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Sandbox / wingedcatgirl

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If you have something relevant to add to the WIPs on this page, please feel free to do so! If I wanted to keep a draft under my own control, I'd have put it on my tropers page. —wingedcatgirl

This is an anchor link to the bottom of the page.

    In the light of the stars 
Literature.In The Light Of The Stars, custom title to correct capitalization

In the light of the stars is a Web Serial Novel by wingedcatgirl.

In the examples of the tropes:

  • Animal Jingoism: Pandora, a catgirl, makes a great show of taking offense at being mistaken for a canine, though she doesn't seem to be particularly serious about her offense.
  • Alternative Calendar: The setting has eight-day weeks and doesn't count years at all — it's a flat world, so there's no seasonal cycle.
  • Bag of Holding: Eiri suspects that Pandora's backpack holds more than it looks like it should.
  • Call-Back: In 1.4, Pandora pulls a ligma joke on Lebrook by claiming her name is "Bophades Nuts". In 2.5, she learns that she's wanted under that name.
  • Catgirl: Solea are, as the glossary puts it, a "near-standard species of sapient humanoids, with the addition of triangle ears and meow meow".
  • Exact Words: Pandora loves using technically-correct statements to hide her otherworldly origins:
    • She describes the conditions she grew up in in terms that make it sound to Eiri like it was a nation of fellow Solea, and the humans she met there were a minority — but she grew up on Earth, where humans are the only kind of person that exist.
    • She doesn't know anything about the temperature system used in Clauton, but reassures Araceli after asking the freezing point of water that she "never forgot" what it was, not specifying exactly what she means by that.
  • Expospeak Gag: Pandora asks the kids if they "need some sustenance in [their] flesh vessels". When she realizes that it flew over their heads, she clarifies that she's asking if they're hungry.
  • Foreshadowing: Pandora's Earthly origins are alluded to a few times before the official reveal in 2.3:
    • In 1.2, she's utterly incredulous that she's "being racism'd at", despite the implications that anti-Solean prejudice is, if not widespread, then at least not unheard of. She hasn't been a Solea for all that long.
    • At the end of 1.2, she says "we're not completely adrift" when Eiri clarifies that she knows some things about the world. As a new arrival to the world, that "we" was very much including herself.
    • 1.3 describes Pandora using a device described exactly like a smartphone, despite the setting's tech level being more Renaissance-era and smartphones not existing. But Pandora's not from the setting, she's from modern Earth.
    • Pandora mentions in 1.3 that "hand-washing got real important, real suddenly" where she grew up. She's referencing Earth's COVID-19 Pandemic.
    • Pandora is the only person to use the word "human", aside from the narration from Eiri's perspective (and that only after noting that Eiri had never heard the word before Pandora said it). That's because she's the only one here who calls them that; the natives of this world refer to the species as "Aver". Conversely, she never uses the word "Solea" despite being one (consistently glossing over the species's name by referring to them as "like me" or "our kind") until hearing it from Araceli, since she hadn't heard it before then.
    • In 2.2, Pandora displays a shocking lack of information about the world, having no knowledge of things as basic as the local temperature system or what umbra is. This is so blatant that it tips off Araceli, leading directly to the actual reveal.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: After Yui warns her that they need to get out of Brooktown, Eiri steels herself to convince Pandora, a task which she feels "would surely take all of [her] cunning". But after a run-in with a Fantastic Racist the previous night, Pandora was already inclined to leave before Eiri even speaks, and being told that the girl doesn't like the place instantly confirms her decision.
  • Malicious Misnaming: Pandora hasn't bothered to learn the proper name of the institute that had been holding the twins, instead dismissively calling them the "whatever institute".
  • Microts: Clauton measures time in "degrees", of which there are three thousand per day. The glossary breaks the fourth wall to directly tell the reader that days are the same length in this world as in reality, which makes a degree work out to slightly less than 30 seconds.
  • Never Learned to Read: Eiri grew up as an experimental subject for an evil science institute, which naturally wasn't interested in educating her when all they wanted was to exploit her powers, so she doesn't know how to read as the story begins. She's shocked to learn that Yui does; while he grew up in the same circumstances, he was able to use his powers as a seer to listen in on other kids learning to read and pick up the skill anyway.
  • Paranormal Gambling Advantage: Eiri accuses Yui of using his powers to cheat at card games. However, since the card game in question is War, "cheating" amounts to knowing in advance who's going to win.
  • Repeated for Emphasis: Upon arriving in Snowfall, Eiri counters Yui's excitement by pointing out that any town would be more exciting than the snowy wilderness they'd been in before — Yui's response is to emphasize the particular interestingness of where they've ended up by saying "this place in particular is particularly amazing! In particular!"
  • Shipper on Deck: Yui really wants Pandora and Araceli to "discuss tax law" together. Eiri doesn't get it.
  • Suddenly Shouting: While trying to figure out the time system in Clauton from Araceli's posted operating times, Pandora muses calmly to herself about most of its various features, but then breaks out into an angry shout when she notices that there are eight days per week and she somehow failed to notice this up til now.
    "... and was anyone gonNA TELL ME THERE WERE EIGHT DAYS IN A WEEK AROUND HERE OR WAS I GONNA HAVE TO FIND THAT OUT FROM — meep‽"
  • Taking the Fight Outside: When Pandora is first accosted by Lebrook, she apologetically asks the innkeeper if he'd prefer she "take this outside". "This" turns out to refer to Lebrook himself, as she heaves him bodily out the door and locks him outside. As she explains to Eiri, she doesn't have anything to prove to Fantastic Racists like Lebrook, so she had no reason to actually fight him.
  • Thinking Up Portals: Eiri has the ability to create "rifts", pairs of swirling black vortices that transport matter from one to the other.
  • Touché: Eiri, annoyed that Yui has better endurance than her, demands to know why he didn't tell her to stay active like he did. Yui tells her he could've told her, but he doesn't think she'd have listened. Eiri hates that he's right about that.
  • Trapped in Another World: One night, Pandora went to sleep on Earth. The next morning, she woke up in this world. She seems to have no idea what caused it, and by all indications it was a one-way trip.
  • Undead Tax Exemption: Pandora, being from another world, has no legal documentation of her existence in this world. She's apparently able to legally establish her existence just by filling out some paperwork taken from a library in Snowfall, and lacking any existing papers doesn't seem to be any obstacle. Eiri and Yui, having been raised as captive experimental subjects, are in a similar situation, and fill out the same paperwork.
  • Undisclosed Funds: Pandora spends her money freely on food and clothing, but still can't afford to buy a house (or apartment) outright. She can afford to enter into the "usual arrangement", which seems to be the local version of a lease. The numbers involved seem approximately proportionate to her, compered to renting an inn room. What any of these numbers are, the narration doesn't bother specifying.
  • What's a Henway?: In 1.4, Pandora baits Lebrook into calling her "Bophades". Bophades Nuts! The next omake consists entirely of alternate henway traps she could've used, because the author couldn't decide which one she liked best.
  • Wrong Insult Offence: When Lebrook calls Pandora and the twins "rabid mutts", Pandora takes offense... at "mutts", because they're catfolk, not dogfolk, so he should be calling them "moggies".
Trivia

