“The world's a weird place, when you get down to it.”
Each Little Universe is a comic urban fantasy-ish novel by Chris Durston.
When a girl from the stars unexpectedly shows up in the lives of two oddball, slacker entrepreneurs, they find themselves tasked with showing her what it means to be human the only way they know how: pop culture and nerdiness.
Things might not be as simple as just coming down to Earth and chilling, though - the sky's going to want its missing daughter back, and earnest silliness isn't likely to help much on that front.
Provides examples of:
- The Ace: Dominika, who seems to be able to do almost anything. Lampshaded by other characters, who either feel Overshadowed by Awesome or just think it's unfair for one person to have so many skills.
- Aerith and Bob: To an extent; while the majority of characters have reasonably Bob-ish names, most of them are almost exclusively referred to by nicknames. The two main characters are, to the narration and to other characters, known as TM and Veggie; their real names are Tom Major and Jonathan Vega, both of which are hinted at early on and revealed to have some level of significance later. There are also starperson characters who assume human names that might not be completely impossible for a normal person to have been given at birth but are at least mildly unusual, most noticeably Riegel O'Ryan.
- Becoming the Mask: Almost all starpeople seem to get this, to some degree. Those who run away do so out of a desire to experience human life; those who come after them sometimes seem to find themselves attracted to the same thing. Orion claims not to be affected, but Lauren and the Ire love performing and Altair is eventually revealed to have incarnated himself as a human multiple times, with varying degrees of success.
- Big Bad: For the purposes of the narrative, it's Orion. There are some hints that there might be a Greater-Scope Villain in the form of nebulous, uncaring cosmic forces, but - to the point, perhaps - these are never explored or directly interacted with.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: It seems initially as if Orion and Altair are this, but it transpires that the singular Big Bad is Orion, with Altair acting as The Dragon. Later, Orion forms something of a Five-Bad Band with Lauren and the Ire, although the members of the latter group don't get much in the way of individual personalities and the five are rarely seen working as a unit.
- Big Damn Heroes: TM's dad and Marty's band, the Inciting Incident, bust in just at the right moment to save TM, Veggie, Marty, and Dominika from Lauren and the Ire. At the very end, Ziggy descends from space right on time to stop Orion killing TM.
- Bittersweet Ending: Big time. Ziggy and Veggie are gone for good, which will leave a huge gap in the lives of those left behind. On the other hand, the closing moments see the forming of a new relationship and focus on the positive side of continuing to exist at all.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The trio of Derrida, Dominika, and Marty - who, while they're part of the core cast of good guys, often function as a separate unit to the TM-Veggie-Ziggy group - are blonde, brunette, and blue-haired respectively.
- Brought Down to Normal: The fate of Altair, who in their last appearance is so diminished from their former power that a punch to the face leaves a fist-shaped dent, as if they were made of modelling clay. Interestingly, runaway stars seem to be deliberately trying to invoke this trope, but the specific aforementioned case goes a little bit too far from 'cosmic force' to 'regular person' and then just sort of keeps going downhill from there.
- The Caper: The first part of the story after Ziggy joins the group revolves around pulling off an epic heist, although it turns out not to be that epic at all. However, there are two much more successful capers later in the story, first when TM, Veggie, and Dominika take on the Swede and again when TM returns to the museum - the intended target of the first, disappointing heist - for the final confrontation.
- Cat/Dog Dichotomy: The good guys own a couple of cats, albeit ones who don't really seem to care too much about anything. Inverting Heroic Canines, Villainous Felines, there's a dog on the bad guys' side.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Two pivotal moments, one around two-thirds of the way through the story and one right at the end. In the former, Orion and Altair, with some help from Keelut, easily defeat TM, Veggie, and Ziggy; in the latter, Orion initially seems to have defeated TM and Veggie but winds up literally smashed into the pavement by Ziggy on her return from space.
- Deadpan Snarker: Most characters get a go at this, but Derrida is perhaps the most frequent culprit.
