Sandbox / Mightymewtron

MB clone high writeup

• "Cloney Island: Twist!": Mrs. C is a robot assistant built by Sandra Sandria while stranded on a deserted island. Resentful of her role, Mrs. C desired a way off the island, but Sandra stayed in hopes that that her lost love Scudworth would someday find her. Upon spotting Scudworth and Mr. Butlertron's boat, Mrs. C shoots it down to strand them on the island. Using her Mary Poppins-like charm, Mrs. C seduces Mr. Butlertron, then "confesses" to him that Sandra is planning to rob Scudworth, setting her up as a scapegoat so Mrs. C can rob Scudworth herself. Once on the repaired boat, Mrs. C reveals her true self as a rude Cockney robot who plans to use the stolen money to launch a weight loss app as a cover for a robot uprising, taking Sandra hostage as a human slave to solve CAPTCHA tests for her. Mrs. C invites Mr. Butlertron to come with her, claiming that she developed true feelings for him during her scheme, but when he rebukes her, she cusses him out and rides off, having pulled off what Scudworth describes as "the grift to end all grifts."

Going Number Three

• Back at the Barnyard: One episode has a recurring joke of Freddy having to go number three, disturbing Pip, who doesn't even want to know what that means.
• Big Mouth: Exaggerated with Jay, whose digestive health is so poor, he not only refers to his various excretions by number (which go up to the thirties), but symbols. "Number four" is apparently a mix of vomit, "shart," and a bit of urine.
• King of the Hill: In "Fun with Jane and Jane," the Omega House cult prevents Luanne from going to the bathroom, but promises that Luanne will be able to "go number three" at the Omega Ranch.

Dumper/Dumpee Debate

LACONIC:Exes refuse to accept that they were the ones who got dumped.

Films — Live Action

• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: When first telling Ramona about his breakup with Envy Adams, Scott claims the breakup was mutual (or at least, "she told me it was mutual"). The narrator affirms that she clearly dumped him, and it was "brutal."

Western Animation

• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: Carmelita Aves, also known as the supervillain Voltura, used to date Manny's father Roldolfo (also known as superhero White Pantera), and she always insists she broke up with him. Whenever someone reminds her that Rodolfo broke up with her, she responds, "As if I could ever forget!"
• Futurama: In "Love and Rocket," Leela recalls her "mutual breakup with Sean which was totally mutual." When she runs back into Sean and meets his wife in "Fry and Leela's Big Fling," they claim Sean dumped Leela, and Leela shouts back, "It was mutual!"

Trying For A Baby

LACONIC: A story arc in which a couple actively tries to conceive a child.

Lying to Get Laid

LACONIC: Lying about something to have sex with someone, because they wouldn't consent if you told them the truth.

[...]Supertrope to Bed Trick, The Baby Trap, and Contraception Deception.

Film — Live Action

• Grease 2: Louis takes Sharon to a bomb shelter and convinces her that the country is going to war, and that this is their last opportunity to have sex, leading to the song "Let's Do It For Our Country." Sharon is reluctant even under these alleged conditions, but when she escapes the shelter, she's furious that Louis tricked her.

Live Action TV

• How I Met Your Mother: Barney Stinson's bread and butter is tricking women into sex with him by taking on various impressive identities. Sometimes it's as simple as claiming he has an Inherently Attractive Profession, and other times he dons entire costumes to sell the illusion. He's even falsified multiple online articles based around one impressive character of his, a hot air balloon flyer with a condition that causes a Gag Penis.

Western Animation

• Futurama:
  • In "A Bicyclops Built For Two," Leela meets another cyclops named Alcazar who claims to be the last other remaining member of her species, convincing Leela to repopulate with him. However, he turns out to be a jerkass shapeshifter who's pulled this same trick on four other women, just so he could have sex with them and make them scrub his five castles.
  • "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela" has Leela and Zapp seemingly trapped on a planet resembling the Garden of Eden, and when the Earth is destroyed, Leela agrees to repopulate the human race with Zapp, who seems to have turned over a new leaf under the dire circumstances. However, it turns out Zapp trapped Leela himself, lied to her about their ship being destroyed, and faked the visuals of the Earth exploding — turns out they were still on Earth all along. All because he wanted an excuse to sleep with her again.

Forgiveness Backlash

LACONIC: A character is forgiven in the narrative, but the fandom doesn't buy it.

[...]

Compare Easily Forgiven.

[[AC:

Western Animation

Missing Soundtrack Song

An official soundtrack or cast recording doesn't always include every song from the show. This can be for a variety of reasons:

• The song is incredibly short.
• The song is too much of a spoiler.
• The song only makes sense in the context of the show.
• There's too much dialogue interspersed with the lyrics for it to be listenable on its own.
• The song is meant to be a joke.

Reprises often get this treatment, usually due to a combination of being very short and being tied to spoilers.

See Cut Song for songs that never even make it into the show, much less the soundtrack.

Examples

Theatre

• The Book of Mormon: Short reprises are not included in the cast recording, including the numerous "something incredible" refrains that are not part of existing songs (including the bit that interrupts "I Am Africa," which is on the recording) and Nabalungi's Dark Reprise of "Hasa Diga Eebowai." The latter may also be kept off for being a spoiler, as it happens after she learns Arnold's been lying to her.
• Dear Evan Hansen:
  • Alana's reprise of "Waving Through a Window" is not on the cast recording, likely due to being very short.
  • "Sincerely Me (Reprise)" is not included on the recording, likely also due to length and because it's interrupted by Evan before it can properly end.
• Six: The Musical: The original West End recording doesn't include all of the songs.
  • Any reprise or playoff in the show is cut, including "Ex-Wives (Reprise)," the musical introduction before Anne Boleyn's number, and the "Haus of Holbein" playoff.
  • The encore remix "Megasix" is kept off the album, as it's meant to be an exciting surprise for the audience and a celebration of the show they've just seen.
  • Even though the 2022 recording of the Broadway opening night keeps most songs intact, including the reprises, it doesn't include the scene right after "Don't Lose Ur Head," nor the interrupted "Wearing Yellow at a Funeral" song. This may be because the song is too short, or to keep the song joke a surprise.
• Wicked: "The Wicked Witch of the East" is not on the cast recording, presumably because it's too full of dialogue and a potential spoiler (Elpaba grants Nessarose the ability to walk, and when Boq tries to leave her, Nessa loses it and casts a spell that shrinks Boq's heart).

Logo Debut

Disney

• The logo of a blue background with a pale blue castle debuted in 1985 with Return to Oz, but the full rendition of the logo, including the version of "When You Wish Upon A Star" that goes along with it, was only added with The Black Cauldron.
• Toy Story introduced a special CGI version of the logo that subsequently appeared with all other Pixar projects up to Ratatouille.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest introduced a CGI logo with fireworks going off behind the castle, as part of Disney's gravitation towards computer-generated effects over traditional animation. This was slightly tweaked from The Muppets (2011) onward to say "Disney" instead of "Walt Disney Pictures."

Warner Bros

• Tom & Jerry (2021) was the first film to use the updated 2021 Warner Animation Group logo.

Hypermasculine Trans Woman

LACONIC: Trans women depicted as more masculine than their cis female counterparts, and sometimes even the men.

In media, transgender women are often depicted in an unflattering manner. Sometimes, the audience is presented with an very feminine and attractive woman, only for the show to "shock" us by revealing she's a trans woman. Other times, however, the show tries to make it very obvious that a woman is trans by exaggerating her masculine traits to comic proportions. She'll be much larger and buffer than other characters, have excessive body and facial hair, and have a chiseled face with a prominent Adam's apple. If the show really wants to drive the point home, they may even give her a bulge. Some works add these features to the trans woman even if they're never actually present on the male characters on the show, just to exaggerate the supposed dissonance between her gender and her assigned birth gender. She's likely never had gender affirmation surgery, if the show even acknowledges that it exists. If the work believes that Trans Equals Gay, the character may be depicted as a crossdressing Manly Gay.