  • Based on a Dream: The atuhor's nose on the prologue says that the story is distantly inspired by a dream the author had, in which she found some of her older works and had a nostalgia trip over it. "Distantly inspired" here amounting to the dream having caused her to write the story, as the one element she says the story-as-published actually still has in common with the dream was in turn only part of the dream because it was taken from an old roleplay thread.
Indices: Troper Works, Web Serial Novel
    Namespaces in Toki Pona (mostly hypothetical) 
I got into Toki Pona like three days ago, any of this might be bad lmao

For any of these that already exist in another language, prepend TokiPonaLa ("in Toki Pona, ")

(tropes and stuff)

  • Main:
  • Administrivia:

lipu (media)

  • Advertising:
  • Animation:
  • Anime:
  • ARG:
  • Art: Musi (art)
  • Audio Play: KalamaToki (talking sound)
  • Blog:
  • Comic Book: SitelenMute (many pictures)
  • Comic Strip: SitelenLili (a few pictures)
  • Creator: JanMusi (art person)
  • Fanfic: TokiMusiPiMusi (talking-art about art; is this right?)
  • Film:
  • Franchise:
  • Literature: LipuTokiMusi (artistic, talking document)
  • Magazine: LipuMusiLili (small, artistic document)
  • Manga:
  • Manhua:
  • Manhwa:
  • Music: KalamaMusi (artistic sound)
  • Myth: TokiPini (talking from the past)
  • Pinball:
  • Podcast:
  • Radio: TokiKon (air-talking)
  • Ride: IloMusiSuli (large fun machine)
  • Roleplay: TokiMusiLinja (connected talking-art)
  • Script:
  • Series:
  • Tabletop Game:
  • Theatre:
  • Toys: IloMusiLili (small fun machine)
  • Video Game: KulupuSuno (glowing game)
  • Visual Novel: LipuSuno (glowing book)
  • Web Animation:
  • Webcomic: SitelenMuteSuno (many glowing pictures, but how to distinguish from TV and animation?)
  • Website: LipuLinja (connected document)
  • Web Original:
  • Web Video:
  • Western Animation:
  • Wrestling: UtalaMusi (artistic fighting)

lipu lili (subpages)

tenpo lili (moments)

ante (other)I'm making a personal judgement call here as to which pages are actually useful to have

    get to these later 
    open/close all folders 
    drrp circle (The DoorRonpa DRRP Circle?) 
[PAGENAME] is a loosely-connected group of Danganronpa roleplays on Discord. They're not formally a Shared Universe, but occasionally characters from one game will return in a later game, resulting in a fair amount of overlap in continuity. As well, the first 3 Doorronpa and Moonronpa: Neo Bunker Game take place within the same timeline.

Roleplays connected to this group include:

The roleplays in this circle that don't already have their own pages, and/or the group as a whole, contain examples of:

  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
    • "[Creator's name]ronpa", one of the most common naming schemes in the circle, sums a game up quite simply as a Danganronpa fangame run by that person.
    • "[Gimmick]ronpa", the other most common naming scheme in the circle, succinctly conveys the idea of a Danganronpa fangame with a specific gimmick.
    • Discordronpa and both Dangancord games, all run by Moon, have names that quite plainly describe them as Danganronpa fangames run on the Discord chat client.

    animal mascot story 
Literature.Local Animal Mascot

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/animal_mascot_cover.png
When you've had a lifelong interest in magical girls, but suddenly they take an interest in you...

The Local Animal Mascot Insists I Can Become A Magical Girl And I Have An Obvious Objection I'm Not Sure I Want To Raise!! [1] is a Light Novel by wingedcatgirl about magical girls, but really about genderfeels.

This work provides examples of:

  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In the grand tradition of light novels, the humorously elaborate title tells you exactly what the central conflict is: a transgender awakening sparked by an offer to become a magical girl.
  • Expy: The mascot is pretty obviously based on Kyubey, minus turning out to be the Big Bad.
  • Figure It Out Yourself: Nobody directly tells the protagonist why she can become a magical girl. The obvious implication is that, no matter how transparent the closet, you can't just make someone come out, even to themself.
  • Gender-Inclusive Writing: The light novel is written in first-person as a way around misgendering a protagonist who hasn't yet realized they're trans.
  • Gender-Restricted Ability: Unsurprisingly, only girls can be magical girls. This meant more in the backstory, before the mascot created mage knights (which are functionally identical minus the gender restriction).
  • The Heartless: Shades are made of negative emotion, plus ambient magic and elemental darkness — or other elements, if darkness isn't available.
  • LGBT Awakening: The entire story is about the protagonist coming to terms with being transgender.
  • Mentor in Queerness: The entire cast helps the protagonist figure out that she's trans, and it's implied that the magical girl will help her transition.
  • Minimalist Cast: There are four characters. Obviously other people exist in the world, since the story takes place in a slightly-past-modern-day society, but they're never mentioned.
  • Nameless Narrative: No characters are named, though the protagonist and the magical girl both have screennames (MagicalBoy2424 and CeruleanCombatant, respectively).
  • Noodle Incident: Apparently, shades can be made of technology instead of darkness. All the mascot says about this is that it was "a bad day".
  • Officially Shortened Title: "Local Animal Mascot"
  • Shout-Out: The 2424 in the protagonist's screenname is a reference to the recurring Arc Number of Puyo Puyo.
  • Transparent Closet: The protagonist is the last one to figure out that she's trans — admittedly, the others had an unfair advantage, since they knew exactly what being a potential magical girl implied.
  • Writer Cop Out: invoked Lampshaded; the shades flee just when it looks like they're about to fight, and the protagonist wonders if it was "a cheap excuse to avoid writing a combat scene."
  • You Watch Too Much X: The magical girl is accused of reading too much Madoka fanfic when discussing her past reluctance to sign up.
    Quotes 
Before you ask, no, I can't put these on Quotes.wingedcatgirl; the only subpages tropers get are Sandbox/ (hi there!) and TroperWall/.
Steybarque: Who took away our lives, then told us the only way to get them back was to take lives in turn? The Headmistress. And when the time comes to strike back, to try to PICK THE LOCK ON THE FRONT DOOR and LEAVE, which we should have tried at the start... Do you want one less person on your side? A second murderer, they who sabotaged the pilot light, they still walk among us. Do you honestly think you could catch them? Once you've caught them, then what? You wait for your chance to kill someone, then subsequently get caught and get executed yourself?
Headmistress: A fascinating thought. Can you band together against me? Or will one of your number give in, again and again, until there's nobody left?
    Apple Magus vs the Nightmare King 
Apple Magus Vs The Nightmare King, redirect Apple Magus Versus The Nightmare King
A young woman fights off a nightmare demon who may or may not be real.
Apple Magus vs the Nightmare King is a story by KiraHeartilly36.

