Hooker!Verse
An Alternate Universe series created by emeriin (although other authors enjoy playing in it and the Kink Meme has contributed considerably), this universe sees the That Guy With The Glasses and Channel Awesome team as owners, employees and patrons of a seedy club in an even seedier world.
The timeline can be found here and the masterlist can be found here.
Tropes used in Hooker!Verse include:
- Alternate Universe: Because there's no That Guy With The Glasses site in this world (or The Spoony Experiment or The Cinema Snob etc.), the Nerd has to have a rivalry with The Irate Gamer. AAAAAAH!
- Anachronic Order: For example, origin stories for the Chick, Marz and Critic were done way after we had got to know all their issues in the present. Luckily, the timeline and masterlist helps things from getting too confusing.
- Armor-Piercing Question: In "The Real Green Thing Will Come", Harvey asks Critic if he has a death wish. He can't answer, but we all know the answer is yes.
- Author Appeal: Fem!dom, curvy women with long hair, public sex and high-heeled boots.
- Bad Boss: Played straight with Goggles's boss, a sexist bastard who gets MarzGurl into prostituting herself. It's hinted that he would have done the same thing to Goggles if she had turned up to defend her job instead.
- Bad Dreams: A common theme. And understandable, given the circumstances.
- The Bad Guys Win: They're non-canon, but "Night Of Soil" and "Searing The Flesh" has That Other Girl kill Critic and head off to snuff out the rest.
- Bedlam House: Averted with the hospital Critic and Penny go to. It's a nice place that wants to help. (We're sure that not all the patients are stubborn jackasses though.)
- Be Yourself: Subverted. Snob tells Critic he doesn't want him to act like a stepford bimbo but when it looks like this is the message, he tells him to put on a different act because hookers acting normally makes them look like freaks. Lampshaded by the Critic himself.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. All of the hookers get bruises and wounds that stay for a while, and Angry Joe gets a half-Chelsea grin.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Michaud and Chick are quite possibly one of the most messed up examples. Both have admitted to utterly despising the other. When confronted with the possibility of being in love with one another, both work very hard to change the subject.
- Bi the Way: The majority of the characters, whether they like it or not.
- Bittersweet Ending: It ends properly about twenty years into the future, with Liz's son Aidan going to college to be a doctor and meeting a nice girl (and it's implied that the girl in question, Maggie, is actually Joe and Mary's daughter). Sweet because the boy's adorkable, bitter because the question of how many of his mom's friends are dead is clearly hanging in the background.
- Black Comedy: For all the verse's "Grimdark" reputation, there's plenty of this around.
- Bound and Gagged: Happens to the Chick and Critic with regularity. In-universe reason? That Other Girl. Out of verse? Author Appeal.
- Break the Cutie
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In "These Boots Are Made For...", the Critic asks 'you' what you want him to do. After two fairly normal examples (oral and bending over), he mentions getting a swirly and then giving oral. Ew.
- The City Narrows: The only time police are mentioned is when Critic panics about how he can't go out in his work clothes because he'll get arrested.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Chester A. Bum!
- Contrived Coincidence: Yes, everyone lives in Chicago and meets each other eventually. Just go with it.
- Conveniently-Common Kink: Averted. Not all the customers are into the soft stuff, and Mary has one who was into watersports. Not that this is a bad thing, she was just squicked out.
- Cool Old Guy: Oh Harvey, why so awesome?
- Crapsack World
- Cruel to Be Kind: The Chick's punishment of Penny. She could have easily got Michaud to throw her out but she stuck with a whipping. As we all know, though, That Other Girl doesn't take this well.
- Cute Kitten: Chester gives Mary a kitten he got out of his coat pocket.
- A Day in the Limelight: rachelleneveu's the stars have all faded here looks at the AU through Stacey's eyes.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Is there anyone with a nice backstory?
- Deadpan Snarker: You really thought this was going to go?
- Disgusting Public Toilet: There hasn't been a nice one yet, even in the club.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Deconstructed. The outside world wouldn't care if any of them got hurt or killed, but we would. Hammered home with The Reveal of what Ask That Guy and Sage do for a living.
- Played straight with Shelly, one of the workers at the club before the main cast came in. All we know of her is that she purposefully overdosed when she got a positive pregnancy test.
- Doomed by Canon: Due to Anachronic Order. For example, sorry Donna, there's nothing you can do to stop Suede coming back and giving Benzaie his Happy Ending.
- Double Standard: (in-verse) The girls get at least some form of protection while they're in the club, while Benzaie, Y, and especially Linkara and Critic are pretty much ignored.
- Double Standard Rape (Female on Female) and Double Standard Rape (Female on Male): Both averted. That Other Girl raping, torturing and generally mindfucking the Critic and the Chick (and Penny too) is her being a Complete Monster, not an Abusively Sexy Woman.
