Draw Your Own Story

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A Round Robin tradition at the Civilization Fanatics Forum, each Draw Your Own Story episode is a collaboratively-created comic, usually about the CF forum. The notoriously confusing and complex plot tends to involve the authors' self-insert characters combating a villain/seeking out an artifact who/which has incredible power. Lots of explosions and military hardware is usually involved. There is a massive supporting cast, most of which are characters imported from video games, tv shows, comics, literature, and historical and real life figures, resulting in a massive Mega Crossover and/or Anachronism Stew.

Also infamous for personality conflicts among the contributors (not so much nowadays) and frequent Series Hiatus.

Yes, it has a Wiki. There have been 12 episodes so far, but unfortunately threads for episodes 1-9 have been deleted and live on only in memory.

The available episodes include:

• DYOS 10 - a story of the Avatar Wars, where people's old forum avatars rebel against their former masters;
• DYOS 10.5 - a Sequel to the above;
• DYOS 11 - tells about the struggle against a mysterious Hacker who closes the Off-Topic subforum, thus denying the forum users their daily dose of flame wars.

Tropes used in Draw Your Own Story include:

• Aborted Arc: The series is littered with these. Contributors sometimes became inactive and left their side-plot unresolved, or they'd forgotten about a side-plot or simply didn't want to continue it.
• Action Girl: Seems to be a lot more of them than men.
  • Action Mom: Hanna Antilles
• All Nations Are Superpowers: The many world wars are driven by contributor-led factions with little mention of "neutral" countries. In DYOS 5, this resulted in a plethora of Space Filling Empires.
• All There in the Manual: The Wiki started out having things that happened in comics, and now has way more information than the story itself, in plenty of cases way more than is necessary, much to the annoyance of the Wiki's Creator.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Used so much in DYOS that it's now considered a Discredited Meme
• Alternate Timeline: A recent plot twist involves Dr. Richtofen travelling back to 2003 to dissuade CivGeneral from joining the fight against CurtSibling, resulting in the "Tripartite" ascending to world supremacy.
  • Bad Future: In this case, present 2011
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Word of God confirms the story arc is An Aesop about this.
  • Delayed Ripple Effect
  • Have We Met Yet?: Averted with Ayane & CivGeneral when they were in close proximity to Major Kusanagi in 2003. They resorted to a Forceful Fake-Out Make-Out as Kusanagi walked by.
  • Meanwhile in the Future: Can become confusing as the transitions aren't always marked. Made even more confounding by at least one comic set in the original timeline.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: CivGeneral, Ayane, Dr. Richtofen, Stylesjl, Martha Shepard, Qara Avethokastar, The Hacker, & all of the Zombies.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The whole objective of CivGeneral, Ayane, and Martha travelling back to 2003.
  • Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: A book containing the DYOS 10 & 10.5 stories leads CivGeneral to quit the army, facilitating Coruscant's defeat.
• Air Vent Passageway: Inverted with Ayane, Amanda, and Zelda when they infiltrated an Umbrella research facility.
• Amazon Brigade: The Galava Narratorspace Team consists of six women.
  • And General Kwai
  • Hanna Antilles leads a squad consisting mainly of women
• Anti-Magic
• A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: Played mostly straight by Captain Locke. Reynaud's crew looks like an Anachronism Stew (and not just of pirates); but let them draw their guns...
  • Depending on the setting, the Saucy Mare crosses over into Space Pirates territory.
• Apocalypse How: Lucifer is attempting to do a Class X-4.
• Art Evolution: Most, if not all of the regular contributors have modified their styles in some way over the years, and not only the pen-and-paper crowd.
• Artifact of Doom: The Gem
• Ass Kicks You: Ayane performs this move against the brainwashed Faye, complete with saying a Russian reversal
• The Atoner: CivGeneral, both outside and inside the story. The Republic of Coruscant is slowly becoming this.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Chuck the Freaking Alien has this as a special ability. Also can be done with an Active/Industrious Beam.
• Author Existence Failure: Some of the contributors, for various reasons, left the story completely at some point. Some even left the site. One contributor is thought to have died in real life.
