Create a Trope List for your world!

I'm uncertain how many people actually read these lists, but maybe this will help to get my thoughts in order. This is for my oft-referenced "story I'll probably never publish." I'll start with a description, because otherwise my tropes will seem irrelevant:

It has been a millennium and a half since the wars between the various species of the Gods' Cradle were resolved when the dragons passed through and conquered the entire region, on their way to taking over the world. It has been half a millennium since the elves threw off the bonds of slavery, slaughtered the dragons, and with the help of their ancient allies, the beastmen, took control of the ensuing chaos. Now the only threats they face are the ever-persistent orcish raiders and the occasional bandit or two.

On the southernmost edge of the elven nation, two travelling warriors ply their trade. Kyle is a descendant of the old elven kings, possibly the last one still alive after the dragons purged their number, now using the magic they passed down to him to purge villainy and make a name for himself as a hero, hoping to restore the royal honor and maybe regain the throne. "That hooded mage," as she is called by those who've heard of her, has never explained what she wants, but it seems to be something she can obtain by fighting alongside Kyle.

Their next job is more urgent than most, but not a major worry to them. An outcast mage of dubious sanity has apparently been kidnapping young female mages, using them in an unknown scheme. He just managed to grab a minor noble's daughter, Rose, and said minor noble will pay well to get her back. With the help of Sen, a blathering beastman missionary with limited life expectancy, and Frederick, a traveller of mysterious origins, they are prepared to overcome whatever defenses the mage may have and collect their reward.

But strange things are on the horizon. Whispers speak of a new leader amongst the orcs, and of a sudden drop in attacks along the border. A few say that something has been found in the mountains on the north end of the kingdom. Soon there will be a greater war than the Gods' Cradle has ever seen, and the key to it will be a single mercenary who happens to have the blood of kings in his veins.

• Ambiguous Gender: Rose and the narration use female pronouns for Gale, but Frederick uses male ones. Kyle just says "it."
• Amplifier Artifact: The only way the strongest casters can control their powers.
• Ancestral Weapon: The royal blade was made before the draconic conquest, intended to annihilate the orcs and the corrupted. When the invasion began, the elven king knew every faction had to work together to fight it off, so he had the blade sealed away behind a magical barrier that could only be shattered by a great caster in the Control style (presumably another member of the royal family.) The new alliance fell apart almost immediately, so the blade's location was lost.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Flair magic, the style of dragons.
• Big, Badass Wolf: What appears in Rose's place when fighting begins. She insists it's not actually her, but a creature with all her memories in addition to its own.
• Black Cloak: Gale, complete with a hood that no light penetrates no matter how bright the day is. It's hinted that her letting light shine on her face would not be a good idea.
• Blessed with Suck: Stunted Power mages tend to die young.
• Buffy Speak: Frederick, and only Frederick, to the bemusement of those around him.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: One of the drawbacks of being a dragon.
• Chekhov's Gun: Many, but the "essence of monstrosity" Frederick finds a bottle of in the outcast mage's laboratory stands out in this regard. If drunk by a young female elf with strong magical powers, it might turn her into a powerful corrupted like Rose, and the transformation would heal even the gravest wounds she had received. If drunk by just about anyone else, or even dumped on them, it would cause horrible, horrible death.
• Clingy Costume: Transformation is a very energy-intensive form of magic, so each of the transformation victims was forcibly dressed beforehand in a jumpsuit-like outfit of unusual fabric, intended to amplify the power of the magic used. Each of the resulting abominations can still be observed to have parts of the jumpsuit bonded to its skin, and Rose confirms that it can't be removed. Several different implications of this are explored (ranging from Rose's increased vulnerability to all forms of magic, to her need to shapeshift before taking care of certain bodily functions.)
• Cursed with Awesome: Yes, Rose is now a corrupted, and yes, she's an outcast from where she once lived. But she could very well have wound up as a half-elf half-animal monstrosity. Instead, she's a Shapeshifting Nature Hero, not to mention almost as good a fighter as Kyle, without ever having to earn her abilities. She does get called out for angsting over this.
• Dark Magical Girl: Gale, for a certain value of "girl," though she's substantially more cynical than that trope would imply.
• Driven to Suicide: Frederick tries jumping off a cliff in Gale's ending after killing Kyle. Gale uses her telekinesis to haul him up by his own belt buckle, and drops him far away from the edge.
• Elemental Powers: The Power magical style focuses heavily on this.
• Explosive Breeder: "There are always more orcs" is practically a natural law in this setting.
• Five Races: Elves, orcs, beastmen, corrupted, and dragons (not counting whatever the hell Gale is.)
• For Want Of A Nail: Everything that goes wrong traces back to when Sen lectures Frederick about religion, and Frederick insults him rather than remaining silent. In a huff, Sen goes on ahead of the rest of the group, and promptly gets himself impaled on a spike trap the outcast mage set as preparation for the inevitable do-gooders. The rest of the group continues in a stunned silence, and they manage to defeat the mage's freshly created monsters, but Frederick's attempt to negotiate with the mage (since he's fairly certain they can't beat him without Sen helping them) succeeds only in distracting him long enough for Gale to resolve things more directly. The mage uses his dying strength to pull a lever marked with the number of Rose's cell, and from there things go significantly Off the Rails.
• Functional Magic: Each species initially obtained its magic from one deity or another, but for practical purposes it's a combination of "inherent gift" and "force magic," with each species able to tap into one or more types of Background Magic Field. Weaker magic-users are mages in the proper sense, while more powerful ones (known as "stunted" spellcasters) have specific abilities that never turn off.
• Genre Savvy: What Frederick really means when he says that he "knows how things should go." There's a reason for this.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Gale knows a trick that, while not causing any permanent damage, creates wounds that will keep someone off their feet for weeks even with the aid of healing magic. All we're told about it is that it nearly makes Frederick throw up.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: Well, some of the individual characters aren't so bad, but the factions all can and do commit genocide.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted in Kyle's case, though he takes it off when talking to people. Played straight for the rest of the heroes, but for various reasons they don't wear armor at all.
• Heroes Protagonists Prefer Swords
• High Fantasy
• Humanoid Abomination: Any way you dice it, Gale is alien.
• Immune to Fate: Frederick, and he hates it. He has a good idea of what paths fate should take, but he's never precisely sure what he should do to ensure that nothing changes, and he blames himself for any harm that results from his screwing up.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: What Gale's double-ended knife seems like, and indeed, it's awkward as a melee weapon and practically impossible to throw. But it's also magnetic, and Gale's magic allows her to manipulate magnetism, lifting it into the air and spinning it rapidly like the blade of a food processor.
• Interspecies Romance: Gale is in love with Rose—or rather, she was once in love with someone rather like Rose, and she views her as a Replacement Goldfish. This only works out in one ending.
• Just Eat The MacGuffin: Frederick's ending. The leader of the Coalition is already dead, and the orcs are on the run, so he sees no reason to let the sword stay intact.
• Made of Iron: Kyle's "stunted Control" gives him inhuman endurance and prevents him from being tired easily. Among other things, this allows him to use a two-handed sword with a shield and walk around in heavy armor all day.
• Magitek: The corrupted tend towards this.
• The Magocracy: The elves, though since strong magical power is genetic, ruling positions are inherited.
• Meaningful Name: "That hooded mage" became Gale because of Frederick's description of her voice—"like that whispering sound you sometimes hear during a gale."
• Multiple Endings: By which I mean that I've written five of them, and I still haven't decided which is best.
• No Cure for Evil: Oddly enough, inverted. Control, the magical style associated with healing, is derived from the most evil deity in the setting.
• No Periods, Period: Rose is apparently infertile after what's been done to her, and Gale's an entirely different issue.
• One True Threesome: In Rose's ending, Gale-Rose-Frederick is canon.
• Only Mostly Dead: Very, very common—the grass in the Gods' Cradle absorbs Power magic and releases Control magic, and laying an injured person down on it can keep them alive indefinitely until better healing is found. In war, of course, this just means the winners decapitate all the near-dead losers.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Ever wonder why you seldom see a magic-using orc? More than half their population has stunted magic, and it manifests in indirect ways. (Their magical style is known as Subtlety, though their combat style most certainly isn't.)
• The Red Mage: Only powerful elven mages can become corrupted, and sometimes they retain a fraction of their Control magic in addition to gaining Power magic. Incidentally, this combination of powers is necessary to create animated skeletons.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The final ending, in which everyone except Gale dies, and she finally gives up on trying to defend the elves. She leaves the corrupted blade on the mountain, knowing full well that it will be found, and that with it the elves will be slaughtered—and furthermore, that with them gone, and with the Coalition's leader dead, the Coalition will crumble under the weight of old resentments, annihilating itself in a bloody civil war. She is ready and willing to stand aside and laugh at the destruction each faction has brought upon itself through its own blind hatred.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: You can beat up orcs, but you can't beat tactics into their heads. As soon as they conquer one area of the Cradle, they send what soldiers aren't needed to hold it into another region, and they've overstretched even their infamous numbers. This means that as they're beaten back, the survivors mass in larger and larger numbers in the remaining conquered territory.
• Staff Chick: Frederick, despite being male, since he's the only main character who can cast healing magic. He's made the best of it, though, by appropriating a beastman staff, which is made of wood from a magic-absorbing tree and greatly increases the strength of the wearer. (He can't actually swing the staff very well, but he's figured out that just having it strapped to his back makes his bow and arrows significantly more forceful.)
• Sword In The Stone: Anyone can carry the royal blade, but only a very powerful caster in the Control style can use its powers. In practice, this means a member of the royal family.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Frederick's shtick, although it only works on his more educated foes—Mooks often don't speak his language.
• Technical Pacifist: Frederick isn't happy about this whole "killing people" thing, and Gale isn't happy about this whole "killing orcs" thing. Together with Rose, they've dragooned Kyle into agreeing that even if the army they're helping is going to kill a lot of grunts, they're going to focus on removing the leaders from combat (not as hard as it sounds, as described under Only Mostly Dead and Gory Discretion Shot.)
• Teleporters and Transporters: Stunted Flair magic can be used for this several times a second. When used over very short distances, it can create the illusion of flight. (This is how dragons make it off the ground.)
• There Is Another: Gale encounters four beings like herself amongst the Coalition's forces. She talks three of them out of fighting her, and they give the fourth a Tap on the Head.
• 30-Sue Pileup: I originally intended this as a combined parody of high fantasy and fanfiction—Kyle's the shining hero, Gale's the angsty, edgy antiheroine, Frederick's the obvious author stand-in who has the plot wrapped around his pinkie finger, and Rose is an unholy combination of Purity Sue (pre-transformation), God-Mode Sue (post-transformation), and Possession Sue (since according to Frederick, her transformation wasn't "supposed" to happen.) Even though it's more serious now, each character maintains a Sueish core.
• Unstoppable Rage: When Frederick sees Kyle kill Rose, he stands in silence for a moment, his expression blank. He rummages through his backpack for an empty vial as Kyle stares at him in confusion. He kneels next to Rose's body, and with the vial he scoops up a bit of her blood. Then he hurls it in Kyle's face, and doesn't stop swinging his staff until either he or Kyle is dead. (Which survives depends on the ending.)
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Subverted—as it turns out, Kyle fully intends to kill Gale someday, and she's willing to fight him when that day comes. For the time being, they recognize that their talents complement each other perfectly, and they're willing to work together towards mutual goals.
• Warrior Therapist: Frederick, from an elven perspective. From a human perspective, he holds the twin powers of emotional perspective and common sense. He can put his allies' Wangst into perspective, ask a would-be world conqueror what he intends to do with the conquered world, and make a hot-tempered enemy officer drop his guard.
• What Measure Is A Non Elf: Kyle is quite opening about wanting to exterminate other species. When he actually gets his hands on the blade, he decides that he no longer needs the "monstrous" Gale and the "impure" Rose, and he's willing to kill Frederick as well if attacked for this.
• Xanatos Gambit: How the villain views his plans. He knows that if any descendants of the elven royal family survive, the blade can some day be reclaimed and used to decimate the orcs and the corrupted. He also knows that Kyle is the only elven royal known to still be alive, and that he's the type who can't and won't lie low when that means leaving civilians to die. He sends Kyle a magical message, outright telling him where the sword is, and inviting him to fight his way across the kingdom and deal with all the invaders on his way to get it. If Kyle actually survives that, he or one of his descendants would have gotten the sword anyway, and if he dies, the threat is gone.