- Drugs Are Bad: They're the cause of most of Linkara's problems.
- Dying Alone: Hasn't happened yet, but Critic will eventually die alone in the dark because everything went too wrong and Penny will stab herself in the stomach because she wanted That Other Girl to be gone for good. She'll be found a few days later by a neighbor who was worried about the smell.
- Dysfunction Junction
- Early Installment Weirdness: "Cherry Lipgloss" was the first fic in the verse and you'll notice it was a lot lighter, with dark bits creeping through the shiny pretty instead of the other way round.
- In the second fic, "Taking What You Deserve", Mechakara came into the verse and tortured Linkara. That's not in canon anymore because robots and world-hopping would kinda clash with the down-to-earth, "gritty" feel.
- Eek! A Spider!: Critic's phobia of bugs (and spiders especially) induces some humanity in Ask That Guy and he gets rid of all the ones that show up in the apartment.
- Even Evil Has Standards: LordKat will smuggle in weapons, drugs and alcohol for Sage, but he will not take part in the sex trafficking.
- Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Wouldn't be a Hooker AU without it.
- Everybody Smokes: It's usually a way to calm themselves down.
- Everything's Better with Penguins: Sometimes Critic will go with ATG on his trips to the zoo, and they'll spend the day in the aquarium together. He likes the penguin house the best.
- Fan Disservice: While the first fic's description of Critic's outfit of make-up, thigh-high boots, corset and mini-skirt (along with the tie, hat and jacket) was Eating the Eye Candy, later fics give the impression that he's supposed to look seriously trashy.
- Not just the Critic's clothes. It's kinda hard to enjoy the pretty boys and girls when you learn that they often go without food for a long time due to lack of money.
- Before Linkara and Spoony have anonymous sex, much detail is given to the diseased, dirty surroundings before we get to any good stuff. Gee, thanks for that.
- Fat Bastard: Mr. Scholl is described as a "fat, tall man wearing one of those shirts with the loosened tie you always saw fat, sweaty business men wear".
- Fanservice: The original point of this AU. It's somewhat expanded beyond that, now.
- Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Your favorite characters... as hookers!
- Foe Yay: Pretty much every relationship Michaud has.
- Forced to Watch: Chick has to watch the Critic die in an out-of-canon fic, and That Other Girl has her usual dream fun by torturing Mary in front of Joe.
- Futureshadowing: "even when we are nothing left" is filled to the brim with this, nearly all of them soul-breaking.
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He was even used to some of them looking at him as if just by doing so, he'd act like a complete whore for them. |
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- Gaslighting: That Other Girl's main method of keeping Penny an Extreme Doormat.
- Genre Shift: As lampshaded on the notes on "There'll Be Peace When You Are Done", who thought a Hooker!Verse that started out to be to be purely fanservice would end up talking about faith in a fair, well thought out manner?
- Get Out!: Goggles to Marz when she disappoints her for the last time, said in a Tranquil Fury way.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Oy vey... Ask That Guy hates Chick for taking his only constant away from him, Paw resents Benzaie for getting most of Donna's attention, Michaud can't stand Critic because Chick actually cares about him, Joe treats Mary like a doll others can only play with sometimes and Critic hates practically anyone who Chick and Linkara get close to.
- Grey and Grey Morality: The key word for this verse is "complicated".
- Happily Ever After: Benzaie gets to go home with Suede, has no problems in doing so and his worries that his boyfriend will think any less of him are unfounded. Even though Donna has a breakdown after he leaves, it still counts.
- Heroic BSOD: More and more as time goes on...
- Heterosexual Life Partners: Ellis and Michaud. And you should know by now that it's not exactly a positive example.
- Lucy and Stacey are best friends and they've had no romantic feelings towards each other.
- His Story Repeats Itself: Very often. Two examples that stand out are Chick seeing her past relationship with Nella in Critic/Ask That Guy and Critic taking a suicidal Penny to the same hospital he was at when he was Driven to Suicide.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Liz gives this warning to Joe about Mary.
- Innocent Inaccurate: Chester, occasionally. He's blissfully unaware of what all the "nice people" do for a living.
- Ironic Echo: In Guttering, Ask That Guy says "How could I leave the Critic?" when Sage wanted to take him to Thailand. In Stay Near, Critic said the same thing about Ask That Guy when an upset Chick suggested they ran away.
- I Should Write a Book About This: In the future, Stacey will one day write The District Sleeps Alone: Four Years of Sex Work in Chicago, with whole chapters dedicated to the more... freak-show members of the club.
- Jerkass: Mr. Scholl and the Distressed Watcher.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Most notably the Nostalgia Chick (who genuinely cares for the Critic and has great affection for Film Brain), MarzGurl (who rescued Linkara and took him in, as well as taking him out for his birthday) and Michaud (who not only likes children but also may or may not be in love with Chick).
