Darth Wiki / The Annobyn Universe

The Annobyn Universe refers to a series of Roleplaying Sites. It progressed in real time, though the universe's timeline was always exactly five months ahead of the current date, though various time skips eventually led to the game timeline overtaking real time, going as far ahead as 2020.

The game itself initially took place in the fictional community of Palm Beach (Not to be confused with the real Palm Beach, Florida), but would eventually expand to include other small towns and cities, including both New York and Los Angeles.

Though it usually lacked any one overarching plot and was mostly character-driven, time skips and reboots actually allowed most of the prominent characters to not only finish High School, but advance well into college and eventual adulthood.

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Characters

Continuity 1 Characters

Adrian Jamison

Lanie's step-father, a conservative career politician who ultimately becomes the short-term mayor of Palm Beach.

Tropes:

• Big Bad: Once Jamison succeeds in becoming mayor of Palm Beach, he pretty much becomes this for just about every character who isn't straight or over the age of twenty-one. He's also probably the most successful villain the site ever had.

Alfred "Jerry" Coogan

A bullying senior jock who plays linebacker on the Palm Beach High School football team.

Tropes:

• Disc-One Final Boss: Jerry was about as much of a direct antagonist as EWO had, when he was alive. However, the scope of his misdeeds were limited to the context of High School and he died early on enough that Jamison tends to get remembered more as the "bad guy" than he does.
• Jerk Jock: A very good football player and wrestler, but universally recognized as a massive jerk, even to his closest friends.
• Pet the Dog: A very small one from just before he died- When Travis allowed him to stay in his guest room, the two came about as close as they would really get to verbalizing how much they valued each other's friendship.

Anastasia Leroy

Zara's mother, a professional party planner.

Tropes:

• Jerkass Has a Point: Ana often raises pretty legitimate points about Zara's behavior, and treatment of the people around her, that tend to go unnoticed because they're framed as coming from an abusive bitch instad of a parent at the end of her rope.

Arthur Leroy

Zara's father, a successful lawyer.

Tropes:

• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: While he's certainly a tad.... eccentric at times, he's also very clearly one of if not the best lawyers in Palm Beach.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: One of the few in Palm Beach. Whatever else can be said about him, he's generally a reasonable guy who usually makes a point of acting logically instead of emotionally.

Bulgarin Rossovich

A 19-year-old Russian-American from New York, Bulgarin initially moved to Palm Beach and began working as quite possibly the town's most notorious drug dealer.

Tropes:

• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: He used to go to football games just to watch Zara.
• Genius Bruiser: While he might just look like Dumb Muscle and it's certainly joked about, Bully is clearly very adept at math and science, to the point of being able to tutor Zara in math and being able to figure out how to produce his own drugs without much in the way of formal training.
• Hidden Depths: He's definitely got a nicer, more caring side to him than one might initially think, and he's far more intelligent. Not that he hides it, it's just occasionally easy to lose sight of.

Cassandra Cuoco

Jason and Matt's mother. She had the both of them as a High School senior, and splits her time between being a sporadically-employed hairdresser and the town drunk.

Tropes:

• Maternally Challenged: She tries, but Cassie simply isn't suited to being a parent.

Clarissa Vanderbilt

A shy, submissive 16-year-old girl, born on Staten Island. Reasonably new to Palm Beach and raised in a stuffy, sexually-repressed Victorian environment.

Tropes:

• Buxom Beauty Standard: While Rissa isn't overly fond of her curves, both Jason and Zara seem to like them a lot.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Jason is the poor, unrefined son of the town drunk, the complete opposite of the kind of guy Virginia wants Rissa associating with.
• Progressively Prettier: She's initially described as being very mousey and plain. As time has went on, it's fairly clear that nobody ever really thought of her as being remotely unattractive, just strange and oddly dressed. This is especially clear in Grapevine Fires, where she's considered one of the most attractive girls in town upon arrival, even being compared to a Disney princess.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: She's got a particularly lethal pair of large blue eyes, which she's very much weaponized.
• Put on a Bus: Grapevine Fires ends with her finding out that she's moving back to New York to be closer to her extended family and new fiance, and the last thing to happen is her telling Jason, after having put it off for a month.
• Spock Speak: As a result of her upbringing, she speaks in a very proper manner and is literally incapable of using contractions.

Daniel Ridge

A meek, reserved 17-year-old High School junior who's extremely close to his mother.

Tropes:

• Nerds Are Virgins: Initially played straight, then defied. He's arguably more of a Clueless Chick-Magnet than Jason is, and he's had plenty of love interests (and sexual partners) of both genders as time went on, oftentimes even because of his dorkiness. To date, he's even actually been part of two love triangles and the center of a Love Do Decahedron involving Xavier, Peyton and Teddy.

Darian Peterson

A 19-year-old from Chicago, a star player on the Palm Beach High football team and a man with plenty of interesting connections.

Tropes:

• Cartwright Curse: An inordinate amount of Darian's love interests have been killed off, or disappeared without a trace.
• Glass Cannon: Although he's an excellent fighter, Darian is also very likely to be nicked up or injured a lot of the time.
• Handsome Lech: Darian is somewhere between this and Casanova Wannabe. While he's certainly not unsuccessful with the opposite sex, he tends to try much harder than Bully or Jason and, while he's rarely unsuccessful, seems to have a lot more trouble holding down long-term relationships.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Although he's bisexual, Darian has been known to pepper his speech with the occasional homophobic slur.

Farlane Kirkpatrick

The captain of the Palm Beach High School cheerleading squad and a talented gymnast, Lanie's main struggle is with his feelings for his best friend and his abusive, politician step-father.

Tropes:

• Boomerang Bigot: Lanie is about as homophobic a gay person as you're likely to find, although it's not always obvious.
• Straight Gay: Less stereotypically "gay" than Boone as a product of Jamison trying to force him into being "straight".