• Author Filibuster: Just about everyone at some point. Some people more so than others.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: If someone is Coruscanti, they're probably this. Coupled with Brooklyn Rage if you push their Berserk Button.
• Back From the Dead: Captain2
  • More like Only Mostly Dead, but yeah.
  • Kan' Sharuminar. Briefly. He later came back for good.
  • Stylesrj, but then, for him, Death Is Cheap.
  • Tama Shepard.
  • SpongeBob and Sandy, although the latter was dead for all of two panels.
• Badass: Many characters and most of the leads.
• Badass Longcoat: Commander Laes, Wesker, Rhiza Kalanin
• Battle Couple: CivGeneral and Samus/Jill/Ayane; Stylesrj and Rhiza Kalanin; Spongebob and Sandy (occasionally); Marth & Martha Shepard
• Beard of Evil: Generally inverted. Most of the major male protagonists have facial hair, while bad guys like Hickten and Johnson are cleaner-shaven.
  • Discussed by the villains in the Alternate Timeline. Perfection grows a beard to prove he's evil, while Thorvald laments that he already has a beard.
  • Commander Laes has a goatee.
• Beat Panel: Some comics do it right, some overdo it. Often leads to lolz moment if coupled with a Precision F-Strike in a deep voice.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Pretty much every character. This is of course due to limitations in the different games people use to gather images.
• BFG: Both CivGeneral and Stylesrj love this trope. Complete with More Dakka and/or Beam Spam.
• Big Eater: Gnowel Lawgiver does this a lot. Also crosses with Extreme Omnivore
• BLAM Episode: There were many, which often led to Flame War (because little-known forum comic is Serious Business)
• Bounty Hunter: CivGeneral and his group; Talon Company's combat divisions
• Boring but Practical: If this could apply to a person it would be Mr. Crane
• Bowel-Breaking Bricks: Literally happened to Spongebob after Kaede showed her vectors to kill the RED spy.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Faye Valentine, but she got better.
  • Roxane Rose suffered this when she spotted Major Kusanagi and CivGeneral in the same room. She did not get better.
  • One of Tama Shepard's new powers. Works best on Mooks though.
• Brick Joke: Used occasionally.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The stated purpose of DYOS 10.5.
• Chekhov's Gun: Remember the Space Pirate Jingal's journal a year back?
  • That purple box, complete with You Will Know What to Do.
  • The Gem.
• The Chosen One
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: e350tb and Judge_Deadd are killed before they even know they're Chosen. The Clone Guild learns the new identities and immediately embarks on a manhunt, captures taillesskangaru and literally rips the trait out of him, possibly inflicting brain damage.
    • Later on, it's found out he's a Chosen One again. But this time, it pays well.
• CIA Evil, FBI Good
• City of Everywhere: Coruscant's fictional capital city; New Port City combines Big Applesauce, Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe, and Hollywood New England (With a touch of Lovecraft Country in the rural-suburban area).
• Cloning Blues: Commander Laes seeks to kill Stylesrj to become the dominant avatar. Mariko tries to shoehorn herself into CivGeneral's family tree.
• Colonel Badass: Stylesrj, Tama Shepard
• Combat Medic: Rebecca Chambers, Martha Shepard, CivGeneral, and Valerie.
• Continuity Snarl: The simultaneous existence of 10.5 and 11 is mostly responsible for this.
• Cool Airship: The Gogf, named after a forum member who has a blimp as his avatar.
• Cool Guns: Some of the guns CivGeneral and Jill use would also tread into the Rare Guns category.
• Coruscant Saves the Day
• Creator Backlash (often leading to Creator Breakdown)
• Crossover: Too many to count.
• Cryptic Conversation: Pretty much everyone when speaking about Mr. Toyoda, including Toyoda himself.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Jill vs. Domination3000. Jill eventually showed him the power of the glow. It was in a non-canon comic though, one of the many "Take That, annoying forumers" comics that have been written over the course of the series.
  • The fight between Marsha Conrad and The Hacker. Complete with dropping a toilet on him and stomping on his groin.