The personality of this character usually goes in one of two directions: exceedingly masculine or exceedingly feminine. The overly masculine character will be tough and frequently put her muscles to use, and won't tolerate people making fun of her appearance. The overly feminine character will be more interested in fashion, romance, or other traditionally "girly" activities, the intention being that they're at odds with her appearance.

This is usually played for comedy on shows that see trans women as targets of mockery, but it's possible to play such a character as sympathetic by focusing on her body dysphoria and her desire to be seen as a woman.

Gender inversions of this trope are quite rare — trans men are rarely depicted as excessively feminine.

Note that a trans female character having a few masculine interests or a slightly squarer jawline isn't enough to qualify for this trope. She must be deliberately designed to stand out among her cis female counterparts, and physically masculine enough to rival cis male characters.

In real life, trans women can vary in appearance just as much as anybody else, especially with the advancement of gender-affirming treatments and surgeries. Additionally, a woman having features considered "masculine" is not always a sign that she's a trans woman. Due to the stigma related to this trope, do not add real life examples to this page.

Examples:

Comic Book

• The Highland Laddie arc of The Boys had a secondary character known as Big Bobby, first met in a pub wearing heels, a frock, makeup, and a wig, the 6+ foot Big Guy self-identifies as a lesbian, although she was pre-op at the time. The storyline sees her emasculated by a fat psychotic lady with a pair of hedge clippers. Bobby takes this in stride and asks the doctors not to sew the severed genitalia back on, but to treat it as the first stage in gender-reassignment surgery. Played very sympathetically, with nary a joke in sight (initial surprise on the part of Wee Hughie, who hadn't seen Bobby for several years; Bobby is referred to by male pronouns, although not when present. There is one genital mutilation gag near the end).

Live Action TV

• Frasier: In "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do," Niles, worried about his father becoming engaged to a new woman, mentions their cousin Douglas married a woman who he latered discovered was trans. Frasier points out cousin Douglas wasn't very observant, as his wife was strong enough to hold up a watermelon with one hand.

Western Animation

• In the Captain Sturdy [adult swim] pilot Captain Sturdy: The Originals, it is established that Captain Sturdy's muscular teammate Commander Guts has undergone a sex change and now goes by Brianna. She has a very deep voice and a Lantern Jaw of Justice, and is much larger than some of her male teammates.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016): Implied. All of the Derbytantes are short, identical girls with the exception of Bobbysuzeraelyn, who is large and muscular with a full beard and body hair, but speaks in a high-pitched voice and using "she" pronouns. Even more outlandish, the Derbytantes are meant to be kids, but Bobbysuzeraelyn looks far past puberty.
• South Park: Heather Swanson, the transgender athlete who sweeps the Strong Woman Competition in "Board Girls," is designed after Randy Savage, with a deep masculine voice and big bulging muscles, and she's much physically stronger than her cis female rivals. However, it's implied that she may not be a trans woman, but a disguised cis man using the competition as a means to beat Strong Woman (her ex) in a competition.
• Superjail!: Alice, the head prison guard, is a transgender woman with hulking muscles and an aggressive, violent attitude.

Body Spelling

LACONIC: Each person wears a letter to spell out a particular name or phrase.

Anime & Manga

• In Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a group of Lucas Lee fangirls wait outside a movie studio each wearing a shirt bearing one letter of his name, albeit standing out of order.

Literature

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In The Third Wheel, to help out Rowley's campaign for Social Chairperson, Greg organizes some students to spell out Rowley's name with T-shirts during a rally. It flops because the students can't stand in the right order.

Live Action TV

• Saturday Night Live: The "Jingleheimer Junction" sketch has an example that the characters didn't intend. A kids' show features a bit where Umberto Unity, Carla Caring, and Katie Kindness introduce their new friend, Fred Friendship. All of the characters have their initials on their shirts, and when they stand together, their shirts spell "UCKF." Then Carla Caring suggests that Fred Friendship go to the front of the line, and he moves further to the left until the show cuts to standby.

Theatre

• Legally Blonde: At the end of "So Much Better," Elle's sorority sisters turn around to reveal that the backs of their jackets spell out "ELLE WOODS."

Single Setting Series

LACONIC: Most or all of a series takes place within a specific enclosed location.

A Bottle Episode is a single episode that takes place in only one location. When most or all of a series takes place in only one location, that's this trope.

While it's sensible for a series to stay mostly confined to a specific town or city, this kind of show goes even further, staying within a specific building or other location. It's very rare that a series will stay entirely in one place, but other settings will be saved for special occasions, and only a few episodes will break out of the main location.

This is most commonly seen in Work Coms, as the plot will focus on what the characters do in their workplace while the details of their home lives are mostly informed (until their work and personal lives begin to clash, that is). This is also often an Enforced Trope for low-budget series, especially online series, that can't afford multiple shooting locations and thus mostly film content in the same place (often their own home).

These shows will usually compensate for their lack of settings by focusing more on the characters than the details of the settings, but they may also find ways to keep the setting invigorating. For example, a show taking place entirely inside a school will often showcase new and different classes within the school, and a show taking place in a mall may explore different stores within the mall.

Examples:

Live Action TV

• Barney Miller takes place entirely within the bleak 12 Precinct squad room, with action sequences mostly happening off-camera.
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: Most episodes take place on the grounds of James K. Polk Middle School. The only exceptions are "Guide To: The Bus," which is about the characters getting to school on time, and the Grand Finale, which takes place on a field trip (but still has a subplot within the school).
• Superstore: Almsot every episode takes place inside the titular superstore Cloud 9, and most plots focus on new developments within the store. "Cheyenne's Wedding" was the first episode to take place outside the store, and across six seasons of episodes, only a handful ever took place outside of Cloud 9, usually taking place at a party to celebrate a special occasion.

Western Animation

• All episodes of 6teen take place inside a shopping mall.
• Being based on Survivor and other reality shows, most Total Drama seasons take place exclusively on the island (or film lot, in the case of Action) where the challenges are held. The exceptions are a few specials that venture away from the island to another specific location, such as the "Playa des Losers" in Island and the Aftermath studio in Action. Action also has a special taking place after the show and off the film lot. World Tour is an aversion, as is the spin-off Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, as the contestants travel to various locales around the world in both cases.

Class Action Park

Class Action Park is a documentary released on HBO Max in 2020.

It documents the development and legacy of the infamous 1978-1996 Theme Park Action Park, located in the town of Vernon in northwestern New Jersey.

The story begins with investor Gene Mulvihill, who designed the park as a way to profit off his newly-purchased Vernon Valley/Great Gorge Ski Resort (now known as Mountain Creek) during the summer. On paper, it seemed like a normal theme park, with an alpine slide, a ski area (it was part of the ), and two themed areas: Motorworld (based around vehicles) and Waterworld (a water park). Sounds good, right?

Well, the execution is where things went horribly wrong.

The rides were poorly designed and poorly maintained, leaving people seriously injured or sometimes dead. A total of six fatalities have been linked to the park. Most of the employees were undertrained, underage and under the influence. At best, the employees studiously ignored what little safety rules were in place, and at worst they would egg on visitors to violate them and sit back to watch the ensuing carnage. Though it was a popular summertime destination for New Yorkers and New Jerseyans in the 1980s, legal and financial troubles, not just at Action Park but also at the ski resort and within the management, caused Action Park and Vernon Valley/Great Gorge to shut down after the 1996 season. The whole complex was later purchased by Intrawest in 1998 and reopened as Mountain Creek. The former Action Park became Mountain Creek Waterpark, its old rides having been either torn down or heavily renovated (with much better protection for the riders, obviously).

The documentary features interviews with former park employees, frequent guests, and the family of the first person to die at the park. It deconstructs why the park was so famous and dangerous, placing it in the greater cultural context of The '80s and explaining Mulvihill's mindset.