- Lampshade Hanging: "Make Yourself The Hero" takes the usual Linkara/Insano hero/villain dynamic and twists it into something both depressing and funny.
- Lighter and Softer: The Kink Meme spawned a spin-off of this verse that made the Secret Treehouse hookers and the TGWTG people customers. For now, it's fun, lovingly self-indulgent, cracky relief that serves as like an antidote to the original that can at times get so heavy. (They are of course both awesome.)
- Literary Allusion Title: Most of the titles are lines from poetry.
- Loads and Loads of Characters: It's more or less a given that every character from That Guy With The Glasses exists in this universe somewhere, and the only reason they haven't appeared yet is because nobody has yet thought of a way to include them.
- Love Hurts: You could write an essay on how destructive the relationships in this verse are.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Thus far we have had: At an airport, in a bathroom (twice), behind a dumpster, on a stage, in an office, in a car, in an alley...while in all probability sex does take place on beds in this universe, the majority of on-screen sex seems to take place anywhere but.
- Marshmallow Hell: Mary's a skinny lass, but this is Joe's favorite reason for spooning with her.
- The Masochism Tango: The Chick/Nella relationship. Both were bitchy, both were horrid to each other[1] and to be honest, Nella leaving was a cruel blessing.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Averted. Although the main author clearly loves fem!dom, the girls go through just as much horror, danger and humiliation as the boys do.
- Mind Screw: The whole That Other Girl/Penny/Critic/Chick mess.
- Morality Pet: Chester gives the club-people someone to look after.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Both MarzGurl and Film Brain have killed people, both by accident, and both have felt utterly horrid afterward.
- Mythology Gag: If you played a Drinking Game for all the references made to the "normal" TGWTG verse, you'd be dead very quickly.
- No Name Given: Done intentionally for the hookers when it's from a customer's POV. They don't care enough to ask.
- Only Sane Man: JewWario, Cinema Snob and Harvey Finevoice seem to be the only conveyors of consistent sense in this world. Harvey tries to remind his patients that acting they're the victim isn't doing them any favors and the other two are in the character sheet.
- Platonic Prostitution: Chick and Film Brain, while she's still in that job.
- Original Characters: Penny and That Other Girl (expies from another fanfic), Donna, Stacey, Mary, Liz and Lucy.
- There are also a few original characters that help move the plot along by being assholes. It still works though.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: For emeriin's birthday, a Humor/Fluff fic called 'Eye of the Storm' was written where Michaud is absolutely adorable through and through.
- Red Light District: The pitiful version.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Due to Scarlett/Noah and Lewis/Liz breaking up, those storylines have stopped and the ladies not appearing since then.
- Rescue Romance: Both Chick/Critic and MarzGurl/Linkara start out this way, albeit in an incredibly cynical fashion.
- Revenge by Proxy: Whenever Ask That Guy gets in trouble, Critic is the one who suffers.
- Rule of Symbolism: The non-canon "Night Of Soil" does this in a creepy fashion. The dirt caked on Critic's wrists are bruises, he imagines the Chick screaming at the PAAAAAINK sky but she really is, the snakes wrapped around the Chick's arms is her tied up, the spider hanging out of her eye is another bruise, the red paint is blood, he can't talk because there's a penny in his mouth (what some cultures do for dead people) and the faded images are him dying.
- Sadistic Choice: In "Searing The Flesh", That Other Girl makes Critic choose who'll she brutally kill next. He chooses the Chick for Together in Death reasons and she taunts him that she'll tell her that.
- Sanity Slippage: Um, hospital? If one of your patients panics about "being thrown away" when it's time to leave, you might wanna keep him around for longer.
- Sex for Services: It's implied this is how Linkara got started. But replace services for drugs.
- Shower of Angst: Critic regularly uses up all his apartment building's hot water for the reasons you might expect.
- Slasher Smile: The fuckhead that holds a knife to the Chick and assaults her has one of these.
- Streetwalker: Linkara and Critic are at the very bottom of the club's power chain, and could be kicked out at any point.
- Which is partly the reason why Marz and Chick are looking after Linkara and Critic, respectively. They know what it's like to be on street corners.
- Twincest: Critic/Ask That Guy are the horribly fucked up, self-destructive kind, naturally.
- The Windy City: Poor Chicago gets picked on quite a lot.
- Wall-Bang Her: Nerd/Critic against a dumpster and Critic/Chick against a bathroom wall in a posh restaurant.
- What Does She See in Him?: Joe doesn't get what the big deal is about Nerd.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Film Brain eviscerates Nella for leaving the Chick alone and depressed.
- What You Are in the Dark: MarzGurl whores herself out to save her girlfriend's job and doesn't tell her.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Spoony ends up here when he meets Linkara for the first time.
- ↑ Yes, Chick is the victim in this instance but it's clear she didn't make anything easier.