  • Implied in many of Stylesrj's comics.
    • In fact so much, that most of his enemies just go after easier targets.
  • Mjcommie's Daedalus tearing apart the Confederation of Space Iranians.
• Cut and Paste Comic: Most comics are this as they're easy and quick to make.
• Dark Action Girl: Ivanna Dostya, Mariko Antilles
• Dark-Skinned Redhead: Qara Avethokastar
• Day of the Jackboot: Grimsby's coup turns the FWA into a fascist Neo-British Empire, declaring the protagonists enemies of the state.
• Death Is Cheap: Just how many times has Stylesrj died, exactly?
  • Not used much any more these days, as processes for resurrection are quite dangerous, expensive and/or just not done for plot reasons.
• Deface of the Moon: The Hacker turns the Moon purple in DYOS 11.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: CivGeneral, Jill, Marsha, and Spongebob invoked this trope with Kaede/Lucy, complete with But Your Horns are Beautiful
• Deus Ex Machina: "An overly convenient plot device. Excellent!"
• Didn't See That Coming: Villains frequently fall victim to this.
  • In a prime example of Didn't Think This Through, the Combine leads an all-out assault on the capital city of Arrakis in the hope of beating Coruscant to the Gem. They didn't seem to register they were taking on an interstellar empire, and in DYOS 10.5 the only reason they're still alive is because the Landsraad is blocking Corrino from completing the counterattack.
  • CivGeneral and Company are kidnapped and brought to Enclave headquarters where Dr. Breen tries to prompt a Face Heel Turn. Not only does he fail, but the kidnapping spurs Coruscant to launch a scary fast assault across the entire United States that drives the Enclave from the continent. Oops.
  • The Space Nazis anticipate a quick victory in Europe, thinking it's less unified than it really is. What happens? The invasion force wedges itself between two hostile blocs and now fights for survival.
  • Wesker grants Dr. Richtofen permission to travel back in time with the aim of preventing CivGeneral from rising to prominence and scuttling his evil plans. While the resulting Alternate Timeline sees Coruscant defeated early in DYOS, Wesker is captured and executed by the Sibling Empire.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: one example, Satan's decapitation by GuitarHero.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Parodied.
• Dude in Distress: Toyoda and Krieger.
• Doomed by Canon: DYOS 10.5, being an interquel to 10 and 11, sees this- the Combine must be defeated, the main characters must survive, most plot threads must be resolved, et cetera.
• Duel to the Death: Unfortunately, our protagonist did not have a pistol.
• Earth Is a Battlefield: Self-explanatory.
• Earthshattering Kaboom: More times than should be legally allowed. Earth was destroyed at least once in every thread up until the 9th one, usually multiple times. In DYOS 8, it was destroyed, replaced by a Communist version, then destroyed again.
• The Empire: Combine Empire, the Enclave, the Greater German Space Reich, The Second Galactic Empire, and Transatlasia, to some extent.
• Estrogen Brigade Bait: Commander Laes when splattered with glitter
• Evil Brit: Albert Wesker (other British characters avert the trope).
  • Agent Grimsby also comes to mind.
• Evil Knockoff: For CivGeneral, Samus Aran and Spongebob.
• Extreme Omnivore: Gnowel Lawgiver can eat anything she wants. Including tanks and people!
• Eyepatch of Power: General Leiong Leang got one after fighting Bayonetta
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Ayane did this to CivGeneral when they traveled back in time. Justified since they did not want to encounter Major Kusanagi and mess up the timeline further. Though CivGeneral did not see it coming.
• The Federation: The Eastern Union, Republic of Coruscant, the Free Western Army.
• Fiery Redhead: Qara Avethokastar
• Filler Strips
• Fingerless Gloves: Some characters wear them, mostly CivGeneral and his characters.
• Flame War: Many happened in the previous threads before more rules were added to prevent them.