- Death Is Cheap: Teased, but averted. Although it seems as if it might be possible to rescue Ziggy and bring her back, it doesn't work - at least partly because she accepts her place in things in order to prevent putting people in more danger - leaving the rest of the main characters to move on and deal with things. Veggie, too, is Killed Off for Real at the end.
- The Dragon: As discussed under Big Bad Duumvirate, Altair and the four members of Lyra are nominally just as important as Orion in the collaborative hunt for their missing stars, but Orion's clearly the one in charge. She's the common element in any star-hunt, getting a different Dragon to help out each time. Of course, she also has Sirius (aka Keelut the dog) with her during all visits, giving her another Dragon.
- Elective Mute: Dominika seems to be this, but turns out to be closer to The Quiet One, only speaking when she's certain of something. TM points out that, what with being The Ace, if Dominika doubts her own mind enough to stay mostly silent, it's hard to see what hope anyone else has of ever being sure of anything.
- Evil Redhead: Orion.
- Expressive Hair: Ziggy is a mild case, with dark purple hair that intensifies or darkens depending on her emotional state.
- Faux Affably Evil: All the bad guys walk some line between this, genuine affable evilness, or a facade hiding the fact that they really do enjoy hurting people.
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: Inverted. The two cats owned (or unofficially adopted) by TM and Veggie are both male. Keelut, the canine companion of survival show host Riegel O'Ryan, is female - as such, Men Like Dogs, Women Like Cats is also inverted.
- Finishing Move: Discussed when the main characters watch wrestling, then pulled out again when real fights happen. Orion uses the Rainmaker, while TM tends to go for a knee or kick to the face. Ziggy borrows the High Fly Flow for the final confrontation, taking it up to eleven by delivering it from space.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Derrida is sometimes treated as this by the others due to their inability to stop constantly snarking about everything, but it's obvious that everyone does love them and that the jabs are good-natured.
- Good Parents: TM's parents seem to be, and the fact that Marty's parents (the only other parental relationship we hear of) are supportive enough to go by his stage name suggests that they probably are too. Interestingly, Marty's parents are an extremely successful woman and an 'occasionally entrepreneurial househusband', in what seems to be a reversal of the archetypical relationships on shows like The Real Housewives.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Heavily implied: the antagonists claim, at least, that they need to put runaway stars back in their place to prevent uncaring, possibly vaguely eldritch forces - the laws of physics with some Cosmic Horror undertones - from knocking the balance of the universe out of whack and causing its eventual destruction. As such, the bad guys who appear in person come off as if they're doing their best to think of themselves as Above Good and Evil owing to the Blue-and-Orange Morality of the things 'above' them, but it's clearly not always so impersonal.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Pulled by Veggie at the very end of the story. Also occurs in the Show Within a Show: Barry, TM's character in tabletop RPG Hero's Adventure, dies at the end of their campaign, which TM's not particularly happy about.
- Homemade Inventions: TM and Veggie's living. Some are more 'homemade' than others, such as the Bedsheet-Tablecloth-Whiteboard (really just a laminated sheet), and they've had varying degrees of financial success. Most of the items mentioned in the early story are Played for Laughs, although some of them do reappear much later. Notably, the Enchi-Ladder, a throwaway pun from near the start of the story, comes in handy when TM goes back to the museum looking for Orion, while the Octobike - an insistently indefinite contraption first mentioned in the very first line of the novel and never taken seriously - comes back in a big way when it's needed.
- I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Implied to be part of the reason TM never went after Aster, who broke up with him of her own free will - he respected her choice. When Ziggy is taken not of her own free will, Veggie suggests that TM might get some sort of closure on Aster from taking action this time.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Ziggy wants some combination of this, I Just Want to Be Loved, and I Just Want to Be Normal. As it turns out, no humans (or stars, or cats) can really be described as normal, and the idea that true love doesn't have to be romantic means that all of the main cast really do love each other.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Veggie, at least, is pretty sure this is how the world works: his plan for pulling off an actual, real-life heist is to spend a few hours training by playing stealth games. He might not be wrong; given that anyone with a little bit of Star Power becomes a low-level Reality Warper, there's probably a degree of truth to the idea, certainly if the person believes it'll work. TM is shown early on to know a few wrestling moves on account of having watched a lot of wrestling, while Veggie introduces himself to Ziggy as a 'two-time regional Guitar Hero champion' and at one point proves that he can in fact play the actual guitar. It's not explicit whether he's good at Guitar Hero because of knowing real guitar, vice versa, or whether the two are unrelated.