Tropes

  • Based on a Dream: In-Universe, Claire has a fever dream where an evil demon demands that she write two creepypastas for him. Claire's first creepypasta is based on that dream. This is based on the author having the same dream.
  • Comically Small Demand: The Nightmare King's demand to release Claire from his fever curse? She must write him two creepypastas. It's later revealed that the two creepypastas were a test and once she's done he expects her to keep serving him by spreading his influence.
  • Create Your Own Villain: A rather literal example. Claire's reality warping powers brought the Nightmare King into existence.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Claire's creepypasta ends with a warning not to think about the Nightmare King late at night, lest you too have a fever dream about him trapping you in the desert. Not that she thinks he's real, but just because she knows thinking about something while falling asleep has a tendency to result in dreaming about that thing.
    So tonight, when you’re in bed, trying to get to sleep, whatever you do: do not think about the Nightmare King Oneirophobia. He isn’t real. But that doesn’t mean he can’t hurt you.
  • Incompatible Orientation: Claire is designated male at birth and as a child thought her crush on her best friend Brandon was hopeless because they were both boys. As adults, they're incompatible because Brandon is gay.
  • Nightmare Weaver: The Nightmare King gives Claire nightmares throughout the story, usually threatening to do even worse things to her.
  • Reality Warper: The Nightmare King can warp reality. He uses scorpions and dogs to terrify his victims, while also showing people fake videos of their dead friends, and editing Claire's stories. It's later revealed that Claire herself is the true reality warper. She unknowingly created the Nightmare King, altered people's memories, and willed other characters into existence as well.
  • Scary Scorpions
    • In Nightingales, an in universe story written by two of the characters, the heroes Clara and Bradley investigate a desert town being threatened by a dangerous scorpion monster. The story ends before they can fight it.
    • One reader reviewing Claire's creepypasta mentions fighting an evil scorpion in her nightmare.
    • The characters find scorpions randomly popping up in real life. One pops up inside a library book, another crawls onto a character's hand, and another character's workplace is suddenly infested with scorpions.
    • While discussing Claire's creepypasta with her, Jacob mentions a fight scene with a scorpion, though she insists she didn't write one. When he checks, the creepypasta appears to be different from what he remembers.
    • The mysterious Catscratch Haven children's series features a scorpion demon that the heroes fight in one episode.
    • The book Bloodstained Nightingale is said to also feature a dangerous scorpion monster.
    • While eating dinner, Jacob watches a Rottweiler laying on the ground as countless scorpions pour out of its stomach.
    • In the final battle, the Nightmare King controls an army of countless scorpions and one human sized scorpion woman.
  • Shared Dream: The final battle takes place in Claire's dream, with her many friends coming to help her.
  • Trapped in Another World: The story within a story Catscratch Haven is about a protagonist being trapped in a magical world.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Catscratch Haven, In-Universe, was a mediocre children's cartoon that dealt with such distinctly not child friendly subjects as Self-Harm, fear of death, and suicidal ideation.
  • Un-Installment: There is no chapter 13. The characters say it's because they don't want bad luck.
  • Worm in an Apple:
    • Claire once used a cartoon worm in an apple as her online avatar.
    • Jacob watches a YouTube video showing a dead teenage Claire holding an apple in her hand. Suddenly, countless worms begin crawling out of the apple.

Trivia

  • Based on a Dream: The story is based on the author's fever dream in which an evil demon demanded they write two creepypastas.

    CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good 
Cordyceps Too Clever For Their Own Good
Someone wakes up in a mysterious facility with no memory of how they got there. This turns out to be the ideal state of affairs, and is swiftly ruined.
CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good is a story by Benedict_SC. (insert description here)

This pink elephant contains examples of:

  • Bittersweet Ending: Gavin survives and his treatment works. He's lost all memory of who he was, but the elephant can no longer harm him. Arc, however, was unwilling to sacrifice their personality this way, and deliberately let the elephant kill them.
  • Death of Personality: The unavoidable side effect of the treatment — by luring the elephant into patients' personalities, then giving them Laser Guided Identity Amnesia to isolate it until it starves, everything the patients know about themself is sacrificed. When Arc realizes this, they decide they won't have it, and deliberately causes the elephant to kill them.
  • Identity Amnesia: 3 and F wake up in what looks like a hospital with no memory of who they are. All they can remember is their aliases — what their brains are giving them when they ask for their names, though they know these aren't their names at all. The amnesia isn't the disease, it's the treatment.
  • I Just Write the Thing: The author's notes explain that the whole thing "grew out of an attempt to reverse-engineer an explanation for a standalone snippet of fiction inspired by one of those KID visual novels" and "happened without my having a lot of choice in the matter".
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: A drug is used to give people amnesia, and they are manipulated in such a way that it specifically erases all parts of the memory related to their personal identity.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter: 3 is not fond of profanity, so when they're the viewpoint character, a lot of F's dialogue is described roundabout.
    They said... the cuss word that means like "that's nonsense", starts with B. I'm not going to reproduce it here.
  • Note to Self: When it becomes apparent that they are in danger of having their memories erased, Arc begins leaving notes to themself. Unfortunately, Arc does not trust people easily and has trouble believing the notes. (Could also use more context, but this is all I recall off hand.)
  • Ontological Mystery: The story opens with one of the main characters waking up in a hospital room with no idea how he got there and no idea who he is. As the story's summary puts it, "This turns out to be the ideal state of affairs, and is swiftly ruined."
  • The Paranoiac: Much to 3's frustration, F is insistent on seeing malicious intent in everything even slightly odd — which is a serious problem when one is in the hospital for a fungus that makes you explode into spores if you know how it works, for which the only treatment is luring it into your identity and then getting Laser-Guided Amnesia to isolate it until it eats your identity and starves to death. (This could use more context; the main page lists specific required criteria, which F does meet, but I can't recall all the details offhand)
  • Thought-Aversion Failure: The main threat of the story is a fungus that eats away at your brain when you think about it. Of course, trying not to think about the fungus only makes infected patients think about it more.
  • Un-Installment: There is a Chapter P listed, but all you get for clicking on it is a message saying that the chapter doesn't actually exist. It's the last chapter and it exist only to trick the reader into thinking that the titular character will survive and get a happy ending.
  • Unusual Chapter Numbers: Most of them aren't numbers — other than "Table of Contents" (which is almost halfway through the book), each chapter is "numbered" with the non-name of that chapter's viewpoint character, resulting in several duplicate numbers.

    Withered Wings 
Fanfic.Withered Wings (an AO3 search shows no other fics by this name)
"Bubbler, I am Papillon, and I grant you the power of–"
"Bubbler? What kind of name is that?"
"Well it's your name now!" Papillon said, sounding defensive. "And it's not that bad! I, well, I grant you the power to bring people together! With your unpoppable bubbles no one will ever be lonely again! All I ask is that you act like you're after Ladybug's Miraculous and pretend to put up a fight in return."

