Literature / I Do Not Want To Do This

The second Web Serial Novel by The Tales of Paul Twister creator Anthony Peers, I Do Not Want To Do This is the story of a new college graduate who just landed his dream job, starting out at the new office in a new town and trying to get used to the work and the culture there... except that it's a magical, game-inspired world, with casual references to Final Fantasy, Pokémon, and especially Dungeons & Dragons popping up everywhere.

It's "the Sixth Age," a time in which a technology referred to as "ætherics" has enabled their world to build a modern society. People drive mana-powered cars, browse the æthernet with rune tablets, and the old tales of heroes and quests are considered to be a relic of the past.

Brad Webb just got a job at Dyralight, Inc, (where "the big guy" at the top is apparently a powerful dragon named Dyralist,) and he has no time for fanciful ancient tales of heroes and other such geekery. When coworkers ask him how he would respond to a hypothetical Call to Adventure, he says that the modern Age is so much better than the standard of living that went along with heroic times, and he would simply turn it down and leave the past in the past; he has modern concerns to deal with, like building a career.

Of course, with the author of Paul Twister at the helm, you just know he's not going to get his wish on that point...

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I Do Not Want To Do This provides examples of the following tropes:

• Above the Influence: Brad to Joanna, multiple times, rightly believing that she isn't thinking clearly with her succubus aura screwing with her emotions.
• Action Girl: Felicity, a powerful paladin who joins the team as a pickup healer for their first dungeon run. She leaves everyone awed when she manages to solo the dungeon boss.
• A Dog Named "Dog": The world in which the story takes place is named Mundus, Latin for "world."
• Aerith and Bob: Humans (and partial-humans) tend to have typical American names. Non-humans generally don't.
• Amnesiac God: One of the possible explanations Brad comes up with for Gareth Meranas.
• Arc Number: Being a D&D-inspired world, the number 20 pops up a lot and has cultural and religious significance.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After a long debate on the value of tolerance and seeing all Alignments as equally valid and generally harmless, Brad is confronted with news that the Transformationists, a Chaotic party in Imperial government, appears to be abusing the rules to instigate strife at the highest levels. Gareth simply asks him if, seeing this, he can still believe Chaos isn't really all that bad.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The Dancers are a dark-skinned people who live on a remote, isolated island. Their name for their own people is vaguely Polynesian-sounding gibberish.
• Barrier Warrior: Joanna's role on the dungeon team is the abjurer, focusing on barriers and protective spells.
• The Berserker: Daheþ, who Joanna worships, is known for this. When Brad points out that she doesn't really fit the stereotype, she says that that's only one aspect of Daheþ and his doctrine is mostly about dealing with the struggles in your life, which definitely fits her.
• Blood on the Debate Floor: By law, any vote at the Council of High Lords (Congress-equivalent body) that results in a tied vote twice must be resolved through Trial by Combat. Brad worries that if this happens during the vote for the new Emperor, in a highly-polarized political environment, it could lead to widespread bloodshed. And it does.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The leader at the local church who fills the roll of a priest or pastor is referred to as an "Esott."
• Calling Your Attacks: Said to be something that ancient heroes did, but it's no longer necessary for modern-day magic.
• Character Alignment: invoked One of several traits that Dyralight does not discriminate in hiring on the basis of. Brad apparently is a member of a Good church, but doesn't attend particularly often because at college that was a good way to draw ridicule and negative attention.
  • The Transformationists are said to be a Chaotic political faction/party, minor but theoretically large enough to act as kingmakers.
  • Brad's ex, Vivian, was Evil, and neither of them seemed to have had a problem with dating each other in these modern, tolerant times.
  • Much of the chapter "Philosophical Perspectives" is dedicated to a debate between Brad and a man from an earlier Age about whether or not Evil (and to a lesser degree, Chaos) should be considered a legitimate part of civilized society.
• Cheese Strategy: invoked Brad deals with the giant beetle dungeon boss by using his enchantment skills to weaken the stone in the dungeon ceiling and then drop stalactites on it, killing it instantly. It never attacks him as it doesn't recognize what he was doing as a hostile action.
