The Gifted Mutation is a roleplay universe that started on Neopets as an offshoot of the Gifted Running From Government genre. It got its own forum, then as members dwindled to just two, it seemed pointless to keep it on a forum and instead exists on Skype. We basically play around with the same storyline and characters, giving the story a somewhat consistent world.
The Gifted Mutation mostly follows Roselyn Ressom as she tries to grow up in the midst of a war, between Gifteds acting in public interest and Gifteds who want to keep their freedom.
This is split up by timelines. Each timeline has some variables. The biggest one is that, in-between the Tommy timeline and the Azu timeline, one major roleplayer left. This causes the disappearance of Brooke and Tommy, and of a character named Maximus. The character's role is essentially replaced by Atticus, but they are definitely two different characters.
Constants:
- Action Girl: It would be easier to list the aversions than those played straight, but the main three Action Girls are Rose, Cadwyn, and Kora.
- Anti-Hero: There are few straight heroes, but there are a few that are solid Anti Heroes.
- Type V for Nia and Rex, as serial killers that are on the same side as the protagonists, but sometimes will take things out on the protagonists.
- Their daughter Leandra is a solid type IV, as a serial killer whose biggest plot-line is trying to protect her younger sister from who she is. This starts very early, after her Yuthark Activation.
- Reith is type III. She sometimes tries to take over the world, and sometimes she joins the police force.
- Anti-Villain: Again, a lot of these.
- Type Is: Veata and Belial, psychopaths forced to forever feel torment. Atticus can count as one, and so can Solace. Lakesha is a major one.
- Type IIs: Marbus. He has found a cure for psychopathy... but it usually involves driving those 'treated' insane. He has to be aware of this on some level, as he has set up several of them so They can't kill themselves.
- Battle Couple: Rose and Chase.
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Badass Decay: Lakesha is the largest example, as a girl who seems extremely heartless and cold, and has enough power to completely tear somebody apart, she obsessively loves a woman and is trying to find her again. She has severe issues with her abilities, severe Daddy issues, and just really wants to be loved. In playing with this trope, Lakesha herself believes this happened, and she often goes through periods where she tries to re-assert herself as a badass, often leaving to hurting those she loves when she rejects them. - Deadpan Snarker: Kora. Rose has hints of this. The biggest one would be Rex.
- Declaration of Protection: Lakesha to Fenix. No particular reason beyond Lakesha's own obsessiveness. However, it fits perfectly under the 'she's the reason she is in danger' subtype, as part of the reason Fenix ever gets into danger is because of people trying to get back at Lakesha for her agency ties.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Rex. He shows up on the scene, finds a crazed Nia rambling about dictionaries, and they go kill some people. Then he gets upgraded to a main character.
- First Girl Wins: Played absolutely straight with Michelle and Atticus, as well as Lakesha and Fenix.
- Grow Old with Me: Michelle and Atticus have been shown from meeting to growing old. averted in most timelines with Rose, as she often gets very sick, goes crazy, and dies before her youngest kid grows old.
- Happily Married: The only time this is averted consistently is with Tommy and Rose. Tommy and Rose are both vying for dominance in their relationship, and are unable to handle each-other's problems, but they stay together because they feel they are the only ones who could possibly understand each-other.
- Overall, Chase and Rose's has been the closest to this.
- High-School Sweethearts: Michelle and Atticus met during their late years of High School.
- Most of the characters. See Interspecies Romance.
- Interspecies Romance: Since we have a plethora of humanoid species, Humans, Gifted, Betweens (altered humans, technically human, but often consider themselves separate), Diluted Yuthark (we don't even want to know how Yuthark and Humans started mixing in the first place, but we doubt it's consensual), several variances of Demons, Werewolves, Vampires, and one alien species: Zenithians. Because of this, we have some rather interesting variants:
- Azu and Rose. Azu is a First Generation Werewolf, and Rose is a Between.
- Rex and Nia. Rex is a Yuthark hybrid, Nia is a Demon one, diluted enough that the only effects are that she's sufficiently nasty.
- Atticus's parents. One was a human, one was a Zenithian.
- Speaking of that, Atticus and Michelle. Atticus is part Zenithian, and Michelle's mother was a half demon.
- Married to the Job: Carla Ressom is this. It seems to be a form of self-punishment and denial more than anything.
- Our Angels Are Different: Angels are people who are trying to ease their karmatic debt. They can always be seen by the people they're watching, and sometimes can be seen by other people.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts are usually a temporary thing that The Reapers have to deal with. Poltergeists go under the name Dubn, and they are souls so attached to life, and so angry over something, that they transform. The Reapers deal with them by temporarily bringing them back to life, but setting them with a sickness curse so they die again quickly.
- On that subject, Our Reapers Are Different: Reapers are meant to guide souls to the afterlife. They can die, but automatically reform into a "golem body" that ages. Sometimes, if they go through a drastic personality change, their appearance will change. The more 'nasty' their personality is, the more monstrous they look. Not necessarily an Evil Makes You Ugly thing, but just makes their job of helping ghosts over to the afterlife more difficult. Reapers are people who fell out of the tightly-knitted web of 'bonds' or connections that occur through their lifetimes. They stopped bonding with people, or their bonded moved on. So they are cursed to spend the rest of their days as immortals. Thankfully for them, or not thankfully, see Jerkass Woobie for an explanation, they forget everything every 200 years or so.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Vampirism is genetic, though some people can be turned into a vampire if they aren't dead after vampires feed on them. They don't like to do this, as Pseudovampires have a harder time controlling themselves and are unstable. The regular Vampires can develop powers if they drink only a certain type of blood growing up.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: There are several types of werewolves.