• Forceful Kiss: Rosalina does this to Stylesrj eventually. Even though Rhiza is nearby
• Forever War: Not so much one war eternal as a perpetual stream of new enemies. CurtSibling is probably the closest example, striving for world supremacy in every story he was featured in.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Stylesrj's team drinks fruit juice instead of regular alcohol at parties. The intoxicating effects could be claimed on a sugar rush.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Combine and Umbrella Soldiers as well as the Space Pirate foot soldiers.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Quoted by Wesker.
• Genre Shift: Mainly CivGeneral who went from a mercenary-like character into a leader of his own nation simply to counter the excessive powergaming found in the Dark Ages of DYOS. Recent episodes now show him reverting back to his mercenary roots.
  • This also can apply to sudden changes in the plot or an individual's plot going from an action sequence to a Survival Horror.
  • Demonstrated most poignantly by lord_joakim's abrupt change from campy comedy to psychotic quasi-Mind Screw. And back.
  • Stylesrj every other month with the Narrator plots
  • taillesskangaru's entire Gem storyline, notable for being almost completely devoid of any attempt at humour, and for featuring lots of blood.
  • DYOS 10.5 as a whole. It keeps the humour bubbling on the surface, but the wars and diplomatic manoeuvres are much more nuanced, giving it the trappings of a political thriller.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Justified due to the PG atmosphere the forums has in its rule set. One of many examples: Ayane and Faye were wrestling and got into a few suggestive positions.
• GIS Syndrome: Most prevalent in earlier comics
  • Lampooned in DYOS 7, in which Stylesrj uses the "Copy-and-Paste Machine" to mass-produce a (crappy) army.
• Go Mad From the Revelation: Corporal Reitan after the Gem led to the destruction of his squad.
• Guns Akimbo: CivGeneral is especially fond with this trope.
  • His mother also dual wields blaster pistols.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Rhiza, oh so many times.
• Healing Hands: Martha Shepard, despite being an undead, zombie-slaying cleric
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kan' Sharuminar. And made only about two seconds after being resurrected by time travel...
• Highly-Visible Ninja: The goddamn CIA, complete with Conservation of Ninjutsu.
• Hitchhiker Heroes
• Hitler Rants: First done by e350tb and Stylesjl as panel comics. Thorvald occasionally submits full videos, typically criticizing his Schedule Slip.
• Hollywood Hacking: CivGeneral's characters are firm disciples, and a few confront the Hacker in a Cyberspace setting. CivGeneral fights the anthropomorphism of his hate in a virtual reality environment.
• Hostage Situation
• If It Was Funny the First Time: Tragically, the fate/origin of many of the comic's RunningGags
• Implausible Deniability
  • Mohammad Saeed Al'Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister in 2003, appears in comics to do this.
• I Have Your Wife: Happens to Rhiza Kalanin quite frequently. The first time it was serious, the others... Rhiza handled it easily herself.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: What the Lazy Beam does to people.
• Killed Off for Real: A few people actually have died and remained dead, although the only dead among the self-insert characters are e350tb and Judge Deadd
• Klingon Promotion: choxorn became the leader of the Zombie Apocalypse after vaporizing the original leaders with a Kill Sat. Mythmonster briefly became the leader of Apolyton after shooting the previous one in the head, then forgot about that plotline as a result of his update schedule of "almost never"
• Kudzu Plot: So much of it.
• Lampshade Hanging: So much so that people have even begun hanging lampshades on how much Lampshade Hanging there is.
• Legendary Carp: The carp from Dwarf Fortress is used as a weapon by the Hacker.
• Limited Wardrobe: Stylesrj used to have this, only wearing the one set of clothes/armour. Then he started changing outfits after he met his wife.
  • Marth & Martha Shepard are either in their armour or in the clothes underneath
  • Generals Kwai & Leang. When Kwai went on a date, his normal brown suit was dyed grey.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Enough to warrant a character page. Just look at this picture. And that was drawn more than a year ago- there's even more characters now.
• Lost Episode: DYOS 1-9. The contributors still have a few individual comics from those threads, though, and upload some of them to the side-threads at times.
  • A good chunk of DYOS 10 is missing, too, due to CFC's Uploads and Downloads Folder being hacked and deleted in 2008, taking a large amount of the comics for the thread with it.
