter ends with him looking at the city as the military bombs it, now coming to the realization that he can't save Diamond City.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- The story never confirms whether or not the dragon was killed during the bombings in the final chapter.
- After Chapter 2, Lyle's raccoon mook, Geivers, disappears from the story entirely.
- World of Funny Animals: The story takes place in a universe filled with anthropormorphic animals.
- You Have Failed Me: Captain Lyle kills Pryllic after he fails to defeat Michum and Tully.
- You Need a Breath Mint:
- Carson's friends constantly remark or make fun of his foul breath, so much so that it becomes a Running Gag. It gets to a point where he manages to stun a wolf assailant just by exhaling in his face.
- A couple characters comment on Lyle's breath as well. Even he admits that he's aware of how bad it smells.
- Your Head A-Splode: How A-Hole dies after Teri shoots him with her laser rifle.