Withered Wings is a Miraculous Ladybug Alternate Universe fanfiction by 11JJ11.

Adrien never went to Françoise Dupont and never became Cat Noir. Marinette, as Ladybug, has had to fight Hawk Moth all by herself, up until the day she recruited Alya to be Rena Rouge.

Adrien gets caught overhearing Gabriel ranting to Nathalie about this development, and Gabriel talks Adrien into joining him, after a quick test to see how well Adrien wields the Butterfly Miraculous himself...

This fanfic contains examples of:

  • False Cause: Gabriel gives Adrien allergy medicine to help him cope with the Peacock Miraculous, since he is allergic to feathers. He also makes sure to mention the side effects, ensuring that Adrien will blame his subsequent fatigue on the medicine, rather than the Miraculous he doesn't know is damaged.
  • Mythology Gag: "Papillon", Adrien's name when wielding the Butterfly, is Hawk Moth's canonical French name.
  • Not Brainwashed: Because of his sympathy to Adrien, Nino lets himself be akumatized willingly, and retains his memories afterward. It helps that Adrien admits that he only really wants to avoid his father's anger, and won't mind if he loses as long as he puts on a convincing display of trying.
  • Oxymoronic Being: Adrien, allergic to feathers, is so well-suited for the magic of the Peacock Miraculous that he grows his own feathers when he transforms.
  • Second Super-Identity:
    • Adrien briefly wields the Butterfly Miraculous as Papillon, then switches to the Peacock and becomes Blue Wing.
    • Alya initially holds the Fox Miraculous as Rena Rouge, but after Nino steals it from her in chapter 10, Ladybug starts lending her the Bee Miraculous instead, and she fights as Abeille. When that Miraculous gets stolen too in chapter 21, Master Fu gives her the Black Cat Miraculous, and she becomes its permanent holder as Panthera.
    • As in canon, Marinette recruits Nino to wield the Turtle Miraculous as Carapace, unaware that he's also the same Silver Paw who stole the Fox Miraculous from Alya.
  • Wham Episode: In Chapter 21, Blue Wing steals the Bee Miraculous from Chloé and hands it over to Hawk Moth, who gives it to Nathalie, allowing her to become Mellifera. Shortly thereafter, Master Fu meets with Alya to give her the absent-til-now Black Cat Miraculous.
  • Wild Card: Nino as Silver Paw has one goal and one goal only — to get Papillon/Blue Wing away from his abusive father, Hawk Moth. To this end, he fights both heroes and villains.

YMMV

  • Moral Event Horizon: Gabriel forces Adrien to help him with his evil plans by using the damaged Peacock Miraculous — and does he warn him of the danger and advise caution? No, he deliberately hides it, ordering Nooroo and Duusu to keep quiet and misleading Adrien into believing his strange new symptoms are side-effects of his allergy medicine.
indices: Miraculous Ladybug, Fanfics of the 2020s

    Tales of Many 
Fanfic.Tales Of Many probably (an AO3 search does show one other fic by that title, but it's X-rated and so is unlikely to get a page)

Miraculous: Tales of Many (FFN AO3) is a Miraculous Ladybug fanfic by wingedcatgirl. It centers on the Leclairs, a plural system of Original Characters who attend Françoise Dupont.

The author originally stated that it is planned to consist of four "key" episodes that advance the main plot, and "some number" of additional episodes that show off some character interaction. The finale episode ended up becoming a two-parter, for a total of five "key" episodes.

  1. "Legion": Celine Leclair and her headmates get akumatized into a villain with shapeshifting and self-duplication powers.
  2. "Domain": Lea Leclair befriends a new student, Céleste Vérany-Brunelle... who gets akumatized and takes over Françoise Dupont, as a result of which Ladybug finds herself in need of a new hero.
  3. "Mayhem": Ikarus lives up to their name and takes a huge risk, setting off some severe trouble in the process. Shadow Moth is pulling out all the stops, and now the heroes have to do the same.
  4. "Unknown ([title redacted] - Part 1)": In the aftermath of "Mayhem", some long-dormant members of the system take control, and seek out an opportunity to make things right.
  5. [title redacted] - Part 2: TBD

Tales of Many contains examples of:

  • Achievements in Ignorance: Ikarus captures an akuma with their chakrams by simply not knowing that this is "supposed" to be a power exclusive to the Ladybug yoyo. Pigella is later shown capturing amoks with her tambourine, suggesting that any Miraculous can do it and the heroes just hadn't realized it.
  • Age Lift: The author's notes on "Legion" state that the main class is 16-17 in this fic, rather than the canon 13-14.
  • Brick Joke: Early in "Domain", Marinette has Kaalki (offscreen) use Voyage directly to get her the Dragon Miraculous, and it's mentioned that this presumably resulted in flinging some random object into space through a second portal. Much later, when Ikarus summons an imitation Miraculous Ladybug, part of the World-Healing Wave goes flying off into space "for some reason Ikarus couldn't fathom".
  • Casanova Wannabe: According to Celine, Achille "thinks he's smooth as butter but he's actually just so awkward it wraps around to adorable".
  • Curse Cut Short: Chapter 3 opens with a mysterious sequence of Koppi in Thunderbolt's headspace, talking to two people — one of whom turns out not to know the other, which they express with the eloquent "whomst the actual fu—" and then the scene ends.
  • Discard and Draw: "Mayhem" ends with Shadow Moth losing the Butterfly Miraculous and seizing the Octopus, and Thunderbolt system, previous holder of the Octopus, recovering the lost Butterfly.
  • Domain Holder: Domain, as her name implies, has effortless control over the terrain of the school, allowing her to quickly renovate the place — and summon turrets out the walls with a wave of a hand.
  • Endearingly Dorky: Celine describes Achille as "so awkward it wraps around to adorable".
  • Exact Words:
    • Ladybug asks Lea if she happened to ask for Ikarus's pronouns, and Lea responds that Ikarus is genderfluid and uses any pronouns. She does not say she asked Ikarus, because she didn't — she knows Ikarus's pronouns because she (and her system) is Ikarus.note 
    • Catalyst taunts the heroes that they'll never find her akuma. She's deliberately misleading them — they'll never find it because it doesn't exist. She's not Nathalie back in her akumatized form, she's a sentimonster copy of it.
  • Fangirl: Though he is, in fact, a boy, Achille's fannishness for Cat Noir is very much of the "cute boy is cute" type, not the "I know so much trivia" type.
  • Hand Wave: The Octopus Miraculous gets two handwaves to allow for its presence in the Chinese Miracle Box — first Tikki mentions that Koppi had been taking a "quick forty years" nap, explaining why he never appeared in canon, then the author's notes ask readers to imagine a "fourth less-prominent group for miscellaneous animals", since the Octopus is not part of the box's three established subsets.note 
    It's Not Strictly Ruled Out By Canon!™
  • Icarus Allusion: Achille, suddenly put on the spot, picks the name "Ikarus" for the system's superhero form. At the end of "Domain", Shadow Moth declares that they're already flying too close to the sun, and he'll be ready when their wings melt. Sure enough, in "Mayhem", they take a massive risk and pay a massive price — in trying to expose Shadow Moth, they reveal their own identity to him in the process, and provoke him into pulling out all the stops to win as fast as he can, eventually resulting in losing the Octopus Miraculous.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: Achille is quick to gripe when his headmates make cat puns, because they, unlike Cat Noir, are "not kitty".
  • Parental Neglect:
    • Jade's parents have been away on a business trip for several months, leaving them and their headmates entirely alone to fend for themselves, without so much as calling or texting them every day. This is one of the factors that leads to Celine's akumatization.
    • Céleste's parents don't pay much attention to her and her interests, leading her to develop an unhealthy attachment to Françoise Dupont and the friends she made there, which in turn leaves her vulnerable to akumatization.
  • Perplexing Plurals: The narration refers to a group of more than one octopus magically summoned as an imitation Miraculous Ladybug as "octopi (or octopodes, or whatever plural you prefer)".
  • The Pin Is Mightier Than the Sword: The Octopus Miraculous is a pin that grants its wearer the power to transform into a hero of Imitation.
  • Power Copying: Koppi, the kwami of Imitation, grants his holder the ability to use imitations of other Miraculous holders' powers. Though they're still subject to canon's Running Gag about imitation Lucky Charms always being big-ass weapons of one kind or the other — Ikarus's Lucky Charm on their first appearance is a bazooka.
  • Rapid-Fire "No!": Cat Noir's reaction to the Internal Reveal of Shadow Moth being Gabriel Agreste is to back away from the group in terror, muttering "no no no no".
  • Reality-Breaking Paradox: "Mayhem" kicks off when, after defeating Gigantitan once again, Ikarus uses their power of imitation to mimic Shadow Moth's akumatization, to try to akumatize Shadow Moth through his still-active akuma. At the same time, Shadow Moth uses this opportunity to try akumatizing Ikarus back, through their akuma, causing a magical feedback loop that shakes the very earth. Cat Noir outright calls it "dividing by zero". Thankfully, Ladybug can still capture and purify both akumas in this state, stopping the paradox and calming things back down.
  • Running Gag: As in canon, an imitation Lucky Charm can only be a big-ass weapon, so Ikarus's Lucky Charm in "Domain" is a bazooka.
  • Second Super-Identity:
    • Due to Domain tracking her with a magic tether, Marinette opts not to transform into Ladybug that day in case the supervillain figures out her identity. Instead, she uses the Dragon Miraculous to become Dragonfly.
    • Thunderbolt system picks up the Butterfly Miraculous and spends a day or so helping people to get the hang of the power. This identity is never named, but it's made clear that it's separate from Ikarus.
  • Shout-Out:
  • A Wizard Did It: According to Ladybug in a deleted scene, the reason she is able to pronounce the plural pronoun "you&" (despite that ampersand being silent) is just "magic". She clarifies that she knows it's Miraculous magic because she's unable to do it when not transformed, but has no more information to offer than that.
(Trivia)
  • Outdated by Canon: After the heroes reclaim the Butterfly Miraculous, Nooroo is unable to tell them Shadow Moth's identity, since he never officially renounced Nooroo and is still the official Butterfly Holder. It's since been revealed that the Guardian taking back the Miraculous is enough to negate someone's status as a Holder.
  • Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The atuhor's nose at the end of "Unknown" mentions that the original plan was for Thunderbolt system to get the Butterfly Miraculous full-time, and that them handing it off to Céleste instead was only decided midway through writing that chapter. Another thing stated to have been decided mid-chapter is that the Age Lift, previously stated to be completely arbitrary, would have an actual impact, as Céleste turned 18 between "Mayhem" and "Unknown", allowing her to retain her transformation after using an akuma.
Indices: Fanfics of the 2020s, FanWorks.Miraculous Ladybug, Troper Works

    Isekai'd as a regular ordinary kitty cat‽‽ 

    Hidden Beacons 

    Tubes 
VideoGame.Tubes

Tubes is a 1994 DOS-based puzzle game by Absolute Magic, published by Software Creations. Dr. Lanny B. Brilliant has discovered eight new elements, and is preparing his presentation for the Nobel Prize committee — when suddenly, he learns firsthand that they're much more unstable than he realized, and they scatter throughout the lab, leaving him with nothing to show for his work. His last hope is that connecting three like-colored atoms together will form a stable molecule chain, so he gets to work recovering his discovery...

It's an action puzzle game, in which the player controls a test tube that can hold up to five atoms and drop them into the 6x5 beaker below. This gameplay might sound familiar. The shareware demo can be found on the Internet Archive.

Tropes:

  • Antimatter: Antimatter, available only in the registered version, is a glowing red atom that annihilates any adjacent atoms upon being dropped into the beaker. This is nothing like how antimatter works in reality, but that's hardly the point.
  • Artistic License – Physics: It's a puzzle game first; the science is merely set dressing, so the game diverges from real atomic physics quite readily.
    • The atoms are absurdly large. Even the smallest test tube should be able to hold far more than five of even the largest atoms, and beakers more than thirty. And individual atoms are too small to have their own color.
    • Real antimatter annihilates with any matter. The air in the lab would have already set it off long before Dr. Brilliant could do anything with it — and if we arbitrarily pretend the gameplay is in hard vacuum, it'd still annihilate with the tubes before it made it to the beaker.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Instead of easy, medium, and hard, you have Tubes 101, 201, and 301.
  • Shareware: Registering the game for $20 unlocks 50 more levels in Wave Mode, five more backgrounds, and the Antimatter and Bonus atoms.
  • Songs in the Key of Panic: When you're one drop away from a Game Over, the music switches to a more frantic and tense theme.
  • Subject 101: The Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels are "Tubes 101" (easy), "Tubes 201" (medium), and "Tubes 301" (hard).

Trivia:

Indices:

    Little Kitty, Big City 
VideoGame.Little Kitty Big City

Little Kitty, Big City is an upcoming game by Double Dagger Studio. The Steam page gives it a planned release date of 2024.

Prerelease material includes the first teaser trailer, Kinda Funny Games Showcase GDC Stream 2023, and the playable demo on Steam.