  • More recently, archives of parts of the missing threads were found.
• Machinomics: Many are done using Garry's Mod.
• MacGuffin : all the quest items.
• Made of Iron: Rhiza Kalanin. If it hurts her, then it'd have to be pretty painful or it could be mind control
  • A lot of people fit this trope as well.
• The Mafia: The minor villain Scalise belongs to the Mafia.
• Magic From Technology: Magic isn't allowed, so you see a lot of this.
• Manly Tears: CivGeneral shed them at Spongebob's funeral
• Marshmallow Hell: Both Stylesrj and CivGeneral experienced this. Spongebob thinks it's a kind of dessert.
• The Medic: Dr. Terrance Hastings, Princess Peach
• Medium Awareness: Exploited by nearly everyone, especially Thorvald, choxorn and taillesskangaru. Memorable examples include Krieger leaving DYOS 11 to fight in the prequel, Zheng He pondering whether he's in a tragedy or a comedy, and tailless going meta to escape a hostile space fleet.
• Mega Corp: Umbrella Corporation and, arguably, the Clone Guild.
  • Talon Company probably counts, and Toyoda is inferred to run one.
• Mega Crossover: Starcraft, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dick Cheney, The Fairly Odd Parents, Cthulhu, Star Wars, Dune, Ozy and Millie, Sonic the Hedgehog, Half Life, Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, Metroid, Fallout, Dead or Alive, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex, Command & Conquer and of course Civilization
• Meta Fic: Commonly demonstrated in "Narratorspace", "The Reality Warpers' Club", and "Ask that Ninja".
• Mind Screw: The Thear arc. Didn't help that E350 lost one of the pages and was too lazy to redraw it, resulting in an As You Know.
• Mood Whiplash: With so many different participants, it's inevitable that consecutive comics won't always carry the same tone.
• Multinational Team: Among the characters are nearly every European and East Asian nationality that exists, and a few that don't. Also true of the story writers, whose present and past ranks include around 15 Americans, 4 Canadians, 5 Australians, 2 English, a Scot, 2 Danes, a Norwegian, 2 Swedes, a Pole, an Asian-Australian, a Pakistani-American, and some people with an unknown nationality.
• Napoleon Bonaparte: Turns up as a villain in the Avatar Wars.
• Nice Hat
• No Fourth Wall: Several of the main characters seem to be perfectly aware it's a comic. Others settle for just breaking and painting the wall.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Invoked by Colonel Maxium. Commander Laes does the same to Stylesrj's brother.
• No Name Given: Most self-insert characters are only known by their username, which rolls into Only One Name for a majority of self-insert characters. Though some over time were given surnames, like Stylesrj, or opted to adopt their spouse's name, like CivGeneral. The hacker in DYOS 11 is known simply as the Hacker.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Defied in the cruellest irony imaginable: a nuclear-armed Tupolev bomber sets off to strike an Enclave oil rig from Hiroshima.
  • Sometimes Stylesrj makes a big explosion and explains that it's not a nuke, but an N2 mine.
• Nuke'Em: The above example is only one of hundreds...
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Used often when the contributor doesn't want to spoil something or just hasn't thought of anything thus far.
• One of Us: Everyone who is writing this story, some more so than others, is one of us.
• Only Six Faces: Frequently occurs in CivGeneral's comics, but then, it's a limitation of the medium. Amusingly, the same face model was used for both the Chancellor of the Republic (good guy) and the CIA Deputy Director (bad guy).
  • A notable Lampshade Hanging occurs in choxorn's conversation with Tanaka. Ironically, Tanaka's model was unique.
• Our Presidents Are Different: Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. Not only is she the Chancellor of the Republic of Coruscant but she is also an Action Girl in CivGeneral's Mercenary group.
  • Stylesrj once was president of France (It's a Long Story) and he spent very little of it leading.
  • Someone once remarked that Thorvald was vying for the King Richard award for most time in office spent outside the country.
• Private Military Contractors: Mr. Toyoda's Security Company, CivGeneral's Brotherhood of Steel and S.T.A.R.S. factions, Stylesrj's Space Mercenaries, Talon Company.