I spent all day writing this, so if nobody actually reads it, I'll cry.

edited 29th Sep '10 11:41:36 PM by FeoTakahari

Schizo Tech: sorta, more of a "alternative" past event that caused the resources poured into electronics to be poured into chemistry, engineering, and biology, instead. Badass Longcoat: Main character from Hard Rain likes tan trench coats for obvious reasons plus the fact he likes looking "more gumshoe, less badass." Gun Porn: Again, same character as above, justified in part by being a natural engineer. Fire Breathing Weapon: 40mm grenade launcher loaded with a custom "Napalm Blast." Bullet Sparks: Justified by special ad-hoc "Flint Round." Small Girl Big Gun: Twelve gauge semi-automatic Benelli Nova in the hands of a five foot nothing replaced by a Benelli M3. Tsundere: Type A to the extreme. Arm/Leg Cannon: Guy hides the forward half of a carbine in his false leg and the back half in his false arm. Shovel Strike: Several times... Batter Up: see above... Bayonet Ya: particularity nasty with the Confederate M33 "Barbed-Spike and Hook" bayonet. Cartoon Bomb: Done deliberately by a very twisted individual. Deadpan Snarker: Almost everyone gets a shot. Fantastic Foxes: overlaps with... Catgirls: and... Cute Monster Girls: several Obstructive Bureaucrat: always fighting with... Manipulative Bastard: though "bitch" would be more accurate. A lot more i don't feel like looking up.

^^ I read it! I particularly like having a Humanoid Abomination as a protagonist, in an otherwise fantasy setting.

edited 30th Sep '10 3:58:32 PM by Noaqiyeum

Perkins Hall

• Affably Evil: Satan, of all characters.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Played straight and averted: Rence, the first floor RA, is considerably more powerful than any of the other demon characters. However, Steve, possibly the most powerful character in the series, is only a regular resident.
• Ax-Crazy: Robert Krueger. Also, Rence's familiar, Ares the mountain lion.
• Berserk Button: Several of the residents of Perkins Hall are in romantic relationships. Threaten their significant others at your peril.
• Big Bad: Robert Krueger.
• Deal with the Devil: How Steve became a Lich. Unusually, the deal did not involve Steve selling his soul (in Satan's words, "given the circumstances, that seemed stupid.")
• Ding! Sportswear, Pantyhose and Tropes: Spoken by the operator to the Elevator to Hell
• Eloquent In His Native Tongue: Clint the Troll speaks in Hulk Speak out loud, but thinks in complete sentences, and is shown to be better at chemistry than his roommate. Word of Me is that he was raised speaking Trollish, which is about as different from English as it is possible for a language to be.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: Kelly's familiar, Arthur, is a grizzly bear. He is very protective of her.
• Exact Words: Steve takes advantage of Satan's phrasing of a challenge to help his friends win a gladiator match. However, it turns out that Satan deliberately worded it the way he did so that he could maintain his reputation, while still providing an out for Steve to help his friends.
• Familiar: Spellcaster, vampire, and demon characters get familiars. Familiar animals will not take commands from any other type of creature.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Brianne
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Satan only ever appears on-panel as a gauntlet or, when Hell freezes over, a mitten.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: "Yes. Come. Sail away with me." Spoken by Charon.
• Knight Templar: Robert Krueger
• Mushroom Samba: Lord Tusksworth is a pink, British elephant, with an umbrella, teacup and saucer, monocle, and bowler hat, who only appears to severely intoxicated characters.
• Not So Harmless: Robert Krueger's introductory strips paint him as Laughably Evil, with a number of Gilligan Cuts contradicting everything he says about himself. Rence describes him as having "the common sense of a small rodent." He then shows up at Perkins Hall, incapacitates Steve, and nearly kills two of the residents.
• Our Demons Are Different: Red-skinned, cloven-hooved, horned. Possess long tails with spades at the end. Kaitlin has white pupils and black sclera. There's also a difference between regular demons and Archdemons, who have wings (that can repel fire), and reptilian feet and tails.
• Our Trolls Are Different: They are seven feet tall, with tusks, leathery gray skin, three toes on each foot and four fingers on each hand.
• Our Vampires Are Different: While they do need blood to avoid serious anemia, they can easily get it from their own animal familiars without doing serious damage (although it's easier for those with large animals as familiars). They have very large upper canine teeth, and are compelled to wear high-collared black capes for no readily apparent reason. Sunlight makes them appear human, but also strips them of their superhuman abilities. These abilities include Super-Speed, wall climbing, turning into a bat, and the ability to smell human blood. Religious symbols have no effect (in fact, most of the vampire characters are practicing Christians).
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Generally follow the rules of The Howling, in that werewolves generally look like bipedal wolves, can change at will, and can only be killed by silver weapons. Even then, if the injury isn't something that would be immediately fatal to a human, their Healing Factor can recover from it.
• Rock Me, Asmodeus!: Steve and the soul of Stevie Ray Vaughan challenge Satan to a rock-off. They lose miserably.
• Rule of Funny: Robert Krueger is force-fed an entire trash can of alcohol, causing him to go from sober to staggeringly drunk in fifteen minutes, conversing with Lord Tusksworth, and eventually making it back to the station with a BAC of 7. There is only one possible explanation for this.
  • Also, Rence can see Lord Tusksworth, despite being sober.
• Shout-Out: To numerous horror movies. To whit:
  • The Big Bad is named Robert Krueger
  • Kaitlin's familiar is a rottweiler named Damien.
• Taken for Granite: Brianne is a Gorgon. This was bound to happen. However, as a Lesser Gorgon (Medusa is said to have been an Elder Gorgon), she only turns people who make direct eye contact, and it wears off at the next sunrise.
• The Fair Folk: Bethany is a Sprite. Sprites are shapeshifters, and she normally takes the form of a human with insect wings, as that's what she thinks everyone expects a Sprite to look like. Her true form looks more like Cthulhu.
• Urban Fantasy: It's set in a modern college dormitory, but the main characters are all some sort of supernatural being.
• Van Helsing Hate Crime: Robert Krueger hates all forms of supernatural beings, considering them abominations that must be eradicated.

^^ What's embarrassing is that I just realized I left out at least four tropes. Get back to me in a year or two, and I might actually have this list finished! (The story, though, that's going to take a bit longer to finish.)

I'm working on a trilogy of screenplays about a character named Loki America that have the following:

• Action Prologue: Each one depicting a Noodle Incident in progress.
• All Myths Are True
• All Theories Are True
• Awesome McCoolname: Loki America, Saxon Loveblast, Abraham Phoenix, Zoë Pandora, Max Fucking Fightmaster (yes, I made his middle name Fucking), Samson Thundercrotch, Marcus Stonewang, Emily BoneAxe, Duncan Firesteel, Blade Manhammer, and loads of others.
• Bad Ass: The main character.
• Beyond the Impossible: I'm going to make my hero as awesome and badass as possible. And then, I'm going to make him even more awesome and badass.
• Bond One-Liner: Unfortunately, I can't think of any good ones.
• Brain in a Jar: Of the Nazi variety.
• Captain Ersatz: I'm not even going to mention who it is.
• Chainsaw Good: Flaming chainsaws.
• Chase Scene: Many.
• Conspiracy Kitchen Sink
• Crazy Awesome
• Cthulhu Mythos
• Cute Ghost Girl: HP Lovecraft's granddaughter.
• Deadpan Snarker: Loki America
• Dragon Their Feet: Subversion. The replace The Dragon with the Big Bad himself.
• Expy: Loki America is basically Ash Williams. Only with both hands intact. And an extra boomstick.
  • There's also a Nazi Brain in a Jar who controls a zombie gorilla and a Hitler clone strapped into a Powered Armor suit armed with miniguns.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Bigfoot, UFO's, ghosts, zombies, demons, the Stock Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, aliens, witchcraft, government conspiracies, Cthulhu, Voodoo, druids, dinosaurs, ninjas, vikings and pirates.
• Fu Manchu: The Arch-Enemy.
• Ghostapo
• Ghost Shipping: The ghost of the granddaughter of HP Lovecraft possesses Zoë Pandora and falls in love with Loki America.
• Girl of the Week: Subverted. Loki America has one in each adventure, but he always ends up getting back together with his ex-girlfriend Zoë Pandora.
• Groin Attack
• HP Lovecraft: The ghost of his granddaughter, actually.
• Incendiary Exponent: Loki America has a swordfight against The Voiceless Dragon while on fire atop a truck that's sinking into a pool of lava.
• Intrepid Reporter: Loki America
• Me Love You Long Time: Inverted with Loki America, although being Happily Adopted, he is so detached from his ethnicity he might as well be a white guy with Chinese ancestors.
• Memetic Badass: Loki America is based on this trope.
• The '90s: The time period.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Genetically engineered Nazi zombie cyborg dinosaurs armed with flamethrowers and grenade launchers, Scientologist pirates who are part of the Ku Klux Klan, and demon cultist Ninjas.
• Noodle Incident: Each installment starts with one in progress.
• Occult Detective: Loki America
• One-Liner
• Post-Climax Confrontation
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner
• Rated M for Manly
• Refuge in Audacity
• Refuge in Cool
• Rule of Cool
• Rule of Funny: Plenty of slapstick.
• Rule of Scary: Occasionally.
• Running Gag: Saxon Loveblast has an obsession with the Dilophosaurus.
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler
• Testosterone Poisoning: There's a Post-Climax Confrontation in which the hero battles a pair of ninjas while Dual Wielding flaming chainsaws.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The villains of the first installment.
• The Voiceless: Each Big Bad's Dragon.
• Weird Science

