Tropers / SonicLover

(It's not supposed to be spelled with a space. Use the NotAWikiWord method to keep it that way.)

SonicLover here. Occupation: university student, fourth year. Hobby: looking through TV Tropes and locating tropes I myself previously used in my fanfiction and/or other work. I've listed the ones I've found below.

• Adventure Couple: A lot of these tend to crop up in the two-person roleplays, with each player dictating the actions of one member of the couple. Sometimes, more characters will join in the party, but the basic twosome will always be obvious:
  • Alt (me) and Sherbie (her) in the Tech series
  • Winter (me) and Len Kivakita (her) in The Innocent Recluse
• Aliens Speaking English: Averted in an interesting way with Zoey of self-roleplay The Creature; he's from a distant planet, and doesn't speak English. He does, however, speak a special "universal dialect" that anyone can understand the meaning of, regardless of what language they speak. This doesn't, however, explain how he can understand languages that other people speak...
• Big "NO!": Alt has a mental one of these in roleplay A Small Technicality, when Sherbie's mind goes completely robotic and his personality disappears, seemingly for good.
• Bilingual Bonus: Dunno if this counts if the second language is ASCII binary, but in roleplay A Small Technicality, the lullaby Alt recalls her mother singing near the end translates to "I love you". This was revealed in the artist's comments when the roleplay was publicly uploaded.
• Brainwash Residue: Early on in roleplay A Small Technicality, an unseen force affects Sherbie's mind and turns it into that of a complete robot, reduced to speaking in blips and bleeps and without any ability to think for himself. Not long after he recovers, he finds he's still fluent in the digital-speak that Technulojian robots use, which comes in handy on more than one later occasion.
• Brown Note: The Mark of Ivarn in roleplay The Innocent Recluse. Described like this:
  It was no ordinary symbol. It was the Mark of Ivarn, an indescribable insignia with arcane powers. Anyone who looked at the symbol for more than half a second lost all ability to think for themselves and became a completely obedient drone, albeit temporarily.
• Chekhov's Gun: Somewhat blatantly played in roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia. This quote from the narrator says it all:
  Remember how I said at the beginning that there was a full moon tonight? And how Aaa had been bitten by a werewolf a month prior? Both those facts had just become VERY relevant.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Sherbie from roleplay Tech a Powder seems to be immune to this, but in A Small Technicality it comes full circle as a curse corrupts his mind and turns him completely robotic in a very painful process. Later, even after he's recovered from that, he lives fearful of this, and even has a Nightmare Sequence or two about it.
  • Also subverted in Agent Topaz, as Tails's cybernetics do not directly affect his state of mind; he needs an additional chip implanted in his head in order to keep him on Eggman's side.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: A variant occurs in roleplay Wings, where Mythril throws a handful of dirt at Quagmire to provoke him into launching an attack that Cryo and Celcia can turn against him.
• Divide by Zero: In idea pitch The Educa Team, Educa M's ultimate attack is literally this (it's an education-themed superhero team, and she's math-themed). Also obviously falls under Crossing The Streams.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: An interesting example occurs in roleplay A Small Technicality. Sherbie has a Nightmare Sequence of involuntarily shooting Alt with his plasma cannon, obliterating her completely. Later, this does happen when Nebula infests Sherbie's systems. Thankfully, the "Alt" he gunned down was only a strategically placed hologram. The kicker? This Troper, despite having been the one to make the prophesy come true, had done it by accident (he didn't remember the dream at the time)!
• The Easy Way or the Hard Way: Winter finds herself at the receiving end of this choice near the very beginning of roleplay The Innocent Recluse. She handles it in about the most badass way possible:
  Len Kivakita: Do you want to make this easy or hard?
  Winter: Easy. (whips off scarf to reveal the Mark of Ivarn on her neck)
  • It doesn't really work, but still, not bad.
• Enemy Without: Has occurred in roleplays Agent Topaz and A Small Technicality. The latter case is interesting in that both the "enemies without" later pulled Heel Face Turns and became friendly.
• Fainting Seer: Well, she's not exactly a seer, but otherwise Alt comes as close to the trope as one can in roleplay A Technical Foul. She reads Sherbie's memories of his death, recorded on his artificial parts, and her reaction fits the bill. She even faints!
