Top panel: Sam and Dean
Lower panel: (Jareth's boot), Sarah, Christine, Erik, James, Javert, and Legolas
Lower panel: (Jareth's boot), Sarah, Christine, Erik, James, Javert, and Legolas
"What happens after the film ends and the credits roll" is a subject of fanon everywhere, but in this universe we do things slightly... differently. We ask, "What happens when the film ends, and while everything in it happened, it's still a film? Where do you go from there?" The answer appears to be: Buildingverse!
— Sursum Ursa, Stuff You Like
In a World…, where fictional characters can go after their story ended. In an unnamed, secret university town with a population consisting almost entirely of aforementioned fictional characters stands the eponymous Building. It all began when Jareth of Labyrinth and Erik of The Phantom of the Opera decided to move in after some years of drowning their sorrows together. And the madness spreads ever since.
In less movie trailer like words: The Buildingverse is The 'Verse that sprung up around the DeviantArt Fan Webcomic Roommates when different authors began producing Spin Offs and otherwise expanding on the source material. Most of these take place in the Building (Building #42) or the University (Saint Jude's), or at least in The Unnamed University Town, but the world outside is big and some already stepped outside... a bit.
It has a Trivia subpage, and—if you didn't need that liver anyway—a Drinking Game.
Notable longer works in the "franchise" in alphabetical order:
Most DeviantArt ones end up in the fan group
.Works with trope pages:
- Down the Street by Heroes Daughter:
Focuses on a nearby building where Dr. Frankenstein and Dracula are sharing an apartment. Wasn't updated since May 2011. - Girls Next Door by Pika-la-Cynique:
Focuses on unwilling love interests Sarah and Christine. Ongoing, updates on Wednesdays. More Popular Spin Off. - Meanwhile Upstairs by EveryDayArtist:
Focuses on new tenants John Taylor, Spencer Reid, and Agent Derek Morgan, as well as supporting characters who don't get as much limelight in other series. Ongoing, updates on Fridays. - Roommates by Ashe Rhyder:
The mother series of it all. Cerebus Rollercoaster and highly Mind Screwy. Ran from 2007 to January 2019. - Superintendent by spiritfox94:
Slash Fic about superintendent Valjean and his boyfriend. Ongoing, without a fixed update day.
Others
- Children and Monsters by Belle-et-la-Bette:
Extrapolated from the GND strip "Not-Pocket Monsters". Ongoing, without a fixed update day. - Funny Days with the Stars by romancefreak:
Strictly a collection of one page gags (it isn't even numbered) centered around the misadventures of various characters, a self-insert and the occasional OC. - Homework also by EveryDayArtist of Meanwhile Upstairs:
Wasn't updated since June 2012. - Only A Dream by greeneyesandglasses:
Fanfic with Sarah/Jareth and heavy emphasis on dreams. - The Vampires Below by LadyAkeldama:
Fanfic that added various more crossovers mostly from the Anita Blake novels. Wasn't updated since Feb. 2011. - Tanuki in the Building by Amarth9:
Fancomic which adds some OCs. Wasn't updated since Sept. 2011.
Tropes associated with the Buildingverse:
- Actor Allusion: Playing with this is one of the source for meta joke.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Almost all characters have embarrassing parents, except if they are dead... which is a hard thing to do around here. Jadis (Jareth's mother) takes the cake but it's safer to assume that any parent will be embarrassing unless proven otherwise.
- Art Shift: In the case of the comics nobody is surprised, but because things like "and the art went all straight" appear even in the fics this deserves a special mention.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: Because the primary source for these forces is Good Omens in the 'verse.
- Building of Adventure: Well, it's called the Buildingverse for a reason. But it stands in a City of Adventure (The Unnamed University Town) that also has a University named after St. Jude and who knows what else. There where also outtakes from Oz to Paris.
- City with No Name: The main building stands in one. Even the fans and creators call it The Unnamed University Town if they need too.
- Crossover Ship/Crack Pairing: It graced fangirls everywhere with several in-universe ones (so not even going into the fan ones) at least teased, for example:
- Custody Battle: The relationship of the Erlkönig and the White Witch ended with a really messy divorce. She did threaten her ex with banishment by magic to make him leave (seen in Roommates) and they still fight over their son (he was kept by the White Witch originally probably at least partially to deprive the king from the heir he always wanted as she routinely calls the kid "Despised waste of genes" in Girls Next Door), who grew up and moved away long ago.
- Death Is Cheap: Death Is Cheap in the 'verse in general, but at least in Roommates there is an outright Nobody Can Die rule in place.
- Depending on the Writer: Each and every addition to the 'verse has different writers with different character interpretations and story ideas. Here this is a feature, not a bug, though.
- DeviantArt: Most works are published on this platform.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: As out of canon worlds go, this is a fairly common phenomenon. (Also the other Did You Just Index Cthulhu? tropes tend to happen fairly regularly. Except Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? because these aren't that action oriented works.)
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The naming convention of the series' tend to reference where its main characters live relative to the main apartment of Roommates (like: next door, down the street) or what they are/do in the 'verse (being the superintendent). Sometimes both (Vampires Below is about vampires who live on a lower level). Or rarely the most fitting trope (like: Children And Monsters)
- Failure Is the Only Option: Tend to run on this.
- The Fair Folk: The Magical People. They are a big source of mischief. The focus on them wary from work to work, but they are "easily entertained but frequently bored tricksters" at best, and you don't want to see their worst. Really you don't. If any work has a Nightmare Fuel entry it's a safe bet that it's because of them.