edited 15th Nov '10 11:41:54 AM by RL_Nice

The Mythology 101 Cycle already has a trope page, so I'll put a list here for my other major (in other words, actively being worked on) work-in-progress, Music City. Tropes are in order of importance/frequency of occurrence, then in order of when I think of them.

• X Meets Y: Sin City meets The Dark Tower at the intersection of Urban Fantasy and Lovecraft Country.
• Shout-Out: Every single thing in this universe is named after a song, musician, album or band. There are also quotes from songs and liner notes in the dialogue, and if there's ever a film adaptation I'd like for there to be Simpsons-style gags where music is referenced in signs on the fronts of buildings in blink-and-you'll-miss-it shots (for example, the law firm of Emerson Lake And Palmer).
• Alternate Universe: No, this is not our Earth.
• Schizo Tech / Anachronism Stew: The year is 1979, but magic exists, swordplay is rampant, and cybernetic technology is so advanced that people with permanent spinal damage can walk again.
• World of Badass: Just like everything else I write.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Invoked with Wang Chung's "Use evil to fight evil" philosophy.
• Big Bad: The Crimson King.
• Big Good: Wang Chung, though "good" is a relative term.
• The Four Horsemen: Played straight with The Man In The Long Black Coat, Aqualung and Tarkus. Famine has been replaced by insanity in this particular universe, hence the existence of Lacrymosa.
• Eldritch Abomination: Both played straight ("The Thing That Should Not Be") and physically humanized (Aqualung looks like an old homeless guy, Lacrymosa is an Eldritch Abomination impersonating Ms. Fanservice, etc.).
• Mind Rape: Lacrymosa's power.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The aforementioned Eldritch Abominations, the haunted amusement park, the Peppermint Tribe (a tribe of brain-eating cannibals), Lacrymosa making people off themselves in horrific ways, and the entire "Brain Salad Surgery" chapter.
• Gorn: Actually pretty tame by my work's usual standards, but still much bloodier than most other people's work. The "Brain Salad Surgery" chapter is the biggest offender ( a Mook has his organs removed to be sold on the black market, and is not given anesthesia first).
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Two people are shut inside iron maidens, and then there's the whole surgery without anesthesia thing. There are also some cruel and unusual self-inflicted deaths due to Lacrymosa's involvement.
• Anyone Can Die: Even moreso than in the author's other work.
• Rated M for Manly
• Deadpan Snarker: Pretty much anyone who's not Axe-Crazy.
• Axe-Crazy: Freddie Mercury is one of many, but it's basically his entire personality so his name gets thrown up here.
• Blessed with Suck: Freddie being Axe-Crazy is what makes him immune to Lacrymosa's power... she can't make you insane if you're already insane.
• Cursed with Awesome: The Man in the Long Black Coat used to be human... he was made into the Anthropomorphic Personification of Death by a voodoo curse.
• Five-Man Band
  • The Hero: Wang Chung.
  • The Lancer: Freddie Mercury.
  • The Big Guy: Leroy Brown.
  • The Smart Guy: Dani California.
  • The Chick Action Girl: April Wine.
• Five Bad Band
  • Big Bad: The Crimson King.
  • The Dragon: The Man in the Long Black Coat.
  • Evil Genius: Aqualung.
  • The Brute: Tarkus.
  • The Dark Chick: Lacrymosa.
• Knife Nut: Mack The Knife.
• I Call It "Vera": Mack's got female names for every single one of his blades. And he's carrying a lot.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Named Thriller.
• Monster Clown: Who sings Emerson Lake And Palmer while juggling flaming chainsaws. He does get scary later on, but he's a clown so he has to be Played for Laughs a little bit.
• Creator Cameo: The author intends to play the Monster Clown in any film adaptation.
• Ear Worm: Just try reading this without getting a song stuck in your head.
• Memetic Badass: In-universe. Leroy Brown is referred to as "the baddest man in the whole damn town", referencing the song for which the character is named.
• Scary Black Man: Leroy Brown. His father James is pretty intimidating too.
• Narm Charm: Just try taking a character named Wang Chung seriously. It's obvious the author was intentionally shooting for Narm here.
• Inscrutable Oriental: Sukey Tawdrey, a true woman of few words. When she does speak, she tends to be a Deadpan Snarker. Which doesn't make her any less inscrutable.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Lacrymosa is named after one of her songs, so the author modeled her look and style of dress after Amy Lee.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Lacrymosa's Memetic Outfit.
• Genre Savvy: Mack The Knife.
• Crowning Moment Of Funny: "Be Careful with That Axe, Eugene!"
• Creepy Child: Eugene, though that's mostly because he's under Lacrymosa's influence... he wouldn't be swinging an axe at people if not for her.
• Ethical Slut: Dani California and April Wine. Since Freddie Mercury is canonically involved with Dani and implied to have a thing with April as well, he might qualify too.
• Boobs Of Steel: April Wine. She's got four of them.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Even though this isn't in the same universe as the Mythology 101 Cycle, it's in the same continuity. Therefore, April Wine has extra pairs of breasts, heightened senses in her human form and incredible regenerative powers whenever she receives damage from something that's not made of silver.
• Regret Eating Me: April Wine gets to pull two of these.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: When you try explaining this to people, you'll need one. Especially if you tell them that it contains a werewolf stripper.
• Ms. Fanservice: April Wine. An occupational hazard of being a stripper. Lacrymosa doesn't wear much either, and Alicia Keys has a spandex Spy Catsuit.
• Punny Name: Alicia Keys, who is a lockpicker/safecracker. And Jenny Diver, who goes muff diving.
• Butch Lesbian: Jenny plays it completely straight, Mustang Sally has the personality aspects but looks more like a Lipstick Lesbian, and Lucy Brown is a full-fledged Lipstick Lesbian.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: As a lesbian couple.
• Dropped An Eighteen Wheeler On Her: This is how the first death scene of a named character in the book plays out.
• Meaningful Name: Freddie Mercury, the bipolar Mafia don; Frankie Knuckles, who has brass knuckles permanently grafted over the skin on the back of each hand; Eddie Money, who can always be bought; Dr. Hook, who has a hook for a right hand.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Dr. Hook.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Frankie Knuckles has certain aspects... the Man in the Box plays it pretty much completely straight.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Each chapter starts with a quote from a song. Brain Salad Surgery starts with a quote from the Weird Al Yankovic song "Like A Surgeon", so that you start the bloodiest scene in the whole book while laughing.
• Holy Shit Quotient: On the proverbial scale from 1 to 10, I'm shooting for about a 32.
• Not Using the Zed Word: They're called "Cannibal Corpses".
• Always a Bigger Fish
• Hell Is That Noise: On several different occasions.
• Red Shirt Army: The Cannibal Corpses, though being zombies they're a bit tougher to dispatch than your average Red Shirt.
• Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: All that's missing is the pirate. There's a werewolf instead.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Dani California, Lacrymosa.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: Averted. Lacrymosa can have sex, but in the throes of orgasm she'll completely destroy her partner's mind, leaving them in a persistent vegetative state. Being a Card-Carrying Villain, she doesn't particularly care whether she does this to people or not.
• Noodle Incident: How Dr. Hook lost his hand.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Freddie Mercury may very well have removed Dr. Hook's hand in a fit of rage.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Freddie's first line of dialogue.
• Smug Snake: Bobby Brown, even though his ascension to true villain status is the book's Stinger (yes, there is a sequel planned).
• Heroic BSoD
• Dead Little Sister: Leroy Brown has one, which is why It's Personal for him.
• Instant Death Bullet: The Man in the Long Black Coat's six-shooters are loaded with these... if they hit you — even if they hit you in the foot — you die.
• Immune to Bullets: Unless, of course, you're Leroy Brown.
• Half the Man He Used to Be
• Kill It with Fire: Dani California is a pyromaniac. It comes up as a plot point briefly.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Goes along with Dani's pyromania. Also, it's awesome.
• Refuge in Audacity / Refuge in Vulgarity: The author's typical places of refuge.
• Eigen Plot: Each character has a power or personality trait that will allow them to take down one of the main villains.
• Large Ham: Freddie Mercury. Planned invocation in the film version.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: April uses her regenerative powers very creatively a couple of times.
• Fanservice with a Smile: Kim the waitress. Averted by her boss, Alice.
• Knowledge Broker: The Man in the Box.
• Super-Strength: Leroy Brown, to a Beyond the Impossible degree.
• More Dakka: Jenny's chaingun. She hits one Mook with so many bullets that he's torn in half at the waist.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Dr. Hook can be this even when he's himself... other characters become this under Lacrymosa's influence.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Inverted when Sukey breaks a male character's wrist before depriving him of his knife.
• Giant Mook: Tarkus.
• Country Matters: A couple of different times.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Frankie Knuckles.
• Face–Heel Turn
  • The Mole
• Loveable Rogue: Freddie Mercury, Dani California, Frankie Knuckles and especially Mack the Knife.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Some of the musical references that get shoehorned in can be this. Your Mileage May Vary on how frequently and which ones.

edited 4th Nov '10 9:29:43 AM by Pinata

I have hundreds if not thousands of tropes that I am planning to use, using, or have used intentionally, unintentionally, or tangentially.