Frederick Vanderbilt

Clarissa's closeted older brother, who hangs out most commonly with Jerry and Travis.

Tropes:

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he's capable of being just as much of a dick as Jerry or Travis, he's very obviously got a soft spot for his younger sister.

Jacqueline Lambert

A 15 (later 16)-year-old High School sophomore, and cheerleader.

Tropes:

• Broken Pedestal: Jac is absolutely convinced that Jason is 100% completely perfect, no matter how abrasive or irritated he would get with her for thinking so until she finds out about Fight Club, and the ensuing fallout causes their relationship to end on a horrible note.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Clingy, absolutely. And unfailingly suspicious of Jason and Rissa's friendship, though perhaps not without good reason.

Jason Cuoco

A 17-year-old Palm Beach native, whose mother is the town drunk. Jason himself is a recovering alcoholic, and attempting to use sports as a way up in the world.

Tropes:

• Book Dumb: Jason is a poor student, with several glaring gaps in his education due to spotty attendance, who needs lots of tutoring just to be able to stay academically afloat.
• Determinator: One of his defining traits. He's a big-time workaholic, which is suggested to be a displacement for his addiction issues, and very good at shaking off illnesses and injuries when he doesn't want to waste time recoving.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Although Cassie's verbal abuse and emotional manipulation are usually played as being fairly serious, his stories about his early childhood do tend to veer into this territory from time to time. For instance, while changing his fake rubber baby, he suggests just running it under very cold water when he can't find any baby wipes. Rissa thinks he's just being funny, but the ensuing post hints that it actually was something Cassie did when he was a baby.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's built like a brick shithouse, but able to cover ground like a sprinter.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Well over six feet tall, dark-haired, noted by most people he comes across as being rather hunky, and entirely too sarcastic for his own good.
• Troubled, but Cute: Considering he's fairly oblivious, he definitely attracts a lot of female and male attention. He gets arrested and thrown in the drunk tank at one point, and judging by Cassie's reaction to bailing him out, it's not the first time.

Mathena Cuoco

Jason's manipulative twin sister, and a disaffected party girl with no real aspirations for her own future.

Tropes:

• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Although she often snarks at her brother, and acts rather coldly toward him, she takes the idea that he might leave her behind to go to college rather hard.

Mason Prince

A well-off junior who's interested in Zara.

Tropes:

• Butt-Monkey: He "loses" Zara to Bully, loses the Homecoming Prince election to Jason — who not only didn't campaign at all, but had no idea that he was even entered to begin with until his name was called — gets groped by Slenderman, and the plane tickets he bought for himself and Zara wound up being used to send Bully and Zara to France, instead.
• Informed Flaw: Zara routinely complains about his insufferable arrogance, but he's not particularly confident to begin with and tends to fade into the background in her interactions with Bully.

Tiffany Baxter

An extremely short cheerleader with a lot of interest in sports.

Tropes:

Travis Huntington

An apparently meatheaded senior jock at Palm Beach High School who thinks the only things that matter are him and his car.

Tropes:

• The Charmer: He can surprisingly charming when he's not busy being a massive Jerkass, and even sometimes while he's being a massive jerkass. Generally just when he wants something from someone, though.

Virginia Vanderbilt

Clarissa's mother.

Tropes:

• Condescending Compassion: Although she's not consciously discriminatory, Virginia is often rather unintentionally xenophobic- She assumes that Bully's english is poor, for example, because he happens to speak with a mild Russian accent.
• Statuesque Stunner: Even well past the age of seventy, Virginia is rather striking — Most notable by the fact that, at five-foot-ten, she is canonically the tallest female character in the entire EWO universe. It also puts her head and shoulders above her 5'3" daughter, and just about on eye-level with her 6'2" son.

Xavier Alexander

The least popular student at Palm Beach High School, and the former president of the Gay-Straight Alliance.

Tropes:

• Hidden Depths: Despite his rather simple nature, Xavier is a surprisingly adept photographer, and actually shows a good amount of promise as a filmmaker. He's also an accomplished liar and a surprisingly capable schemer when the need arises.

Zara Leroy

The Queen of Palm Beach High School, she starts out as a co-captain on the cheerleading squad and an active member of more clubs than one could probably count.

Tropes:

• Broken Ace: She's popular, well-liked by the student body, intelligent and highly involved in just about everything, but she's got more than her share of crippling family and self-esteem issues.
• Put on a Bus: Between Grapevine Fires and Our Next Chapter, she moves away to go to boarding school in Connecticut. Although she and Rissa continue to maintain contact, they never wind up returning to what their friendship used to be.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: A lot of her motivation is to prove her worth to her very difficult-to-please mother.

Continuity 1. 5 Characters

These are characters who appear in version two of Eyes Wide Open, but not the original.

Continuity 2 Characters

Aedan Brightman

The youngest Brightman brother.

Tropes:

• Love Makes You Dumb: Aedan continually takes Teddy back in spite of the fact that the older boy is openly manipulating him, regularly cheats on him, and is very obviously an emotionally abusive, suicidal heroin addict. He does grow out of it later, however.
• Emo Teen: Although he's not exactly prone to dressing darkly, he entered an RP that already had it's fair share of Wangst and quickly established his claim to the Wangst Throne with his near-constant complaining about his life and how misunderstood he is by his siblings and father.
• Informed Ability: The Brightmans are touted (mostly by themselves) as excellent musicians with a legion of adoring fans but Aedan in particular is rarely shown to practice or devote any real attention to music, at all.
• Prone to Tears: Seldom does an appearance where he's involved end without him crying over something or other.

Brayden Brightman

The oldest of the three Brightman brothers, and the arguable leader of the band.