• Cooldown Hug: When Joanna starts to crack under stress in the dungeon, seemingly reliving some form of past trauma, Brad helps her calm down with one of these.
  • Above the Influence / Heroic Willpower: He does so while taking the full brunt of her succubus aura, then disengages when its effect on her causes her to try to get physical with him.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: From Gareth's perspective, this the state of the Empire, with Evil alignments considered simply another equally valid perspective. Brad disagrees, pointing to the lasting peace and prosperity of the Empire as a direct result of their tolerant way of life.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Discussed. Joanna is reluctant to share her thoughts on the nature of the second dungeon with Brad because what they see sounds uncomfortably close to some really weird theories she's run across online, and she doesn't want him to think she actually believes that stuff.
• Cruel to Be Kind: When Joanna asks Brad to be her boyfriend, he immediately and quite bluntly tells her to leave and not talk to him again for several days. He does so because he can't trust her or himself to be clear-headed about such things with her succubus aura affecting both of them, but he does add that if she still feels the same way after, he'll consider it.
• Culture Clash: After three years in a very different country on the other side of the world, Felicity is having some difficulty adjusting back to life in the Empire. For example, she's used to walking everywhere, and is prepared to head on foot to a place way across town, then feels a bit silly when Brad suggests just driving over there.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: All of the strange and creepy scenarios Brad dreams about in "Troubling Thoughts" appear to be set in his future. Which (if any) will actually come true remains to be seen.
• Extreme Doormat: Brad's desire to keep his head down and generally be a people-pleaser can make him come across like this... until the stakes are higher then his personal comfort, and then watch out, as he can be a surprisingly vicious fighter when backed into a corner!
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Empire seems largely reminiscent of modern-day America: said to span an entire continent, with people driving cars and listening to the radio on their daily commute at corporate office jobs, obsessing over politics, going out to eat at restaurants, and so forth. Except everything runs on magic.
• Functional Magic: Brad is an enchanter, working on programs rune-scripts for a self-driving car.
• Genius Loci: Dungeons are run by Dungeon Cores, though it's not clear how intelligent they are.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: When Brad ends up teetering on the edge of a Heroic BSoD at getting lost in a dungeon, Felicity gives him a hard slap and screams in his face to get up and be a proper soldier. (Despite him not being one.) She immediately apologizes for it and explains that's the only way she knows to snap someone out of a state like that.
• Glass Cannon: Spellcasters seem to be this in combat, able to charge up their attacks to extremely high power levels, but only if they have enough time to focus on the spell uninterrupted.
• Good Bad Girl: Joanna implies that she may have been one at some point in the past. Brad waves it off, saying he doesn't want to hear any confessions and "everyone has stupid crap in their past that they regret."
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted. When armored, Felicity goes all-out, head-to-toe plate mail including a face-concealing visored helmet.
• Have You Seen My God?: Gods putting in personal appearances apparently used to be a thing, but with the advent of the Sixth Age this abruptly stopped and no one's sure why. Holy magic still works for clerics and paladins, though...
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: The story is full of them. Examples include ætheric technology rather than electronics, rune tablets rather than computers, Brad taking a nondisclosure oath as he starts his new job, and a mention of a "teddy drake," which from the context can be used as a comfort object.
• Humanshifting: Dyralist, the dragon who founded the company Brad works for, is able to take human form.
• Indentured Servitude: It's a bit ambiguous exactly what the status of a warlock is, with Brad considering them slaves while Kayla points out that they are free to leave at any time, if they're willing to give up the magical power and other benefits they gain from it, but the one thing that's clear is that while someone is a warlock, they're obligated to work for their Patron's benefit and follow the Patron's commands rather than living a fully free life on their own terms.
• It's Okay to Cry: In "Wet Shirt," Brad holds Joanna as she works through her grief over her father having to leave once her succubus aura came in, so that he wouldn't end up doing anything to her. It's implied that this is the first time she's really confronted these feelings since childhood.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Felicity dresses in head-to-toe plate armor for combat, with even her face concealed behind a visored helmet.