Tropes found in the documentary include:

• Alcohol-Induced Stupidity: Alcohol was sold at concession stands, with little enforcement of the drinking age, meaning that many rides that were dangerous enough to go on sober were operated by drunk guests and employees. This was most common in the Motor World area, as it was right next to the bar area, so drunk guests and employees would take the small cars from rides and ride them all the way down the highway. This was a major contribution to accidents.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The idea of a looping water slide sounded awesome on paper. Action Park heavily promoted the loop in its commercials as a unique attraction of the park. However, many guests got seriously injured by the ride. So many got stuck in the loop that they had to add an escape hatch. To paraphrase one employee, it was a ride "less to be enjoyed and more to be survived."
• Callousness Towards Emergency:
  • One former attendee recounts what he saw in the Tarzan Swing ride, in which a person hung on to swing rope, and and dropped about ten feet onto the pool below. Since the pool was spring fed, a person could go into shock going from 90 degree (F) heat to water that was at least 30 degrees (F) colder, and the crowd waiting their turn, upon seeing someone struggling to swim, or being fished out by a lifeguard, would point at them and scream demening, and vulgar, insults at the unfortunate victim.
  • A former lifeguard recounts the time that she was sentenced to supervise the race boat pond (apparently that was least wanted position amongst the staff, and was seen as a punishment rather than just another assignment) one boat crashed onto another, and the rider on top tried to keep going, not caring that he was crushing the rider on the bottom, and the lifeguard had to yell at him, and hit the boat with a stick to get him to stop pressing on the accelerator and get him out of the boat. When the top rider got off, he walked away like nothing happened.
• Comedic Sociopathy: The employees discuss how many people gathered the riskier rides, like Surf Hill or the Tarzan Swing, just around to watch other guests, since they could see either lost bra tops, grievous injuries, or both.
• Everyone Has Standards: According to "Class Action Park", the owner, Eugene Mulvihill, was friends with Donald Trump, himself known for having some questionable ideas of his own during his career. Eugene invited Trump over to check the park out and Trump was utterly horrified at the state of it, leaving unimpressed.
• Gallows Humor: Some of the former guests of the park admit that the way they grew up without restrictions and got beat up so badly at the park wasn't healthy for a child, but there's nothing much they can do more than laugh about it now.
• Loophole Abuse: Mulvihill avoided reporting George Larsson Jr.'s death to the state by claiming Larsson had been an employee of the park. He had worked the ski lift the prior season, but when he died, he was attending as a guest.
• Lower-Class Lout: According to Class Action Park, a great percentage of the attendees were people of blue collar background from New York City, who couldn't afford to take exotic vacations in the Caribbean, so traveling to rural New Jersey was the closet thing they could do that resembled a long distance destination, and their lack of manners and decorum is what led to people getting hurt trying to push their, and the ride's, limits, and why the staff had to develop a routine to take care of a "Code Brown."
• Mad Scientist: In the animations, the engineers for the more dangerous rides are depicted as stereotypical mad scientists.
• No OSHA Compliance: One of the most famous Real Life cases of this trope. It wasn't that the park didn't try to advocate safety, but were extremely lax about it. Gene himself even encouraging guests to be as rowdy as they wished.
• Off with His Head!: The infamous looping water slide apparently decapitated test dummies.
• Parental Hypocrisy: One former employer talks through Nostalgia Filter about how before cell phones, kids would go off on an adventure without parental supervision. The former employee recounts how before he got a job at there, he and his brother would have breakfast, then they would ride their bikes to Action Park, have fun, and be back home for dinner, with their parents being none the wiser. He then says that if he ever found out one of his kids ever did something like that, he "would beat their asses."
• Precision F-Strike: A hidden case happened once the lifeguards decided to brand whoever they saved by writing on their wristbands "CFS" - short for "can't fucking swim".
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Employees were reportedly offered hundred-dollar bills to test the infamous looping waterslide. According to a former employee, "$100 did not buy enough booze to drown out that memory." According to the documentary Class Action Park, during the park's heyday in the 1980s', despite the countless unreported minor injuries (scrapes, bumps, bruises, etc.) dozens of serious injuries (defined only as a visitor being carried out in an ambulance), and even a few deaths, Gene Mulvehill, who owned Action Park, didn't face serious legal repercussion, with the worst thing being a rare visit from the U.S. Marshalls' coming to collect an equally rare legal settlement that Mulvehill refused to pay right after the court proceedings. The reason for such a lax enforcement by the authorities is because Action Park brought a large influx of cash to the local economy in the summer, and his nearby ski resorts brought the cash in the winter. This did eventually catch up to Gene as bad press and word of mouth from the park soon caught on to the point his investors started distancing themselves from him. After his two other business chain in ski resorts dried up, he was forced to shut down the park on 1996.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: George Larsson, Jr.'s mother notes that Gene Mulvihill's death was the only time her family ever celebrated somebody's death because they all hated the man so much.

[[folder:Gross Granny Kiss]]LACONIC: Elderly relatives greet their kids with the wettest, most disgusting kisses ever.

Examples:

Stuck with the Losers

LACONIC: When their usual friend group rejects them, a character gets stuck hanging out with the least popular characters around.

Gay Icon Shout Out

LACONIC: A Camp Gay or Ambiguously Gay character fancies a celebrity popular with the gay community.

Examples:

• Dexter's Laboratory: In the banned segment "Barbequor," the flamboyant, Ambiguously Gay Silver Spooner gets excited when somebody mentions Judy Garland.

Reviewer's Saving Grace

LACONIC: A Caustic Critic absolutely detests a piece of media, except for that one part.

Budget-Breaking Element (Trivia)

LACONIC: A single aspect of production eats up a significant amount of the work's budget.

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My stories

SP fanfic stuff

Stan and Kyle vs. the Network is a South Park fanfiction series. It focuses on a college-aged Stan and Kyle, struggling to break into mainstream filmmaking and music due to their family struggles and general depression. Their old friend Butters, working towards an illustration career, posts on his portfolio website The Spirit of Christmas, a short Stan, Kyle, and their friends created in their childhood. However, Cartman claims that he should be credited for the short, and reposts it as his own creation. The resulting conflict between the boys and Cartman is so entertaining to the online public that it draws more attention to the short, leading to Stan and Kyle getting optioned for their own animated television show. This time, with better equipment on hand and nothing better to do, they take the offer.

The fic is very loosely based off of the early careers of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, with their Author Avatars in their place. (As a reversal, Stan and Kyle's in-universe Author Avatars are named Trey and Dick^note Matt Stone's middle name is Richard respectively.) It also serves as a Deconstruction Fic as it addresses the controversy surrounding South Park and the responsibility of the artist when it comes to controlling their own Misaimed Fandom.

In addition to the main series, there are several shorter fanfictions that take place in the same universe. These establish some backstory and explain what happened to the characters who aren't heavily featured in Network. These include:^note god knows if I'll actually write all of them lol

• Spare Room, which establishes how Butters lived with the McCormicks for a brief period of time and formed a relationship with Kenny.
• Please and Sparkle, which follows Wendy and Bebe's perspectives as their friendship hits a rocky road and Wendy pursues other relationships and a political career.
• You're a Fox, which follows Kyle and Rebecca's high school relationship.