Tropes:

• Chick Magnet: Once he and Ben broke up, he was suddenly very popular with the guys and literally held mass "sleepovers" at his house almost nightly just to take advantage of his newfound popularity.
• Nice Guy: The guy gets the crap smacked out of him by Bully, and then nearly body-checked off a boat by Jason, but he forgives all of this fairly readily with a smile and laugh when Jason attempts to apologize purely because the two are track teammates.
• Took a Level in Badass: After a Curb-Stomp Battle with Bully in which he was just barely saved by Jason, Brayden suddenly gained an excess of martial arts know-how- Which led to a case of Fanon Discontinuity when later discussions between the characters attempted to retcon it into Brayden having reluctantly beaten Bully up to save Peyton.

Ellington "Elle" Pierce

The middle Pierce sibling, who was held back a grade and is best known around school for her tendency to sleep around a lot.

Tropes:

• Retargeted Lust: The personality-based similarities between Travis and her ex-boyfriend Tony make is seem like her Friends with Benefits relationship with the former is essentially just using him as a replacement for the latter. Travis is entirely aware of this, and doesn't mind exploiting it.

Kaine Brightman

The middle Brightman Brother.

Tropes:

• Dull Surprise: His trademark being that in contrast to his younger brother's emotional nature, he's been referred to as a zen master; Completely impossible to phase. He found out that his girlfriend (who, up to then, had only been with him as far as he'd known) recorded a sex tape with another guy in the time that they'd been together. His reaction? A mildly curious "is it hot?"
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After having convinced his girlfriend to keep their baby, and then proposed marriage to legitimize it, the two of them go to meet her parents. Moments after they disown her and Kaine himself is nearly strangled by her father, while she's openly weeping a couple feet away, he wonders aloud if they wouldn't be better off broken up so that he could potentially hang out with his brothers and play the field more.

Teddy Bellerose

A melodramatic senior who returns to Palm Beach High School after having been institutionalized for much of the previous year.

Tropes:

• Attempted Rape: On several occasions, he attempted to intimidate people into having sex with him, often physically. Just about every time, it backfired on him.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's generally very kind and overly-friendly toward guys he's attempting to seduce, but the affability ends as soon as he catches even the slightest hint of rejection, revealing his more sociopathic leanings.
• Informed Ability:
• He's supposedly a talented dancer who's headed to a prestigious performing arts school on a full-ride scholarship in spite of the fact that he's a heroin addict who attempts suicide once a week and is constantly in and out of the hospital with no apparent time to ever practice, or think about, dancing.
  • He's routinely outsmarted by characters both highly intelligent (Travis and Bully) and average-to-slightly-dim (Lanie and Daniel) due to his transparent attempts at scheming, and easily outfought at one point by the equally-untrained, much smaller and less muscular Rockie.
  • He claims that he can make any guy, regardless of sexuality, fall for him. This is repeatedly proven not to be the case.
• Remember the New Guy?

NP Cs

Algernon "Dinky" Dinkleberg

A birthday clown by trade, with a rather violent grudge against a certain Russian.

Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: His revenge plot against Bully was cut short because of a storm rendering his R Per's internet connection faulty and never picked back up.
• Almighty Janitor: Although he ultimately becomes the head of an international terrorist brotherhood of just about anything in facepaint, it's easy to forget that his day job is still being a clown that does children's birthday parties.
• Bigger on the Inside: His clown car fits a dozen clowns inside, with room for two more normal-sized people.

Slenderman

The owner and manager of Slendy's, a local diner back in Palm Beach.

Tropes:

• Commuting on a Bus: He makes occasional appearances in Grapevine Fires, but they're much rarer than they were on Eyes Wide Open.
• Nice Guy: Although he's certainly creepy and lurky, he's never outright malicious and even more than occasionally exceptionally nice, just socially awkward.