• Punch Clock Hero: Most of the FWA troops would rather be fishing.
• The Quest: the central plot of most DYOS threads, though the story often became so chaotic the original goal was forgotten.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Martha Shepard
• Reality Warper: The Hacker, and a few others.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Tons of examples, sometimes even other fictional things writing the plot. A recent one was the volcano in Iceland with an unspellable name delaying an invasion of France (It Makes Sense in Context)
• Redemption Quest: Some of CivGeneral's sideplots are this in DYOS 11, representing the fight against his inner daemons and atonement for his attitude in the past.
• Redshirt Army
• Remember the New Guy?: With the Loads and Loads of Characters, many of them end up being this.
• Retirony: Invoked with Rodney McKay.
• Rule of Cool: Kan' Sharuminar rescuing Captain2 while riding a T-Rex that has been outfitted with a jetpack
• Rule 34: In-story, one of the Hacker's furry henchmen finds a Rule 34 pic of himself and the Hacker (although the actual pic is not shown since it's against the forum rules, and it's not something anyone would want to see anyway.)
• Running Gag
  • "We're in POLAND!"
  • (Tom) Cruise Missiles
  • "I know all your evil plans!"
  • "What's next in the parade of constant interruptions!"
  • Hrmph? Muffy!
  • #$%& HIATUS!!!
  • The Iranians will get the joke before the infidels!
  • Meanwhile, IN SPACE - this one's straight from TV Tropes
  • "Hey, can I eat this one?"
• Scars Are Forever: Tama Shepard's resurrection
  • Hanna has two scars on her cheek from defending her son many years ago.
• Schedule Slip: Oh so, so very much.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Two of CivGeneral's past bullies, Bryan and Melinda, are Umbrella's goons. Word of God states they are based on an amalgamation of the kids who bullied the poster CivGeneral in the past.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Seen in concept posters
• Security Blanket: Taillesskangaru in place of Linus in one of the "Why Haven't Contributor Drawn Comics Lately" comics.
• Self Deprecating Humor: All the writers do this, rather frequently, except for CivGeneral, and even he's starting to do it some now.
• Self-Insert Fic: Pretty much every major character is a self-insert. The exception is whoever e350tb's main character is at the time- he uses characters from Nickelodeon cartoons as his main chracter(s) instead of himself. He had a self-insert like everyone else for two seconds, but said self-insert was killed in his first comic.
• Series Hiatus: DYOS occasionally suffered from this due to contributors being busy with real life.
• Shoe Slap: Happened to Martha Shepard. Hit with a pair of Vintage 2004 Converse Sneakers thrown by Stylesrj. Her reaction? Who throws a shoe, honestly?
  • She only managed to stop one of them. Even Bush could do better than that!
• Shoo Out The Clown: Kaede/Lucy did this to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
• Shoot the Medic First: Mariko's Empire does not hold the Geneva Convention in high regard.
• Shout-Out: To just about everything at some point.
• Shrink Ray: The Lazy Beam
• Small Annoying Creature: Fergy the Fudgehog for a while. Then kulade killed him, And There Was Much Rejoicing.
• Something Completely Different: in among the world wars and massive space battles, we get... Joseph Crane, manager, Yardy's Office Supplies.
• Space Cold War: Between the Republic of Corusant and the Combine Empire
• Space Pirates
• Space Sailing: Admiral Zheng He's Ming Treasure Ship Armada and Thorvald's Golden Fleet.
• Sprite Comic
• Standard Female Grab Area: Subverted with Marsha Conrad. Don't ever try to grab her arm or you will find yourself flat on the floor.
• Stalker with a Crush: Jessica Daibijin is Stylesjl's Axe Crazy Stalker. Her plans of cutting out Stylesjl's heart with her axe are on hold though until the current plotline is resolved.
• Statler and Waldorf: doing what they do best. Cameoed as Space Nazi soldiers during the invasion of Britain in DYOS 10.5; in DYOS 11, they're perched at the bow of a pirate ship à la Muppet Treasure Island.