Yes I'm gunning for Trope Overdosed can you tell?

edited 3rd Nov '10 8:01:14 PM by MajorTom

I've added some new tropes to the Loki America trilogy after perusing the site a bit.

• The Ace: Loki America.
• Action Girl: The Girl of the Week of the second installment: The Star Curse.
• Action Prologue: Each one depicting a Noodle Incident in progress.
• Action Survivor: Zoë Pandora.
• Adolf Hitler: A Voiceless clone.
• All Myths Are True
• All Theories Are True
• Arch-Enemy: Fu Manchu
• Artifact of Death: An alien device that summons scary looking aliens to kidnap the villains.
• Awesome McCoolname: Loki America, Saxon Loveblast, Abraham Phoenix, Zoë Pandora, Max Fucking Fightmaster (yes, I made his middle name Fucking), Samson Thundercrotch, Marcus Stonewang, Emily BoneAxe, Duncan Firesteel, Blade Manhammer, and loads of others.
• Bad Ass: The main character.
• Batman Cold Open
• Beyond the Impossible: I'm going to make my hero as awesome and badass as possible. And then, I'm going to make him even more awesome and badass.
• Bilingual Bonus: I'm making all the foreign dialogue humorous. I just need a decent (human) translator.
• Blown Across the Room
• Booby Trap: A whole mansion filled with them appears in the Action Prologue of the second installment, courtesy of Fu Manchu.
• Bond One-Liner: Unfortunately, I can't think of any good ones.
• Bound and Gagged: Happens at least once per story to Zoë Pandora, Loki America's occasional ex-girlfriend.
• Brain in a Jar: Of the Nazi variety.
• British Accents: Zoë Pandora and Saxon Loveblast. Loki America lives in London but speaks with an North American Accent, having grew up in British Columbia.
• But Not Too Foreign: I don't know if this trope fits here. Loki America is 100% Chinese in terms of race, but he was Happily Adopted by black Canadian lumberjacks as a baby and grew up in Canada and the Caribbean.
• Captain Ersatz: I'm not even going to mention who it is.
• Cataclysm Climax: The end of the third installment.
• Chainsaw Good: Flaming chainsaws.
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Loki America in: Terror of the Fourth Reich, Loki America in: The Star Curse and Loki America in: Revenge of the Orient.
• Chase Scene: Many.
• Chekovs Gun: Saxon Loveblast keeps gasoline in his office because he likes the smell of it. It later ends up being used to light a pair of chainsaws on fire.
• Chick Magnet: Loki America even gets the girls he's trying not to get.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Saxon Loveblast
• Conspiracy Kitchen Sink
• Convection, Schmonvection: Subverted. Loki America has a swordfight in a pool of lava and is actually lit on fire by the lava. But he isn't harmed much in any other way. And it's cooling lava.
• Conveyor Belt of Doom: Loki America fights a Nazi Brain in a Jar grafted into a cyborg zombie gorilla on a factory assembly line. While being constricted by an anaconda.
• Crazy Awesome
• Critical Research Failure: Loki fakes one of these in order to rile up Fu Manchu. Specifically, he blames China for starting the Boxer Rebellion by bombing Pearl Harbor. I'd like to point out at this moment that Loki himself is Chinese-American.
• Crossover Cosmology
• Cthulhu Mythos
• Cute Ghost Girl: HP Lovecraft's granddaughter.
• Da Editor: Kind of a subversion, actually. Saxon Loveblast, the editor of The Mantis newspaper, is a lazy and eccentric Cloud Cuckoolander. And he technically isn't Loki America's boss. Loki is a freelance reporter who just so happens to do most of his work for Loveblast.
• Darker and Edgier: Revenge of the Orient
• Dead Foot Leadfoot
• Deadpan Snarker: Loki America
• Dragon Their Feet: Subversion. Replace The Dragon with the Big Bad himself.
• Eldritch Abomination
• Eldritch Location: Revenge of the Orient ends with a temple with a well that turns into a powerful vacuum every time something is thrown into it. What's down there is implied to violate every law of reality that exists. Including the ones that don't exist.
• Expanded Universe: Haven't started work on it yet, but I have ideas.
• Expy: Loki America is basically Ash Williams. Only with both hands intact. And an extra boomstick.
  • There's also a Nazi Brain in a Jar who controls a zombie gorilla and a Hitler clone strapped into a Powered Armor suit armed with miniguns. There are also aliens based off of the Dimensional Shamblers from the Cthulhu Mythos. The entire trilogy itself is an Expy of the Indiana Jones films, with a little bit of Army of Darkness and The X-Files thrown in.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: An Adolf Hitler clone melts completely like play-dough and a Dragon falls into a pool of lava.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Bigfoot, UFO's, ghosts, zombies, demons, the Stock Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, aliens, witchcraft, government conspiracies, Cthulhu, Voodoo, druids, dinosaurs, ninjas, vikings and pirates.
• Fu Manchu: The Arch-Enemy.
• Ghostapo
• Ghost Shipping: The ghost of the granddaughter of HP Lovecraft possesses Zoë Pandora and falls in love with Loki America.
• Girl of the Week: Subverted. Loki America has one in each adventure, but he always ends up getting back together with his ex-girlfriend Zoë Pandora.
• God-Mode Sue: Loki America
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The villains try lowering a camera into the aforementioned well in Revenge of the Orient. Those who look at the images being transmitted back go insane. The Eldritch Abomination also does this to Loki America via Mind Rape earlier in the script, but the Cute Ghost Girl reads a Brain Bleach spell from the Tome of Eldritch Lore and restores his sanity.
• Groin Attack
• Gross-Up Close-Up
• Happily Adopted: Loki America was raised by a pair of lumberjacks in British Columbia after his parents disappeared after he was born.
• Has Two Mommies: Loki America was raised by lumberjack brothers.
• HP Lovecraft: The ghost of his granddaughter, actually.
• Human Sacrifice: Fu Manchu attempts this.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
• Incendiary Exponent: Loki America has a swordfight against The Voiceless Dragon while on fire atop a truck that's sinking into a pool of lava.
• Indy Ploy
• Interesting Situation Duel: First on a factory assembly line, then underneath a speeding train, then in a pool of lava.
• Intrepid Reporter: Loki America
• I Shall Taunt You: Loki America pulls an intentional Critical Research Failure that invokes All Asians Are Alike to infuriate Fu Manchu. See above.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Loki America is an idealist who pretends to be a cynic.
• Kung-Shui
• Lethal Lava Land
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Revenge of the Orient has Fu Manchu, Shub-Niggurath and Chinese yaoguai all in the same story.
• Me Love You Long Time: Inverted with Loki America.
• Memetic Badass: Loki America is based on this trope.
• Mind Rape
• The Mole: A character named Karen Ross.
• The '90s: The time period.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Genetically engineered Nazi zombie cyborg dinosaurs armed with flamethrowers and grenade launchers, Scientologist pirates who are part of the Ku Klux Klan, and demon cultist Ninjas.
• Noodle Incident: Each installment starts with one in progress.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Loki America is Canadian, but his accent is completely American.
• Occult Detective: Loki America
• Omniglot: Loki America is fluent in English, German, Russian, French, Spanish and Latin (he learned the last one courtesy of an Upgrade Artifact) moderate in Zulu, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian and Hindi. In an inverse of You No Take Candle, he also speaks broken Korean, Chinese (despite being Chinese, but this is thanks to his being Happily Adopted), Persian, Greek and Polish.
• One-Liner
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: Who are also Scientologist members of the Ku Klux Klan.
• Post-Climax Confrontation
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner
• Psychic Powers: Emily BoneAxe, the Girl of the Week of the second script, The Star Curse. She's reluctant to use them.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Karen Ross.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Loki America's exact words are "Oh shit."
• Rated M for Manly
• Refuge in Audacity
• Refuge in Cool
• Revenge of the Sequel: Revenge of the Orient is the title of the third installment, although the aforementioned Orient do not appear in any previous installments.
• Rule of Cool
• Rule of Funny: Plenty of slapstick.
• Rule of Scary: Occasionally.
• Rule of Three
• Running Gag: Saxon Loveblast has an obsession with the Dilophosaurus.
• Sealed with a Kiss
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror
• So Cool Its Awesome: That's right. I just judged my own work as awesome. Because it is.
• Status Quo Is God: The three scripts don't really reference each other at all.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler
• Tampering with Food and Drink: One of Fu Manchu's assassins slips a fungus into Loki America's drink that causes him to lose control of his limbs. Hilarity Ensues.
• Testosterone Poisoning: There's a Post-Climax Confrontation in which the hero battles a pair of ninjas while Dual Wielding flaming chainsaws.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The villains of the first installment.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Necronomicon (No, not that Necronomicon) makes an appearance.
• The Voiceless: Each Big Bad's Dragon.
• Weird Science
• The X of Y: Terror of the Fourth Reich & Revenge of the Orient.
• Yellow Peril: Fu Manchu is the Arch-Enemy of Loki America, after all. Subverted in that Loki America himself is also Asian.