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YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Travis very much fits the profile of a sociopath; Glib and superficially charming. Manipulative pathological liar with a sense of entitlement. No real sense of shame or guilt (a fact which he's very proud of). Callous. Promiscuous. Might or might not be capable of genuine love or affection. Needs constant stimulation and lives a parasitic lifestyle. His RPer has even theorized as much out of character, though it isn't considered to be canon.
  • Lincoln: Sweet, well-meaning but sheltered kid who is rarely intentionally hurtful, or self-centred Jerk Jock who coasted through life on his athletic ability and charm and didn't seem to think much, or care, about who he hurt in the process?
• Base-Breaking Character: Depending on what camp you're in, Noah King was either one of the best things about Down These Halls or a poorly written Jerkass who was inexplicably never taken to task for being a terrible friend.
• Broken Base: The question of who would win in a serious fight between Bully and Jason- Which Word of God has stated is unlikely to ever actually come to fruition.
• Crazy Is Cool: Darian once "bought" Bully a yacht as a birthday present.
  • Bully's pet Komodo Dragon, Ozzy, who was implied to have eaten Teddy between Eyes Wide Open and Grapevine Fires.
  • The Clown Mafia, which grew out of a minor NPC who'd been hired to entertain at Clarissa's birthday party.
  • The Darkness, the universe's resident ambiguously undead serial murderer who quickly became an Ensemble Dark Horse among the members.
  • It's left ambiguous whether or not the person who owns the local diner, which Jason and Lanie both worked at, was actually Slenderman or just an overly-involved but kind-hearted middle-aged recluse.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Bully/Zara was a huge one, early on, due to the fact that she and Bully had fantastic chemistry- Bully's natural charisma being even more glaring when compared to her alternative love interest being Mason.
  • Word of God is that in and out of character, pretty much everyone saw Unresolved Sexual Tension between Jason and Rissa long before Alex or Robyn did. They actually got some minor Ship Tease early, but didn't actually get together until midway through the first game. The previous consensus between the characters' RPers had actually been that they were Like Brother and Sister.
  • Mason/Slenderman is more positively remembered than any of his actual canon relationships.
  • Linc/Chas was far more popular than Linc/Cotton or Noah/Chas.
• Freudian Trio: The three site admins themselves could arguably have fallen into this- Although all three tend to swap hats from time to time, Robyn is usually The Kirk to Anna's McCoy and Alex's Spock.
• Growing the Beard: While there were early flashes of promise, it was the Homecoming Event when the site itself really started to grow the beard, and the storylines became more unified and interesting.
  • Zara's miscarriage and Jerry's murder could both makes claims for being emotional high points. Both are massive tearjerkers that even members who weren't in any way involved admitted to bawling while reading through.
• Hollywood Homely: Xavier is often compared to gnomes and troll dolls, in terms of appearance, but he's rather good looking by any reasonable standard and not really any uglier than any of his male classmates.
• Ho Yay: Jason and Bully, if the tumblr confessions page was anything to go by, had their fair share of shippers.
  • Bully's frequent comments about Jason's muscles, Jason's fanatically blind loyalty to Bully, and their tendency toward deep emotional talks while driving home from the cabin certainly didn't hurt the argument any.
  • Bully and Mason arguably had more chemistry together than Zara and Mason did.
  • Zara and Rissa also have their fair share of Les Yay over the course of the games, though it's more on Zara's end than Rissa's- Zara seems every bit as fond of Rissa's breasts as Jason is. This is lampshaded by Bully during Grapevine Fires in his theory that Rissa's behaviour around him comes from being a closeted lesbian in love with Zara.
  • It was a running joke that the (ostensibly and very loudly heterosexual) Travis and Jerry came off as gayer (for each other) than Freddie (who was actually canonically gay, but closeted) did in general. Although considering that he was an Armoured Closet Gay, that does make sense.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Xavier, when he's not busy trying to make Jason and himself happen, vocally shipped Jason and Jac. Naturally, he doesn't take well to Rissa, who also initially wavered between supporting Jason/Jac and thinking that they weren't a particularly good match at all.
  • Bully was the original captain of the Jason/Rissa ship, which also had a lot of out of character support.
  • People also apparently really shipped Jason and Bully, if the confessions page and bathroom wall areas were any indicator.
  • And at least one person has interpreted Jason and Darian's friendship as being intense Belligerent Sexual Tension. Jason, Darian and Bully as an OT3 seems just short of canon at times. Their actual OOC nickname was "the BROT3".
  • During Grapevine Fires, Jason and Whitney get a fair amount of Ship Tease and arguably had more chemistry than Whitney and Lucy (Whitney's canon girlfriend) did. Particularly notable, because Whitney describes herself as otherwise being "200% gay" at multiple points.
  • Lincoln Bauer was pretty much the site bicycle on Down These Halls, primarily due to the fact that he had chemistry with 'everyone'. He was frequently shipped with every other member of the Bro Circle (particularly Atty and Noah), Courtney, Chastity, Cotton, Rory, Hailey, Vega and even had at least one serious ship tease moment with Issy.
  • Noah had a similar reputation, out of character, although it was more Fanon than anything else.
• Narm: Jason storming off to the hospital to confront Rissa over dumping him over text elicited more than a few laughs, out of character.
  • Teddy's attempted suicides were often melodramatic and overwrought to the point of unintentional hilarity in their execution.
  • Papa Brightman's Hot-Blooded Papa Wolf tendencies were very clearly meant to be very serious, but the nonplussed reactions of the characters on the receiving end often made them hilarious.
  • Noah attempting to express anger was usually a goldmine of unintentional hilarity, due to a set of repetitive character tics used to indicate that the character was upset (alternately hitting lockers and shouting, every time he spoke).
• Narm Charm:
  • Boone and Ruby's entire relationship. They basically fell in love at first sight. Boone was constantly going overboard in his gift-giving, while delivering flowery and lengthy monologues about his feelings for her. Ruby very clearly thought the sun shone out of Boone's backside, and would say as much to just about anyone within earshot. They're almost aggressively happy and idealistic about their relationship. But somehow, it just worked, and was one of the more heartwarming and popular relationships on the board.
  • Court's behavior could get rather narmy and childish when she was upset, rendering even her more heartfelt dialogue rather unintentionally funny, but she was just so earnest that one was never really taken out of the moment.
• Never Live It Down: Darian "sharting" in Jason's car. It happened early on in Eyes Wide Open, and was still being referenced throughout.
  • Out of character, Rissa referring to Jason as her "big, grumpy bear" has stuck as an apt description of his character for years after the fact.
  • Bully taking a bite out of someone's forehead while high on shrooms at a house party.
  • Rockie was constantly teased about her irrational fear of trees.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Pretty abundant in every incarnation; Adanie (Adam/Lanie), Red (Ren/Ed), Renquel (Ren/Rockie), Tiffvis (Travis/Tiffany), Travules (Travis/Jules), Trelle (Travis/Elle), Jervis (Travis/Jerry), Jervedie (Travis/Jerry/Freddie), Zarullaissa (Zara/Bully/Jason/Rissa), Zarully (Zara/Bully), Zason (Zara/Mason), Bulson (Jason/Bully), Bullissa (Bully/Rissa), Javier (Jason/Xavier), Jaissa (Jason/Rissa), Jara (Jason/Zara), Zarissa (Zara/Rissa), Davier (Daniel/Xavier), Willic (Will/Eric), Booby (Boone/Ruby), Edoone (Ed/Boone), Loone (Lanie/Boone), Adoone (Adam/Boone), Lanison (Lanie/Jason), Svetson (Svet/Jason) and that wasn't even all of them!
• The Scrappy: Jules was the original one. A Creator's Pet who had the habit of trying to derail any plots she would get involved in so that they were about her and her relationship drama of the week, and whose behavior was apparently always justified and in the right, no matter how insane or destructive.
  • Jules, however, pales in comparison to Teddy. He would actually have been a particularly good, if not over-the-top villain if he weren't so blatantly an Author Avatar for the person playing him. He was about equally reviled in and out of universe on a level that even Jules never achieved and even prompted Daniel to deliver a surprisingly brutal reason you suck speech.
  • And of course, the Brightman Brothers. A Boy Band made up entirely of people that were magically good at absolutely everything they tried, even if it flew in the face of their previous characterization or even the laws of reality itself. They were so hated that they inspired a rule change on Grapevine Fires just to prevent a repeat.