Little Tropes, Big Page:

  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the demo, after giving the Tanuki the feathers to open the first Petwork portal, she will speak directly to the player to tell you that using this portal will end the demo.
  • Cats Hate Water: In the demo, puddles are insurmountable obstacles, as the kitty will leap back with a hiss the moment they get their paws wet.
  • Character in the Logo: The logo has the words "Big City" in 3D block letters with the kitty sitting on top of the "Y".
  • Cute Kitten: The central selling point of the game as promoted in all the trailers is getting to play as a cute and curious little kitty lost in the big city, running around and being cute while you find your way back home.
  • Falling into the Plot: The GDC stream shows how the little kitty gets lost in the big city — it was napping on the roof outside its home, and slipped off the edge by accident.
  • Fun with Acronyms: In the demo, the crow tells the kitty that "demo" stands for Definitely Exciting Media Opportunity.
  • Holler Button: The demo has a button to press to make the kitty meow, which can get attention from various NPCs.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: The kitty is an ordinary kitty who clearly has no containers on hand, yet the GDC stream shows it starting several Collection Sidequests. Lampshaded by the Tanuki, who says she smells that the kitty is carrying feathers — "Although goodness knows where you're keeping them."
  • Invisible Wall: There are a few blocked-off passages in the demo that seem like they could be unlocked later, but getting the camera right up to them shows a barrier of 🚫 signs, indicating that they at least won't be unlocked during the demo.
  • Match Cut: The first teaser trailer ends with the kitty glancing at the camera and a circular wipe to the game logo, which features the kitty in the exact same position and pose.
  • No Name Given: The little kitty isn't officially named. According to the GDC stream, naming the kitty will be part of the game's story.
  • Not Zilla: The GDC stream shows an in-universe cartoon character named Gecku, who is very specifically a big gecko exposed to nuclear radiation, and not a weird sea monster. There are rare misprinted medallions that make it look like the latter, you see.
  • Plot Detour: The first teaser trailer opens by saying that the kitty's "main" goal will be to find its way back home... the rest of the trailer makes it clear that the kitty will be spending most of the game doing anything but that.
    You're a little kitty, LOST in the big city, and you need to find your way home. URGENTLY. VERY URGENTLY. SUPER DUPER URGENTLY....Please? Oh, for the love of
    You're a little kitty, LOST in the big city, and you need to find your way home. Eventually.
  • [Popular Saying], But...: A crow in the trailer declares that "Curiosity never hurt anyone. Especially not a cat!"
  • Portal Network: The GDC stream shows that the Tanuki has invented the "Petwork", a network of portals made by using feather magic on sewer access holes. The first portal only goes to the next room over, but after proving it works (and that you need a portal back) the Tanuki gets to work making some more of them.
  • Rhyming Title: Little Kitty, Big City
  • Shout-Out: As shown in the GDC stream, the (green) Turtle Hat's description says "I just need a red shell and a blue shell and we can try go-karting!"
  • Verbal Backspace: The first teaser trailer opens by saying that the kitty needs to get home "URGENTLY", only to repeatedly revise this statement as the kitty takes its sweet time with that objective. A cursor moves back and forth over the line "URGENTLY", adding and deleting text as needed.
    URGENTLY.
    VERY URGENTLY.
    SUPER DUPER URGENTLY.
    URGENTLY....Please?
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: The GDC stream shows that the kitty is able to trip humans and steal their things. While there are gameplay reasons to do this (stolen bread can be used as bait for birds, for example), you can also just do it for funsies.
  • Worm in an Apple: Referenced in the description of the Apple Hat as shown in the GDC stream, which says "Better to find a kitty in your apple than a worm".
Trivia

  • Release Date Change: The GDC stream gave the game a tentative release date of 2023. This was quietly pushed back to 2024 at some point.
YMMV

  • Funny Moments: The control option that most games would call "run" is instead called "zoomies".
Indices: American Video Games, Microsoft Windows, [Video Game Genres], [Video Games of the 2020s if released on time], Feline Fiction

    The Superhero Arena 
Literature.The Superhero Arena

The Superhero Arena is a web novel by KiraHeartilly.

This work contains examples of:

  • Jack the Ripoff: Invoked by Sparkle, who uses her electricity powers to murder abusers and leaves a Calling Card of a blue spraypainted lightning bolt — both of which are easily replicated by mundanes, allowing many people in abusive situations to murder their abusers and let the police blame it on Sparkle. Unfortunately, it's not only victims who take the opportunity she provides. In at least one case, an abusive woman killed her husband this way and was only found out because his father hired a private investigator. Sparkle is deeply upset when she hears about this.
  • The Unpronounceable: One supervillain goes by the name "🐱🌷👸". Most people find this confusing, so they just call her "Emoji the Clown".

    Not Only Nine 
Not Only Nine

Not Only Nine is a game by Larryzaur (previously known for various Final Fantasy XIV videos including the "Basically" series) about a recently-deceased cat named Lune journeying through the afterlife to save its owner. It was first announced in October of 2022, with a demo released in April 2023. Steam store page. Kickstarter page.

This work contains examples of:

  • Arc Number: In the demo, the number nine comes up a lot — in addition to the cat motif, the three parts of the flashback to Luke's life are separated by nine years from the first to second part, then nine days from the second to third.
  • Arc Words: "Choose to continue" and "Till All Complete" come up repeatedly in the demo. allan please add details
  • Boss Game: According to the trailers and the Steam page, the only fights are the bosses.
  • But Thou Must!: After defeating Ursa in the demo, you'll be given the choice as to whether you want to reap his soul, or defy Tod and spare him, but it's a false choice — if you try to defy Tod, he'll simply take control and reap Ursa himself.
  • Cats Have Nine Lives: The title suggests that cats get nine lives in the mortal realm — but since the game takes place in the afterlife, they don't get only nine lives.
  • Dead to Begin With: Trailers show that the game takes place in the afterlife. The demo shows a flashback in which Lune jumps in front of a Reaper that was intending to take Luke.
  • Easter Egg: In the demo, when you're asked which sword to take, if you repeatedly inspect them without picking one, Tod will force-quit you back to the main menu, and when you continue, he'll be much more irritable and snarky with you for the entire rest of the chapter.
  • Expy:
    • The first character you meet in the demo is Tod, who presents himself as your helpful assistant on your mysterious journey, then reveals himself to have a hidden nasty side, an ulterior motive, and the ability to detect when you reload the game. This is reminiscient of a certain character from Undertale, and in a video plugging the game's Kickstarter, Larry cited "what if Flowey helped you the whole game?" as part of his inspiration.
    • In the demo, Borapora is an owl who, in his own words, will "give you a long-winded explanation about the afterlife, followed by prompting if you understood me, with 'no' as the first choice" — or, in other words, Kaepora Gaebora.
  • Foreshadowing: In the demo, after Ursa explains Edwin's diorama of the Reaper War, Tod will claim he left out "a few key details". Such as that he was part of it — Ursa is a retired Reaper, and the game's first boss fight.
  • Go into the Light: The first entity you encounter in the demo is a glowy floating orb that claims to be The Light, as in "Oh me, oh my, don't walk towards the light". He also goes by Tod.
  • Homage: In the demo, a scene early in the game in a surreal location asks you to tweak your stats by taking one of three weapons and discarding one of the remaining two.
  • Horns of Villainy: Invoked in the demo; if you toy with Tod by repeatedly inspecting the Cosmos Swords without picking one, he'll give you the Despair Horns, "to remind us that you're trouble".
  • Ludicrous Precision: The first trailer shows Tod in the afterlife greeting Lune as being the "first stranger in 999999999 years, 99 days, 9 hours, and... 2 minutes!"
  • Shall I Repeat That?: Parodied in the demo by Borapora, an owl clearly based on the Trope Codifier from Ocarina of Time, who outright tells you upfront he's going to prompt you if you understood his explanation in the most inconvenient way possible. After you finish, he does indeed ask if you want him to repeat himself, and is excited to do so as many times as you wish.
  • Taking the Bullet: A flashback in the demo shows that Lune died by jumping in front of a Reaper that came for Luke.
  • Unreliable Expositor: In the demo, most of your information on the nature of the afterlife comes from Tod and Ursa. However, both of them talk in rather vague terms, they're clearly opposed to each other, Ursa confirmably hides important details from you, and Tod just has a real skeevy vibe, especially if you've activated the Easter Egg changing his personality, making it hard to know just how much what either of them say is accurate.
Trivia:
  • Inspiration for the Work: The demo release trailer includes a segment from Larry discussing the process of developing the game, during which he explains that he'd always wanted to make a video game, but hadn't had any real idea what to make it about, until his cat died young and he wrote a story to process his grief, about a cat having adventures in the afterlife, which he eventually realized would make a good story for that game he was trying to make. In a video plugging the Kickstarter, he also cited The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask's gameplay and the character Flowey from Undertale, as well as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Nier more broadly as inspiration.
Indices: American Video Games, Microsoft Windows, Feline Fiction, Video Games of the 2020s if released on time, [Video Game Genres]