• Stomach of Holding: Gnowel Lawgiver and her High Cleric Juline Sane both have these.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: The Greater German Space Reich
• Swirlie: inverted, Marsha spawns an unflushed toilet above the Hacker. Cue in gravity and a moment of toilet water getting into the hacker's eye.
• Symbol Swearing: Justified mainly due to the main rules in CFC. Some resort to using Censor Boxes even to the point of playing with the trope just for laughs by censoring the word "cake" and other non-swear words.
• Take That; can get uncomfortable when it's aiming close to home. CivGeneral tends to be more hash and mean-spirited with his TakeThats.
• Technical Pacifist: Rhiza Kalanin fits this trope. Her kills always have been indirectly caused.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: Though the end has Symbol Swearing, Marsha Conrad delivered this line right before serving the Hacker's ass to him.
• This Is Sparta: used OVER 9000 times.
• Those Two Guys: Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko and Sergeant Abigail Belmont, of the F.W.A.
• Tragic Villain: Space Nazi field marshal Kurt Schäffer. While he harbours no love for Coruscant, he adheres to a higher ethical standard than his fellow officers and works within the system to mitigate the damage as much as possible, even leaking critical information to Krieger.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The main plot of DYOS 10, when forum avatars revolted against the posters.
• Tsundere: Tama Shepard and Kaede, and CivGeneral.
• Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: True for pretty much all of the writers.
  • In fact, sometimes it seems like some of the writers only put something in a comic so that it could be listed on this page...
  • Some characters even refer this site as the "Site-that-shall-not-be-named".
• Unwilling Roboticisation: Happened to the entirety of Planet Thear - and many other planets, which were fed by produce from Thear. Well, It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time.
  • Happens again later in, when Sandy ends up on the wrong side of an Emergency Roboticiser. Happily for the plot, her mind is intact.
• United Europe: A subversion that tries to play itself straight. The continent is split longitudinally between the Eastern Union and Free Western Army, who work very closely with each other. No Iron Curtain here, folks!
• Very Special Episode: Happens around Christmas time with special edition comics. A few lampooning comics consist of other posters from the forums. Almost all of the special episode comics are considered non-canon.
  • Stylesrj recently did a parody of a whole bunch of Soap Opera Special Episode themes.
• Villain by Default: The Combine in DYOS 10, the Space Nazis in DYOS 10.5, Umbrella Corp. in DYOS 11, and CurtSibling whenever he appears.
• The Virus: The FEV and various strains of the progenitor virus (T-virus, etc)
• Visible Invisibility: In two flavors, distortion & invisible to the reader.
• Washington DC Invasion
• Webcomic Time: Often occurs due to the frequent hiatuses- comics months apart from each other can, in-story, take place within the space of a few minutes.
• Wham! Episode: They happen from time to time.
• Wham! Line: "If you're plotting against Toyoda, >don't< tell the Masakari."
• When He Smiles: Averted with CivGeneral, normally he's a Perpetual Frowner. Though he hopes to one day invoke the trope.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: New Port City in DYOS 10. In later threads Word of God placed it on the U.S. eastern seaboard.
  • Now true of wherever the hell the Zombies' secret base is, although it IS a secret, and it's mostly only this because choxorn updates about once every 4 months these days.
• Who Writes This Crap?: choxorn sometimes complains about something in the story, at which point he's reminded by someone else that he's the one who's writing this crap.
• The World Is Always Doomed: And how!
• World War II: Among the supporting cast are Erwin Rommel, Bernard Montgomery, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Patton, and just about the entire Soviet and Nazi leadership at one point or another.
• Yandere (disambiguation): Jessica Daibijin is the possessive sort.
• You Gotta Have Blue/Purple/Pink Hair: Ayane, Faye Valentine, Rhiza Kalanin, Major Kusanagi, Kaede/Lucy/Nyu
• Zombie Apocalypse
• Zombie Infectee: Averted HARD by CivGeneral: the other characters realize before he does, he certainly doesn't deny it, and he's treated and cured before symptoms begin to manifest.