Website / Realm-Mesh Reality

The Realm-Mesh Reality Wiki (archive link on the Wayback Machine) was a wiki containing a number of (often completely unrelated) short stories, character bios, location descriptions, and a link to a webcomic, all of which were considered to be part of the eponymous universe. Primarily created by the wiki's main author, founder, and troper Wikikinetic, who added content to the wiki on an irregular basis since the wiki's conception in mid-2018, the wiki was also edited by a couple of other authors prior to its shutdown in late 2022, which was followed by its partial re-release as a book of the same name.

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The Realm-Mesh Reality's sub-contents contain examples of:

• Action Girl: Most of the female characters in stories can hold their own in fights and have done so at least once.
• Addiction Displacement: Rane used to be in the habit of biting her nails in stressful situations. Sara got her to stop by having her instead carry around a lollipop and suck on that in the same situations. This change apparently works, though Sara feels bad about having gotten Rane addicted to what she feels is also a bad habit.
• Albinos Are Freaks: Downplayed and Justified. Opal is bullied over his albinism by other kids, but it's largely due to the contrast between him and his dark-skinned family. Also, the bullying doesn't last long, as he stands up to it, reclaims it, and isn't bothered again. Furthermore, not only does his own family not really care about Opal's differences, but nobody seems to make any fuss over the albinism of Kirby, another kid, whose family resemblance is never touched on.
• Arc Words: Fit to Survive and Football Man both have their titles as these.
• The Atoner: After nearly blowing up her home realm, Sierra Rinn has dedicated her life to trying to help people as atonement for that and the other atrocities that she committed.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Thana has blood manipulation powers, but tries to avoid using them for anything other than healing people and occasional teleportation.
• Big Anime Eyes: Invoked. Cici is excited to find a pair of "anime goggles" that make her eyes appear to be enormous, allowing her to make exaggerated faces of the sort common to anime.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the final chapter of Spinning Out, when Aiden is tied to a chair in the Gone's townhouse, he is saved by the dramatic entrance of every other character in the story (with the exclusion of Jag, who'd helped Aiden earlier in that chapter, and Evan, who shows up at the very end to clean up).
• Blatant Lies: Lampshaded. Eteru starts singing, then denies it. Nate informs him that, despite being a backup singer in a band, she doesn't sing either.
• Bloody Murder: Sierra Rinn has this power and used it to take numerous lives, turning her into the most hated person in her entire realm. Thana also has this power and doesn't use it for offense for that exact reason.
• Blow You Away: Philip can shoot gusts of wind from his hand, but is too concerned with his power's name to notice what he's doing.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Discussed in The Party Wagon, where Nate breaks the fourth wall, only to be chided by Hayleigh for doing so. Nate agrees to stop if it means that the story can finally end.
  • Played Straight in Sharing Walls strip #9, where Sylvie notes that a random acronym is identical to what one of the comic's characters would have been named in development.
• Captain Obvious: Lampshaded: Philip reiterates what everyone has been doing for the first half of The Party Wagon in an attempt to make sense of it all, but Nate dismisses Philip's behavior as a usage of this trope and moves on.
• Chainsaw Good: Męka Niki's robotic arms can retract the hands and unfold chainsaws in their place. Downplayed, however, as the only thing she ever gets to hit with them are some wires. Cutting the wires is crucial to saving everyone in the climax of Fit to Survive, but it's not exactly the standard usage of this trope.
• Chekhov's Gun: In Spinning Out, one-third of the way through, Aiden asks Bri for a panic button. Near the end of the story, when he's tied up in the Gone's townhouse, it's revealed that she's given him one, which he uses to get help, thus saving himself and bringing down the relevant Gone members.
• Chew Bubblegum: Cici riffs on this line in both The Party Wagon and Happy Campers; in the latter case, it's just for the fun of it, and the statement turns out to be patently false moments later.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Cici is often one. Most notable in Happy Campers, where, upon hearing a barking noise, she insists that it is coming from a cow despite obvious evidence to the contrary, and starts fabricating evidence (such as it being a magical barking cow or zombie cow) in an attempt to prove her point.
  • Gary, despite usually being a Straight Man, also exhibits this once when he forgives Dan for throwing a table in a window, reasoning that it would have been impossible to get the table up to their apartment otherwise.
• Combat Haircomb: Discussed but Averted in Crimson Lightning. Sara wishes she'd put her hair up so she'd have a hairpin to free Rane from where the gargoyle's tied her up, but the point is moot, as Sara has in fact left her hair down and so has no such useful implement.
• Crazy-Prepared: Bri in *Spinning Out*, Bri has a plethora of items on her person that never come up and is able to construct just about anything necessary for avoiding sticky situations.