edited 4th Feb '11 4:53:12 PM by RL_Nice

• Agony Beam
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome
• Ancient Artifact
• Art Initiates Life
• Bad Ass Blink
• Bio-Augmentation
• Black Box
• Carrying the Antidote
• Clarke's Third Law
• Clingy Macguffin
• Disability Super Power
• Electric Torture
• Elemental Absorption
• Energy Absorption
• Exposition Beam
• Functional Magic
• Going to Give It More Energy
• Green Lantern Ring
• Green Rocks
• Helping Hands
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum
• Hulking Out
• I Know Your True Name
• LEGO Genetics
• Lightning Can Do Anything
• Losing Your Head
• Lost Technology
• Magi Babble
• Magically-Binding Contract
• Magic A Is Magic A
• Magic Plastic Surgery
• Magic Tool
• Make a Wish
• Medieval Stasis
• Mental Picture Projector
• Mind-Control Device:—pokes avatar—
• Misapplied Phlebotinum
• Override Command
• Plot-Sensitive Items
• Phlebotinum Analogy
• Phlebotinum Bomb
• Powered by a Forsaken Child
• Power-Up Food
• Restraining Bolt
• Sentient Phlebotinum
• Time Travel
• You Can't Fight Fate
• Stable Time Loop
• Transformation Trinket
• Translator Microbes
• Utility Belt
• Above Good and Evil
• Adaptational Bad Ass: In story example
• Jerkass Has a Point
• All of the Other Reindeer
• Allergic to Routine
• Always Someone Better
• Angst? What Angst?
• Annoying Laugh
• Apologetic Attacker
• Bad Dreams
• Badass Decay
• Beneath the Mask
• Be All My Sins Remembered
• Being Personal Isn't Professional
• Berserk Button
• Beware the Honest Ones
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Birds of a Feather
• Blood Brothers
• Blood Lust
• Blood-Spattered Innocents
• Book Worm
• Born Winner
• Break the Badass
• Bruiser with a Soft Center
• Buy Them Off
• Can't Hold His Liquor
• The Chains of Commanding
• Catchphrase
• Character Check
• Dynamic Character
• Static Character
• Hidden Depths
• Character Tics
• Chekhov's Skill
• Chronic Hero Syndrome
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander
• Collector of the Strange
• Cowardly Lion
• Cower Power
• Dark and Troubled Past
• Dark Is Evil
• Dark Is Not Evil
• Light Is Not Good
• Designated Protagonist Syndrome: The intended effect, anyway
• Don't Make Me Destroy You
• Driven to Suicide
• Embarrassing Nickname
• Entitled Bastard: Don't you love my protagonist already?
• Evil Laugh
• Fatal Flaw
• Fearless Fool
• Flaw Exploitation
• Former Teen Rebel
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul
• Freudian Excuse
• Mommy Issues
• Friendship Moment
• Go-Karting with Bowser
• Good Is Not Nice
• Hanging Separately
• Hates Everyone Equally
• Hetero Sexual Life Partners
• Hidden Heart of Gold
• Scary Shiny Glasses
• Holy Hitman
• Hormone-Addled Teenager
• Horrible Judge of Character
• Hot-Blooded
• Hyper-Awareness
• I Kiss Your Hand
• Ignored Epiphany
• Improbable Age

Just a few of the tropes my sci-fi fantasy series uses:

• Atlantis
• All Myths Are True
• Ancient Astronauts
• Here There Were Dragons
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late
• Artifact of Doom
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy
• The Order
• Mask of Power
• Mass Teleportation
• Really 700 Years Old
• Who Wants to Live Forever?

edited 5th Nov '10 12:59:55 AM by Surenity

Here's some tropes from my universe, which is more or less a multiverse consisting of basically all fiction:

• Cicada People: The Swarm, whose name is a rough translation since their language consists mainly of wingbeats and pheremones.
• Brown Note: Swarm soldiers are capable of killing enemy combatants with deadly sonic blasts released from their wings.
• Darker and Edgier: Started off as somewhat soft, but became darker as I got older.
• Elemental Powers: The aptly named Elementals, who are capable of controlling one or more elements.
  • Blow You Away
  • Dishing Out Dirt/Green Thumb
  • Dark Is Edgy/Dark Is Not Evil
  • Light The Way/Holy Hand Grenade
  • Making a Splash/An Ice Person
  • Playing with Fire
  • Shock and Awe
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The 9th Reconnaissance and Light Assault Battalion, also known as the Wanderer Corps, who serve as the Alliance millitary's elite shock troopers for clandestine operations.
• Elite Mooks: The Red Talon, who are more or less the Horde's answer to the Wanderer Corps.
• Kryptonite Factor: Null Stones, which cancel out the abilities of Elementals. Pronlonged exposure can actually cause a permanent loss of powers.
• Light Is Not Good: There are light elementals whose powers have made them Knights Templar.
• Mind Hive: Swarm soldiers fight by linking their minds together so that they can attack in unision, a strategy that works well against most opponents. Psychics can disrupt their mental connections and cause them to go into dissarray, however.
• Mêlée à Trois: There is a three-way war going on between the Alliance, the Horde, and occasionally the Swarm. While for the most part it is a clandestine one fought by proxy, occasionally full out battles can rage.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: In spades. Just about every Shade Of Conflict is explored.
• Multiworld Team: Both the Alliance and the Horde recruit individuals from different worlds across the universe. This goes all the way down from spec ops to the rank and file grunts. As a result, both sides field a variety of weaponry to reflect their status as multiverse superpowers.
• The Musketeer: Due to the fact that different worlds can have wildly disparate technology levels compared to one another, as well as a need to uphold the Alliance's Prime Directive, Wanderer Corps members are proficient in using a variety of different kinds of melee weapons and firearms.
• Our Demons Are Different: Rarely seen, but if they are seen it considered as dangerous as dealing with Daleks or Heartless. They can only be harmed by spiritual weapons.
• Prime Directive: Officially, Alliance protocol prevents those from worlds that they consider not ready from gaining knowledge of the multiverse. Unofficially, the Alliance sends down members of the Wanderer Corps to keep tabs on local events and observe if said worlds are indeed ready, irregardless on technological levels. Often enough, they will get directly involved in a world's events with or without permission from High Command, though they normally get off with little more than a reprimand in the case of the latter. This is because Wanderers that are experienced enough often develop a sixth sense that tells them whether or not they can interfere.
• Sorry, I Left the BGM On: Called the Music of the Universe by those who know of it, it can be heard by those who are in tune with the worlds.
• Training from Hell: The training required to become a full fledged member of either the Wanderer Corps or the Red Talon.
• Translation Convention: Not everyone in the multiverse speaks English, so translators are standard equipment for all except those with an Omniglot ability.

edited 1st Apr '17 7:59:25 PM by rmctagg09

I wanted to do this, then decided not to. My OCD won't let me leave without posting this. Sorry.

Gaia, from Viandas

• Always Chaotic Evil: the demons, but later proved to be a false conclusion, there are some good demons, and all together, the ones on the mainland are the mean ones, and the rest are just like Youkai.
• Ax-Crazy: Johnson's demonic side, which has a lot of really really weird, psychotic expressions. Its thoughts, when read by a thought reading demon, were Kill...kill...kill...kill...joy of killing...kill for killing...kill to fight to kill...
• Bee People: The Flytrap Demons, and it can be spread to others...
• Big Bad: Its Kall, Ein Woe, or the Seven God-Emperors.
• Complete Monster: Do we need to discuss this? Given the Crapsack World...
• Chaotic Good: Johnson, who is more or less an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight at the start, mellows out a little, but is still a Blood Knight who really enjoys fighting. The demons are just those obstacles on his way to killing Kall and his father.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Johnson looks like a black knight type villain, but is a nice kid when you get past his...interesting quirks
• Evil Weapon: Darric's sword, Jigoku, is responsible for his terrifying psychosis when he fights Johnson.
  • Then there is Ikijigoku, a katana blade wielded by a filler villain for one of my short stories set between Viandas and the sequel. Ikijigoku is Jigoku reforged, but even worse. It cycles between masters through the story, eventually settling on a 13-year old boy. It overflows his body with demonic energy, and basically violates his mind. The spirit in the sword got really angry when it got broke in two that one time, and now its just kind of a sadistic asshole. Said best when it faked letting the kid have control during an "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight moment, and when it follows by doing the unthinkable to said kid's crush.
  • "I made my host eat his little girlfriend...not to show anything. I did it because I could, because I knew it would hurt you, and mostly, because I wanted to."
• Fantastic Racism: Between humans and the demons, between the Phoebononians and everyone else, and between Qing-Gongese and the Jalmarians.
• The Supremacies are Jerkasses: Well, some of them are pure, unrefined evil, like Telrash Zaal, but most of them have a degree of harsh lack of care for the world they are supposed to be watching for signs of the emergence of some Eldritch Abominations...some of which have risen anyway. The hero needs to kill said abominations because the Supremacies were too busy Outgambiting one another.

edited 15th Nov '10 9:40:56 PM by NickTheSwing

This is a work in progress. I don't even have a suitable title.

