Count the tropes!

NOTICE: HERE BE BLATANT SPOILERS FOR INSTANT AWESOME, JUST ADD ZELRETCH!









Instant Awesome: Just Add Zelretch provides examples of the following:

Author Appeal: Both writers' love for Type-Moon, Haruhi, Blaz Blue, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Gurren Lagaan is evident. For xm specifically: Zel's companions are his favorite Tsukihime and Fate characters, there's the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War reference, and the complete and utter disdain for Code Geass. For Heraklinios specifically: Shin Megami Tensei, When They Cry, Marvel, and fanfics by SamJaz show through in Raim Hanta's dialog.

Training From Hell: What Zel puts Rin through. He's notorious for that in canon as well.

Bloody Hilarious: Arc's Curb Stomping (see Curb Stomp Battle) of Chaos Marines.

Always Chaotic Evil: invoked by name in reference to Chaos Space Marines.

Curb Stomp Battle: More than one. Picking a fight with a Nasuverse character is generally a bad idea.

Fanfic Chop Suey: Chaos Marines, Zel behaving like a certain Time Lord, Haruhi characters, jokes at the expense of Code Geass, Blaz Blue cameos, a sidetrip through the frikkin SSD Executor, and a final boss fight with Viral; why the hell not!?

Talking is a Free Action: Averted. Noted by Raim at one point.

Plot Hole: Raim notes Rin referencing Simon before it happened in the GL universe. So far, xm has yet to address this.

Epileptic Trees: In the CG universe, Zel said staying in that universe for too long would turn you into a poorly drawn, xenophobic hypocrite who can't speak in any tone other than forced hamminess. Some time after being in the GL universe, Rin starts behaving like one of the heroes from said universe, but only when she's in that universe. Can also count as Fringe Brilliance.

Large Ham: The Space Marines, Lelouch and Suzaku Zero and The White Knight, the GL characters, and even Rin on one occasion.

OC Stand-in: The Beastmen that weren't Viral were basically xm combining random animals and drawing up character traits from Saturday Morning Cartoon villain fodder.

Gratuitous Spanish: Zel is guilty of this.

Gratuitous French: Zel is also guilty of this.

Gratuitous German: Rin. Heraklinios remembered to put "Anfang!' down, but xm Just Didn't Care and always printed, "Recited in German."

Foreign Cuss Word: Zel says the German equivalent of "Shit!" in the CG universe.

Suicidal Overconfidence: The White Knight admits to this, perhaps referencing his Plot Armor in CG canon.

Screw This, I'm Outta Here: in a sense. It was Zel's reaction to ending up in the anime version of CG.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: In-universe (sort of). Meta-Raim knows he's in a video created by Rin, Kohaku, and Arcueid from another dimension.

Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmen Academy: Played hilariously straight with the Trope Maker. Subverted with the Imperial Commandos (those dudes in black), who actually can aim. (Or so Word of God claims from having played the original Jedi Knight a lot.)

Fanservice: It ends with a Beach Episode. Word of God admitted that he knew it was gratuitous and unnecessary, and only did it to increase his trope count.

Bad Liar: Yuki. Kyon notes this in the only line of narration he has in the fic.

Cliffhanger: Arc reveals something dramatic in the very last line . . . and it suddenly ends!

Sequel Hook: Arc's Reveal, not to mention Prequel Hooks from the locker names. Note: those were only in the Women's Locker room; who knows what male companions Zel has had.

And lastly, numerous Shout Outs:

-The entire idea started because xm though Zelretch had much in common with The Doctor. Zelretch is impossibly smart and powerful, and can freely move through time and space, and yet can get jittery at times. He quotes the 9th Doctor at the end.

-Warhammer 40K, obviously. Only the Marines and Chaos Marines are shown.

-The heroes travel to the universe of Haruhi Suzumiya.

-Code Geass is also featured, although in an unflattering light.