    Spellcaster University 
VideoGame.Spellcaster University

Spellcaster University is a Space-Management Game by Sneaky Yak Studio, tasking the player with building a school of magic out of randomly-drawn cards from six decks before the Lord of Evil invades and destroys it all.

Draw from the Trope deck...

  • All Witches Have Cats: One of the animals you can get for your university is the Witch's Cat, a cute calico cat that wanders through the school and reduces characters' needs. The Flavor Text notes that cats aren't actually magic or anything — just adorable.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: If you have a mission to graduate students with a particular future, any student who meets the qualifications will get that future, instead of selecting randomly from all the futures they qualify for like they normally would.
  • Big Eater: The "Round Belly" teacher trait and "Voracious" student trait cause the character to recover hunger more slowly, resulting in them eating more whenever they visit the refectory.
  • Big Fun: Teachers with the "Round Belly" trait always also have the "Fun" trait.
  • Challenge Run: When starting a campaign, you can choose from five challenges to make things more complicated. Each challenge rewards two bonus cards for completing it.
  • Dice Roll Death: One possible future for graduated students is "Dead!", losing you some prestige for no benefit whatsoever. While qualifying for better futures can reduce the probability of this one down to quite small numbers, only missionsnote  and elvesnote  can prevent it entirely.
  • Luck Manipulation Mechanic: When a student graduates, they pick one of their possible futures at random. If you don't like what the RNG gave them the first time, you can reroll once per student — or twice, if they visited the guidance counselor during their studies.
  • Mage Tower: The buildable area at ground level is very limited, but there's lots of room to build upward.
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Students can only earn one item of equipment, and will keep that one item for the rest of their life.
  • Nutritional Nightmare: The "Health-risk Waffle Maker" in the Shadow deck is stated in its Flavor Text to produce waffles containing "gluten, artificial sweeteners, several hues of food coloring, battery-farmed chickens' eggs and meat from cute and cuddly lambs". Anyone eating in a refectory where this has been placed completely stops feeling hunger for a few minutes, but is more susceptible to losing health.
  • Tiebreaker Round: In dungeon battles, after 10 rounds of combat, healing and gaining shields becomes impossible for both sides, to ensure battles do eventually end even with the most padded-sumo builds available.
  • Timed Mission: There's a meter at the top of the screen showing how close the Lord of Evil is to invading, and when it fills up, the game ends as you flee the university's current location. You can get time back through various events, and slow down the meter by increasing your Alliance Meter with the Lord of Evil.
  • Vicious Cycle: Evil rises to destroy all life every two hundred seventy four and a half years.
  • Wizarding School: As you might imagine from the title, you're building a school to teach people magic.
Indices: Space-Management Game, Video Games of the 2020s

  • Multiple Endings: The campaign has three possible endings, depending on how you complete the final level: note 
    • Ritual ending: By gathering five special components, one from each of the magic decks, you perform a ritual to turn the Turtle into a spacefaring vessel to flee the Lord of Evil's armies and seek out a new planet to live on.
    • ???: By performing seven specific tasks to call upon your allies, get this ending so you can describe it lmao
    • Bad Ending: By running out of time before completing any of the other tasks, you find the school and the world overrun by the Lord of Evil, but Postumus opens a time portal for you to escape back to the past and try again. On Sorcerer difficulty or lower, you can retry the final level, carrying over benefits from graduated students in previous attempts. On Mage or higher, the game simply ends; the implication seems to be that the temporal portal takes you back to the beginning of the campaign without letting you benefit from your failed attempt.
    I Wanna Be The Cat 
VideoGame.I Wanna Be The Cat, custom title to canonical (weird) capitalization

I wanna be The Cat (Steam, other links if they exist) is an I Wanna Be the Guy-inspired roguelite Platform Hell game by Nemega. Go through rooms of platforming challenge, fight bosses, collect items and coins.

I wanna trope the cat:

  • Bonus Level: Some rooms have an optional, much harder side path that leads to a warp portal. If you can make it to that portal, you'll go to a special challenge room with its own life count and a reward chest at the end.
  • Expy: Many of the bosses are cat-themed versions of popular fictional characters:
  • Macrogame: After each run, you can use your collected coins to buy perks and unlock items to use in your next run.
Indices: Video Games of 2015–2019 (2017), Platform Game, Indie Game(? how do you check whether a game is indie)

    Let's Play Ultima (Nakar) 
Fanfic.Lets Play Ultima Nakar Let's Play Ultima (Nakar)

Let's Play Ultima is, as you might gather, a series of Lets Plays of Ultima. By a user named Nakar. The series consists of:

This Let's Play contains examples of:

  • Butt-Monkey: Iolo gets no respect from anyone at any time.
  • Gender-Blender Name: This Avatar is a woman named Steve.
  • Heroic Comedic Sociopath: The Ultima games let the player do some pretty nasty things and still be treated as a hero, but it's probably not supposed to be canon. Steve, though, actually does all that shit — she has little interest in being nice or letting people live if they irritate her, and it's just lucky for the world that "threatening the world" is something that irritates her.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
    • When discussing the silly-sounding planimals in Martian Dreams, Nakar makes a point of providing screenshot proof.
    • In Martian Dreams, it's possible to get Percival Lowell to tell you he might know who can repair a given part of the lens tower, and then immediately claim to have no idea who can fix the lens of the lens tower. When showing off this part of the Dialogue Tree, Nakar appends "(ACTUAL RESPONSE)" to Lowell's claim of ignorance.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: During The Black Gate, Steve mentions a few times that her name isn't actually "Steve", but her explanation of why she's called that always gets drowned out by someone else's dialogue.
  • Open Secret: Yellin, Sherman, and Duprey of Martian Dreams are literally Iolo, Shamino, and Dupre respectively (unlike canon where they were just Suspiciously Similar Substitutes) and Steve knows it, but the trio insists upon maintaining the charade.
  • Un-Installment: Savage Empire is mentioned at the beginning of Martian Dreams, but the actual LP series skipped that one. but check SA for whether it happened and just wasn't archived
  • Uranus Is Showing: In Martian Dreams, upon finding Percival Lowell on the seventh island of an area representing the solar system, Nakar describes him as being "deep within Uranus". And immediately gloats that he got to make a Uranus joke that made perfect sense in context.