• Magitek: Ætherics is essentially modern technology powered by mana.
• Make Some Noise: Kayla is able to use her magic to amplify dissonant chords from her guitar into sonic blasts that can shatter stone.
• The Missionary: Felicity's backstory. She was sent out by her church as an anointed paladin to both preach and fight in war-torn kobold lands. Three years later, she's come home.
• Non-Action Guy: While Brad's magic makes him a capable fighter, and he can be surprisingly vicious with it when backed into a corner, his clear preference is to have nothing to do with such things whenever he feels that he has a choice not to.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Kelamek says that his war hero grandfather was an engineer. When Kayla asks if he built stuff for the army, he clarifies that no, he was a train engineer working in the supply and logistics branch. Which didn't stop him from seeing plenty of combat action in a war that apparently lasted for at least fifty years!
• Power Incontinence: Joanna's aura affects any man who gets too close to her, filling them with lust for her. It's supposedly a legacy from her incubus grandfather, and she has no way to suppress it or get rid of it altogether.
• Power Levels: Something that still exists. College grads tend to be level 3 or 4, with 5 considered to be a great achievement attained by a lifetime of training. One of the most powerful men in the world is "believed to be" level 9, and Brad considers ancient tales of heroes regularly hitting double-digits and even epic levels to be exaggerated myths that are probably based around some grain of historical truth somewhere.
• Punctuation Shaker: More like Archaic Letter Shaker. The letter "ash" (æ) is frequently used in words related to ætheric technology, and "thorn" (þ) seems to be connected with deities, with the gods of the Empire even referred to as a "panþeon."
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: Dyralist describes the state of the world at the end of the Fifth Age this way. Essentially, everything that could be true was true, all at the same time. If multiple mutually exclusive options existed, they all happened. The person hailed as the great hero of the time was the Sole Survivor of the party of heroes that managed to put reality back together.
• Refusal of the Call: At his first church service in the new town, Brad gets a personal message that something divine has a purpose ahead for him. He immediately nopes out and decides he's never going back to that church again.
• Sexiness Score: Discussed in the first chapter where (being a D&D-inspired world) the scale goes from 1 to 20, rather than 10.
• Shout-Out: As expected from Anthony Peers, the story's full of them.
  • In ancient tales, summoners would call forth their creatures with the words "I choose you."
  • The Dancers live on a distant island and have horns on their foreheads which grants them summoner powers. Sounds a lot like the Madain tribe.
  • Casual conversation frequently uses "twenty" in many places where we would say "ten," because it's a D&D-inspired world.
  • Several points appear to be inspired specifically by Critical Role, including the title. Rather than Sunday, the usual time for church worship services to be held is Thursday night, and references some of the series' more infamous lines, such as "life needs things to live" and "time is a weird soup," pop up in various places.
  • The concept of Thaxil's Tower, a philosophical construct describing how some necessities are more fundamental than others and dealing with them enables people to work on higher, more aspirational goals, is strongly reminiscent of the real-world concept of Maslow's Hierarchy.
  • The Transformationists' abuse of the rules of parliamentary procedure to force a tied vote right where it would do the most harm is strongly reminiscent of Hel's actions at the Godsmoot.
  • Transformationists (a Chaotic political faction) hold to the belief that all that is necessary to break even the most Lawful of people is "one truly bad day." Sounds a lot like another agent of chaos.
• Shrinking Violet: Joanna is notably shy and withdrawn, and always keeps her distance from other people, even during a dungeon run when the party should stick together. Probably because she has a "succubus aura" that causes intense lust in people who get too close, that she can't turn off.
• Signed Up for the Dental: Kelamek knew he wanted to work in transportation, but he picked Dyralight specifically for the dungeon-crawl team sponsorship.
• Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: Gareth denies that the two concepts are in conflict, claiming that the choices a person makes with their own free will shape their character, which ends up determining what they will or will not do in certain situations, which is the essence of fate. He says that the only difference between "free will" and "destiny" is the passage of time.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Inverted. Joanna is not particularly beautiful, but is cursed with a succubus aura that makes any man who gets too close to her think she's the hottest thing ever and start desiring her. Worse still, it works on her as well, attracting her indiscriminately to any and every guy around. This leaves her shy and withdrawn, unable to get close to anyone she might build a relationship with for fear of losing control.