  Franklin: Your Majesty!
  Nebula: I think she saw something she's going to have nightmares about for the next few months.
• Five-Man Band: In idea pitch The Educa Team, the titular team is literally based on this model:
  • The Hero: Roger Schmitz / Educa S
  • The Lancer: Miles Denzel / Educa L
  • The Big Guy: Steve Rockwell / Educa P
  • The Smart Guy: Adam Victrola / Educa H
  • The Chick: Janet Brown / Educa M
• Fridge Brilliance: Since I'm the author of these works, it's by definition impossible for me to "discover" what I was thinking at the time I wrote something, but neat little coincidences that resemble brilliance crop up every so often.
  • In the Tech series, although Alt's ancestry's collective inability to swim was created due to Rule of Drama at the time, it's actually quite symbolic when one remembers that water and electronics don't mix.
  • Throughout the same series, Alt has gained a few levels in badass, such as a powerful werewolf form, while Sherbie has remained at more or less the same level. Doesn't seem fair? Well, remember that when they first met, Sherbie was at a fairly higher level than Alt was. He has a freaking cybernetic right arm with an ion cannon built in. Alt isn't leaving Sherbie in the dust; she's catching up to him.
  • Figment and Nebula seem a lot more open about their relationship with one another than Sherbie and Alt are about theirs... and considering where the former couple came from, how does that not make sense?
  • It's never explained where Franklin got the DNA samples of Sherbie necessary to create his new body and bring him Back from the Dead in roleplay A Technical Foul. It's unlikely that he keeps such assets on file for just that sort of situation... and then you remember that Franklin's second-in-command at the medical facility, Figment, happens to be a genetic clone of Sherbie with identical DNA and everything. So, really, he had easy access the entire time.
• Heroic Fantasy: The setting for roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Fanfiction bite Peach Meets Blaze is about the meeting of Princess Peach and Blaze the Cat during the Olympic Games. Peach comments on how often she and Princess Zelda (her bridge partner, apparently) have been kidnapped, and Blaze replies, "It sounds like you and Zelda could use a few self-defense classes." Both Peach and Zelda were playable in the Super Smash Bros games long before the work was written, so that doesn't count; what DOES count is that Peach has since starred in her own platformer in which she gets to beat Bowser up and rescue Mario for a change, and Zelda has gotten really good with a bow and Light Arrows in her own series and played very active roles in a few final boss battles.
  • A scene in fanfic Sonic Releashed has Sonic and Snake chatting about where the latter came from. Sonic speculates that maybe Snake's a descendant of his and jokingly suggests that he "kill me and see if it causes a paradox"; Amy then cuts in and punches Snake before he can even consider it. By itself it's a great illustration of Amy's overprotective personality, but then a commenter pointed out the obvious:
  Well after Silver it stands to reason that Amy'd be wary of guys showing up from the future to kill Sonic! :P
  • Way back in my DA gallery there's a picture called "Oil Foil", depicting a catfish fancharacter stuck in an oil spill and phoning his lawyer. It was submitted on February 22nd, 2009. It probably would have been interpreted differently had it been submitted a year and two months later. The icing on the cake is this bit from the artist's comments:
  I think we would take preserving nature a lot more seriously if the plants and animals had lawyers. But what can I say? I was born and raised in the USA, the land of lawsuits.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The chapter titles for roleplay Tech a Powder are always in a "This and That" format. For odd-numbered chapters, the "This" supposedly refers to Sherbie and the "That" to Alt; for even-numbered chapters, it's reversed.
  • In roleplay A Small Technicality, the chapter title is always a quote from either the first or the third roleplay "post" in the chapter, sort of like a backwards Title Drop. This practice is supposedly inspired by MS Paint Adventures. In A Technical Foul, the titles are lines of C++ code. In Technically Unsound, they always follow the pattern "The _____ _____", where the blanks are filled with two words that alliterate.
• I Know You're In There Somewhere Fight: Sonic plays this very straight in roleplay Agent Topaz in trying to restore Tails's mind. Does it work? Ultimately, yes. One final speech from Sonic at the eleventh hour causes the fox's "obedience chip" to overload and blow out, giving Tails his free will back.