Tropes involved in the fanfiction:

• The Ace: Ike was a straight-A student who became a successful lawyer and charismatic family man, marrying his childhood sweetheart along the way. His success fills Kyle with envy.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Downplayed. Butters goes by Leo as an adult to sound more mature and detach himself from his child memories.
  • Scott refers to his partner, formerly known as Douchebag / Dovahkiin / Butthole, as "Deedee."
• Audience-Alienating Premise: invoked Stan and Kyle's short film about the child-killing Hat McCullogh, featuring an ironic Sympathetic P.O.V. of the killer and lighthearted musical numbers (as a loose nod to Cannibal! The Musical). Even though the point of the work was to be as absurd and disgusting as reality, not a lot of people in their class find it amusing when they show it off.
• An Aesop: You can't get away with childish carelessness as an adult. Be responsible for the things you say and do.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Rebecca pinpoints Kyle as the only boy her age who didn't overprotect her or take advantage of her, and as a result begins flirting with him. While Kyle is attracted to her, he develops guilt that he's not as nice as she thinks he is and that he also just likes her for her looks.
• Broken Ace: It turns out that Ike's turnaround into the ideal family man is far from ideal. He feels he forced himself into a successful career just to make his mother respect him again, and he has to rush a wedding to avoid the news getting out that he got Sally pregnant. He is terrified of making mistakes because he doesn't want to be known as the problem child he was scapegoated to be in his childhood.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In-Universe, Stan defends making their film about the child-murdering Hat McCullogh a musical by saying it pushed it far enough over the line that nobody could mistake it as legitimately defending the guy.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Stan begins the story as very snarky and apathetic towards how people see him, but his work on Mountain Town seems to unlock some childish joy in him. However, Randy's death (or rather, the community reaction to his death) sets Stan into a depressive spell that influences his work, as well as developing an addiction to Ricorda di Montalcino.
• Delayed Diagnosis: Kyle doesn't get a good therapist until he's in his thirties, and only then does he realize he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which explains his obsession with moral purity.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Several characters are written with mental disorders. Kyle's anxiety is written specifically as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Stan suffers from PTSD on top of his canon depression, and both Leo and Karen have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Kenny is also heavily implied to have some sort of dissociative disorder.
• Double-Meaning Title: The "network" in the title refers to Cartoon Central, which fights to censor Mountain Town, and Stan and Kyle's network of friends and family, who also provide conflict for the duo.
• Former Teen Rebel: When we first meet Ike, he's sixteen years old and appears to be going through a scene phase. Sometime after the Time Skip, however, he turns himself around to become a law student at Harvard with a lovely girlfriend (who's implied to have whipped him into shape).
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Stan gives a brutal speech at Randy's funeral that highlights how absolutely stupid the deceased was, which shocks many of the attendees at the progression.
• Gender Flip: Played with regarding Kenny, who came out as trans after childhood and presents more feminine, though she avoids assigning herself a specific gender identity.
• Gratuitous Italian: As a form of foreshadowing, the name of Stan's choice wine is Ricorda di Montalcino. "Ricorda" is Italian for "remember" which hints at the wine being derived from Memberberries.
• It Will Never Catch On: Comedy Central turns down Stan and Kyle's project under the assumption that taking on an unabashed Animated Shock Comedy like theirs would be network suicide.
• Lyrical Dissonance: In Chapter 2, Stan writes a soulful song in the style of Stephen Schwartz about the serial child killer Hat McCullough.

• Relationship Revolving Door: Like in canon, Wendy and Stan keep dating and breaking up over and over throughout their teen years. This only dies down after Wendy and Stan go to different colleges, but once they meet up again, the tension flares up again if only because they've been emotionally attached to each other for so long.
• Shotgun Wedding:
  • Kevin and Jenny got married shortly after Jenny became pregnant the first time, despite their young age, both to protect Jenny's good name and so the McCormicks could share the Harrisons' finances.
  • This turns out to be the reason behind Ike and Sally's sudden marriage arrangement. Due to their reputations as the town's biggest successes, they didn't want to have a pregnancy out of wedlock.
• Shout-Out: The Rocky Mountain Network is a reference to Paramount Network, particularly the mention of its logo being a mountain with a bunch of little leaves over it, similar to the stars around Paramount's mountain logo. Additionally, the Rocky Mountain Network's extensive rebranding from its Canadian-centric content parallels Paramount Network's succession from Spike TV, which influences Rocky Mountain's crude, masculine branding.
• Sibling Rivalry: Kyle and Ike both hold some resentment towards each other. Kyle's jealous of Ike's incredible intelligence, career success, and love life, while Ike only pursued the path of success as a child to prove that he was not helpless and deserved just as much attention from their parents as Kyle. However, deep down, they do love each other and would do anything for each other.
• Stepford Smiler: Butters, aka Leo, appears to be much happier as an adult, but only because he refuses to address the traumatic events of his childhood. Part of this is because he straight-up can't remember everything that happened to him, but he also doesn't want to risk upsetting his happy family life.

• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Rebecca's problem as a teenager and young adult is that due to her sheltered upbringing, she used romance stories as her guide for romantic interactions. This resulted in her practically imprinting on Kyle just because he was nicer than the other high school boys, and assumed that he "deserved" to be her lover for saving her from assault.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Stan and Kyle's big break is based loosely off how Trey Parker and Matt Stone became famous: making a short animated film that goes viral and developing it into an adult animated series. However, the story is heavily dramatized to focus on the characters' relationships with one another.

SP story revamped

One Christmas evening, ten years after the events of the original story, Kenny McCormick died unceremoniously after getting hit by a bus. Expecting to reform the next morning, they instead remained in Hell for the duration of the evening, spending time with the young prince of darkness, Damien. Little did Kenny know that their body had been repurposed by the Woodland Critters as the vessel for Damien's heir and the second Antichrist (the Grantichrist, if you will).

Several months later, Kenny is pulled back to Hell with a simple request. In the time Kenny has gone without dying, Damien's heir Morrigan has set out to memorize the list of sins for every person on Earth, starting with South Park. Noting Morrigan's concern with the inevitable influx of people arriving in Hell, Damien makes a deal with Kenny to adopt and raise Morrigan on the surface, with the condition that Damien will protect Kenny and his family from ever suffering again. Kenny makes the deal, and begins raising Morrigan with Butters (now going by Leo), who has no idea where the demon came from, but is happy to raise a family with Kenny.

Things quickly turn sour when Morrigan begins telling everybody in town their comprehensive list of sins, prompting everybody to question their past and change their future.

---

• An Aesop: People should be held accountable for their past behavior, but instead of being guilt-tripped, they should be given a chance to grow.
• Anti-Anti-Christ: Played with, especially considering that Satan Is Good (or rather, was good) in this universe. Morrigan is the grandchild of Satan, but rather than create a world full of torture, they're really uncomfortable with how much sin is in the world, and would rather send people to Heaven until Hell is better equipped to deal with people. However, their method of spreading this news only brings more strife to the world.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Leo becomes suspicious of Morrigan's resemblance to Kenny and suspects that they're Kenny's child with somebody else. When Kenny finally tells Leo the truth, Leo doesn't buy the complicated manner of Morrigan's birth and thinks Kenny cheated on Leo with Damien.
• Mythology Gag: Randy's Halloween costume is Pocahontas, a reference to the Pocahontas Randy card in South Park: Phone Destroyer.
• Network Decay: In-Universe, the Canada Channel no longer relies on exclusively Canadian programming following the death of Terrance and Philip, and is renamed to the vaguer "Rocky Mountain Network," allowing it to air Stan's American music videos.
• Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous:
  • Morrigan has Kenny's body, but presents in a feminine manner and often switches pronouns. When pressed on their gender, Morrigan shrugs it off as not important to her.
  • Kenny themself is a variant, as their otherworldly ancestry is a plot point in this story, and they are nonbinary with an androgynous gender presentation.
• Teen Pregnancy: Jenny Harrison became pregnant as a high school senior after a casual relationship with Kevin McCormick, the boy she was tutoring in English.
• Undignified Death: Randy dies by drunkly driving his car into a CVS trying to get limited edition Cheesy Poofs. While dressed in a stereotypical Pocahontas costume, no less. This humiliates Stan so much that he reconsiders his entire career, lest he become a Manchild.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Morrigan wants to help the human race not be tortured for eternity by warning them of their sins ahead of time. The problem is, they go about this in a very blunt and unintentionally threatening fashion, planning to threaten every human in the world to confront their past sins. They also don't actually know how to teach them to not be sinful, because they spent so much time studying sin, they didn't think of what a world without it could be like.

---

Truly Scrambled Drama

Truly Scrambled Drama is a Total Drama Alternate Universe Fic. Half-rewrite, half-Self-Imposed Challenge, the series is based off randomizing various elements of the series and trying to rework the season to accommodate those decisions. This includes the team structure, the elimination order, the romantic relationships, and various other plot points and plot twists common to Total Drama seasons.