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted, because of how Genre Savvy all the scientists are. AI's are never given direct control of any weapon or military systems, are programmed not to make any decisions without human authorization and when the first self-aware AI is created, legislation is immediately passed to grant them the same rights as human beings.
• The Alliance: One is formed between the Solar League and the Magic Empires in 2162 to combat World-Cracker.
• Benevolent Precursors: Extra-dimensional Energy Beings. They are refugees from a reality that was destroyed by a demon horde. They are responsible for creating sentience in the universe, but were all hunted down and destroyed by World-Cracker, until Soul Builder was the only one left.
• Chekovs Gun: The Infinity Stone at the center of Vanguard City is in fact a demonic beacon sent into this reality 65 million years ago along with World-Cracker. World-Cracker has finished surveying the universe and needs only to return to the Infinity Stone and activate it in order to open the gateway that will allow the demonic invasion to begin.
• Clockwork Creature: World-Cracker commissions a clockwork army to assault Vanguard City and secure the Infinity Stone.
• Dragon Rider: The Vanguard Empire's air force.
• Dungeon Punk
• Eldritch Abomination: World-Cracker, and by extension, all the demons that it is scouting the Universe for.
• Energy Beings: The Precursors who fled from an alternate nonphysical reality that was destroyed by the Big Bad demons.
• Exty Years from Now: Mid 22nd century.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Orcs are Mongolian and Russian.
    • Some Orc generals also have a bit of 19th century Prussian thrown in.
  • Jade Elves are East and South Asian.
  • Goblins are Mayincatec and African.
  • Dwarves are all rednecks and bikers.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Some of the soldiers in the Magic Empires use muskets, which are charmed to increase effectiveness. They can't stand up to a modern assault rifle, though.
• The Federation: The Solar League, a loose government that oversees Earth and all the colonies in the Solar System.
• First Contact: The Greys arrive in the Solar System, along with Soul Builder (one of The Precursors) on a quest to destroy the Infinity Stone before World-Cracker can reach it. The peaceful Grey fleet was unprepared to defend itself when attacked by a group of cultists though, and only a single badly damaged ship containing Soul Builder's essence is able to contact the Solar League on Luna.
• Flying Car: Ubiquitous in the 22nd century. They mostly run on autopilot.
• The Magic Versus Technology War: Subverted. The two societies form an alliance and learn from each other. A few hundred years down the road, you get advanced technology bolstered by magical charms.
• Masquerade: Enforced by the Praetorians. During a rebellion against them, contact is made with the United Nations and an embassy is set up in Vanguard City. This is kept secret from the general mainstream public until later.
• The Man Behind the Man: World-Cracker.
• Medieval Stasis: Due to the influence of magic on society, the Magic Empires haven't advanced much technologically. After the alliance with the Solar League, things begin to change.
• MegaCorp: Subversion. There are in fact good megacorporations that work closely with the government, and several non-profit organizations exist that rival the megacorps in power. However, malicious megacorps have been responsible for half of all the civil wars that started since the formation of the Solar League.
• Muggles Do It Better: Thanks to the advanced technology of mainstream society, Solar League soldiers can easily kick the asses of all the Magic Empires combined. In fact, a single team of the Tactical Emergency Response Unit is able to defeat an entire army of goblin Necromancers.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: World-Cracker.
• Our Monsters Are Different:
  • Our Banshees Are Louder: Women who died with a broken heart and are then summoned by a necromancer.
  • Our Centaurs Are Different: They are the Proud Warrior Race Guys and they find it really awkward when anyone tries to ride them.
  • Our Demons Are Different: They are extra-dimensional forces of destruction that travel from universe to universe, annihilating each one they come across.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: They are a sentient honorbound race who volunteer themselves as mounts for the Vanguard Empire's air force.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: They are the offspring of Muggles who were magically experimented on by the Knights Templar. They are completely devoid of any magical ability, so they can't find much of a place in Vanguard society, but the Masquerade prevents them from finding a place in mainstream society. As such, they have all ended up in the lower rungs of society.
  • Our Elves Are Better: The Jade Elves are traditionalist and reclusive. They also act a lot as The Man Behind the Man.
  • Our Fairies Are Different
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Most ghosts are completely invisible to the living world. However, if the circumstances are special enough, a ghost will gain the ability to communicate with the living and manipulate the physical world. There are even ways for a ghost to come Back from the Dead.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier: The basic footsoldier of the goblin Necromancer armies.
  • Our Goblins Are Different: They practice voodoo, black magic, and live in tribes. Some of them took over Aztec, Incan and Mayan ruins after those civilizations died and adopted their culture.
  • Our Gnomes Are Weirder: They are the most technologically advanced race in the Magic Empires. It's roughly equivalent to early 19th century mainstream tech.
  • Our Liches Are Different: They are the administrators of the underworld, and are sometimes summoned by goblin necromancers to act as generals.
  • Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Feral apes who like to eat people.
  • Our Orcs Are Different: They make up the bulk of the Vanguard military and are brilliant strategists. Sun Tzu's Art of War was actually ghostwritten by one. If not in the military, they are commonly seen as mercenaries, assassins or gladiators.
  • Our Robots are Non-standard: Mainstream society uses drones as basic security and infantry. However, they are not advanced enough and lack the ingenuity, cunning or decision making abilities of human soldiers and are thus only used in situations that require minimal tactical consideration.
  • All Trolls Are Different: Domesticated versions of the ogres.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: There have been a few outbreaks in mainstream society starting in the early 22nd century, thanks to a pharmaceutical MegaCorp.
• Post Cyber Punk
• Post-Modern Magik: Diplomatic relations between the Solar League and the Magic Empires will lead to this in a few hundred years time.
• Steampunk
• Urban Fantasy

edited 1st Jan '11 6:51:42 PM by RL_Nice

What's funny is that a lot of the ideas my fellow tropes have are much more entertaining than most stuff that comes from Hollywood lately. I'll post my setting soon enough.

In my newly retitled series Dark Tales, I use the following tropes.

Everyone Is Bi (plus Bi The Way) or Straight Gay (plus Ambiguously Gay).

Our Monsters Are Different - everything that isn't human is a faerie.

Rape Is Love courtesy of Bastard Boyfriend resulting in Child by Rape.

Cock Fight and Triang Relations.

The Masochism Tango (including Love at First Punch) meets In Love with Your Carnage.

Incest Is Relative.

Functional Magic and Power at a Price. Magick is usually chaotic evil.

High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

Alien Geometries, Artifact of Doom, Body Horror, Haunted Technology, and almost everything else on the Horror Tropes index.

Ambiguously Autistic, Cloud Cuckoo Lander, and Mad Hatter.

Ambiguous Gender and Transvestite (a lot of this).

I also use a crapload of other tropes, but for now I'll leave you with this bunch.

edited 5th Jan '11 4:58:23 PM by nekomoon14

The story behind my youtube animation series / webcomic.

• Cloning Blues - The Helmethead Clones and Pentagram Clones.
• Kamehame Hadoken - The "Satanic Death Power" and "ASPC-Hameha" attacks.
• Psychic Powers
• Action Girl - most female characters
• La Résistance
• City of Adventure
• Face–Heel Turn
• Captain Ersatz - P.T. Frost maybe is Captain Ersatz of Slaweel Ryam from Sonichu
• Driven to Suicide Murghazhor in ep.2
• Take Over the World
• Shout-Out
• Write Who You Know
• Playing with Syringes
• Tin-Can Robot - the vacuumcleaner robots model Centauri 666
• Electric Torture
• Cerebus Syndrome
• Knight of Cerebus - Dr. Quicksilver

edited 17th Feb '11 3:14:57 AM by aspc

For my as-yet-unnamed world in which The Kelgrave Chronicles are set:

• Character tropes
• Affably Evil: Tristan, unless you piss him off.
• Break the Cutie: Autumn, so very much.
• Take a Level in Badass: Autumn again; she starts out as a timid housewife and evolves into a gun-toting Badass Mother who pistol-whips a potential rapist, faces down a roomful of hostile politicians, and rescues her friend by taking herself hostage.
• Stoic Woobie: Morgan, possibly. Definitely counts as a Bad Ass of the quiet variety.
• Faux Action Girl: Vadria Shaddar.
• Dragon Lady: Kumori Castanaveras. Also counts as a Woman In The Queenly Mask.
• Magnificent Bastard: Tristan Blackstone.
• The Dragon: Samir.
• Dark Action Girl: Black Beckah, who also borders on both Ax-Crazy and Complete Monster.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kumori runs on this. Justified in that her culture does not encourage emotive expression.

• Story Tropes
• Doomsday Device: The Ultimatum, a Steampunk-themed atomic weapon with enough power to vaporize a whole city.
• Crapsack World: Oh so very much.
• All Governments Are Evil: And how.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Both played straight and subverted; the Cavalier Movement is pretty ragtag, but doesn't flinch from activities that are just as bad as the government they're fighting against.
• Girl Power: Cruelly subverted.
• Bound and Gagged: Autumn, several times.
• Our Elves Are Different: The Caathans, who resemble Tolkien elves in appearance but have a vastly different, Asian-themed culture. They are more like Vulcans or vampires than classic fantasy elves.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: All over the place.

There are more, I'll edit this list when I have the time.

edited 23rd Feb '11 9:54:11 PM by drunkscriblerian

Hmm. I tend to build settings a lot, some of which rarely if ever are used. Can't remember half the tropes concerned, though.

F'rinstance, I wrote a fair bit in this world, although didn't finish anything. Then I turned about 16 and decided to abandon it, apart from a brief re-imagining a couple of years later when I considered salvaging the useful parts. Never finished that either. It's more Snark Bait than anything.

• Aborted Arc: A number of plot lines were never satisfactorily worked out and I tended to stop writing in the middle anyway.
• Action Girl: Just about every female character except Senna in the re-imagining.
• Action Guy: Likewise, it's easier to list the aversions, if I can think of any offhand.
• Aerith and Bob: Particularly common early on, with Orestikases and Drakeclaws happily coexisting with Josefs and Lydias.
• Affably Evil: Riftmaker/The White Prince/He Who Comes With Winter/etc etc etc in the re-imagining. A number of earlier villains, less successfully though.
• Artifact of Doom: A knife made of stone. Arguably the Big Bad of the setting.
• Author Appeal: There are a lot of waterfalls and swordfights. And, in an isolated chapter written about a year before everything else, irrelevant statistics and background material that never appears in the story again:

As the 25,076 soldiers marched through the desert, passing the ancient palace of King Lighthawk the Brave which was now a site for archaeological investigations, the temperatures rose to about 120º F (49º C), a little above average for the season and time of day.

• Authority Equals Asskicking: Early on yes. Later on, not so much.
• Big Bad: Apart from the Artifact of Doom above, about one per story. Initially with ridiculous names like Deathblade, later retconned into being epithets; barely moderated to things like "Szang the Pitiless" later on. In the re-imagining, Riftmaker, although he's a bit of an Anti-Villain.
• Big Good: In early installments, a mighty wizard (who never does any magic) initially named Kardon, later Jamar and finally quietly dropped altogether. In the re-imagining, Mandraki Delthaín, also The Hero.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Nonsensically averted. Early on I decided that it would be stupid for the obviously evil bad guys with Names To Run Away From Very Fast to actually consider themselves evil. Therefore, they continually refer to themselves as "the good guys." In those precise terms. Despite murdering thousands of people and stealing candy from children. Eventually they graduated to making Not So Different arguments or being Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• Cliché Storm: Most of the plots.
• Cool Sword: It has a name (Savedín)! It glows in the dark! There's an order dedicated to protecting it! Somehow it always manages to get stolen by the Villain of the Week anyway! I'm not sure why anyone cared so much about it tbh
• Deadpan Snarker: There's always one.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Since I worked on it over about five years, during which I became acquainted with much more fiction, and also grew up from Cheerful Child to Emo Teen. <.<
• Low Fantasy: The amount of magic declined rapidly from the start, and there is basically none in most of the stories.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: This appears a lot instead.
• Medieval Stasis: Attempted aversion — later stories contain throwaway remarks to the tune of "Metalworking has advanced enormously since those days, of course" — but Fantasy Gun Control nonetheless remains in effect over a time period of about two thousand years. Likewise, no noticeable linguistic drift is referred to.
• Mordor: The Bleak Hills; The Shadowlands might have been this but they were never described in the stories.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Again, partly due to the author gradually transitioning from oblivious to actively opposed to romance, which is limited to subtext as a rule.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In a moment I'm still fond of despite its cheesiness, the mighty warrior, having hacked his way through hundreds of enemy soldiers to reach the Big Bad — himself a powerful swordsman — exhausted, wounded and blood-spattered, finally reaches the top of the plateau. As I recall, their exchange was something along the lines of

Villain: Ah, [Hero]. You must be exhausted. Won't you stop for a little chat? You'll need all your strength to—
*Hero, having reached arm's length of villain, simply stabs him in the face.*
Villain: *falls over, dies*
Hero: You... should... have... run. *collapses*

• I can only imagine that I'd always been frustrated when heroes waste no bullets on the low level lackeys but hesitate when faced with the guy who actually was behind everything the low level lackeys did.
• The Chosen One: Appears in early installments. Is actually referred to as such despite there actually being four of them. Later abandoned.
• The Empire: Two examples at different points in time — both called simply "The Empire." Only one of them is evil, however. (The other one has numerous story ideas plotted in it but, in actually written stuff, is only ever referred to as something along the lines of "the mysterious Empire in the East."
• Villain Sue: There's always this one bad guy I evidently found more fun to write than anyone else. Even occurs in the re-imagining, with Riftmaker stealing every scene he appears in (and that's only in flashbacks, too).
• We Have Reserves: I still have no idea where the villains got all those Mooks (the human ones, at least)....