-Blaz Blue, especially considering both authors have Blaz Blue fics.

-Raim is chock full of shout outs. Specifically, SMT, When They Cry, Index, Devil May Cry, the Marvel universe, Touhou Project, and even xm's own Ask Rachel Alucard. His manner of constant Lampshading would almost make him seem like a MST3K regular.

-Star Wars, obviously. Darth Vader makes an appearance. Raim quotes the Star Wars Cantina song by Richard Cheese.

-Gurren Lagaan. xm couldn't decide to set the final world in the universe of Eureka Seven, GL, Halo, or Half-Life. Heraklinios convinced him to choose GL, and the rest is history.

What Could Have Been: Rin facing off with the army from E7, or the Covenant, or the Combine. It was decided her final test would be to fight Beastmen mecha pilots.

Audio Erotica: Zel notes that Ryoko's voice is rather pelasant. xm thinks that Ryoko's English voice actress, Bridget Hoffman, has one of the most beautiful voices he's ever heard. He's noted this on his blog, more than once.

Writer On Board: We get it, xm, you hate Code Geass! So much for a real storyline in the CG universe. (No word yet if Heraklinios also hates CG.)

If there are any I'm missing, let me know!

watch as I write a trailer

Even though the first half has been available for some time, watch as I make a trailer for a new fanfic by me and Heraklinios.

(Play the following embedded video for maximum effect)

Coming soon to Fanfiction.net.

"Let's do this."

From the author of Mentor & Protege, and the author of Human on the Other Side.

"Speak of the devil."

Comes the long-awaited collaboration.

"What a fascinating specimen you are!"

The next installment of Endless Number of Possibilities.

"I think we ended up in a bad place."

"Bad? You need a better adjective than that."

The most Troperrific Nasuverse megacrossover fanfic ever!

"JUST WHO THE HELL ELSE WOULD I BE!?"

Instant Awesome, Just Add Zelretch!

(music cuts out)

Rated t for teen.

"You're pretty good, for a human."

(end trailer)

Isn't it funny how without any images, you have no context for those quotes? Trailers are funny like that. Fun fact: The late Gene Siskel hated movie trailers. He would walk out of a theater every time it played a trailer, and whenever he couldn't walk out, he'd look at the ground and cover his ears. Trailers are reprehensible to professional critics, and yet, I just scripted one in a matter of minutes.

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5 more days before the next attack. 5 More days before Studio Khara rocks my world.

Head-on

Apply directed to the-THIS MEME WAS NEVER FUNNY TO BEGIN WITH!

Rather, I am taking dub haters head on again.

Guess what I attempted not too long ago? Watching Kanon in Japanese. Final thoughts: Man, now I know I gotta stop harshing ADV. Most of the Japanese voices suck!

All the girls sound like toddlers! All because the moeness in their voices is way too forced. In English, they actually sound like real teenage girls, and still manage to sound cute. IN YOUR FACE, DUB HATERS! JESSICA BOONE AND BRITTNEY KARBOWSKI FOR LIFE!

I also tried Eden of the East in Japanese for the first time. Akira Takizawa didn't sound as good, but some of the other characters sounded better. Overall, I think both dubs for Eden of the East are of the same quality; which one is better depends on how you're more used to watching anime.

Though, to the haters' credit, the Japanese dub of Princess Tutu is just as amazing as the English dub. Good work all around, everyone!

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7 more days. Exactly one more week until the release of Rebuild 2.22.

The System is back!

And better than ever!

vbulletin is more robust than ProBoards. Man, Beast's Lair is, I never thought I'd say this, pimped out now! I love how everything turned out! And you don't even need permission to join clubs now! Just point and click! I'll be sure to join fanclubs of my other favorite characters soon enough.

Unfortunately, not everything was saved. More recent fanfics, as well as those from posters still active, have been re-uploaded, and I myself provided links to Endless Number of Possibilities, but since the shutdown was so sudden, how will we make up for it? On the plus side, someone already updated the links in the Fate recommended fanfics page on tvtropes to the new address. Man, people are working fast!