• I'm Your Worst Nightmare: Delivered by Figment upon introduction in roleplay A Small Technicality. A particularly jarring example in that he's right.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Played with in roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia, in one scene where Aaaaaaaaaa says he needs a drink after a tough battle. Played with in that since he's an RPG hero, his "drink" is a health potion.
• In Medias Res: Roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia begins this way. Throughout the roleplay the hero even makes use of several alleged Chekhov's Boomerangs from earlier in his adventure.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: The naming scheme for the chapters of roleplay The Innocent Recluse, featuring such chapter titles as "Wherein Good Deeds Are Performed, Steps Are Retraced, And Mysteries Are Contemplated" and "Wherein The Aforementioned Demon And Spirit Guide Kick Each Other's Asses".
• It's a Small World, After All: Sherbie and Alt meet completely by chance at the beginning of roleplay Tech a Powder. Later it's revealed that Sherbie's coworker, Tesla, is actually an immigrant from Alt's home country of Technuloji. As if that weren't enough, even later we discover that the prototype robot Sherbie's cyborg parts came from was originally designed in Technuloji as well, and Tesla accidentally stole them when she fled the country! How much more entwined can you get than that?
• Kangaroo Court: Played straight and slightly deconstructed in fanfic Sonic Releashed. The judge, a literal kangaroo^note It's not as bizarre as it seems - remember, this is a Sonic The Hedgehog fanfic!, is described up-front as not being a particularly fair decider, and the "trial" only emphasizes this. Sonic's final rant right after the verdict is delivered puts the icing on the cake:
  Sonic: Wait one minute! What sort of a kangaroo court are you running, kangaroo? What sort of legal system is this, that doesn't let the defense get a word in? I call a mistrial! I call- HEY! * is captured and taken away for imprisonment*
• Lamarck Was Right: Alt from roleplay Tech a Powder and her royal ancestry's Super Drowning Skills.
• Lampshade Hanging: Played perfectly in the narration of roleplay Tech a Powder, near the end:
  Nobody decided to comment on the fact that Alt actually had a fitting swimsuit in good condition despite the obvious illogicalities.
  • Indeed, this is one of this troper's favorite tropes; he hangs enough lampshades to stock a furniture store.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Roleplay Agent Topaz. Tails is electrified when a lightning strike hits his workshop late at night, causing an evil version of his cybernetically upgraded self, which he previously got rid of through a bit of Chaos Emerald science, to be ejected from the Emerald he happens to be holding at the time. Yikes!
• Little Did I Know: A slight variation. This narrative line ends Chapter 6 of roleplay Agent Topaz after Tails comments that "Agent Topaz is gone now, and he's never coming back.":
  Neither of us knew it at the time, but that last part would be proven wrong the following night.
• Logic Bomb: Referenced. At one point in roleplay A Small Technicality, the phrase "My directive is to disobey my directive" is spotted written on Ohm's electronic sketchpad. It's unknown whether he's actually tried issuing that directive to any robots, or what would happen if he did.
• Mundane Utility: At the beginning of roleplay Tech a Powder, Alt is using her electrokinesis powers to... play a video game hands-free.
  • In fact, as most of this troper's stories and roleplays start off in peaceful, uneventful settings yet he feels a need to establish abilities like these right away, he uses this trope quite a bit.
• Neural Implanting: An interesting variation occurs in roleplay Tech a Powder, in which Alt accidentally "downloads" some of Sherbie's memories and relives them herself. Later, she sends one of her own memories back to him, but the quality stinks.
• The Nicknamer: Snake from fanfic Sonic Releashed. Despite being the first to be nicknamed, he immediately slaps Sonic back with the alias "Nick". From there he doesn't hesitate to attach nicknames to everyone in Sonic's time period, from Tails ("Captain Tailspin") to Professor Pickle ("the Prof") to Amy Rose ("Rosie").
• No One Could Survive That!: Nipped in the bud in roleplay A Small Technicality, right after Sherbie is forced to shoot Alt by a renegade malicious spirit in his cybernetics:
  There was no possible way Alt could have survived that... was there? Was everything here what it seemed like?
  • Not that it mattered. Either way, Sherbie takes the incident as a prompt to attempt to kill himself, and is only saved by Nebula's Heel–Face Turn.