- Implacable Man: Downplayed, but Orion, and to a lesser extent Altair and the Lyra group, can come off like this when at their most ruthless and effective.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Too many to mention. It's almost as if the puns came first and the entire rest of the narrative was just an excuse to make incessant, terrible puns.
- Insufferable Genius: Derrida thinks they're this, but most of their friends see them as frequently insufferable and less frequently genius. They do have their moments, though; their gaming-focused explanation of Kant's noumenal-phenomenal distinction forces TM to admit that they do occasionally know what they're talking about.
- Kick the Dog: A semi-literal example: Orion doesn't seem to care too much that her dog might have been harmed or killed by the gang in their escape, which Derrida thinks makes her a monster (more so, apparently, than any of the other things she's done, including but not limited to murder).
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Ziggy comes across as this at times but is more often a deconstruction, experiencing severe existential angst. She picks goals on a whim out of a sheer desire to experience something, which turns out to be unsatisfying enough to send her into a spiral of sadness - the others, though, point out that reaching an arbitrary milestone and finding it disappointing is actually a fairly common part of the human experience.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Most things in the world of Each Little Universe could be this. The simple act of remembering someone could be a kind of magic, semi-literally bringing a part of their consciousness to life in your own; heck, as flashback-exclusive character Aster articulates, the universe itself might be a giant brain with something like consciousness. While there are things in ELU that are more openly magical than others, characters spend a lot of time wondering whether things we take for granted might not be more like magic than we tend to give them credit for.
- Meaningful Echo: A few times throughout the story, Veggie says the words 'you get this one', or something to that effect, usually meaning that he wants someone else to do something for him or pay for something because he doesn't want to. At the very end, his last words are 'I got this one.'
- Meaningful Name: Very few character names fall into neither meaningful nor punny. This includes but isn't limited to:
- TM, whose real name is Tom Major; the David Bowie motif throughout the story comes into play a few times where TM's involved. He's also an inventor who would presumably use the letters TM (as in 'trademark') in his business.
- Veggie, real name Jonathan Vega - this proves fatal when Orion spots his name on a letter and assumes he must be the human identity of runaway star Vega.
- Riegel O'Ryan is a pretty transparent allusion to Rigel, a star which is a member of the Orion constellation.
- Al Tyer, like O'Ryan, is obviously just a phonetic rearrangement of Altair, the star in the Aquila constellation.
- Gary Mackerel subverts it, if anything, by being a man named after a fish who refuses to leverage his extremely relevant surname to market his fish shop.
- Michel Furcoat and Maurice Meow-Ponty (the cats) are puns on philosophers Michel Foucault and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
- TM and Veggie also discuss near the beginning of the story whether continuing to pitch business ideas purely on the strength of the punny name is a good idea. Turns out that it probably is: their most successful venture is the bizarre mashup of a seafood restaurant and a gym, named Muscles & Mussels.
- Necessarily Evil: The villains certainly want to claim that the harm they cause is necessary, in service of restoring the natural order that if left unbalanced could destroy the entire cosmos, but Orion in particular occasionally lets the mask slip and openly enjoys inflicting pain.
- Not So Above It All: The antagonists like to think of themselves as detached, doing an impartial service, but Orion seems not only to enjoy her work but to be genuinely afraid of the forces above her, while neither Altair nor Lyra is immune to the attraction of a human life, just like the runaway stars they're hunting.
- Papa Wolf: Thomas Major Senior gets to prove it with a Big Damn Heroes moment late in the story, becoming an Action Dad in the process.
- The Power of Friendship: Might well be an actual physical force in the ELU world.