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9 more days til the release of Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22. This is one I'll get with Amazon's one-day delivery deal. No sense making myself wait longer than is necessary!

routes completed

So I played some more Clannad. I finished the Kotomi route. There are a few scenes in that route that weren't in the anime. On the other hand, some scenes were handled better in the anime. (Ex. the dream. "Nande ya nen? Nande ya nen? Nande ya nen?") But it was still worth it. Kotomi and Tomoya become an item in the VN, however . . . I still feel he should be with Nagisa. But that's just me.

I also explored the route of a character hat never appears in the route; Kappei. I can't say I like Kappei as much as my favorite characters, but I still feel he should've been in the anime, somehow. I'm sure viewers would've liked his story.

Oh, also, Ryou plays a bigger part in the VN instead of the anime. This I feel is a plus.

So yeah, in some ways, the VN is better, but in other ways, the anime is better. The anime is certainly more accessible, since it actually is legally available in North America, and you don't have to look up strategies either just to see the conclusions of story arcs. On the other hand, the VN has scenes that didn't make it into the anime, and more narration from Tomoya.

So, which version would I recommend? Must like with Cardcaptor Sakura, if you want to experience all that Clannad has to offer, you'll have to play the VN, and see the anime.

However, this VN is looooooooong. I don't feel like playing anymore at the moment. No, I'm not dropping the game, I just want to do other things for the time being. I will say this, though. When I play Clannad again, guess whose route I will complete next?

STARFISH MASTER!

Oh, also, when you complete a route, you unlock a sound test. Perfect for capturing MP3s, if I do say so myself.

Stuff

The release of the demo of the new Touhou game has been delayed, due to the catastrophe in Japan. This is bringing back flashbacks of the quake in Haiti, the 2007 tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. Can we ever get to the point where we can become impervious to nature, or will we always be at the mercy of it for as long as we exist? The latter seems more likely.

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Beast's Lair is still down. However, it looks like it may start up on a new server in the future, one that isn't tied to rules governing fanfiction and talking about games with nookie, or at least, that's the plan . . . I think. I don't know how long this will take, if it occurs, but I'm not giving up hope just yet.

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Last night, I had a dream. I was playing a Dynasty Warriors game, not the first time I've done that in a dream.

The rules were like so; it was an online battle. (Do DW games have an online feature now?) No one was allowed to use pre-existing characters; we were only allowed to use original characters. This isn't the first time I dreamed this, so perhaps it's the next chapter in a serial.

Regardless, I (as in my in-game avatar) was bloodlessly slashing through hordes of pikemen without a scratch, when suddenly, a player from the opposing faction ran past me on horseback. This player's avatar was in the guise of a blonde-haired woman in a blue dress . . . swinging an invisible sword.

I complained through my mic, "Hey! No canon characters from other franchises! OCs only!" Not only that, this DW-ized Saber had a sword with a range of at least fifteen feet; I'm pretty sure her weapon doesn't have that reach when not in Noble Phantasm mode. Yep, we were dealing with a cheater. I chased after the Saber player, but even when she was on foot, I couldn't keep up with her. I tried shooting arrows, but missed every shot. She ran past me again, completely ignoring me. I guess I should be grateful, because if this player really had the power of Saber, I'd die in a matter of seconds.

But of course, my side eventually lost the battle, since no one could keep up with 5th War Saber. Can you believe it? Someone taking a character as noble as Saber, and using her to cheat to victory on an online game? Despicable!

Besides, if you were gonna make a swordswoman for a game like DW, we already know who would be a better pick. I of course refer to Youmu Konpaku.

The System is Down, yo

Beast's Lair is dead right now.