• One of These Doors Is Not Like the Other: One room in MSPAFA You Are Here is like this, but there are no visual or audio cues to assist the player. The solution? Sakura finds a scarf and gives it to Spiff, whose acute canine senses allow him to remember the scent and follow its trail through the maze.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: And how. This troper seems to be a werewolf fan.
  • Fiction bite series Violet Moonbeams plays the "classic" werewolf stereotype fairly straight.
  • During the Tech roleplay series, Alt gains a werewolf form that initially serves as her Unstoppable Rage mode, but later becomes a tamer Super Mode triggered by anger.
  • The best example of this trope is fiction bite series The Blue Fang. Janet comments on it right off the bat, blaming the variation on the media's habit of "bending things out of shape".
  • The "classic" stereotype is also played relatively straight by Aaaaaaaaaa, the hero of roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia, except that he retains his mental state due to a previously acquired magic accessory.
• Overly Long Name: Snake from fanfic Sonic Releashed. His full name is Snakken Novoki Ichabod Carven Kissinger... there's more, but that's as far as we've heard it, because someone always cuts him off when he's in the middle of saying it. Snake even lampshades this himself when narrating one chapter:
  The Prof interrupted us, reminding us that this was no occasion to trash-talk each other. I vaguely suspected that my inability to finish stating my own name would become a running gag.
• People Jars: Seen in roleplay Tech a Powder when Sherbie, Alt, and Tesla infiltrate a base where people are getting their Life-Force sucked out to power a robot.
• Photographic Memory: Sherbie from roleplay Tech a Powder has this, justified by the fact that his mind is partially robotic. He shows this off very early in the story by perfectly recounting Alt's Overly Long Name, much to her bewilderment. His memory even becomes an important plot point later.
• Portal Picture: The MSPAFA You Are Here contains a few of these, including the two literal handheld Portal Paintings Mary acquires, not to mention the painting Sakura emerged from near the beginning.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Played straight and justified in roleplay Agent Topaz. One of the modifications Tails receives when Eggman makes him into a super-soldier is that his eyes are now red. Sets things up for a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming when Sonic notes that Tails's eyes are still red even after his obedience chip blows and his mind goes back to normal.
• Reveal Shot: It's hard to pull off a text-only version of this, but roleplay A Small Technicality manages to pull it off. One roleplay "post" mentions that Captain Ohm has shown up on the scene to see Alt and Sherbie at the beach right after Sherbie's mind goes completely robotic. The next one begins as follows:
  After a long pause, Alt stood up and turned to face Ohm. Behind him were Joule, Volt, and Franklin. Behind them were many other people, too many to count, including the girls from breakfast-time and the staff from the medical facility, all here for the same reason.
• Rick Roll: Ohm pulls one of these on Sherbie and Alt, mainly the former, early on in roleplay A Technical Foul.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia takes place in one. The establishing moment is very early on, when the protagonist gets scraped by a branch and loses a few hit points. (The fact that said protagonist's name is literally ten A's in a row may be a tip-off, too.)
• Sailor Earth: Not sure if it fits this trope, but my modus operandi for creating fancharacters, particularly regarding the Sonic The Hedgehog series, is to make them fit in with the official characters as well as possible.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Inverted with Sherbie and Alt in the Tech roleplay series; Sherbie's the energetic one, and Alt the calm one. Alt does wake up significantly earlier in the morning than Sherbie does, though.
• Schrödinger's Gun: Gets heavy use in the roleplays, where minor details are often played up due to Rule of Drama. Most notable in this area is Tech a Powder, which had quite a few of these. Listed chronologically:
  • The fact that Technuloji even existed. Originally the explanation was going to be that Alt was delusional.
  • The "family curse" regarding Alt's line of descent and their collective inability to swim.
  • Tesla. Despite being Sherbie's co-worker and having a crush on him, she never existed until Alt learned that she used to live in Technuloji.
  • The origin of Sherbie's cybernetics. They were originally designed by a resident of Technuloji.
    • And to boot, the fact that said resident was the late father of the current captain of war.
    • To say nothing of the revelation that the "accident" that gave Sherbie his cybernetics had been a set-up the whole time.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Tidal in roleplay A Small Technicality.
• Sequel Reset: Pulled masterfully in roleplay A Small Technicality, which begins with Alt discovering a time capsule which forewarns of the events to come.