- First Generation: Genetic werewolves, allergic to silver, transform only on the full moon.
- Second Generation: Werewolves that got transformed either by having too many children with a werewolf, or getting attacked by a werewolf. They keep their personality while transforming, and only transform every other moon. However, their transformations are much slower than the first generation's transformations.
- Feral Weres: They are a recent mutation, (or perhaps only recently allowed to live). They are a cross between a human and a werewolf at all times, physically and mentally. They transform every full and new moon. Feral Weres also are more likely to suffer from Dominant Wolf Disorder, which is where the wolf's personality overshadows the human's. Feral Weres are often slow to learn.
- Wendigo Syndrome: Wendigos transform randomly, and only partially. Their wolf is the most vicious.
- Demented Weres: Werewolves that start their transformation in their late teen years. They slowly transform into a wolf and will not transform back.
- Our Zombies Are Different: There are a few reanimators running about. The Reapers and Cirque use Golem Bodies... bodies that alter themselves according to people's souls. There's Carys, a reanimator that can bring people back to perfect health... and sometimes uses this control to take over their minds as well. Science has done this once or twice, but the Reapers try their best to make sure this doesn't get out of hand. The only standard is those who are magically bringing back the original body and healing it give up some of their life force.
- Waif-Fu: Cadwyn and Lakesha. Rose would count, but she has a bit of meat on her bones compared to Cadwyn.
- Woobie: Take your pick. Carla likes to vary between Classic Woobie, Stoic Woobie, and Woobie Destroyerof Worlds depending on timeline and level of development.
- Classic Woobie: Wanda. Her mother died, her father got a little rapey, and it was all because her mother pissed off a psychopath telepath. Mind you, she often crosses into Jerkass Woobie as she has been known to manipulate other people with her behavior.
- Stoic Woobie: Atticus and Solace. Atticus can never have a stable family, and Solace's family was killed when she was little and she's pretty much stuck in a life-long contract with the people who did this. until they dump her at the fall of the ACG.
- Iron Woobie: Leandra and Kora. Oren could count too.
- Jerkass Woobie: Tommy, Brooke, Virgo, and Justine. Tommy and Brooke were screwed over from the start.
- Virgo's daughter died in her last life, and she spent all of this life unable to connect with anyone. Now she's immortal, and desperately wishes she weren't.
- Justine lost her memory during a 'death'. She came back into the body of a young child, and was taken care of. Her foster parents accepted a lot of her strange behaviors, but her immortality was just too much. She fell in love with Atticus when he was willing to take care of her, but he didn't really want to get involved with a cosmic being. Soon he started dating, and married Michelle. Justine has to deal with all of these things she thought she could have, and now realizes she never will have. Plus, she'll eventually have to watch Atticus die.
- Woobie Destroyerof Worlds: Reith and Lakesha.
Rose and Tommy:
- Anti-Hero: Tommy.
- In Love with Love: Tommy seems this way, as he hooks up with Rose, then after their divorce, when we start to switch timeline ideas, he hooks up with Cadwyn and basically rapes her, tries to hook up with Virgo...
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: A mild example when Carla goes undercover as a Gifted to catch more of them, and falls in love. This ends with a public ceremony where she was telepathically made to execute him and his friends.
- No Guy Wantsan Amazon: While this is hard to play as most of the females are very badass, Tommy is more masculine than Rose and prefers it that way.
Rose and Azu:
- Friends with Benefits: Rose and Chase likely started out this way.
- First Girl Wins: Averted and gender inverted. Rose and Chase's relationship often takes two turns.
- Chase shows up and Rose cannot trust him again after what happened last time they were together.
- Chase shows up, but isn't really him. remnants of him still exist in the Shadow Creature, and this arc usually ends with him locking it and him in the shadow world forever.
- Happily Married: Rose and Azu have a few bumps in the road. The smallest is that Rose sometimes feels lost in conversations due to a lack of feedback. Azu sometimes gets upset when she gets too dramatic. The largest was when Tommy returns, and Rose got it in her head it would be a good idea to tease him sexually. On the front lawn. This ends with him just about raping her. All of this occurred in front of Azu, and Azu got angry.
- Heartbroken Badass: At first, during the war. Rose gets over it.
- Non-Action Guy: Azu is this by choice, to control his werewolf side and because of his religion.
- One Head Taller: Rose is pretty short, and Azu is rather tall.
- Opposites Attract: Rose is very volatile and emotional, and if Azu got more relaxed he'd probably be dead.
- Pitbull Dates Puppy: Rose and Azu again, though they eventually evolve out of this trope.
Rose and Chase:
- First Girl Wins: Gender inverted with Rose. While Chase is definitely not her first love, he is her first love seen.
- Let'sWaitAwhile: Rose doesn't react well to how she behaved with Grim, and after getting back together with Chase, keeps the relationship rather platonic until she feels more comfortable with her behavior.
- Love Will Lead You Back: While Rose doesn't seem like it as she gets into relationship after relationship, she believed that if Chase loved her enough, he would track her down and they could give things another shot.
- The Matchmaker: In a rather creepy version of this trope, when Cadwyn attacks Rose's kids and paralyzes one of them Rose kicks Cadwyn out of her life. She does realize that Cadwyn's actions were due to her alter, and so she ends up programming an S-series to take care of her.
Others:
- Break the Cutie: Rose starts showing real promise setting up an Artificial Rights movement, and so the people who want to keep Artis as cheap labor decide to set her up, injecting her with some serious drugs and causing her to go insane.
- Friends with Benefits: In one alternate-universe version, Rose hooks up with Fenix. Neither one seems really bothered by it, or bothered when they both start dating.