• Stealth Pun: The local Meþasite congregation is led by a very old-school preacher who speaks out forcefully against the Evil ways of the world. Members of the congregation seem entirely unfazed at manifestations of divine power among them that outsiders might find creepy. And it sponsors congregation members to serve abroad as Paladins, whose key stat in D&D is traditionally Charisma. Though the term is never used, it seems Brad has stumbled upon a charismatic church.
• Succubi and Incubi: Calling a tiefling coworker this is said to be a good way to get slapped with a sexual harassment complaint.
• Superweapon: Dyralist doesn't know what fractured reality at the end of the Chaos War, but he theorizes that Chaos unleashed some sort of weapon "that should never have existed."
• Suppressed History: Gareth claims this as the most likely reason why his memories do not match historical accounts of the Fifth Age.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Brad drops Gareth off at a hotel after getting him set up with some basic needs. Shortly thereafter, Felicity wants to find him. They go to the hotel and are told that a guy matching that description tried to get a room here, but with no ID and no bank card, he was turned away.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: In the second dungeon, Brad meets an angelic warrior who solicits his help in fighting the dungeon boss. When Brad realizes that the angel's preferred strategy involves earthquake magic that could level the nearby town, and the angel refuses to be talked out of it, Brad feels he has no choice but to instead help the dungeon boss kill the angel by blasting him In the Back with his combat magic.
• Stop Worshipping Me / Unwanted False Faith / A God I Am Not: It's not clear whether or not Gareth Meranas is actually the god Meþas, but he seems confused and vaguely irritated by suggestions that he's a deity.
• Title Drop / Arc Words: Brad is always getting socially pressured into stuff he doesn't want to do.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Shown in sharp contrast by the dungeon run. Felicity is a short-haired, no-nonsense warrior who smites monsters harder than anyone on the team. Kayla is a giggly, gossipy, snarky bard who enjoys wearing impractical outfits just because they look good on her.
• Values Dissonance: invoked In-universe example in "Philosophical Perspectives," where Brad discusses the modern belief that tolerance of other Alignments is crucially important to modern society, while Gareth, who is not from the Sixth Age, expresses incredulity at the idea that anyone could possibly think it's a good idea to show tolerance to Evil. Turns out that a lot of the trouble stems from the fact that they have differing definitions of Good and Evil, which Gareth attributes to Evil having somehow secretly taken over the Empire and used its influence to mess with the definitions people use. Brad disagrees, claiming it is simply due to an evolving understanding as Social Science Marches On.
• Vancian Magic: "The Curse of Vance" is something past Ages had to deal with. Even the most nostalgic-for-past-ages geeks on the team definitely don't want to have to deal with spell slots as the ancients did.
• Wham Episode: In "Escapee," Brad meets an angelic warrior trying to clear a dungeon, betrays and kills the angel to keep him from thoughtlessly destroying his home with an earthquake, then meets a man who the angel was presumably trying to rescue, who's been trapped in the dungeon for a very long time. He recognizes this man as the god Meþas, but the prisoner has never heard of Meþas and claims to be a general from a war that may or may not have been the Chaos War of the distant past, except the story he tells of the war is very different from the one Brad's familiar with.
  • In "Missing Person," Gareth, who is unaware that Meþas exists, pronounces Meþas's blessing upon Brad, then seems unaware that he has done so immediately afterwards. Later that day, Felicity tells Brad she doesn't think he's still only level 3 anymore. Unable to meet societal demands he was not aware of, Gareth vanishes into the town without a trace, leaving Brad and Felicity unable to find him again.
  • In "Throne Resolved," the Transformationists' plot to force a tied vote comes to fruition, leading to a full-on magical battle erupting in the Council of High Lords, which just barely gets started before the fighting destroys the camera providing the video feed, leaving the rest of the outcome unknown.