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Awesome

Awesome

• Homecoming weekend. Jason scoring his first touchdown, then having his first kiss with Jac immediately after the game. Jason and Adam both having an Awesome Moment of Crowning when they won their respective awards. Bully managing to get the entire gym completely wasted all at once. Even Darian managed to get hurt in the most epic way he possibly could have done so.
  • Plus, the aftermath at the hospital also has to double as a Heartwarming Moment, and the first real Establishing Character Moment for the three of them as genuinely close friends.
• Fight Club, pre-Badass Decay. Special mention has to go out to Rockie's "Basic Bitch hunt", and Jason's brutal knockouts of Big and Bigger Tom.
• Punchdrunk. Every round of it, and the way it escalated to the point of Jason climbing through Bully's fire escape just to punch him at one point.
• The Vice Presidential Campaign between Bully and Jerry. All of it, culminating in a massive brawl. From Travis's campaigning to Jerry and Bully's first brawl.
• Travis dumping Jules, while needlessly cruel, was still just over-the-top enough to qualify. Any time a person writes a "Dear John" Letter with a skywriter just to let the entire county know that person's been ditched, it literally can't be ignored.
• Rissa's birthday party was made of awesome. Between the Greek Chorus of clowns, Bully launching through a clown car window to save his friends and the ensuing brawl, the entire night was one long one.
  • The brawl in itself also doubles as a Heartwarming Moment when you consider that Bully is terrified of clowns, but jumped into the car anyway to save his friends. Or that Jason only went in after Rissa in the first place because he was worried about her, and proceeded to beat one of them into a bloody pulp for putting Xavier in harm's way.
• New Years, and the massive paint balloon fight.
• Bully attacking Travis with a steel chair during a wrestling meet, complete with entrance music and a fleshed-out pro wrestler's gimmick.
• Lanie blackmailing his abusive step-father, Jamison, into leaving the country for good and ultimately becoming an emancipated minor.

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Funny

Funny

• Zara's first big house part of the 2013 school year. It also doubles as an introduction to drunk!Ren, and gives us Bully and Jason high on shrooms. Particularly notable being Bully seeing Rissa as a giant mushroom, and biting her on the forehead, causing her to run screaming to the bathroom and lock herself in there for the rest of the night.
• Jason calling Bully to let him know to meet he and Darian at the hospital, right after the latter had fractured his leg attempting to superman off a flight of stairs. Bully asks Jason to give Penny his number, mid-conversation, and Jason actually stops what he's doing to give it to her, to Jac's obvious consternation.
• Rissa going slowly insane over the course of the camping trip event, as it seems like nature itself is out to get her.
• Although it was more cringe comedy than anything else, Jason and Jac's one-month anniversary was full of unintentional humor, from Jason's disproportionate level of panic and immediate denial to Jac taking his example at face value when he attempts to explain why he thinks "I love you" is such a loaded term.

Jac: [completely serious] Jason, I'm not going to end up pregnant at sixteen just because I said 'I love you'.

• Jules approaching Travis and calmly carrying on a conversation with him, without her player realizing he'd been "writing his name on a tree" at the time until he zipped up his pants, and said player's ensuing disgusted reaction.
• When Jerry is running for Student Body Vice President, the entire campaign Travis designs for him is based around slinging groundless accusations at Bully and taking advantage of his already larger-than-life reputation. Claims include that he'll turn the school into a communist dictatorship, secede it from the United States, and invoke jus primae noctis to forcibly recruit every woman in school into his personal harem... Including his younger sister.
• During Grapevine Fires, Bully dead-seriously explaining to Jason that he suspects Rissa is secretly in love with Zara, followed by Jason's stunned silence.
  • During the same conversation, Jason sarcastically asking Bully if he thinks Rissa plans to "turn" Zara at a sleepover via naked pillow fight... and then both trailing off to stare wistfully off into the distance, visualizing just that.
• Rockie's initial opponent in fight club being a sweet, Betty White-like old lady... who turns out to have been a retired hitwoman, and carries a purse full of rocks around for just such an occasion.
• Ren stating, matter-of-factly, that she's as smart as every other person in the circle combined during the cabin group's getting-to-know-you circle, coupled with Lanie and Zara's visible annoyance and Boone just shrugging in tacit agreement.
• The VP election brawl in general was pretty funny, but the teachers passing around a sign-in sheet to keep track of who'd been involved, and almost every student there signing as "Xavier Alexander" makes it even better.
• During the Disney World event, Lanie and Adam having a wand fight while dressed in full Harry Potter gear.
  • Jason walking into his and Adam's hotel room right as Lanie's about to get Adam's wand. He essentially walks in, turns around, and wordlessly walks out, looking like he's seen a ghost.
• The wing-eating contest. Lanie over-eating and throwing up all over the wings, Bully throwing up on Zara in response, Jason trying to get to the bathroom, bowling over a waiter and then accidentally puking on him. The night only goes downhill from there.
• Boone and Ruby having a very serious conversation about their respective futures, and confirming that they're absolutely in each other's future plans? Heartwarming. Rockie repeating Boone's exact points, almost word-for-word, to Ren, only about twelve feet away, moments after he said them? Hysterical.
• Jason and Bully finding a taxidermy cougar in the basement, then positioning him in front of the cabin as a "guard dog".
  • Additionally, Jason and Rissa playfully arguing about what to name it, between Fluffy (Rissa's idea of a good name for a pet) and Hitler (Jason's idea of a good name for a guard dog that was supposed to be offputting)- As well as his eventually shot-down compromise idea, "Fluffy Hitler".
• Rissa's entire collection of knock-knock jokes are usually considered to be So Bad, It's Good
• Travis' confusion upon finding out that Jerry let Xavier give him a handjob, and Jerry's ensuing explanation that he was "only gay for fifteen minutes."
• Bully's text to Jason the day after the latter first consummated his relationship with Rissa

Bully: YOU GAVE HER THE D!