• Clumsy Copyright Censorship: In this version of TDA's superhero challenge, when Lindsay dresses as Wonder Woman, she is blurred out with the superheroine's name awkwardly bleeped out because they didn't get the legal clearing to use Wonder Woman's likeness.
• Potty Failure: Owen's talent show performance has him farting Beethovan's Fifth Symphony. Unfortunately, due to the fiber-rich dried fruits he ate before, he can't control his bowels and it's implied he craps himself onstage.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Heather is voted out in only the fifth episode, but kicks off a lot of drama by swapping the votes to illegally eliminate Harold and leaving Gwen's diary with her ally Courtney, setting off their respective antagonistic arcs.

Dear Mom and Dad, I'm Doing Fine...

Dear Mom and Dad, I'm Doing Fine... is a Total Drama anthology fanfiction series. Each chapter provides a story about a Total Drama character's family members, indicating how their upbringing shaped them all the way up to them joining Total Drama. The Framing Device shows the family members watching the show and commenting on how their relative performs.

• Adaptational Gender Identity:
  • Dawn, a girl in canon, is nonbinary, or rather rejects gender altogether, and uses she/they pronouns.
  • Assumed to be a cis man with an Embarrassing First Name in canon, B is explicitly a trans man, with "Beverly" being his dead name.
• Age-Gap Romance: Emmett was in his thirties when he started dating 21-year-old Rebecca.
• Ambiguously Human: Dawn was found by two hikers in the forest with no sign of their biological parents to this day. Because of this and her odd abilities, their siblings and parents believe they may be some sort of changeling child.
• Casting Couch: It's heavily implied Chris got some of his earlier work not because he was talented, but because his (married!) Stage Mom was willing to sleep with anybody to help him get along.
• Commonality Connection: It's revealed that Mike and Zoey had bonded offscreen over their unconventional family structures.
• Former Child Star: Chris was acting as a child and joined a boy band at the age of 12, where he was routinely bullied by his older band mates and pressured by his Stage Mom and agent. As an adult, he panics that his "glory days" may be over and takes his bitterness out on teenagers.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Mike's mother Emily refused to get an abortion because she knew her Catholic family would disapprove.
• Happily Adopted:
  • While they struggle to adapt to his mental disorder, Mike's adoptive parents provide a much better life for him than his biological parents.
  • Dawn's parents are loving towards their foster children, and even make an effort to understand Dawn's odd habits.
• Harmful to Minors: Mike's biological parents were not shy about committing domestic violence in front of him, in addition to abusing him directly. His babysitter also invited her boyfriend over to have sex on the couch while Mike was still in the room.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Sonia is the most beautiful woman in her neighborhood, not hurt by her Hartman Hips and large breasts, and always gets compliments whenever she leaves the house. However, Sonia finds the attention more of a nuisance.
• Intersex Tribulations: Noah is intersex, which contributed to the stigma he faced in his household as his more masculine athletic brothers would poke fun at him.
• Like Father, Like Son: Many parents share traits with their children.
  • Sierra's mother Anna was also a Loony Fan with an unhealthy celebrity crush on Chris (though he was younger than her at the time).
  • Noah's mother Sonia is a downbeat sarcastic Deadpan Snarker like her son, though she's more exhausted from raising many children than she is purely lazy.
  • Both of Geoff's parents are party-loving bohemians like him.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Noah's father Naveem is a friendly, excitable sports fanatic, while Noah is a misanthropic, lazy Deadpan Snarker.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe:
  • Heather was conceived during a period when her mother was cheating on her then-husband with another man, and while her current father seems convinced she's his daughter, neither Heather nor her mother are quite sure, and they don't want to do a DNA test to prove it either way.
  • Chris's mother Nancy cheated on her husband Todd with a certain tennis player around the same time Chris was conceived. Todd suspects this even though Chris looks like both of him, mainly because Nancy is a serial infidel for much of her life.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Heather is the middle child in her family, and an odd case at that — her two older siblings are from one father while her younger siblings have another, and since she was the first child after Erin remarried, the timing made it so it's unclear exactly which man was her father. Her older siblings are more successful while her younger siblings are more spoiled, leaving Heather feeling unwanted (especially since her parents actually don't seem to want her much).
• Opposite-Sex Clone: Cameron is a clone of his mother. Justified, in that he's actually a trans boy.
• Parental Favoritism: Both of Chris's parents have a favorite child. Todd loves Terry for supposedly having more dignity than Chris, while Nancy gets attached to Chris's willingness to do anything for fame and attention, which gives her more worth by proxy.
• Related in the Adaptation: While they never even interact in canon, Blaineley is Sammy and Amy's aunt in this fic.
• Sex for Services: It's implied Nancy exchanged her body for goods back in Newfoundland, as her father chews her out saying, "Ya can’t spend yer whole life showin’ yer arse to ev’ry man comin’ by to collect rent." She's still willing to turn to this as an adult, sleeping with producers to get Chris work as a child actor.
• Shotgun Wedding: Courtney's parents conceived her on accident after an illicit workplace romance. Desperate to keep her political reputation as an upholder of "family values," Isabel planned out an exact time frame to marry Rishi and go on leave without making it look like she was pregnant before marriage.
• Shout-Out: Sam's surname, Wozniak, is a reference to gaming YouTuber Scott Wozniak.
• Stage Mom: Chris's mother Nancy, ashamed of her rural roots, uses Chris as a means to live out her dreams of being wealthy. His Shakespearean father pushed him into acting as a child, but was disappointed with his lack of talent, leaving Nancy to do much of the grunt work (and another certain kind of work) to get him gigs.
• Strip Poker: Rebecca and Emmett first have sex after a game of strip chess.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Emmett was Rebecca's college professor, though they began dating after Rebecca's graduation. Regardless, she still looks up to him as an authority figure, and she's implied to be in an emotionally vulnerable place with a Friendless Background, causing their relationship to sour after becoming a family.
• Teen Pregnancy:
  • Anna was only 15 when she got pregnant with Sierra.
  • Zoey's biological mother got pregnant at 16, the only time she ever had sex, and eventually broke up with Zoey's father because they weren't meant to be together long-term.
• Titled After the Song: The title comes from the first lyric of the original Total Drama theme song.
• The Unfavorite: Downplayed with the Beras. While Noah's parents don't hate him, they (as well as most of his siblings) often ignore him because he's the youngest of nine and the only one not going out to play sports.

Paradox Baby with spoilers

The Paradox Baby continuity is a Futurama Alternate Universe Fic and Kid Fic. Following the events of Bender's Big Score and Lars' death, Fry and Leela find themselves tiptoeing around each other, trying to move on from grief. But when Leela learns she's pregnant with Lars' child, they're forced to confront their complicated feelings, and take the risk of whether the child of a doomed paradox duplicate can even survive in their universe.

The story takes place during several canon events, bridged by a few original scenes. The first section of the story, focused on Leela's pregnancy, takes place over the last three movies; the second section, about Leela and Fry raising the child, takes place during the Comedy Central run, with a few liberties taken with when these events all take place.