  Bri: If you want, I'll come over and put some prime security around your house after school. […] I can rig up some nice electrified barbed wire, no problem. Heat and motion sensors linked to alarms. All the basic stuff.
• Curse Cut Short: In Spinning Out, Marcia has one of these:
  Aiden: Where's Corey?
  Marcia: He's in the hospital, you unthinking—
  Alex: Marcia, it's not Aiden's fault.
• Dark Secret: Rane habitually accumulates these. Among the big ones that have come out are her participation in monster-fighting organization Crimson Lightning, stealing from her mother for said organization, and actually being a Quarterblood Vampire.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Nate constantly makes snarky remarks without thinking twice, even when it's not in her best interests to do so.
  • Rane, while not normally one of these, does this quite a bit to the man with the cart in Illicit Vigil.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Hayleigh can make rock spikes shoot out of the ground at people.
• Dual Wielding: Adriana uses a pair of knives.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Discussed in Happy Campers. Of the three campers, Nate thinks that camping in the woods is a terrible idea, but Cici does not think that this will be problematic, and Eteru does not seem to care. Ultimately downplayed when the group gets attacked by a werewolf, but he turns out to be friendly, and they help him get to safety without any further mishaps.
• Empty Promise: In The Creature, when Bri and Kate are stranded in an unfamiliar place with an unseen monster chasing them, Bri keeps Kate from despairing by telling her that they'll survive this and everything will fine afterwards, despite Bri silently believing the contrary. Subverted (see Foregone Conclusion below)...until Spinning Out reveals this to have merely been Downplayed, as while the characters did survive, it's clear that Kate never fully got over this.
• Everyone Can See It: Aiden obviously is interested in Alex. While Aiden believes himself to be good at hiding this fact, his friend Marcia and even his enemy Jag can tell. Alex cannot, and Aiden is perturbed when all of these facts come out.
• Everyone Is a Super: Not quite everyone, but a very large percentage of the characters have superpowers, and the world treats them as fairly normal for it.
• Foregone Conclusion: The Creature begins by Bri reflecting on the fact that she and Kate both survive the dangers of the story.
• Full-Contact Magic: All of the superpowered characters in Spinning Out use this, albeit with different special effects.
• Funetik Aksent: In Illicit Vigil, the man who Rane talks to and the man's wife both have these.
• Genki Girl: Cici tackles people into sofas, often talks way too fast or too loudly, and disappears randomly to pursue plans without warning anyone due to her supreme confidence in her abilities.
• God of Evil: Malum and Kuld are the evil gods of the Dual-Vortex Realm and Digital Duality, respectively.
• God of Good: Sanctus and Lumi are the good gods of the above two realms.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Tristan frequently uses bowdlerized versions of mild swearing.
  Tristan: Argh, DANG my constant muttering!
• Gratuitous Japanese: Rane's father tells her not to gain any feelings of chūnibyō.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Rane's father is half-vampire, which is apparently human enough that his possible vampire status is relegated to gossip.
• Happily Failed Suicide: Męka Niki's suicide attempt ultimately becomes this five years later after she helps save a city by defusing a bomb, making her realize that there's a reason for her to live.
• Heaven Versus Hell: The Dual-Vortex realm has a Heaven and a Hell that are eternally at war.
• Heel–Face Turn: Sierra Rinn murdered countless people in her home realm before reforming when she killed so many people in one blow that she became too guilt-ridden to continue what she was doing, becoming an anonymous hero to repent for what she did.
• Hidden Supplies: Rane has a sai in her bag in case of emergencies.
• How We Got Here:
  • The entirety of The Creature—save for its opening scene—is a flashback to the events of the story building to the opening scene.
  • Crimson Lightning and Within the Edifice both do this as well, but with some story after the flashback catches up to the present.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Tristan would much rather have the life of a normal teenager than have to fight his father all the time and be alienated because his father is evil.
• An Ice Person: Kirby can manipulate ice, allowing him to create items out of ice or make ice spikes form. However, he usually only uses it to chill sodas.
• Immune to Bullets: Glow. Eric's bullets bounce off of him repeatedly, and he continues talking like nothing happened.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: When Tristan needs to get out of class, he asks for a bathroom pass...so he can get some paper towels to mop up jam from his sandwich...which has gotten on his schoolbook. Right. It's actually so that he can turn into local hero Ronin and save the city.
• Insistent Terminology: Cici is insistent that the werewolf in Happy Campers is not a dog.
• Interrupted Suicide: When Męka Niki is a child, her father catches her trying to kill herself and manages to get her to stop.
• Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Zigzagged.
  • For example, in Fit to Survive, Męka Niki doesn't get to use her chainsaws to attack any living opponents. Her partners—one of whom as a gun and the other of whom has a sword—get to use their weapons...except that they're fighting against a metallic opponent who is Immune to Bullets (and blades).
