Whateley Universe/YMMV


 * Alternative Character Interpretation:
 * Jobe Wilkins: A Complete Monster, or a well meaning if Jerkass Mad Scientist who genuinely can't understand that his attempts to help are worse than the original problem? On the forums even the canon authors have disagreed on this point, but the author of the Book Of Jobe goes for the second viewpoint.
 * Team Kimba: Powerful, but made up of compassionate and heroic individuals, or an Affably Evil subversion of a Nakama whose members have almost no sense of restraint or mercy, care more about each other then the rest of the world, and are each a danger to the rest of humanity for one reason or another?
 * Jade as written by Babs Yerunkle is a mature young woman struggling to overcome physical limitations and the dangers presented by the world with the help of her friends. Jade as written by Diane Castle is a Crazy Awesome Psychopathic Girlchild who is a continual source of crazy, entertaining things. YMMV on which version is better.
 * Artistic License Biology: Naturally part of the mutant factor, however, the vast majority of people have started puberty by 14 (and in fact many girls are actually just about done with it by that time), yet all the characters shown have only recently come into their puberty and powers. It's plausible that the mutant gene causes later puberty
 * It's (jokingly) suggested that there is an increasing number of MTF mutants because the mutant gene is trying to outbreed the baseline genes. Even a cursory knowledge of genetics makes this patently ridiculous as genes aren't intelligent..
 * It's also been suggested that, while the genes themselves aren't intelligent (duh), there are intelligent forces manipulating the situation both for and against the mutants, which is not entirely implausible in a universe where gods, Fair Folk, and Cthulhu Mythos entities are not only real, but awake, aware, and active.
 * A fact occasionally tossed out is that the trans mutants have baseline hormone levels of members of the opposite gender and this somehow explains them developing secondary sex characteristics of that gender incredibly quick. For example Fey goes from male to having to pass as female within the span of a month due to have moderate sized breasts. In real life of course, secondary sex characteristics take years to develop. Justified to an extent however in that speed of change is apparently incredibly variable depending on the individual, and for some it is agonizingly slow while for others it is almost instantaneous.
 * Artistic License Religion: The description Whateley gives for the Tao doesn't match up with the real-life Taosim. At all.
 * Crazy Awesome: A few secondary characters. For example, imagine if the neighborhood daredevil developed a healing factor. What does he do? Go into business as a paid guinea pig/test pilot for the mad scientist students' more iffy experiments at the school.
 * And he lets Phase rip off his dick in the cafeteria. At lunch. In front of the entire school.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Here's the page.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: In Yet Another Day As An Outcast, the Outcasts take on the Goobers in an arena match. They start off by summoning the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
 * At the Halloween dance, Miyet has Hello Kitty gear glued onto her. Jimmy T asks Circe (yes, that Circe) to get it off, and Circe does so with the spell 'Bippity boppity boo, no glue for you!' It works.
 * In the first Boston Brawl story, people keep identifying Heartbreaker by her ass.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: A few, on and off, but on standout, perhaps, is the end of Jadis' first solo story..
 * In "Ayla and the Grinch", Ayla disguises himself as a beauty pageant contestant to hide from the MCO. He then ends up fighting a demon. Two of the other contestants face down the demon armed with nothing more than symbols of their faith (and it actually works). After the fight, Ayla goes to see them in the pageant, and while neither of them gets a place, he makes some calls and gets them scholarships and free long-term sessions with psychiatrists.
 * Designated Hero: Almost every main character has had moments of these, but special mention goes to Sara -- who rapes (in both ways) the resident Jerkass Mad Scientist because she thought it'd be useful to have him angry at her, and Chou, who goes around killing people because a magic sentient sword told her to.
 * Designated Villain: The Goodkinds shift between this and Knight Templar. Possibly lampshaded, since Ayla is quick to defend his family, AND retains contact with a few.
 * Dude, Not Funny: Some fans felt this way about the Black Comedy Rape scenes in The Book of Jobe.
 * The blatant MTF fetishism is offensive to some people.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Amongst people who dislike the series, Ayla and Jade are more popular for having more balanced powers and a more respectful take on transgender issues.
 * Fashion Victim Hero: Jericho, intentionally. It's so bad that it induces vomiting. It's so bad that a fan comic CENSORS it (unfortunately, not for the characters in the comic). It's so bad that Phase paid a gadgeteer to make glasses to filter out colors.
 * Hollywood Homely: When everyone else is an exemplar, minimum, the characters who are baseline in appearance (or worse) are pretty screwed. Or not, actually... Ayla comments a lot on this. (Actually, only about a third of the characters are Exemplars, but it does make a difference. X)
 * Memetic Mutation: There's a few on the forums.
 * Appending mentions of the Canon Cabal with "(There is no Canon Cabal)", or (TINCC) for short.
 * Responding to posts containing common misspellings of character names (e.g. Chakra, Fay, Tenryo, Alya) with RAAAAAGE! (Minus the pothole, of course. Angry red font colours are optional.)