• Adaptational Timespan Change: Flip is born in September 3008 (with the movies all assumed to take place within the same year), and Season 6A seemingly takes place in late 3008 until early 3010. One chapter takes place immediately after "The Late Philip J. Fry" and Flip is clearly less than a year old. However, episodes from that season seem to all take place in 3010, with "The Late Philip J. Fry" explicitly being set in 3010. Since not every canon episode is explicitly rewritten in the AU, it does more or less catch up by the end, as "Meanwhile" is set in 3013 like its canon equivalent.
• Armor-Piercing Question: At Lars' funeral, Fry, insecure about being the same person as Lars, asks Leela, "If you love anything about me, can you just promise that it’s because of what I do, and not what Lars did?" Leela can't honestly answer this, instead leaving Fry behind to think things through.
• Babies Ever After: In place of the time-freezing arc in "Meanwhile," Leela discovers she's pregnant again before getting engaged to Fry.
• Baby's First Words: During the 6b period, Leela worries about Flip not speaking despite being nearly two years old, which is the catalyst for her move in "Overclockwise." While living in space, Flip finally says his first word, calling a photo of Fry "Dada," convincing Leela to move back home and commit to Fry as her partner. For a bit of Mood Whiplash, his second word is "ass."
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting:
  • Downplayed with Leela. While her parents did love her from afar after abandoning her, Leela makes a promise early on to give her baby the love and attention that Leela never thought she had as an orphan. Once she has Flip, she is incredibly loving and protective, though she sometimes tries too hard to recreate experiences with him that she never got to have as a child.
  • Despite sometimes sharing loving moments with him, Fry's parents were often neglectful and, in his father's case, emotionally abusive. This seems to contribute to his insecurities about taking care of a baby. However, he proves himself to be a loving parent and tries very hard to support his son without judgment.
• But I Can't Be Pregnant!: One of the reasons Leela initially doubts her pregnancy is because her reproductive system is complicated (she has a regular period and occasionally lays an egg) and isn't quite sure if a normal human could impregnate her.
• But We Used a Condom!: Lars did use a condom on the night Flip was conceived. Problem is, it's heavily implied to be a spare one he had from the twenty-first century, and had thus gone through two cryogenic freezings on top of being long expired.
• Call-Back:
  • After the first Dream Sequence, the narration alludes to Leela's dream sequences in "The Sting":
  "Outside of pesky comatose venom-induced hallucinations, Leela was smart enough not to let her dreams affect her reality."
  • The reason Kif is able to clock that Leela is pregnant is because he was once pregnant himself. Seeing Kif's tadpoles also helps convince Leela to keep her baby.
  • Cylon and Garfunkel from "Bendin' in the Wind" make an appearance in Chapter 5, playing music on TV in one of Leela's fantasies.
• Child Naming Request: Downplayed. Leela deliriously agrees to let Bender choose her son's middle name if he helps the Feministas break out of prison. Thus, one of Flip's middle names is "Benderisgreat."
• Dead Guy Junior: Played with. During the events of "Rebirth," when Fry is thought to have died, Leela names her son "Philip" after Fry (making her the second person to do so), seeing him as a living memory of both Fry and Lars. Fry does survive, but the name sticks, especially since Leela doesn't usually call Fry by his first name. However, Fry feels awkward about the baby having his name and takes to nicknaming him, with the nickname "Flip" eventually sticking more than his real name.
• Deconstruction Fic: The emotional ramifications of Lars being Fry are thoroughly explored in the fic's first part. Fry worries that Leela loving his alternate self means that her love for Fry isn't something Fry earned himself, sending him into an existential spiral that kicks off the events of the second movie. He later raises the possibility to Leela that Lars' secret identity indicates he could've been lying about countless other things, and while Leela refuses to accept this as she puts Lars on a pedestal, it starts to eat at her until she lashes out at Lars' fantasy counterpart for not communicating with her, building their relationship off a lie, and his efforts to protect her only leaving her more confused and traumatized. Unfortunately, since Lars died before they learned his true identity, Leela doesn't feel she can be certain about his motivations and whether his confession was the full truth. However, processing this grief and communicating more openly with Fry allows them to have a healthier relationship going forward after all this turmoil.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Farnsworth's theory about Lars' offspring being doomed, and the clash he has with Leela over testing for signs of "doom" in the fetus, is analogous to prenatal testing for a genetic disorder and the controversies that follow it.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Zig-zagged. The first conflict between Fry and Leela is when Leela draws affectionate parallels between Fry and his older alternate self, but Fry is uncomfortable with this because he doesn't want Leela to project Lars onto him when they don't share all the same memories. However, after Leela discovers Lars got her pregnant and Fry falls in with Colleen and then Yivo, Leela rationalizes that only Lars is the father of her child, not Fry, because Lars loved her as much as he could while Fry seemingly abandoned her. After Fry tries to act more like Lars to prove he can be supportive to Leela, Leela re-accepts the similarities and shared history between the two, but eventually finds a middle ground.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Leela, Amy, and Zapp overhear Bender talking about Leela's pregnancy to the League of Robots without using her name. Knowing the woman in Bender's story is a widow working at a delivery company, Zapp initially assumes that Amy is pregnant by the recently-dead Kif.
• Erotic Dream: In Chapter 5, Leela's second dream about Lars involves a Massage of Love that transitions into implied sex. Evidently, both Zapp and Amy could hear her moaning in her sleep, and it's implied Zapp's voice while he was having sex with Amy worked its way into Leela's dream, much to her revulsion.
• Fan-Created Offspring: The central premise of the fic is that Leela gets pregnant and gives birth to Lars' child, who is named Flip (short for Philip). The sequel fic centers around Fry and Leela raising Flip during his infancy and toddler years. The third fic also introduces Luna, Fry and Leela's newborn daughter and Flip's younger sister.
• Fantasy Sequence: Leela copes with the distress surrounding her pregnancy by crafting a fantasy world in which Lars is alive and she lives a nuclear family life with him and their perfect daughter. It begins as a Dream Sequence, but become more lucid down the line as she fleshes out the fantasies. These sequences are interspersed throughout the movie arc, but begin to fall apart as Leela reconciles with Fry and accepts the complicated reality of her family.
• Genre Savvy: Bender deduces Leela is pregnant because he learned about Morning Sickness from a storyline on All My Circuits.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Professor Farnsworth believes Leela carrying Lars' baby is too risky and implores her to get an abortion. She does consider it once she finally accepts that she's pregnant, but turns down the offer because she believes her pregnancy has to mean something.
• Gratuitous Princess: In the fic's version of Bender's Game, Leela's fantasy daughter Lulu is the princess of Cornwood, a byproduct of Lars playing the role of king. Leegola feels slighted that her hypothetical daughter is reduced to such a seemingly passive role in Bender's world.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: After the universe's massive breakup with Yivo, several young women share a giant tub of ice cream upon returning to Earth.
• Honorary Uncle:
  • During Leela's pregnancy, Fry refers to himself as her baby's uncle, albeit with a sense of discomfort since the baby is technically his biological child. Flip grows to see him as his dad anyway, and everyone else does as well once Leela officially commits to Fry.
  • Bender alternates between acting as Flip's self-proclaimed Cool Uncle and reacting like a jealous eldest child.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Leela is pregnant during the second through fourth movies, navigating the same level of danger. The fourth movie still has her as a fugitive anarchist while being heavily pregnant (with part of her motivation being to prove that she's not helpless), leading to her being arrested at gunpoint and going into labor in prison.
• Infant Sibling Jealousy: In the third series, Flip is very upset to learn his parents are having another baby, having spent five years as an overprotected Momma's Boy. Bender, who held similar resentment towards Flip himself, trains Flip in the art of jealousy, encouraging him to act out and regress for attention. Once Flip's sister is actually born, though, he quickly develops a Big Brother Instinct.
• Insane Troll Logic: Zapp believes he is the father of Leela's baby, not Lars, despite not having had sex with Leela in eight years. He claims his sperm must have waited until the end of humanity to impregnate Leela. Even after Flip is born and very clearly resembles Fry, Zapp still believes it's his son.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite Fry and Leela becoming parents, most basic episode plots don't change. However, the context of some episodes/movies change to revolve around this element (i.e. Bender's Dungeon's & Dragons obsession in Bender's Game starts because he's feeling left out and needs a distraction), and subplots are occasionally added that involve their baby. In any case, most episodes that don't change just get skipped over to avoid redundancy.
• Is That Cute Kid Yours?: Due to the complicated nature of his and Leela's relationship and the fact he technically isn't the one who impregnated Leela, Fry doesn't consider himself Flip's father while Flip is still a newborn, behaving more as an Honorary Uncle or a live-in nanny. This doesn't stop passersby from noticing the Strong Family Resemblance between him and Flip, to the point Fry is relieved when Flip is bundled up for winter and these features are more obscured.
• Last-Minute Baby Naming: Leela doesn't name her son until shortly after he's born. By that point, she believes Fry has died, hence why she names him after Fry.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The Reveal of Bender's Big Score — Lars being a time paradox duplicate of Fry and sacrificing himself at the end of the movie — is a major plot point in this fic, and frequently referenced.
• Little Bit Beastly: Flip initially shows few to no mutant traits, but eventually grows a donkey tail similar to his maternal grandmother's.
• Living Aphrodisiac: It's clarified that Yivo's genticles increase the production of oxytocin and endorphins, which is why everybody is so enamored with shklim while impaled. Fry got the most of this, so once he and Yivo "break up," he suffers severe depression due to hormonal withdrawal (as well as learning, quite harshly, that Leela is pregnant).
• The Lost Lenore: Lars' death is given a greater significance in this story than in the canon, not only to the widowed Leela (who's also carrying his child), but to Fry, from whom Lars was duplicated. Fry has an identity crisis that causes him to distance himself from Leela lest she see him as Lars, while Leela idealizes Lars and fantasizes about the two of them being parents together to cope with her impending single motherhood. After Fry learns about Leela's baby, he tries to embrace his similarities to Lars. Eventually, Leela accepts Lars being physically out of her life and focuses on loving Fry without needing to compare the two.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