• Ana's and Virginia's utter conviction that they're currently dealing with a pair of gold-digging expert lotharios in Jason and Bully, and discussing how they're going to go about getting their respective daughters away from them.

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Heartwarming

Heartwarming

• Jason taking secret dance lessons just to impress Jac at Homecoming, early on.
• At the beginning of the "Curfew" arc, Rissa's discovery that Jason knows about her bulimia leads to an oddly heartwarming moment where he hugs her and says, completely earnestly, that he'd want her just as much whether she weighed sixty pounds or six hundred; He just wants to see her happy.
• Zara's mother offered Bully a rather large sum of money to stop seeing her daughter. Bully took this money... and then promptly used it to take Zara out on a fancy date.
  • There's also something very cute about Bully giving Zara rides places on his wheelchair, while his leg was broken, and how happy they both seem to be.
• Adam's proposal to Lanie. Lanie continually asking him if he actually means it, and Adam patiently insisting that he does, every time, until Lanie's gotten his head around it enough to accept.
  • Adam and Lanie are made of these. It's also hard not to include the song Lanie wrote for Adam.
• Jerry comes over to Travis' house, freaked out over the way The Darkness had been stalking him for several days prior. With minimal vitriol, Travis readily lets Jerry stay in his guest room and we even get to see Jerry genuinely thank him. Also a bit of a tearjerker, considering what would happen about four days later...
• The Cabin Group, and the way that the two originally very separate groups of friends came together, not only to rebuild the cabin in the first place, but becoming as close as they all did in the process.
  • The circle game, which really drove home how shitty most of their respective home lives were and how their friends were, in many cases, the first genuinely healthy support system they'd ever had.
• Daniel and Xavier getting together for the first time was a massively heartwarming moment, even for people who were annoyed by Xavier more often than not.
• Travis aggressively campaigning so Tiffany would win Prom Queen. He didn't even really have anything to gain from it, she'd be leaving for college before they'd ever have gotten the chance to give their relationship one last go, but it's implied that he just wanted to pay her back for comforting him after Jerry's death.
  • What Tiffany did to prompt this is also worth mentioning: She drove Travis home, then stayed with him for the rest of the night and well into Christmas day, just to make sure he was okay. Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other.
• The comic that Ruby made for Boone on Valentine's Day.
• Any time Zara goes out of her way to do something for Rissa, like organizing her birthday party, that shows she doesn't view Rissa as her "pet rock" (as the latter suspects she does) and does genuinely value her friendship.
• Rissa's determination that Jason have a good eighteenth birthday, combined with his surprised appreciation of the fact that a record four people remembered.
• After running away, Lanie coming home. On top of Adam's joy at seeing him again, there's an exchange between Lanie and Boone in which Lanie gets frustrated when Boone lists of what sort of hypothetical adventures he suspects Lanie might have had on the run (one of which involves pirates), and accuses him of having thought it was all a big joke. Boone responds, in a moment of rare seriousness, that it hurt less to think of fantastic but unlikely scenarios than it is to worry himself to death over their harsher, but more realistic, alternatives and that he's just glad they're both home safe.

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Tearjerker

Tearjerker

• Jerry's death serves as the biggest tearjerker, possibly in the entire game. Being the first victim of The Darkness, he's killed in particularly brutal fashion and left to hang from the rafters in the middle of a Christmas masquerade ball. Freddie goes into shock, and Travis is reduced to a sobbing wreck. Even out of character, everybody around at the time admitted to tearing up a little.
  • Particularly impressive on his writer's part because Jerry had been intentionally written as completely unsympathetic prior to this happening.
• Zara's miscarriage is amazing for the sheer number of horribly depressing things going on all at once. Over the course of that one day, Svet attempts to come onto Jason right as Rissa finally admits to liking him in another conversation (after having had a painfully awkward Cannot Spit It Out moment the previous night, standing in the doorway). Bully finds out, walks in on his sister attempting to get with his best friend, flies into a rage, and hits her. As she's running off, Rissa calls him to let him know Zara's in the hospital, where she's miscarried her child with Bully, who she's about four months pregnant with at this point. Her parents are called to the hospital, and this is the first either of them find out about her pregnancy. The Leroys fight about what caused the situation, and Ana storms out of the hospital. Watching Bully try to comfort Zara while she's convinced that everything going wrong that day was completely her fault and she's failed is heartbreaking.
• Lanie and Adam running away from home, and their goodbyes to Ren and Boone.
• Jason and Rissa finally coming clean about their feelings for each other, because it's immediately followed by the depressing realization that there's nothing they can do to act on those feelings without ultimately winding up devastated once she's set back up in an arranged engagement again. The conversation then goes from a Tear Jerker to a Funny Moment to a completely adorable Heartwarming Moment in a matter of about three minutes, as (after a brief headbutt-related misstep) they decide to say "screw it" and go for it anyway.