Okay, that went on a bit longer than I thought it would.

edited 5th Feb '11 1:10:09 PM by aishkiz

Wow, these are pretty cool.

• Magic A Is Magic A
• Medieval Stasis: Averted hard
• All Deaths Final
• The Fair Folk: Subverted
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Both used and Averted
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: Realistically, this trope is Zig Zagged
• Maybe Divine, Maybe Magic: The existence and nature of the divine and the afterlife is left ambiguous.
• Witch Species: The ability to perform magic is genetic. Approximately 1 out of every few thousand humans has this ability, though this varies by hundreds in certain populations.
• Standard European Fantasy: Deconstructed, and ever so slightly Averted in that it's not entirely European, and it's a little bit past medieval.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: There are no dwarves.
• Our Elves Are Better: They aren't quite elves and particularly in modern times definitely aren't better.
• Can't Argue with Elves: It is very easy to argue with the powerful magical society in the northern part of the world.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Early guns are present, and are beginning to eclipse pre-gunpowder weapons.
• Fantastic Racism: Within species even!
• Blood Magic: Ironically, the order of warriors tasked with keeping evil magic at bay use this.
• Eldritch Abomination: Most spirits qualify as minor versions of this to some extent.
• Vestigial Empire: Several
• Functional Magic: It's rare but present, in the inherited gift variety.
• High Fantasy: Walks the line between this and low fantasy. The vast majority of conflicts in this world are of the "low" sort, even though magic is functional, and there are non-human races. The few that are completely fantastic aren't especially significant.
• Low Fantasy: The conflicts are generally of this sort, even if the setting is a bit higher.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Nope. The different races are, in this case, different species.

Well, mine is a Multiverse. So we'll see.

The Wolf Verse

It is the collection of various teams (or a single unit) who feature anthropomorphic animals fighting evil.

• Police Force K9 - a group of policemen from the Canine Department stop criminals; notable for not having any special equipment or such in their repertoire.
• Rescue Force Quadro - a mechanic uses his father's inventions to be a rescue team, along with his best friend, a reporter, and a former medic; notable for the first HenshinHero in the series.
• Ancient Runic Knightsworns - a knight, a bard-archer, a Lady of War, and an apprentice mage stop an evil sorcerer who went to present time where the kingdom has become a city by using ancient magic to become Knightsworns.
• The Aviators - four pilots team up to stop an alien invasion; a callback to Gatchaman and Jetman.
• Feral School - Beast Arts - a falcon, student of the Falcon Style, joins the Feral School to stop local martial arts mob and win the martial arts tournament.
• Galactic Armada - two soldiers of two warring colonies are forced to be joined by an Erudite Stoner to stop an impending Hive Mind invasion.
• Hybrid Heroes - four humans access their feral state to become beasts to stop evil hybrids.
• Ultimate Highway Racers - Team Highways recruit two independent racers - a cheetah and a tortoise - to win races while finding out illegal activities, while a mysterious rider watches over them; a callback to Kamen Rider and Speed Racer.
• DartDash - an inventor and his student team up to fight evil with specialized suits.
• Deck4s - successors of the previous Deck4s defend the city with card-themed power ups.
• The Journey of the Starbearers - a hobbit thief, an elf archer, and a lizard mage journey across the kingdom to stop a war, and soon joined by a wolf paladin and a young female orc inventor.
• Shed Your Skin - Sirius, a low-ranking cop, realizes that he is more than meets the eye, as his body sheds its skin to become a robotic hound as part of the METAL program, stopping rogue METAL robots.
• S.W.A.T. - the police department use specialized power armor to stop hi-tech criminals.
• Chrome Titans - CATS use Titan Components to form Streak Titan, combating giant evil; later joined by Wolfe twins who use Razor Titan.
• Star Specter - Earth has been taken over by the Prime Program, turning everything into robots. Only a small sanctuary exists in outer space, who sent five people to infiltrate the Prime Program. They failed, but the four survivors were saved by a "ghost ship", to which they continue the fight against the program.
• Chrome Titans v2 - a Darker and Edgier sequel, using the Motion Sensor Technology to pilot non-combining mechas under the City Security Firm.
• Galaxy Sheriff - Cirrus Mc Cloud stops an alien force that has hidden itself inside Earth; a callback to the Space Sheriff trilogy.
• Aura Fighter Victor - Victor uses his aura training to defeat Phantom Beasts and fight fellow Aura Fighters.

Tropes displayed throughout the series are...

• The Ace: some Sixth Rangers are.
• Action Girl: some female heroes are.
• AI Is Crapshoot: some villains are, but Prime Program is the Big Bad equivalent.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Sifu Gui-Lon from Feral Style - Beast Arts, the parents of the current Deck4s team, Commissioner "Mad Dog" Duke from S.W.A.T., and Garyuki from Chrome Titans.
• Badass Normal: some teams are essentially this compared to the others. Police Force K9 are just a bunch of specialized policemen as opposed to S.W.A.T. who are policemen with Powered Armor.
• Big Bad: Depending on the series, it has either a single Big Bad, or many.
• Big, Badass Wolf: the verse sure has them either as The Hero, Sixth Ranger, or the teammate. Some teams don't have a wolf, like The Aviators (where everyone are birds), Ultimate Highway Racers (the closest thing for a wolf is a husky), and Aura Fighter Victor (where everyone are dragons).
• Brainwashed and Crazy
  • "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight
• By the Power of Grayskull!: for transformation, of course.
• Carnivore Confusion: generally avoided as characters are based from carnivores... save for certain teams. For instance, Q3 is a rabbit and Commander Alpha is a goat. Thankfully they are in different universes, so it makes sense. This also leads to...
  • Furry Confusion: S.W.A.T. has Sharkie, who is a shark. Generally fishes aren't anthropomorphic, but in this verse he seems to be one.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: most teams are. Generally it's the suit or armor color, but some like Hybird Heroes take it differently (their beast form is color-coded).
• Crossover: some teams crossed over with each other.
• Dark Action Girl: female Dragons and villains
• Darker and Edgier: certain seasons are. Shed Your Skin is pretty dark despite the dorky main character, and Star Specter is pushing it, because it is the only team where the leader dies to the end.
• Fanservice: some transformation sequence for females.
  • In Chrome Titans v2, most of the pilots wear less clothing so that they can move freely. While they'll just be in their tanktops and pants, Shilong (who has grown up from the prequel and has followed his master's ways) wears nothing but his pants when piloting the Jade Titan.
• Five-Man Band
• Henshin Hero: a bulk of them.
• The Hero: some series only have one hero instead of a team.
• Heroic Sacrifice: so many to spoil.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Darwin (Dart) and Daniel (Dash), Rick and Joshua in Chrome Titans v2.
• Mecha: ranging from space stations to actual robots. The Aviators are primarily about a group of pilots with Cool Planes whereas Ultimate Highway Racers are a bunch of racers with Cool Cars.
  • Whereas Chrome Titans and its direct sequel Chrome Titans v2 are focused on Combining Mecha.
• Petting-Zoo People: though some universes have humans and mythical species.
• Power Trio: some teams are composed of three members.
  • Three Plus Two: some gained two additional members.
• The Psycho Rangers: Negative Universe DartDash and Deck4s, Sirius clone, mass-produced Shark armor
• Shout-Out: crossing from Tokusatsu, Super Robot, and even Comic Book references!
• Sixth Ranger: Penta-Quad (Rescue Force Quadro), Macesworn Dageroth (Ancient Runic Knightsworns), Foresteye (Hybrid Heroes), Raven Rider (Ultimate Highway Racers), Anubis (DartDash), Wild Joker (Deck4s), Orion (Star Specter), and Garyuki and Shilong (Chrome Titans).
• Transformation Trinket: varies from wrist transformers to belt buckles.

My biggest problem with fantasy is how much of is derived from D&D and therefore from Tolkien. My setting is derived entirely from actual European mythology and Fairy Tales.