- Fanservice: These series' are fanservice heavy and shamelessly self-aware about it. Often Invoked and Lampshaded.
- Fan Vid: They exist and unsurprisingly most of them are set to Obsession or Breakup Songs. Some examples:
- Roommates:
- Loathing - the comic with the same name set to What is this feeling...
- Trailer- The Roommates Voiceovers - The project never got made but it has a trailer.
- ROOMMATES Tribute - set to a pitch modified Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)
- Loathing
- Girls Next Door:
- Girls Next Door wannabe - mostly to Wannabe.
- That's what GND girls do
- Trap of Love - by the Hex Girls.
- Jareth doesn't like Christine - Music Girlfriend.
- Happy New Years GND fans - Happy New Year.
- coming to take me away
- Girls Next Door wannabe
- Mixed:
- ❤The Unforgiven❤ {Jareth x Sarah} SEQUEL (Hurts - Stay) - This is an almost 5 minutes Labyrinth sequel building mostly around the Dark!Jareth arc of Roommates and a short clip of Practical Magic set to Stay by Hurts.
- ❤The Unforgiven❤ {Jareth x Sarah} SEQUEL (Hurts - Stay)
- Roommates:
- Finagle's Law: A good friend of the Rule of Funny and archnemesis of the Rule of Cool and the Rule of Romantic, how it relates to the Rule of Drama (and the Rule of Sexy) depends on the individual work.
- Foil: One of the major backbones of the Buildingverse is the idea of taking characters from different stories who are alike and/or serve similar narrative roles, and making them roommates.
- Erik & Jareth: Stalkers with Crushes. Too dark and villainous for their canons to grant them happy endings, but too sexy and sympathetic for the fandoms not to wish it for them. Both are also musical and theatrical, with a taste for the dramatic. On the other side, as alike as they are, Erik has a great deal of fundamental human compassion, and chooses to let Christine go, while Jareth is conversely very inhuman and fae, and truly does not understand that kind of human morality.
- Sarah & Christine: Ingenues who have grown into self-assured women. They know stalking isn't sexy—they made the "right" choice in canon—but they're still attracted to and caring about their suitors. They struggle to reconcile these two things. Sympathy for the Devil is a difficult thing to work with. They're heroines—they can't just coldly turn their backs on their sexy villain antagonists. But neither will they put up again with the tricks and games their sexy villain antagonists put them through.
- James & Javert: Sympathetic Inspector Antagonists. Honorable men who got the short end of the plot.
- Interspecies Romance: It's established that the Magical People actively engage in this, because of a family tree resembling the unholy bastard child of an elaborate Celtic Knot and the Timey-Wimey Ball. With more powerful ones becoming even Divine Date... or Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Roommates began with Labyrinth, The Phantom of the Opera, Pirates of the Caribbean and Les Misérables but as currently stands we are closer to a Multiverse where All Stories Are Real Somewhere.
- Meta Fic/Inn Between the Worlds: These stories take place on an alternate Earth where fictional characters can go after their stories end (or between stories). Like when they died.
- Obligatory Joke: Any addition to the 'verse is "obligated" to sooner or later do a gift (fruit) basket joke (it's a Shout-Out to a Running Gag in Roommates).
- Offstage Villainy/Hero of Another Story: The fail field actively forces any heroism and villainy off panel... or even general cool for that matter.
- Orphaned Series/Dead Fic: As noted on the "longer works" list several of the spin-offs end up as this or at least on an extended
Series Hiatus. It's still safe to assume that at any given time at least 3 or 4 are active. - Recursive Fanfiction: The whole 'verse grew out as this for Roommates, with the current level of interconnectedness it's hard to say which is based on which anymore.
- Recursive Reality/Schrödinger's Butterfly: Worlds of fiction that are fictional in the world of the comic that is fictional in ours... and this is just the beginning.
- Self-Referential Humor: Much of the humor of these works come from their heightened awareness... yeah, lots of lampshades, playing with tropes and the like.
- Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness: Nonexistent Fourth Wall (in
Fridge Logic even Beyond No Fourth Wall as the Recursive Reality implies that even a readers could be fictional). At least Roommates can be argued to have No Fourth Wall at all, others are mostly just Medium Aware, because despite characters' awarenessnote fourth wall breakage isn't really a plot point. - Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters: Firmly on the character driven side. Even the one with the most plot is only balanced at best.
- Take That, Audience!/Self-Deprecation/Biting-the-Hand Humor: And not always played for laughs. These are a self-aware fandom works for fans by a fans. Yes, nobody thinks twice about making jokes about shipping, fans and their/our assorted antics... but the same time it doesn't shy away delivering punches against the "original" authors either. The balance between these tropes vary between works but are almost always present.
- Tangled Family Tree: Every magical being from every fanon ever is related, and they practice Interspecies Romance with mortals. Also all vampires are "related" too.
- Target Audience: Women, mostly in their 20s, and the fangirl (optionally simply geek or nerd) variety, not surprisingly. At least the author of GND joked about "When I grow up I want to draw shoujo manga." (some would argue that she already does or what she does is closer to josei actually).
- Theory of Narrative Causality: These comics and fics tend to be perfectly self-aware about their own fictional nature. "Narrative Convenience" is many times the characters' in-universe answer to things.
- They Walk Among Us: Well, there isn't a Masquerade and at least in the Unnamed University Town Muggles are the rarest species.
- Villains Out Shopping: Many characters in the 'verse are canonically villains... trying to begin a new life. So this is a regular occurrence.
- A Wizard Did It: Or "A fae did it!" or what do we get when a world is self-aware enough to in-universe acknowledge magic as plot device.