- Power Trio: Two: TM, Veggie, and Ziggy, and Dominika, Derrida, and Marty.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Discussed by TM and Ziggy, who come up with a truly ridiculous hypothetical scenario involving killing someone by throwing them off a roof into a vat of baked beans. TM suggests 'be careful when falling from such a great Heinz', while Ziggy opts for the simpler 'looks like he's... bean alive' (and now he's not). TM gets to deliver one for real later on: 'Turn and face the strange, bitch.' Plus it's to Orion of all people, making it all the sweeter.
- Rags to Riches: TM and Veggie seem to be hoping that this will just sort of happen without them having to work too hard for it. It does eventually happen - they don't end up millionaires, but do at least go from being extremely hard-off to making a comfortable living - with a little help from Ziggy and a bit of hard work.
- Reality Warper: Ziggy seems to be this to some extent, what with her ability to change her appearance at will (or, to a degree, involuntarily when experiencing extremes of emotion). It's heavily implied that almost everyone in the world of Each Little Universe has the capacity to very slightly affect reality, with some people (particularly those who hang around starpeople) acquiring this ability to a greater degree.
- Resurrective Immortality: Arguably what all stars have, since the death of their human form means that they go back to their place in the sky, and they could just come back as a human again later. However, the danger involved in doing so means that Ziggy, after being human and dying once, decides not to resurrect but to remain a star. Orion is a straighter case, as she can continue to come back to Earth after succeeding or failing in her hunting missions. Of course, none of the stars are completely immortal; all will eventually explode or burn out.
- Rule of Cool: TM and Veggie - especially the latter - are fairly convinced that the Rule of Cool might well be as fundamental a law of physics as any other, and all indications are that they might not be wrong.
- Shout-Out: The gaming, wrestling, and other pop culture allusions almost approach reference overdose, but the biggest motif throughout is David Bowie. Several chapters are named after Bowie songs; a few events almost seem to have come out of Bowie lyrics; a security code is Bowie's birthday; at least two character names are Bowie references.
- Show Within a Show: There are several instances of the characters playing games that are clearly based on real games but with the names and specifics tweaked slightly, including multiple lengthy installments of a tabletop RPG.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: TM gets to interrupt villains twice: once by hitting the Swede before he can finish a sentence insulting Ziggy, and the second time to Orion.
- Stage Names: Marty Rook isn't his real name, and the rest of his band the Inciting Incident have all taken stage names too. Marty even insists that his parents go by Rook so as to keep up the illusion. There are also Riegel O'Ryan, Al Tyer, and Lauren, who are respectively Orion, Altair, and Beta Lyrae - arguably these are less Stage Names and more just assumed names in their human identities, but they're all involved in stage or screen business in one way or another.
- Time Skip: A significant one about two-thirds of the way through the story, after Ziggy is taken by Orion: there's a gap of two to three years between her death/disappearance and the point that the story picks up.
- True Companions: In many cases, and considered just as valid a love as a romantic one.
- Villainous Breakdown: At the end, Orion seems on the verge of one of these, not expecting that she can genuinely be defeated but nevertheless extremely frustrated that anyone would bother trying.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The good guys are extremely insistent that starpeople are just as much people as any Earth-born human, with Veggie going so far as to sacrifice himself so that the star Orion's mistaken him for won't have to go through the same thing Ziggy did. Ziggy is also hung up on the value of the lives of fictional characters, overlapping somewhat with What Measure Is a Mook? when she finds it upsetting that she accidentally killed a mook in a stealth game. On the other hand, the (non-human) antagonists more than once ask what measure is a human, with characters having different answers over the course of the novel.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: All starpeople are described as being hard to place somehow, often because of the accent, giving them some small thing in common that marks them as not quite the same as most people. Ziggy has an accent TM can't quite identify, and in her post-transformation form her physical features sound as if she could be from almost anywhere on the planet. O'Ryan is supposedly Greek-Irish (but certainly speaks as if she's more the latter than the former); Lauren and the Ire also have an unusual accent and indefinite ethnicity; Altair may as well be from the past; Vega's accent, according to TM, might be Finnish or Welsh.