  • As another, more zigzaggy example, Andy isn't allowed to use her fire powers in The Party Wagon; however, Bri gets to use identical powers in The Creature and even gets to kill the eponymous monster with them.
• Just Friends: In Spinning Out, Aiden secretly has a crush on Alex. While this is reasonably obvious, Alex ignores or is oblivious to it. When Aiden accidentally reveals this in Alex's vicinity, Alex awkwardly refutes the crush, forcing Aiden to pretend that it didn't exist to save face. No mention of this is made for the rest of the story, and Alex is only referred to as a "friend" in her final appearance.
• Light Is Not Good: The only character with powers over Light in the Realm-Mesh Reality so far is Jag, who's a bully.
• Literary Allusion Title: ''Out of the Night that Covers Me''.
• Meaningful Name: Several of these. In alphabetical order:
  • Kuld is Estonian for "gold", reflecting the corporate greed that drove Kuld's creation.
  • Malum is Latin for "bad", reflecting Malum's status as the evil god of his realm.
  • Męka—the first half of Męka Niki's name—means "torment" in Polish.
  • Sanctus is Latin for "holy", reflecting Sanctus's status as the good god of his realm and creator of the angels and similar beings there.
  • Thana is a permutation of the Greek "thanos", meaning "death" (though you probably knew that one already).
• Meaningful Rename: Męka Niki and Thana gave themselves their new names to represent their bad experiences.
• Motor Mouth: Cici, in Happy Campers. She frequently fails to punctuate her words and twice is incomprehensible due to the speed of her speech.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In Dark Infinity Act III-A: Christmas Special, William eating his breakfast.
  Narration: [William] then happily [ate] up his absolutely loaded breakfast, first munching down on the fries, then the eggs, following up with the bacon, and then finishing off with a cup of water. How delicious it was, filling his belly.
• Mundane Utility: Kirby regularly uses his ice powers to chill sodas.
• Nameless Narrative: Football Man's eponymous character.
• The Night Owl: Rane would like to be one of these, but isn't allowed to be. Her father, on the other hand, is one. Both are justified by the fact that Rane's father is a Halfblood Vampire and Rane is a Quarterblood.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Invoked by Rane, who tries to use this to avoid having to explain why she's out at night. This fails pretty quickly, causing Rane to seek Refuge in Audacity instead (which works).
• Oblivious to Love: Implied. In Spinning Out, Alex gives Aiden an odd look when he makes an awkward romantic advance towards her. However, given her Just Friends reaction later, this is uncertain.
• Oral Fixation: Justified; Rane sucks on a lollipop, but it's to avoid biting her nails. Also Subverted, as, despite this trope being Lampshaded by Sara (who explicitly refers to this by the trope name in Crimson Lightning's narration), Rane is never seen with a lollipop again after the initial instance of this.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: The gargoyle in Crimson Lightning is not atop a building, is fully sentient, and can freeze time.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires haven't been elaborated much on, but silver seems to heal them rather than to hurting them as is the norm in vampire stories.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The werewolf in Happy Campers appears to be just a talking dog and seems reasonably friendly.
• Playing with Fire:
  • Nate can create fires, but doesn't get to use them for anything, as she's forced to avoid using her power to avoid unduly concerning everyone.
  • Bri can also create fires, and is actually seen using them to great effect.
• The Pollyanna: Rane. Even after being temporarily frozen in place, attacked by a Living Statue, having to reveal one of her DarkSecrets, and nearly dying, she still manages to remain optimistic.
• Psychic Children: Madison can read minds. She's never seen using said power (though her page indicates that it happens whenever she gets upset), but Aiden uses this once against their father to make him tell them an important secret.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Although Adriana succeeds in killing Yorick, this fails to give her unstoppable power, instead essentially depriving her of all the power that she had previously.
• Refuge in Audacity: When asked about something she doesn't want to have to answer, Rane Invokes this when Obfuscating Stupidity fails, saying lots of random lies in an attempt to creep out the person asking her. This succeeds, though she feels bad about it.
• Rule of Funny: An entire strip of Sharing Walls is dedicated to the explanation and usage of this trope.
• Secret Identity:
  • Pariah Tristan and hero Ronin are actually the same person. Tristan disguises himself as Ronin to fight because his arch-nemesis, who's also his father, is the reason why everyone hates him normally, making him think that people wouldn't support his heroics if they knew who he really was.
  • Anonymous would-be hero Amaranth Ghost is actually former murderess Sierra Rinn.
• Self-Deprecation: In the narration of Spinning Out (written by Aiden):
  …[Kirby] said, "Aiden, not to be, well, Marcia, but I can tell something's bothering you." And I, like the genius I am, said, "Dude, my relationship with Alex is none your business, okay?"