  • Lars and Leela made love in the alley on Xmas Eve after his proposal, next to a dumpster to boot.
  • By the time they're steadily dating, Fry and Leela have apparently had sex in several odd places, including the ship, a meteor, and a giant cardboard box. It's justified in that they have a young son (and they share the place with Bender) and don't get much privacy in their own apartment.
  • During the equivalent of "Meanwhile," Leela and Fry have Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex on the Whalers on the Moon ride in Luna Park. They conceive their daughter this way, which is partially why they named her Luna.
• Making Room for Baby: Leela ends up moving in with Fry during her pregnancy because his apartment is bigger than hers. However, she does briefly move into a bigger suburban house in deep space, but eventually decides to move back in with Fry and Bender full-time because of how important he is to Flip. When she's pregnant again, she, Fry, and Flip move out of Bender's apartment, sending him into a tizzy.
• Massage of Love: In Chapter 5, after an exhausting day of running from Yivo, Leela fantasizes about Lars giving her a romantic massage. It's implied to go into Happy-Ending Massage territory before she's interrupted.
• Maternity Crisis: Leela goes into labor two weeks early while trying to break out of prison, eventually giving birth in a jail cell. On top of that, she's severely anemic from the leech draining her blood, passing out shortly after holding her son.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Flip's name alludes to his dolphin Animal Motif and the fact he's indirectly the product of a flipped timeline.
  • Lars' Cornwood equivalent, King Larzarus, is a play on Lazarus of Bethany, most well-known for being resurrected after death. Larzarus exists in Bender's fantasy because Leela fantasizes so much about Lars still being alive.
  • Luna is named such because she was conceived at Luna Park. Her name is also similar to Lulu, the daughter Leela had in her fantasy life with Lars.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Why Leela tries to explain why she doesn't want to scan her fetus for the father's DNA, the doctor assumes she's making excuses for infidelity.
  “My late fiancé was a time travel duplicate of my co-worker,” Leela explained. “If you search for his DNA, my co-worker would come up instead.”
  “A time travel duplicate of your coworker, huh?” Dr. Evans raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s what my wife said.”
• Morning Sickness: Leela suffers from nausea early in her pregnancy, but attributes it to grief and her nights in the sewer. Only when she vomits during Kif and Amy's fonfon rubok does Kif suggest she might be pregnant, mentioning that he apparently had similar symptoms during his pregnancy. She gets sick a few other times after that, including once on Zapp. Yivo tsemporarily cures her nausea when she moves in with shklim, which initially misleads Leela into thinking shkli affected her pregnancy.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Even before Leela learns he got her pregnant, losing Lars takes a significant toll on Leela's mental health and her friendship with Fry, particularly because Lars is a duplicate of the still-alive Fry. Initially, she alienates Fry by projecting Lars onto him, but after learning about her pregnancy, she becomes so determined to separate the two that she crafts a full fantasy world in which Lars is alive and they have a child together. The Bender's Game equivalent has her literally come face-to-face with this fantasy in Cornwood and accept that Lars is gone.
• My Secret Pregnancy: Leela considers telling Fry about her pregnancy early on, but decides against it. Her plans to tell the rest of the crew are interrupted when Kif dies and she doesn't want to pile more onto Amy, and then gets caught up trying to protect herself and everybody else from Yivo. Most of the cast learns on accident except Fry, who misses the signs and doesn't learn until Leela tells him a few weeks down the line.
• No Pregger Sex: Zig-zagged. Leela has no problem fantasizing about having sex with Lars during her first trimester (with her dream version of Lars joking about not having protection). However, when she starts actually dating Fry around the top of her third trimester, she insists on not having sex, partly due to both of their physical discomfort and partly because she doesn't want to get too attached to Fry.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: Implied in the third chapter. Leela grabs a beer for Bender on a mission and considers getting one for herself, but decides against it. Her reasoning is that it'd be irresponsible to drink while she's flying the ship, but she's also just learned she's pregnant, albeit still in denial about it. Given that she'd easily put the ship in cruise control, it's implied the latter reason is why she's not drinking.
• One-Steve Limit: Played with. Leela names her son "Philip" after Fry, but she never calls Fry by his first name and they both eventually start calling their son by a nickname instead, rendering the shared name a moot point.
• Parody Sue: The fic's version of Bender's Game has Bender's D&D character serve as a combination of himself and Leela (and her ideal fantasy world) due to the impact of the empathy chip. Bender distorts this character into a gorgeous, perfect hero that Leela herself envies (being that her Cornwood equivalent is a centaur and she's still pregnant).
• Personality Chip: The empathy chip from "I Second That Emotion" returns, as Leela forces it back onto Bender to understand how crappy she feels during her pregnancy. This even influences his attempt to get into D&D, as he channels Leela's feelings into his character. However, because robots were never meant to handle the sort of mood swings that stem from pregnancy and grief, Bender becomes Lost in Character as a fantasy version of Leela.
• Posthumous Character: The story begins shortly after Lars' death in Bender's Big Score, and he exclusively appears as a character in one flashback and several Fantasy Sequences. The only time a version of him appears in the flesh is when his fantasy equivalent appears in Cornwood, which is one of his last major appearances.
• Pregnancy Makes You Crazy: Leela's rage issues are only amplified during her pregnancy, though this is further complicated by grief, her relationship issues with Fry, and Farnsworth's skepticism of her carrying to term. This provides a different explanation for Bender's Sanity Slippage in Bender's Game: Leela outfits him with the empathy chip to force him to understand her plight, but her hormone-enhanced emotions overpower Bender so strongly that he bases his D&D character on Leela and starts believing he's living her (fantasy) life.
• Pregnancy Scare:
  • Pre-canon, Leela was worried she was pregnant while dating Sean. She wasn't, and came away thinking she might not be able to get pregnant from a human (thinking she was an alien at the time). It's implied Sean's relief about this was a major red flag for their relationship.
  • Late in the fic's run, Leela believes she may be pregnant again, but it turns out to be a hormonal issue with her desquidification. To her surprise, she and Fry are both a little disappointed. It's not long after this they conceive a baby for real.
• Pregnancy Test Plot: A variant. During the 7b arc, Leela has a Pregnancy Scare and invites Fry to wait with her while she tests. Fry initially thinks she's going to use a traditional pregnancy test ("that thing you pee on to tell you if... you're baby or not") but she just uses her wrist device to check her blood for hormones. The test comes up negative, but in the time they spend waiting, they realize they really do want a second child.
• Replacement Goldfish: Discussed. After Lars is revealed as an alternate timeline version of Fry, Leela begins comparing the two favorably. However, this puts Fry off because he doesn't want Leela to just see him as Lars, driving a wedge between them that drives Fry to immediately get a new girlfriend. After learning Leela is pregnant from Lars, Fry tries to invoke this by following Lars' example so Leela will trust him again. Eventually, they accept that Lars and Fry share many memories by design and both love Leela but are ultimately different people.
• Shotgun Wedding:
  • Discussed. Farnsworth initially thinks Fry is the father of Leela's child and plans to organize a wedding to avoid ire from the Better Business Bureau. Leela assures him that she and Fry — the prime Fry at least — hadn't had sex in a long time.
  • Fry and Leela's wedding is constantly seen as a shotgun wedding as a Running Gag due to the fact he proposed to her on the same day she learned she was pregnant. They're adamant that it was a coincidence and they had plans to get married soon either way.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Lars unknowingly got Leela pregnant a week before his death, mere days before he realized he was doomed at all. Given that he was doomed to die to prevent a paradoxical coexistence with Fry, this is a potential cause of concern, as there's no precedent for a time duplicate reproducing and there's a chance the baby would also be doomed. Despite this, Leela goes ahead with keeping her baby after seeing Kif's tadpoles at Kif's funeral; she sees the baby as a way for her and Lars' love to persist even after his death.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Flip bears a strong resemblance to Fry, with the key differences being his nose and hairstyle (as well as his tail).
• Struggling Single Mother: During the 6a arc, Leela raises her newborn son primarily on her own, despite living with Fry and Bender. She's not only exhausted from Flip's constant fussing, but always ends up virtually helping Fry and Bender with work during her maternity leave. While Fry does offer her extra support, allowing her more freedom, she still refers to herself as a single mother for some time in an attempt to play the Glamorous Single Mother card.
• Survivor Guilt: Since Lars was doomed to die as a time duplicate of Fry, the latter develops guilt for surviving, as well as being the reason for Lars' existence in the first place and thus the reason for Leela's trauma. He even wonders, in light of Leela's pregnancy, if he should have died instead, though Leela misinterprets this as him being jealous.
• Wall Bang Her: The one time Lars and Leela had sex (and conceived their baby) was against the wall of an alley, or as Bender puts it, "they mashed against a wall for a minute [and] got a bit of squirt on each other."
• Wanted a Son Instead: Downplayed. Leela gets so attached to having a daughter (mostly due to having a daughter in her fantasy family) that she's surprised and a bit unnerved to learn she's having a son. However, she soon accepts this and steps out of her fantasy life, even when Freeda Waterfall keeps denying this as the case.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": A variant. The name Lars would have given to his daughter, "Lulu," is an allusion to Leelu, the narwhal he raised in the twenty-first century. This is the name Leela uses for her fantasy daughter.
• Whale Egg: Played with. As a Call-Back to "Leela and the Genestalk," it's mentioned that Leela sometimes lays a small egg in lieu of normal menstruation, but she sometimes has a normal period as well. However, it's also revealed that Leela hatched from an egg, and her parents are under the impression that Leela will lay an egg to have her baby as well. This turns out not to be the case.
• What If?: The main point of divergence is that Leela gets pregnant during Bender's Big Score and subsequently becomes a mother. Most of the story unrelated to the Fry and Leela arc doesn't change.