    Max Headroom Pirate Broadcast 
Max Headroom Pirate Broadcast

On November 22, 1987, Chicago experienced two brief TV signal hijackings by a pirate broadcast themed after Max Headroom: one at 9:14 PM interrupting WGN's The Nine O'Clock News, and one at 11:20 PM interrupting PBS station WTTW's broadcast of an episode of Doctor Who.

This pirate broadcast contains examples of:

  • Kinky Spanking: "Max" has an accomplice who tells him to "bend over, bitch" and spanks his bare behind with a flyswatter.
  • Mock Headroom: The central figure of the broadcasts was someone wearing a Max Headroom mask with a projected background of moving stripes.
  • Product Placement: Parodied; "Max" randomly pulls out a can of Pepsi and says "catch the wave" (a slogan from a then-current Coke ad campaign) in a disdainful tone.
  • Shout-Out: At one point "Max" hums the Clutch Cargo title theme and says "I still see the X" (the show's last episode was titled "Big 'X'").
  • Surreal Humor: "Max" says a whole lot of really random stuff like "I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky, freaking liberal" and "oh, my piles".

Trivia

  • Reclusive Artist: As one might expect from an illegal broadcast, the creators aren't exactly forthcoming about their role in the production. To this day, nobody knows who was responsible.

    The Adventures of Nerd Boy 
Webcomic.The Adventures Of Nerd Boy

The Adventures of Nerd Boy is an ASCII Art webcomic by Joaquim Gândara that ran from 2001-2006 (with a single episode uploaded in each of 2007 and 2016), detailing the adventures of a nerd boy known only as Nerd Boy and his not-quite-secret crush Mandy.

Good going, trope boy.

  • Actually a Doombot: In episode 446, the cast gets vaporized by robot space pirates. Episode 447 reveals that those were actually robot duplicates Nerd Boy made... probably.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: While Nerd Boy and Mandy never really address their apparent mutual crush, there is the occasional strip that's just a cute bonding moment between them, reminding us that for all their comical violence and dismissal, they really are fond of each other.
  • Cut the Juice: In episode 609, Nerd Boy, Fan Boy, and Linda are all enthralled by W4R3Z D00D's hypno-ray, until Mandy casually walks up from behind and unplugs it.
  • Depth Deception: Nerd Boy activates a machine that appears to turn him and Mandy into giants. This causes a panic, and they run back to the machine hoping to turn back to normal... and they're already normal-sized. The machine was actually a teleporter, and they just looked big because they were in the foreground. And the guy that wanted to shoot them with a tank was just messing with them.
  • Digital Piracy Is Evil: Nerd Boy occasionally pirates various media, for which the other characters call him out. He clearly doesn't care that they disapprove.
  • Geek Physiques: It doesn't show through in the ASCII art, but Nerd Boy is occasionally stated to be fat.
  • Kid from the Future: In episode 578, during a time-travel arc, Linda's daughter Molly appears from the future to help out, having retroactively become the central plot device's inventor due to changes in the timeline.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: In episode 595, Fan Boy pitches an idea to Nerd Boy about a comic in which a cat eats a stick of paste and hallucinates that it comes to life. Nerd Boy hates the idea at every step, but especially the reveal that the title would be "Cat and Paste".
  • Nerds Are Virgins: In episode 635, Fan Boy mentions a study showing that people with more education have less sex, to which Nerd Boy snarks that he must therefore be the most educated person in the world. It takes him a second to realize how much of a self-burn that was.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Nerd Boy has a real name, as he says in the very first comic, but everyone just calls him Nerd Boy.
  • Rapid Hair Growth: In episode 566, Nerd Boy makes a machine to accelerate hair growth. It's supposed to stop when he turns the machine off...
  • Robo Speak: The Robot Girl has a Verbal Tic of saying *meep* after every sentence. Episode 94 reveals that this is because Nerd Boy assembled her incorrectly.
  • Swivel-Chair Antics: In episode 535, Nerd Boy spins around on a swivel chair and ends up flinging himself across the room.

    Leaf story 
Leaf Story, no results for that title on AO 3 so probably no need to disambiguate

Leaf story is a Tales of Symphonia fanfic by wingedcatgirl. It also has a few side stories.

Tropes:

  • Amnesiac Hero: The story begins with Leaf waking up and remembering nothing of her time before.
  • Description in the Mirror: At Dirk's house, Leaf takes a moment to look at her reflection in the creek, since she's forgotten what she looks like.
  • Dramatic Irony:
    • When Leaf's notebook warns her against "-os" names, she quickly identifies this as possibly referring to "Kratos" and "Mithos", but is completely wrong on why they're relevant, thinking Kratos as a mercenary might betray the party for money and assuming that "Mithos" refers to someone named after the legendary hero without even considering the possibility of running into the hero himself. Anyone familiar with canon Tales of Symphonia can immediately tell she's on the wrong track.
    • When Sheena first appears, the Virtual Soundtrack makes an extremely flimsy attempt to preserve the mystery by labeling her self-titled theme song as "I know anyone at all familiar with canon knows exactly who this is but humor me, okay?"
    • Leaf notes that Colette is Unaffected by Spice, surprising her as she would have guessed otherwise. Unaware that Colette's angel transformation has at this point taken away her sense of taste, Leaf dismisses this as trivial.
  • Exact Words: Kratos explains getting along with Noishe by claiming to have "had a pet much like him" in the past. Leaf has no idea that Kratos is referring to Noishe himself.
  • Mustache Vandalism: Leaf defaces a "Wanted!" Poster of Lloyd in Triet by drawing a sombrero, face mask, and spiky shoulder pauldrons on it. Genis points out that this is unlikely to stop anyone from recognizing Lloyd, since there are other posters and the Desians can just replace this one, but Leaf does it anyway on the grounds that it'll make her feel better about the situation.
  • Narration Echo: Upon seeing the Desians put up Wanted Posters for Lloyd, Leaf wonders in the narration why Lloyd (since he hasn't been accused of any actual crimes against them in this timeline), and then repeats "Wait, why Lloyd?" out loud.
  • Power Copying: Among the first artes Leaf recalls are Copycat, which allows her to copy the artes of her allies, and Mirror Move, allowing her to copy the artes of her enemies.
  • Shout-Out:

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