All this time, it was hosted for free by ProBoards. Well uh, I don't know all the details, but it would seem that discussing eroge and hosting fanfics is against their rules. A formal warning was issued last night. Beast's Lair went down I think sometime after 10:00 am today in my time zone.

Is this the end of the community forever?

Hopefully not. Many of the more prominent members were discussing moving the messageboard to a different server. This may be happening right now, however, it's possible that any of the content from the board prior to all this that isn't saved on hard drives (thank goodness I also host my Nasuverse fics on FF.net!) may be lost forever.

I do sometimes talk to Dark Pulse, the author of my favorite Tsukihime fanfic. I'm gonna ask him through FF.net for an update on all of this later tonight. For now, though, I refuse to accept this as the end of our community. If worst comes to worst, we may have to start over from scratch, but if there's one thing I've come to believe about fans of Nasu and Takeuchi, it's that we won't die; not even when we're killed.

Nande Ya Nen!?

I am the string of my violin.

Scissors are my body and bento is my blood.

I have mastered over a thousand languages.

Unknown to footwear, nor know to extroversion.

Have withstood isolation to cut out many pages.

Yet these hands will never hold any teddy bears.

So as I read . . . . . UNLIMITED SCISSORS WORKS!

Now that that joke's out of the way, I want to tell you about a fan webcomic that you ought to know about. It's inspired by Gurren Lagaan, much like the image I just showed.

Double K.

If you know anything about GL, you NEED to read Double K. I like Double K even more than the original series. That's how badly you need to read it. The newest page, #79, went online not too long ago. Well, hop to it, already!

Soooo, why the sudden fascination with GL all of a sudden? I'd hate to sound cliched to any of you who enjoy anime, but I can't tell you right now, because it's classified. Later on in retrospect, this will all make sense, believe me.

PUHI! PUHI PUHI!

Hey, I just remembered I had the visual novel version of Clannad on my PC.

I've been playing it some more. To be honest, some of the scenes were handled better in the anime. Remember in the first season, episode 4, there was a scene that made me think for a moment I was watching Marimite? That scene is also in the VN, but it's not as funny. Also, there's a more serious scene that, again, I think was handled better in the anime.

Oh, but playing the VN is still worth it. Know why? Scenes with Botan that didn't make it into the anime. Oh yes, I'm laughing to myself right now! I now have a question; was Jun Maeda a stand-up comic before he took up authoring VNs and writing music? It if were true, I wouldn't be surprised.

And guess what I accomplished? I got . . . a bad end. Okay, from now on, I will not play a VN blind.

And as such, I found a walkthrough on GameFAQs. Guess whose route I'm going through? Go on, take a wild, wild guess.

"Kotomi?"

YES! KOTOMI-CHAN IS LOVE! How could I ignore a sweetheart like her!? She's the greatest moe girl I've ever known!

Speaking of Key, saying that I didn't like Angel Beats is sort of an understatement. Okay, maybe it's not as monumentally horrendous as a Certain Sunrise Series, but I prefer my tv shows to have at least some level of coherency. With that said, the rock star girl with pink hair, Yui, is still really cute in my mind. She is perhaps the only true saving grace of Angel Beats, outside of the animation quality. Why can't girl rock stars be as kawaii as her!?

Getting back to Clannad, some of the dialog in the VN has typos. Great; the official anime subs are riddled with typos, and the fansubs for the VN are, too! Do I really have to teach myself Nihongo to fully interpret the characters!? Not happening, guys! Not only that, there's some instances where characters' names don't show up, and when certain phrases get repeated where such a line would obviously be out of context. This only happened on that bad end I ended up going down, so maybe only some of the bad choices are untranslated, but it's irritating to know every other VN I've played so far translated bad ends, but this one seems to half-ass that.

Oh, one last note. I am aware that someone is translating Little Busters. When that translation gets completed, you'll know what I'll be doing.

"Fawning over cute girls?"

Exactly.