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: In The Party Wagon, Cici uses a lot of unnecessary long words, such as calling her sister an "additional lifeform", before being told to stop. (She then switches to being Totally Radical shortly thereafter.)
• Shout-Out: Quite a lot of these appear across the various RMR entries. These are, sorted by installment:
  • In The Party Wagon, Nate makes three references—one to the The Beatles, one to Star Wars: A New Hope, and one to Julian Smith—all within a page and a half.
  • In Tristan's Quest, Tristan greets his uncle Mark by saying "Oh hi, Uncle Mark." Later, he is completely baffled when Deca (who he's just met) starts quoting Vocaloid.
  • In Happy Campers, Eteru does not sing part of an Eddie Murphy song, Cici sees an animal that she thinks is a goat and chides someone by yelling "JIM!", and Nate wonders why Cici always does this to her.
  • In Illicit Vigil, Rane imagines her grin hanging in midair by some people who she feels triumphant over.
  • In Sharing Walls:
    • The captions proclaim that memes rule (multiple times), ask if you are not entertained, refer to Friday, and rickroll the reader.
    • Dan performs a combat maneuver reminiscent of an early one in The Ride-On King.
    • Sylvie claims to be The Big Bad Wolf and thus demands to be let in.
    • Sylvie (and the comments) Rickroll Dan in one strip. Sylvie spends the entire following strip doing several dances from the Rickroll video.
    • Gary introduces Dan to Sylvie by saying, "This is my roommate, Dan. He's a little...weird."
    • Sylvie says that there's no place for meetings in her apartment, nor in Andy's, claiming that he lives in an anarcho-syndicalist commune. (The same strip's title alludes to The Good Place.)
• "Super Sentai" Stance: Inverted; the bullies in The Party Wagon "pose villainously" upon the arrival of most of their members.
• Super-Strength: One of the bullies in The Party Wagon can pick up four other kids and throw them.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Męka Niki's father gets her to avoid killing herself by convincing her that she needs to stick around for him if for nothing else.
• Telepathy: Madison has this. This is used against Evan when he learns about the Gone. He doesn't want to tell Aiden, but since Madison (who's in the room) can pick up on Evan's thoughts, Evan has to tell Aiden to avoid them getting a warped version of the truth.
• There Was a Door: Discussed and subsequently Averted. At one point in The Party Wagon, Nate would like to leave through a window, but despite it being a first-story window, Haven forces her to go through the door anyway on account of the door being very close by.
• Thrill Seeker: Corey. Besides enjoying horror movies too much, he also goes after agents of a paramilitary cult he knows nothing about, winds up in the hospital, and—almost directly upon getting out—has to invade the cult's headquarters to rescue Aiden. And all he can say next time he runs into Aiden?
  Corey: Aiden. Dude. This been awesome.
• Time Master: Downplayed. Both the gargoyle in Crimson Lightning and Alex have power over time, but the gargoyle can only freeze time, while Alex can only slow it down (originally only being able to rewind it, and that under very exacting conditions).
• Time Stands Still: What happens when the gargoyle freezes time. Complete with monochrome effect.
• Title Drop: In Fit to Survive and Football Man, this occurs several times.
• Tomboyish Name: Nate is female, but her nickname sounds male.
• Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: Discussed by Spinning Out:
  Aiden (narration): I have three slices of pizza on the way, because as awful as I feel right now, I'm still hungry.
• Totally Radical:
  • The bullies in The Party Wagon all wear backwards-facing baseball caps. Nate lampshades this, ticking off the bullies.
  • Moments later, Cici, who'd just been criticized for using long words, declares the powers of her and her friends "totally rad".
• Uneven Hybrid: Rane is one-quarter vampire, three-quarters human, having a half-vampire father and human mother.
• Un-Paused: When the gargoyle decides to un-freeze time, this occurs. Played for Drama, as the results of the Un-Pause are everyone in the vicinity—story protagonist Sara included—being terrified of the gargoyle (which continues to move in the un-paused world) and running for their lives.
• The Un-Reveal: At the end of Out of the Night that Covers Me, Color Star's appearance is revealed to Gavril, but only as being "aweing as befit a sacred one".
• World of Badass: Most of the characters who appear in the stories are fully capable of self-defense and prove it through at least one combat scene. Character bios and realm pages indicate that these characters may be fairly normal for their world.
• Worth Living For: Męka Niki finds a meaning in life at the end of Fit to Survive after managing to save a city from a bomb, realizing that this is why she's been around all this time and should continue to be.
• You Wake Up in a Room: Crimson Lightning starts this way.
  Narration: Waking up from having been knocked out by I-don't-even-know-what is disconcerting. To make matters worse, I don't even know where I am now.