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This Game provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Many, but of particular note is the girl Darian got pregnant in late 2013. Although the reveal led to a rather touching Friendship Moment between Darian, Bully, and Jason, the girl in question disappears without a trace after that, and Darian is back to his usual skirt-chasing ways without any indicator that she ever existed.
  • Darian's love interests are often notoriously short-lived, in general, due to their players often leaving suddenly and without warning. His two most enduring romances are Anchored Ships with Betsy and Matt, both heavy on flirting but never actually acted upon.
  • Rissa goes through almost as many suddenly-disappearing Romantic False Leads as Darian. However, they're usually handwaved in-universe as the engagement falling apart, as opposed to simply swept under the rug.
  • Dinky and Bully's blood-feud is never really resolved.
  • Arthur and Ana's martial problems are mostly forgotten about, once Zara and Arthur move out of Ana's house.
  • Betsy's older brother is introduced as Jac's new love interest, and then both characters seem to fade out of existence.
• Alternate Universe: After a large number of long time members left Eyes Wide Open, the decision to reset a large chunk of the timeline created an alternate continuity between there and Grapevine Fires. Even Eyes Wide Open began as an alternate continuity to another site.
  • Eyes Wide Open V2 was slated to be an alternate continuity from Grapevine Fires/Our Next Chapter, due to dissatisfaction with the last few months of the school year.
• Armoured Closet Gay: Remy is one, early on. Until being forcefully outed by Jerry.
• Bash Brothers: Jason, Bully and Darian.
• Beast and Beauty: Both invoked and played straight with Zara and Bully.
• Betty and Veronica: Seems to come up a lot.
  • Lanie was the Betty to Tiffany's Veronica early on, in regards to Adam.
  • Early on, Mason was the Betty to Zara's Archie and Bully's Veronica.
  • Jules tries to force this trope as well early on, with Aleks as the Betty to Travis's Veronica, but it's mostly averted as Travis is openly only interested in her for sex, while Aleks is just generally apathetic.
    • Though, interestingly enough, Jules was the Veronica to Travis's Archie and Tiff's Betty, as well as Bully's Archie and Zara's Veronica.
  • Dava and Gary are both Veronicas to Rissa's Archie and Jason's Betty, while Rissa is the Betty to Jac's Veronica where Jason is concerned. It can all be very confusing.
  • Speaking of Svet, Jason is also unknowingly the Veronica to her Archie and Daniel's Betty.
  • Rockie being the Betty to Aubrey's Archie and Mel's Veronica.
  • Noah, in a very short time, managed to be the "Betty" to almost all of his friends in rapid succession. Linc was overwhelmingly the Veronica to Chastity's Archie, both Seb and Att were the "Veronica" for Ava, and Matty was Rory's.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Bully, Darian, Jerry, Travis and Gunnar.
  • The entire Somersville Bro Circle could qualify as this, when they're in the right mood.
• Break the Cutie: Rissa is a walking bad luck magnet. Pretty much everything that's happened in her life up to this point seems to have been the universe just kicking her. Repeatedly. In the head.
• Camp Straight: Boone. Just... Boone.
  • James Phillips also qualifies. In spite of captaining the football team, his speech patterns and mannerisms all have a distinctly Valley Girl flavor to them.
  • Blake in particular had a bit of a reputation for playing allegedly hyper-masculine male characters who would then speak and act in very campy, traditionally effeminate fashion.
  • Mathias Cooper definitely had his moments of camp.
• Character Development: Bound to happen with a lot of the longer-running characters.
  • Clarissa developing from a wise Extreme Doormat who'd resigned herself to a fairly joyless pre-planned life to a girl plenty capable of standing up for herself when it matters and her fair share of badass moments.
  • Daniel steadily growing a backbone and embracing his sexuality.
  • Jason going from a friendless teenage drunk to a very well-liked Broken Ace, and then eventually settling into a career as a badass Fair Cop alongside Darian.
  • Travis slowly realizing how important the people in his life are to him, and becoming steadily slightly less of a Jerk Jock who could even have been considered something of a Byronic Hero by the end of his run.
  • Zara's development from an Alpha Bitch with plenty of Hidden Depths to an out-and-out badass Lovable Alpha Bitch. And then continuing to eternally toe that line well into adulthood.
  • Even Bully evolves into more of a clear-cut Jerk with a Heart of Gold as time goes on, with his more honorable and generous character traits coming to the forefront, as opposed to the promiscuous and impulsive hedonist he'd been at the beginning of the game.
• The Charmer: Lincoln Bauer is incredibly charismatic, flirts with just about everyone, endlessly self-confident and easily the most popular student at Somersville High.
• Chase Scene: A pretty memorable one occurs when Bully, Jason, and several other characters escape detention and get chased by the police in Bully's car, where it's revealed partway through that Bully has no idea what he's doing and is flying by the seat of his pants. Made funnier by the fact that everyone just unanimously assumed he'd been in several car chases before.
  • While it was his first, it definitely wouldn't be his last.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Jason and Rissa both have a nasty case of this, and even tend to bring it out more in each other. Jason in particular eventually makes an actual career of indulging this impulse, by becoming a police officer.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Jason in particular manages to be a Clueless EVERYTHING Magnet. He attracted the attentions of straight women, gay women, gay men and arguably, at least one heterosexual guy over the course of the game and was perpetually confused as to why.
• Continuity Nod: There are at least two references to the original characters in Down These Halls' companion blog, with the Somersville football team playing Palm Beach High during a preseason scrimmage, and Jason mentioned as having graduated recently.
• Cooldown Hug: Rissa is fond of doing this to Jason when she (usually correctly) suspects that he's about to hit someone. The first time she does this, she muses that he's like a big, grumpy teddy bear.
• Crapsack World: Played painfully straight. You can't turn around without bumping into someone who's had a downright horrible life, and the chances are that things only got worse for them with time.
  • Palm Beach qualifies as a Crapsaccharine World because while the town itself is exceptionally scenic prior to the storm and just about everyone has a great deal of money, the tone is still often very dark.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Jason versus Big Tom, an appropriately-named giant. Jason's later fight against his even-larger brother, who bears a resemblance to the wrestler The Big Show, is a lot more even.
