"The Stickworld. Home to many different places and beings... It's my job to watch over it."
—Overseer Lolph
The Stickworld is a Stick Figure Animation series started by Zeruel82Mk2
on November 7, 2013. Of course, before the series was called this, it began with a smaller line of FlipaClip videos called The Cliff, in which random stick figures would try to jump across a cliff while killing anyone who got in each other's way. This bloodbath eventually leads to something powerful being summoned and needing to be dealt with before it causes too much destruction.
Not including the content for first five episodes of The Cliff, there are 3 seasons of the Stickworld:
- Season 1 has episodes 1-16 with The Cliff 6 as the finale.
- Season 2 has episodes 17-24 with The Cliff 7 as the finale.
- Season 3 is currently ongoing, but spans from episode 25 to episode 38 as of edit.
Set in the same universe is an Obstacle Course series in which a group of Stick figures with varying powers goes through many dungeons, but will always come back from death.
Tropes found in The Stickworld include:
- After the End: As revealed in various backstories, The One had apparently succeeded in destroying the first Stickworld. The second time The One showed up, the Creator realized what was happening and dismantled the second Stickworld himself whilst moving any survivors to the 3rd and current Stickworld.
- All-Accessible Magic: Anyone in the Stickworld is capable of learning magic, though it usually depends on whether they have anyone they can think of protecting.
- Anti-Magic: Comes up as a purple field of energy that disables all forms of magic, even Flight.
- Author Avatar: The Creator himself. Naturally, his power level is also based on the number of subscribers he has.
- Barrier Warrior: One of the most common forms of magic has a stick figure form a small shield in front of them to reflect attacks.
- The Beastmaster: Summon magicians will try to control monsters to do their bidding, but will usually be killed if they try to control one that is too powerful.
- Black Magic: The attacks used by Dolph the Dark magician and the other Shadow magicians who work to see The One revived are always colored black. Dolph in particular is able to use magic despite not caring about his family, which heavily implies that he's relying on The Power of Hate to fight instead of The Power of Love that most magicians rely on.
- Death Course: Various instances of these are found throughout the Stickworld, usually to protect a MacGuffin necessary for the plot. Eventually an entire spinoff series became dedicated to a group of stick figures solving these.
- Death Is Cheap: The spinoff Obstacle Course series has it so that the titular dungeons occur within in a different dimension where death is a temporary phenomenon, so anyone who loses can come back in the next video.
- Dispel Magic: Overseers have the ability "Magic Control" which lets them divert most magic attacks wherever they want. This can make it relatively easy to deal with threats that rely on magic to fight.
- Energy Ball: How the most basic magic attacks can manifest. These can also explode if the magician firing them is experienced enough.
- Fire/Ice Duo: Several episodes featured a fire magician and an ice magician who engage in several fights before eventually crashing into and killing each other during The Cliff 6.
- Floating Continent: When Mike and his family got Taken for Granite by a Chaos Magician, Lolph decides to find a book describing the Status Heal spell in a hidden cloud city. When he gets there, he finds out that it's currently led by Cloudia, a cloud magician whose father was killed by The One during The Cliff 1.
- Gravity Master: A gravity magician can specialize in altering which way their enemy falls. If a stick figure is forced to fall towards the sky this way, it doesn't last forever, so they'll fall back to their deaths if they can't fly.
- Herd-Hitting Attack: Force magicians can produce a wave of magic around themselves which can push back enemies, or outright destroy them if they're too weak.
- Kamehame Hadoken: Energy magic fits this trope better than regular magic, as it can be fired continuously and can even cause a Beam-O-War.
- The Hero: Anyone chosen to be an Overseer is meant to be this, though the first one got Drunk with Power.
- Law of Chromatic Superiority: Most magicians that aren't part of the main cast are drawn in different colors to represent how powerful they are. Beginners are pink, rookies are green, intermediates are yellow, experts are red, masters are blue, legends are purple, myths are gray, and time magicians are cyan. Balthazar's backstory reveals that this change in color is a side effect of special crystals at a Wizarding School that make it easier to focus when learning magic.
- Lighter and Softer: All videos after The Cliff 5 had it so that stick figures do not bleed when wounded or killed, but are simply Reduced to Dust.
- Magical Star Symbols: One episode of the Obstacle Course series had the stick figures fight a Pentagram magician, whose power is emphasized by the pentagram-shaped aura around him. Pentagram magicians would debut in the Stickworld series proper when two of them challenge Lolph and Rolph to a Wizard Duel.
- Magic Versus Science: One of the main antagonists is The Scientist, a stickman who considered magicians to be cheaters and created increasingly powerful Robots to eliminate them.
- The Night That Never Ends: Season 3 had Mike and his friends travel to an entirely different planet where the sunlight was blocked out by the Stickworld. What they didn't know was that other people lived on that planet, and were working to see the Stickworld destroyed if it meant saving their own home.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The first season as well as the first 5 episodes of The Cliff have Lolph and his allies deal with The One, a demonic entity hellbent on destroying the Stickworld's inhabitants, and even got close to killing the Creator.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: The backstories for Balthazar and the First Overseer reveal that the stick figures of the first Stickworld were several times larger than the second Stickworld's citizens. Notably, Mr. Sheep and his siblings inherited the intelligence, strength, and durability of their parents (stick figures #8 and #69) separately, despite being as small as the second generation of stick figures.
- The Power of Love: As it turns out, Balthazar became the first magician when he drew on his desire to protect his sister Ava. After they defeated the First Overseer together, he would go on to teach other stick figures to use magic by telling them to think about those they want to protect.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Practically all of Zeruel82Mk2's videos use copyright-free music that can be found in the audio library at YouTube.
- Shattered World: The aftermath of The Cliff 6 has the Stickworld split in half by The One, though he would put it back together as part of his Heel–Face Turn in The Cliff 7.
- Shout-Out: Lolph and his family take their names from Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren.
- Sizeshifter: Size-changing magicians can either shrink down to the point that they're invisible or grow to be big enough to squash other stick figures.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Episodes 11, 12, 14, and 15 have a series of serpentine monsters threaten the protagonists. The fourth one, the Dark Serpent, proves to be so powerful that Lolph decides to get the Creator to dispose of it.
- Stat-O-Vision: Throughout the series, stick figures would be described in terms of a general Power Level as well as a magic Power Level if they use magic. Episode 18.5 eventually has the Creator rework this trope by describing them in terms of attack, defense, and health, since it became too difficult to estimate a Power Level.
- Stick Figure Animation: Most characters in the series is some kind of Stickman with the potential to attain some power.
- Time Master: Some stick figures are able to become Time Magicians and stop everything that isn't them for several seconds. A variant of this is the Chrono Magician, who can see into the past of wherever they are, even as far back as previous Stickworlds.
- Toilet Humor: The Stickworld isn't above being silly in this manner, with instances such as stickmen getting a Groin Attack, or the Obstacle Course series having a Stench magician as a guest for some episodes.
- Too Dumb to Live: Apparently, stick figures won't stop trying to jump across cliffs because bridges make it too easy. Magicians who learn Flight don't have this excuse, but will usually run into something that kills them anyway.
- Weaponized Stench: While they aren't common, Stench magicians can release a yellow cloud potent enough to make their enemies vomit, even if it can't actually hurt them.