Walking On Eggshells

Walking on Eggshells is a Futurama fanfiction written by essence_of_annoying, taking place shortly after "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela" and "Attack of the Killer App." After her forced sexual encounter with Zapp Brannigan in the former episode, Leela discovers she's pregnant and seeks out an abortion. The three chapters, each taking place during about one day, detail her trying to covertly get it done without Fry finding out, as well as dealing with the trauma of the experience. An epilogue is set a year later.

• Abortion Fallout Drama: The main plot of the fic is that Leela is pregnant after being forced to have sex with Zapp in "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela" and seeks out an abortion. She gets guilt-tripped by protesters on the way to the clinic and tricked by a shapeshifter trying to talk her out of the procedure. On a personal level, she also refuses to tell Fry what happened despite him noticing that she's not doing well, both because she doesn't trust him to keep the secret and because she has no idea how he'll react. She confesses a year later when they're steadily dating, and Fry doesn't seem to fully understand what she did, but is at least glad that she's better off. He does ask if she would've done the same if he had gotten her pregnant at the time, and she's not sure how to answer.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Leela's mutant reproductive system has her lay an egg instead of menstruating, and her pregnancy also has her fetus growing inside a shelled egg, hence the fic's title.
• Child by Rape: Defied. After Leela was forced to have sex with Zapp, she ends up pregnant (and speculates that this is why she was forced to have sex with him, due to the Adam and Eve Plot nature of their situation), but immediately decides to get an abortion.
• Dark Fic: Downplayed. The fic is more serious in tone and deals with heavy topics never addressed seriously in Futurama (i.e. rape and abortion), but also has scenes of comedic dialogue here and there. However, the epilogue lacks the sci-fi gags of the first three chapters and is more serious in tone.
• Deconstruction Fic: The story was written in response to the end of "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela," in which after it's revealed Zapp faked the Adam and Eve Plot to get Leela to mate with him, a giant satellite forces Zapp and Leela to have sex at gunpoint, which is treated as Black Comedy Rape. Here, Leela is genuinely traumatized from the experience, but struggles to call it sexual assault as she doesn't want to believe she truly fell for Zapp's lies and she technically initiated the sex they actually had. The fic also deconstructs the aftermath of "Attack of the Killer App," as Leela can't trust Fry after he revealed her secret in that episode, which prevents her from confiding in him. The epilogue also deconstructs "Zapp Dingbat," showing that while Leela struggles to accept her own victimhood, she is worried about her mom being a victim of manipulation.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Leela gets angry when Dr. Loretta refers to what happened to her as a "sexual assault," and gets particularly mad when she casually calls her "honey," not wanting to think that Zapp had any power over her.
• Hurt/Comfort Fic: Leela spends most of the story avoiding Fry's attempts to help her while she's ill (with Fry not knowing she's pregnant). After her procedure, she realizes she needs comfort and invites Fry over to chastely sleep with her. A flash-forward epilogue to a year later has Leela explain her feelings about the rape by proxy and explain what she had to do afterwards; while Fry is confused and Innocently Insensitive, he doesn't put any blame on Leela and encourages her to be open about her feelings.
• Hypocrite: The alien protesters fill a dumpster with broken eggs to freak Leela out of aborting her egg. When Leela points out that they have no problem smashing eggs to prove their point, one of the protesters claims "If it's a food species, their unborn babies are fair game!"
• Morning Sickness: One of Leela's clues to being pregnant is that she gets nauseous after a delivery. She throws up in the sink after her pregnancy test comes back positive and she realizes Zapp would be the father, then throws up again when Fry grills her on a mission.
• Original Character: Dr. Loretta, a Neptunian doctor working at Planet Parenthood who spends most of Chapter 2 examining Leela, was made up for this fic.
• Punny Name: The equivalent of Planned Parenthood is dubbed Planet Parenthood.
• Rape as Drama: Zapp's falsified Adam and Eve Plot and Leela and Zapp's forced sex at gunpoint are both referred to as sexual assault and played far more seriously than they were in canon. While Leela initially hesitates to call what happened "assault," she eventually admits that it humiliated her.
• Straw Character: A few anti-abortion protesters show up during Chapters 2 and 3 for the sole purpose of being made out as jerks.
• Trauma Button:
  • When Leela sees her egg on the ultrasound, Dr. Loretta suggests the possibility of taking the egg out of Leela and giving it up for adoption when it hatches. This solidifies Leela's decision to abort, because she doesn't want to put a child through what she suffered as an orphan.
  "I grew up in an orphanage. I had no idea where I was from, who my parents were, or why they gave me up. I had to share my space with dozens of other abandoned kids, and I still felt alone every second.[...]And there's definitely no way I'm going to let this child live if they're going to spend their whole life wondering why they weren't wanted."
  • An epilogue set during "Zapp Dingbat," a year after "In-a-Gadda-da-Leela" in-universe, shows that Leela is uncomfortable in Zapp's presence in a way she wasn't before their forced sex. Her disgusted reaction to Zapp dating her mom goes beyond Parental Sexuality Squick into a trauma reaction. Even after that's resolved, she can't have sex with Fry because her guilt about Zapp crops up; this is the drive for her to realize and admit how much the assault affected her.

The Miracleverse

Sandbox.The Miracleverse