  • Rockie versus one of Bully's Basic Bitches.
  • Bully versus Travis.
  • Travis versus Tristan.
  • Jason & Bully versus a group of frat boys at a strip club.
  • Daniel and Svet versus Nasty Nikki, a hulking female stripper at that same club.
  • Bully versus Dinky, a birthday party clown.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Nasty Nikki very graphically raping Daniel is very unfortunately played for laughs at one point. If that had been, for example, a very large and hulking male stripper forcing himself on Svet then it's a safe bet that it would have been played much differently.
  • It's also hard to believe that, had the genders been reversed, Jac drunkenly attempting to push Jason into having sex after Homecoming and refusing to take no for an answer would have gone over as well. Bonus points for the fact that he apologized after, and attempted to comfort her by saying it had been "kind of hot."
• Even the Guys Want Him: Boone certainly thinks that this applies to Lanie- His so-called "Clooney Effect". Teddy also claimed this, though that's much more dubious. Jason and Daniel also fit more genuinely.
• Easily Forgiven: Rockie and Bully have both very literally attempted to drown Rissa, and she still considers both to be good friends of hers'.
  • Linc is often quickly forgiven for acting selfishly by just about everyone around him, no matter what it is that he actually did.
• Egg Sitting: In Eyes Wide Open V2, one of the first subplots is randomly selected students being forced to look after baby dolls.
• Ferris Wheel Date Moment: Jason and Rissa got a textbook one during the Orlando trip.
• Fight Clubbing: Bully, Darian, Jason and Rockie all formed a Fight Club back in September of 2013.
• First Girl Wins: Played with repeatedly, but rarely ever played straight due to most of the players' aversion to the concept of "finals".
  • Subverted with the Jac/Jason/Rissa triangle. Jason meets Jac first, she's the first character he interacts with, and his first serious girlfriend. But Rissa, who he doesn't develop a romantic interest in until months after breaking up with Jac, is easily his most notable romantic relationship.
  • Downplayed with Bully, Jules and Zara. She technically interacts with him before Jules does, but he's canonically known Jules for longer. He still winds up with Zara, and isn't all that interested in Jules to begin with.
  • Played entirely straight with both Adam/Lanie and Travis/Tiffany.
• Headbutt of Love: Jason does this frequently to Rissa. Played with immediately before their first kiss when Rissa manages to thump him one by accident, due to nerves.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: This trope pops up a surprising amount in-game.
  • Travis (who's 6'4) and Tiffany (who's a hair over five feet) are the most prominent example, with about sixteen inches of height difference between them and several in-universe jokes made about the subject.
  • Bully is a full foot taller than Zara. Maverick and Daisy also have a similar height disparity on Grapevine Fires.
  • Jason is roughly a foot taller than almost all his potential romantic interests to date, with the exception of (5'8") Jayme. Rissa in particular is about eleven inches shorter than him. The fact that Rissa is noted to be very slight and sickly-looking while Jason is described at one point as "a brick wall with eyes" makes the contrast even funnier.
• In-Joke: The "Barclay" and "Foot Villain" voices are particularly long-running examples. Jason and Rissa both seem to find them very amusing. Everyone else? Not so much.
• Innocently Insensitive: Although it was well-intentioned, Boone very obviously setting up Lanie and Xavier on a date because they were the only two gay guys he knew, and because Xavier's sex obsession was a quality that Boone, himself, considered ideal in a partner did far more harm than good.
  • One of Atticus Andrews's defining character traits.
• Knight, Knave, and Squire: Played with in terms of Bully, Jason and Darian- Bully being the Knight, Darian being the Knave and Jason being the Squire.
• Love Dodecahedron: Almost all the Donovan sisters are at the center of perhaps the most notorious one. Chastity and Lincoln dated for a year, but then they broke up after Lincoln cheated with Aaryn. Linc then began dating Cotton (Donovan), who Morgan was also interested in, while Chas took Noah to Homecoming and both Chas and Linc struggled to choose between their respective current partners and lingering feelings for each other (not to mention Kashton Day and Aiden Bell both also crushing on Chastity). Eleanor Rickett also, on and off, held a candle for Linc. Meanwhile, Noah also pursued, at various points, Harper (Atty's ex-girlfriend), Ava (Seb's ex, who was also flirting with Atty) and Rory (Matty's girlfriend) before settling into a relationship with Ava. This doesn't even factor in Rebekah (Donovan)'s unrequited crush on Linc, or being caught in a love square(?) of her own involving Teddy Bauer, Florence Rickett, and Maureen King.
• Memetic Badass: Bully definitely qualified, both in-universe and out.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Most of the guys on-site play this completely straight, but Bully and Jason in particular will not hug each other. Leaning on each other while exhausted, however...
• Stalker with a Crush: It's the only way that Xavier knows how to love.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Jason and Rissa. She was the repressed only daughter in an old money family that's went broke, and she needed to be married off to someone rich enough to get them back to the lifestyle they're accustomed to. He was a poor recovering alcoholic from the wrong side of the tracks who her mother openly hated and viewed as a criminal. They both knew it could only end badly, but neither one was willing to let the other go.
• Straight Gay: Lanie was often described as the kind of person you'd never know was gay unless he directly told you. He's probably the only character just as aggressively annoyed as Bully with Xavier's campier behavior.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Jason and Zara. Although each is dating the other's best friend, the two of them rarely interact one-on-one, due to simply not having much in common, although they generally got on fairly well when they did.
• Weight Woe: Played for Drama with Rissa, who is deeply uncomfortable with her body image, and perpetually made by her mother to feel either over or underweight.
• Will They or Won't They?: Bully and Zara, especially early on in EWO's run.
  • Adam and Lanie as well, though Word of God is that they're more of a Super Couple and that their getting together is inevitable regardless of continuity.
• Workout Fanservice: While, strictly speaking, it's not an actual workout, the cabin-repairing event absolutely seems to qualify as far as Zara, Ren and Rissa are concerned. Jason, Lanie, Adam, Bully and Boone were all explicitly stated to either be shirtless or wearing particularly well-fitted clothing, while moving heavy furniture around and fixing things.
• World of Snark
• Worthy Opponent: Bully with Jerry and, to a lesser extent, Travis.