Cool Dreams

-A couple of nights ago, I had a dream. I was about to do something mundane that i have to do in the real world; vacuum the floors. However, in the dream, I psych myself up. "Those assholes in grade school used to insult me. 'Video game music isn't real music!' 'Eminem is more of an artist than Nobuo What's-His-Face!' That's bullshit! I have background music that covers every mood imaginable! How else do I wrote such good stories? 'Cuz I have music to write them!" I then put on my MP3 player. I then say, "And how do you think I finish all these chores without taking up Crystal Meth? 'Cuz I got epic music, that's why!" I then hit the play button. You know what plays? This. I then start vacuuming to the sound of Alan Silvestri's music. The dream ends just as the music swells.

-A few months ago, some dudes were talking amongst themselves. They were kind of like the villains from the Bourne movies, saying something like it's too dangerous to confront me head-on, but they needed to distract me, nonetheless. One of them comes up with a solution. Cut to my city library. I'm doing research on a computer. I'm surfing the web, looking up information, when all of a sudden, what I'm looking at is suddenly a video. It's an anime video. It was a video of someone running across a field of snow very happily. And do you know who was happily running across said field of snow?

MAKOTO-CHAAAAAAAAAAN!

My heart melts at the sight of my favorite Kanon character. She was just so kee-yeute! But then the video ended, and I went back to my web surfing. I then decided to leave the library, but I had to check my cell phone for something. The moment I did . . .

OH NO! NOT AYU!

I then see Ayu running across a field of snow happily, almost like the ED video of the show, but with more dynamic camera work. She was just adorable! But then the video ended, and I resumed whatever I was doing. I guess whoever was trying to screw with me forgot I liked Nayuki-chan, because I have yet to see her in a dream . . . now I'm sad.

-A few months ago, I'm watching tv. My mom comes in and tells me to do something. I respond, "But, Mooooooom! There's a new episode of Watchmen coming on!" And in the background, you could actually hear the start of the theme song, "Strong together! United forever! They're the best of friends! But when trouble's about, you had best watch out, for the Watchmen!" Man, imagine if Watchmen was a Saturday Morning cartoon . . . imagine how different American comic books would've been.

-Another dream I had, I was watching an episode of Clannad, but it was one that, as far as I know, doesn't exist in the real world. Tomoya and Youhei had to attend a career field day conference or whatever at school. While all the other students were at the kiosks, Tomoya and Youhei were distanced from everyone. Tomoya said "Look at all these losers, fighting for jobs they'll hate, making barely enough to survive." Youhei said. "Yeah, not like us, Okazaki. We live on donations from our families, so that we will be spared the burden of paid work, huh? I mean, could you picture me doing something stupid for a living, like working at a fast food restaurant? Or as a cabbie?" (good lord, the irony of that statement.) Tomoya said, "Yeah, but I think I know what Furukawa-san's ideal job would be." Youhei said, "Well, she's a wannabe actress, so, what?" Tomoya elaborated, "I see her as being the host of a children's tv show." " . . . go on." "Imagine one Sunday morning, you turn on the tv. You turn on the tv, and all of a sudden-"

"-Dango, Dango, Dango, Dango, Dango Daikazoku!"

"It's so plausible, it just might happen! You should be a career counselor, Okazaki!" "I applied, but they said that I was so good, I'd put too many good people out of work." Fun fact, when Tomoya was describing Nagisa's future, my dream actually did a fantasy cutaway, much like in the actual show, to someone turning on the tv, and sure enough, on that tv, I saw Nagisa smiling with her eyes closed, moving her head to the music. Sadly, those are the only lyrics I remember, probably why the dream got cut short there.

-Several years ago, I had a dream that featured characters from one of my original unpublished series. (I can't tell you any details, since I may very well publish this in the real world at some point.) Basically, one of my characters got the idea to steal a gag from Family Guy, namely, this. Yeah, one of my own characters started narrating his own life aloud. I then wrote this as a scene in my series. It will be brilliant.