• Standard Hero Reward: Aaaaaaaaaa the Determined is engaged to Princess Daphne in roleplay Dragon's Dance: Tales of Manavalia, and plans to marry her after his quest is over. He lampshades it himself when he tells Carynnia about it and admits it's rather cliché. It's then immediately deconstructed when the princess in question is revealed to be a manipulative spoiled brat.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Roleplay Agent Topaz. Sonic is captured and given the titular fate in preparation for becoming a heartless cyborg soldier just like Tails.
• Unhand Them, Villain!: The normally Genre Savvy Alt falls for this in roleplay A Small Technicality. During a Nightmare Sequence, she faces a cloaked evil version of herself who introduces herself as Nebula. Nebula has Alt's late mother hostage on the roof of a building, and exchanges words with Alt. The conversation ends like this:
  Alt: Y-You're lying! D-Drop my mother r-right now!
  Nebula: ...Okay, if you say so. * ...and you know the rest.*
• Vasquez Always Dies: Roleplay Wings. Poor Celcia.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Sherbie and Captain Ohm from roleplay Tech a Powder are a perfect example of the second version of this trope. They both insult each other every chance they get, but they both enjoy it.
• Whatevermancy: A Spritemancer, in one "author duel" on the MSPA forums. Said character has the ability to summon and control video game sprites. A quote from his introduction:
  Sure, they laughed at me when I decided on video game sprites as my specialty. I shut them up quickly by putting them at the business end of a Samus sprite's Charge Beam. I chose to become a Spritemancer because I'd always had a passion for video games, to the extent that I even had my magic robes modeled after those of the White Mage from the Final Fantasy series. Plus, it meant I didn't have to draw my own summons, which was good because I was a lousy artist.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Roleplay A Small Technicality combines this with a vague Sequel Hook.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: Early on in roleplay The Innocent Recluse, Ivarn is asked why he didn't kill Winter right away. He explains that he wanted to test her character before doing anything rash.
• You Can Say That Again: Pulled twice (so far) in fan-fic Sonic Releashed, the first with Eggman's first scene, the second with Angel's. The two cases are played almost identically; the lackey says something, the villain delivers the titular line, and the lackey begins to deliver the typical punchline only to be cut off midsentence by a bit of physical punishment from the villain. Also coupled with almost the exact same narrative line:
  That's the problem with (blank): they have an annoying tendency to take things way too literally.

And here are a few examples searching for a trope:

• This comment is made by Alt near the end of roleplay A Small Technicality when Joule asks her if she's feeling all right:
  "Considering that over the course of today I beat people up for looking at me funny, witnessed Sherbie's mind turning to pure AI, rampaged the harbor as a werewolf, confronted Technuloji's original founder who was more dark-hearted than anyone knew, and dealt with two rogue embodiments of our greatest fears... yeah, I've been fine."
  • The key is the "yeah, I've been fine" at the end. This seems to be related to Sarcasm Mode or Blatant Lies, but I can't pin it down. The first and fourth potholes inside the spoiler are of questionable status, too.
• A trope of unknown identity falls victim to a Double Subversion at the end of the first chapter of fan-fic Sonic Releashed:
  (Setup) I figured I had a long time to wait before I'd have to worry about this whole Gaia business again.
  (Subversion) And I was right.
  (Boomerang) ...Well, a single week must seem like a long time to someone, right?
  • I know I double-subverted something, but I can't find the original trope. Had I played it straight, the last two lines would have been replaced with a simple "I was wrong" or similar.

I have also a fan of the Playing With Wiki, and have started the Playing pages for Scooby-Dooby Doors, Super Drowning Skills, The Un-Reveal, Mundane Utility, Amazon Brigade, Bling of War, Magic Ampersand, People Sit on Chairs, Mexican Standoff, Painting The Fourth Wall, Eigen Plot, Our Werewolves Are Different, and many more. Tropes that were my own invention include Futureshadowing, The Dog Was the Mastermind (although that one was quickly put Up For Grabs), Throwing the Distraction, Wheelchair Woobie, Exploited Trope, and {{The Hero's Birthday}}.

Anyone who stumbles across my page and knows of any other applicable tropes to add to this list, or can clarify some of the tropes I'm unsure of, I highly encourage it!

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