 * Tinsnip.
 * Mary Sue: The biggest source of Your Mileage May Vary and Broken Base in the series; just about every character (and Team Kimba in particular) has fans and anti-fans who consider them sue-riffic. However, the school is a Super-Hero School, so some common Sue warning signs are, well, really common. For example, one of the Most Common Superpowers in the setting is a passive power that makes you slowly shapeshift into your ideal physical shape, usually something unbelievably attractive (or at least a very Heroic Build). Not that this is always a good thing, see the Involuntary Shapeshifting entry above.
 * Personality-wise, it often varies between authors. Whether and to what degree someone is sadistic (but never caught), competent (when no one else is), powerful (at the expense of plot) or annoying (yet no one in story catches on) changes depending on who's in the spotlight.
 * Nightmare Fuel:
 * "Sara's Little Purple Book," a guide to mutant sexuality, varies between Crowning Moment of Funny and this.
 * Two words: Dark Generator.
 * Squick: Several examples depending on reader. Almost all the main characters are Transgendered in some way shape or form and there are rather frank discussions of gender issues in the early chapters -- for example, Ayla is mostly female except for... certain elements of his body, Jade uses her powers to "tuck" herself in and this is described rather frankly -- did we mention that Jade is physically 12 years old? Sara essentially vomits out her entire set of internal organs when she "awakens". For the most part however, the series is a fairly standard slice-of-life high-school drama, except with super-powers. If you're squicked by trans-gender stuff, why are you reading Whateley stories?
 * Tear Jerker:
 * Unfortunate Implications: Multiple.
 * The "glamor" mutants like Medusa, Fey or Sara have essentially makes them extremely attractive to people or causes sexual arousal in people affected by it, to the point that some of these powers can bypass even sexual orientation -- See Even the Guys Want Him above. Whether or not this is a form of mild Mind Rape (or actual rape, if they do anything with it) is up to the reader.
 * The biggest one might be the fact that all the LGBT students are segregated from the rest of the school and asked to remain in the closet. The school attempts to justify this by saying that anti-queer bias is so deeply ingrained into Western society that homophobic bullying would be inevitable and apocalyptic in proportion, and all it would take is one incredibly angry homophobe for a tragedy. Your Mileage May Vary on whether or not the justification is sufficient.
 * And the most unfortunate part of that implication: The semi-official cover story for that dorm, obliquely hinted at by the school administration whenever someone outside the dorm wonders why so many Poesies seem a little "off", is that it's the dorm for students with mental problems.
 * Fridge Logic makes it worse: In canon people have an easier time accepting the fact that people at the school are very much non human than they do that that the hot chick might've been a boy until recently. If for example, Poes was instead "Every Jew, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist must hide their faith here because the world is simply too intolerant" it would never have gotten off the ground, which in and of itself just shows the blatant fetishism of transgendered people inherent with the series.
 * Funnily enough, in Real Life bashing LGBT people has become distinctly something that is not tolerated by Western society more and more, making the justification even more unfortunate.
 * After being a girl for only six weeks, Tennyo defended herself against a sasquatch-like mutant who had been trying to bully her by flipping him over her shoulder and pinning him to the ground after he grabbed her. When a teacher heard rumors about this event, he chastised her for not acting enough like a girl, implying that girls should act according to outdated stereotypes and that standing up for yourself, even if you are able to, is improper for a girl.
 * The fact that the sole FTM of Team Kimba is the only one without his own set of stories.
 * The Meta-Unfortunate Implications inherent with people speculating that he is actually a villain because of that, and not that FT Ms are basically ignored.
 * Second Law of Gender Bending takes place incredibly fast, even from characters virulently hating their situation. Fey for instance spends all of about a day worrying that she's become fully female, before giggling and deciding to take Tennyo on a shopping spree.
 * The Goodkinds is just a landmine of unfortunate stereotypes surrounding conservatives; perhaps not undeserved but still. What's worse is that despite their flagrant human rights violations (as in constantly) they manage to control the country to an extent and the superpowered community are powerless to stop them.
 * Values Dissonance: Multiple examples, mostly as a result of the odd balancing act a super-neutral school would have in dealing with super-heroes and super-villains.
 * Villain Sue: Mimeo, as a response to Team Kimba.
 * What The Hell, Teacher?: The "Gun Safety" Instructor is apparently such a paranoid psychopath that he physically assaults students for the "crime" of creating an illusion of a firearm. As a demonstration of what their illusions are.
 * And he deactivates the safeties of a Danger Room, assigning it to try to kill Loophole, so that her mutation will activate against her will. What if the mutation was mind-reading or supersenses? What if her mutation was an extreme GSD?
 * The Woobie: Jade
 * Merry could also qualify, the chewtoy that she is.
 * As above, Greasy shifts to this when Peeper's abuse is taken seriously.
 * Phase.