• Functional Magic: Combines Alchemy style magic with Device Magic style. Except Sprights. They get Inherent Magic.
• Glamour: The sort of Inherent Magic Sprights get.
• Loads and Loads of Races: Adverted. On the entire planet there are only 6-8 actual species, everything else is a product of magical alteration.
• Dark Fantasy: Much like a Don Bluth production (a GOOD one), the setting is meant to violently swing from beautiful and dreamlike to mind-numbingly horrifying at the drop of a hat.
• Background Magic Field: Complete with Ley Lines and Placesof Power.
• Fish People: The Nixies, who were the source of water-dwelling fairy myths.
• Our Fairies Are Different: The word "fairy" can refer to anything from the world known as Faerie. The classic "tiny person with wings" kind is known as Sprights. They are also where the classic "winged person with horns" kind of demon comes from.
• Our Demons Are Different: In fact the inhabitants of Faerie are the source of all fairy and demon myths on our world.
• Transplanted Humans: A long time ago the rulers of Faerie opened a portal to Paleolithic Earth, where they encountered humans. The Sprights brought thousands back with them to serve as a Slave Race. This worked out about as well as deliberately introducing an exotic species to the local environment usually does.
• Cosmic Horror Story: This is the genre it'll veer into whenever some one opens a portal into the Nothingness Between Dimensions.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: In order to increase their mastery of the magical arts, as well as the surrounding area, magician's will often magically alter their own bodies to improve their strength, running speed, intelligence, etc. Those who don't take into account exactly what the magic will do, or how it will react to other modifications they've made, will often drive themselves insane.
• Turned Against Their Masters: In order to increase their mastery of magic, magician's will often experiment on animals or people, voluntarily or not. Often these enhanced beings, driven mad by the constant alteration of their forms, will prove more than capable of shrugging off or through whatever precautions the magician has taken. They usually wander off afterwards and terrorize villages or prevent travel through the wilderness.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: And then there's the times when the experiment just melts down completely, sending magical feedback into everything in sight, and when that happens you're lucky if the building is intact and can be cleaned out for the next owner.
• The Magocracy: Sometimes however, the magician in question can accumulate the knowledge and resources necessary to rule the surrounding countryside without killing himself or reducing his surroundings to the magical equivalent of Chernobyl. These magicians are referred to as Faerie Lords.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Magic cannot create or destroy. It can only change things. Whether or not that change is intentional is another matter. Areas with too high a magic concentration are generally avoided by all but the most stupid.
• The Lost Woods: If you live in a forest, it's a good idea to keep a close eye on the mushrooms, since fungi readily absorb ambient magic. If toadstool caps the size of dinner plates covered in vibrant colors start appearing, it probably means the background magic levels of the area are increasing. The next stage up is when the plants start to exhibit signs of magical alteration.
• Our Dragons Are Different: For starters, they don't have wings. They also aren't intelligent. They live underground in caves, collect shiny things in hopes of impressing a mate, are covered in natural armor and possess the ability to exhale poisonous gasses that can incapacitate a person above ground, but are much more dangerous below ground since air hardly circulates down there.
• Our Goblins Are Different: Goblins are the source of most of the "little people" fairy myths, so my goblins are also my gnomes, my brownies, my pixies, my leprechauns, heck you could even say they're my ELVES too!
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Also the beings behind the myths about giants, my Ogres prefer living in castles, dominating the surrounding countryside, and partaking in gourmet banquets to being club wielding lunkheads.
• All Trolls Are Different: My trolls follow the classical scandinavian design popularized by painter John Bauer; that of the big nosed, bat eared, beady eyed, short necked, bulbous bodied, gangly limbed, very hairy, cow tailed trolls. The eldest race of trolls is the Stone Troll race. Stone Trolls live underground in a manner similar to the dwarves of scandinavian myth. So, not very personable, but often willing to trade metal goods and jewelry for surface goods. The Wood Trolls are the largest race of trolls, and dwell in surface caves located deep within large forests. They often use magic to control forest creatures and raise magical plants. The final and smallest race of trolls is the River Trolls. These are (usually) the friendliest of trolls, as they have the most contact with other cultures. They dwell along riverbanks and in house boats. They sometimes quarrel with Nixies, usually because of fishing accidents.
• Unicorns: They look like a cross between a goat and a donkey with a black horn, are violently territorial, and their three foot long horns aren't naturally black. Bringing along a virgin does nothing.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: For one thing, they don't guard treasure. They're vicious predators and you can't tame them, BUT you should try to find one if you've encountered a Unicorn.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Adverted. Good and bad members of all species will appear.
• Medusa: Present as a species in an earlier draft, along with Satyrs, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Harpies and Cyclopses. While the idea of an equatorial archipelago inhabited by the creatures responsible for Greek myth has been scrapped, individuals matching the appearance of these creatures might make an appearance.
• Was Once a Man: Often the case with Faerie Lords of human descent.
• Monster Lord: Faerie Lords are frequently this.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Classic Voodoo type. Usually well preserved, a rotten zombie is a poor quality zombie.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Technically a variant of zombie, ghouls retain their intelligence and most of their free will, though they are still bound in service to the magician who created them.
• Our Wights Are Different: Physically the most in keeping with modern undead, Wights are the Faerie equivalent of lepers. That's probably going to offend some one. I'm still debating if I should switch Ghouls and Wights.
• Wyverns: Not sure if I'm going to include the scorpion tail bit...
• Salamanders: The only naturally occurring fire-breathing lizard. Any small amphibian you see that isn't a frog is probably a newt. And if it isn't that, it's a caecilian! How'd that get there?
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Oh yeah. Out the wazoo.
• Super Drowning Skills: Sprights are physically incapable of swimming. This is because their wings drag them down. Aquaphobia is very common amongst sprights.
• Giant Spider: The Attercops (final name pending) are a race of Spiiiiiiders! the size of short busses that dwell in the canopies of large forests. Possessing a great cunning, they lay various sorts of silken traps.
• Beast Man: There isn't as let a species that firs this, but people can be magically altered into this.
• Touched by Vorlons: The Faerie Lords often reshape others into servants ideal for a specific purpose.
• Human Resources: This can go one of two ways. Either the magician decides to remake you into something else, something more capable of doing whatever it is they want you to do. Or they break you down into your component essences to use in other projects.
• Our Souls Are Different: The Soul=Mind, No Soul=Coma type. Plants and fungi (usually) have Life but no Soul, and how much Soul something has indicates it's intelligence. It's also possible to HARVEST souls and use them to "operate" independent constructs. Or you can absorb them to gain their memories and knowledge.
• Gotterdammerung: It used to be that the world was completely controlled by the Faerie Lords, who despite their magical alteration of themselves often still identified with their original species. Combine this with near immortality barring defeat by a rival, as well as lesser magicians attempting to claim the rank of Faerie Lord for themselves, and the result was a world under extreme political pressure when Portal magic was discovered. Seeking an edge over their rivals, Faerie Lords of the Spright species brought humans over by the hundreds. This eventually led to a massive Slave Revolt, culminating in the complete disruption and rearrangement of the flow of magic, political upheaval as thousands of Faerie Lords found their magical reservoirs drying up, shifting elsewhere, or increasing to the point where time and space goes a bit runny, and the geological turmoil that comes of a large continent turning into a medium continent, a sea, and an island in the space of one day. Of the ones who ruled before the coming of Man, only a handful remain. Most of the Current Faerie Lords are new to the position and have far lesser power than the ones who came before. Of the ones who are gone, little of what they knew is preserved, since most of their knowledge was destroyed when their magic supply went critical, vanished when it was necessary to maintain the basic structure of the place, or because some other Faerie Lord had already looted the place. Many areas developed new forms of government. This was several centuries ago, so things have stabilized by the present time.
• The Wonderland,World of Chaos,Eldritch Location,Reality Is Out to Lunch: While magic energy is everywhere, in some places it reaches high enough concentrations to cause reality to warp. Anyone who spends too much time in these sort of areas will start to be affected as well, up to the point that they literally MELT INTO the area.
• The Fair Folk: The entire world REVOLVES around this trope.
• Squishy Wizard: Averted. Magicians who make it a habit to get into combat will either outfit themselves with magically enhanced arms and armor or will magically enhance THEMSELVES to the point where they qualify for Lightning Bruiser status. Played straight with the Sprights, a race of beings I for no reason now feel like describing in D&D terms: You gain Sorcerer Levels naturally and lack an armor penalty, but you only have access to Enchantment and Illusion spells and are in the Tiny Size Category.
• Baleful Polymorph: A somewhat common form of punishment inflicted by magicians. One of the main characters was BORN with this, and seeks a way to claim the humanity denied to him since birth.
• Identity Absorbtion: See Our Souls Are Different, above.
• Marionette Master: One thing you can create through magic is Stocks. Stocks are simply things held together by magic and moved remotely by their creator. While they CAN be made from dead bodies, they are different from zombies because zombies operate under their own power and only need instruction, rather than direct constant control. It's possible to create stocks quickly and cheaply, but since the amount of magic holding them together determines how hard they have to be hit before they fall apart this is usually only a stalling tactic.
• People Puppets: Magicians can do this, and Sprights can do this naturally, though it takes years of practice and training.
• Spell Construction: Involves Eye of Newt, Magic Prereuisite, and Magic Wand. Combined it's like a cross between chemistry and cooking.
• Magic Wand,Ring of Power,Amulet of Concentrated Awesome,Green Lantern Ring,Empathic Weapon: While it is possible to build a magic wand that can contain spells and is operated by twisting three rings and then pressing the button carved out of a ruby, a more effective method of working with magic is mind-linking. This turns a magic item into an extension of your mind, allowing you to call upon and direct it's magic mentally. The downside to this is that should the item be destroyed, there is dome feedback. To prevent this, smart magicians simply create a "universal remote" magic item and mind-link with that, using that item to control other things they've made. This has to usually be something not easily notable, yet not easy to loose.
• Mineral MacGuffin: Certain substances make better magic batteries than others.
• Magic Mushroom: The metaphysical structure of fungi makes it a natural magic sponge. An increase in the local *Background Magic Field will cause changes in the local fungus species first.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: After fungi, the local plants will start to be affected.
• Magic Misfire: Recklessness, impatience, or improper understanding of what is being attempted can lead to bad things happening during Spellforging, the sort of things that lead to areas of the world being fenced off until they stop smoking or glowing.
• Unequal Rites: Averted, as it's all technically the same method, just different things being done with it. Broadly speaking there are three kinds of magician. Trade-Magicians, who either create magical items by order or utilize magic in another field. There are magic cooks, magic furniture makers, it's a very common field. Then there are the aforementioned magicians aspiring to be Faerie Lords, and so research ways of magically gaining political control over an area, as well as reach greater heights of magical creation. Finally there are the Faerie Lords, or Arch-Magicians as some newer ones call themselves, who've plateaued a bit on their research but have so much power under their control already it hardly matters anymore. The Aspirants look down on the Trade-magicians as crude laborers, while the Arch-Magicians see the Aspirants as witless fools whose recklessness makes them a danger to themselves and others.
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: Averted. Again, it's all technically the same thing.

edited 23rd Feb '11 1:26:00 AM by Gralien

I'm enjoying these posts, but it seems like they're just not getting enough attention. I think part of the problem is that we're not getting basic descriptions of the stories themselves. It might be a good idea to include a short paragraph describing your story so we can put these tropes into an appropriate context.

Keep them coming. I'm interested in more of these and I'm tempted to post one of my own.

Feo's post at the top basically does what I'm talking about.

edited 18th Feb '11 7:44:38 PM by Aprilla