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glorber · 25 days ago

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trollcyoa silly analysis post

Thank you to @eyedoeluhn for helping with a lot of the research needed, also for being present as we bounced ideas and theories off of each other in a discord dm.

For context and to avoid spoilers, you can read the above. (18k words, so medium commitment)

Now, I know what your thinking. The fuck? A Large Amount of Trolling cyoa v1 fic? What is there to analyze?

Now first off, ironically this fic is fantastic. It's hilarious completely unintentionally, and has literally made me laugh so hard I started crying. But trust me on this, there's some hidden depth to this fic, unaware to the uncritical eye.

Looking past the horribly, terribly dated memes you get a fascinating story about two friends, one a psychotic control freak and a friend that has no choice but to put up with him.

its the fic that keeps on giving. every single line you realize it's something fucking weirder than you were previously thinking. for some reason everything logically makes sense but at the same time it doesnt.

it's weird.

Also, very, very cringe.

We'll take this chapter by chapter, on what I consider important events.

First off, let's meet our protagonist, William.

This is his thoughts on being inside of the classic cyoa darkscape you all know and love. Immediately, we can see that he says he'll miss his parents deeply, but then iterates that there wont be a major sadness because he can 'do whatever he wants'.

This is the first peek behind the mask we get, a look into his insidious yet sad nature. It'll only become more clearer in further chapters.

Now, I believe this rob message is deeply important for my working theory, but i'll explain later. Just keep it in mind.

After this, he then elects to invite another friend to the cyoa. This, this is his victim. He's called Anthony, and is stated to be his only 'major' friend from highschool, and also they've been stated to know each other since elementary.

Of course, he does this without thinking of the implications of randomly kidnapping his friend with high stakes, but specifically thinks about it AFTER. so it's a consideration, he just didn't think of this.

Now, trollcyoa is at best slightly confusing with how it handles chapter breaks, timeskips and generally any amount of time passing, at worst it's completely fucking incomprehensible, so it's up to a bit of reader interpretation on how you read this.

Personally, I've come to the conclusion that this chapter break is a brief couple sentence anthony POV. It's important to note that currently, anthony currently thinks of this as a dream. Also for some reason, this is the only anthony POV.

After that, they briefly go over the classic cyoastuff where william briefly explains the goal, and then we get to the build making.

William's build is eidolon, scope, invictus, blank and shattered limiter while anthony's build is blank, invictus, cloak and dagger, shattered limiter and power manipulation.

Meanwhile, they pick the drawback marked (E88, ABB and ABM) It's important to note here, that literally every other cyoa i've seen just says merchants instead of the abbreviation of the full name.

Now, clearly william knows what's up. He's making his build to minmax, in accordance with the ROB's message, but anthony has no fucking idea what's going on at all.

This passage is worded weirdly, and im choosing to believe that it's on purpose. William notes that after a few minutes of deliberation, he settled on the choice of power manipulator, with invictus and cloak and dagger as the optional perks along side the mandatory ones.

I'm assuming that william had his hand in 'helping' anthony make his build.

Now, one that anthony build is fucking weird. I'm assuming that william had a hand in getting him to pick PM, maybe something to the effect of 'oh dude dont pick eidolon or scope i already have it so it would be pointless', then william forcing him to pick blank, invictus and shattered limiter.

Now anthony clearly does not gaf, im assuming he glanced over the perk page and chose cloak and dagger because it sounded cool after william basically made his build for him. He also chose Invictus, which was listed as optional. I think an argument could be made that william was hoping he didn't, so he would keep a mental advantage.

Now, onto william's priorities.

First off, the one thing that's completely clear is how patriotic william is. I don't think ive seen a more patriotic canadian. secondly, we can see here more of william's homesickness. He claims he wouldn't be said, yet he clearly does greatly miss his home and original dimension. Secondly, I can presume that Anthony didn't have much to say in this part of the discussion. I would say that, in this stage, he still thinks it's a weird dream.

also, these priorities are just bizarre.

Moving on, we get this completely insane bit of dialogue from william.

what? who the fuck says this to a friend that they just kidnapped. FYI, the author's use of italics and bolded lettering is like so:

caps = high volume

bold = intensity/threat

italics = surprise/low volume

this is specifically in dialogue. (cross referenced through every example of special text.)

This is, once again william enforcing his authority onto anthony, a common theme.

After this, one of the most baffling parts of this fic, william literally demonstrates his knowledge on how to use kaleidoscope by giving himself an upgraded version of tighten's power from fucking megamind. He gives this to anthony, but doesnt even bother to explain what he did or what the powers even were which is dangerous but whatever.

Now for one of the actually most baffling parts of this fic, probably rated #2.

For some fucking reason, instead of teleporting like a normal person, he finds a garage, then uses scope to make a car. It's not even that he's limited by the meme stuff, because he literally demonstrates in later chapters the ability to teleport.

???

Even fucking anthony asks him if they're teleporting, but nope they aren't. Also, do note how weirdly condescending and hostile william is to anthony. It's hard to believe their friends.

This is why i believe that, anthony doesn't even know william that well. William thinks of him as a close friend, but is wrong.

William needs someone from earth 'prime' to be here to understand his meme references, meanwhile anthony has no choice but to follow this guy's lead because he knows the most and has a plan, no matter how weird it is.

Consistently, william gives him the bare minimum of knowledge, to force a reliance on him.

Multiple times in this fic, william demonstrates the complete inability to do anything with his powers that isn't meme related. Personally, I believe this to be a side effect of him choosing invictus, and perhaps a bit of nefarious ROB influence.

the ROB never shows himself, just leaves a note.

Anyway, so william creates the thanos car, and for some fucking reason, they drive for FIVE FUCKING HOURS outside of brockton on the way to toronto.

Look at how anthony acts, a five hour car ride of presumable silence with brief interjections. Then william just tells him to check the gps himself like an asshole. I can only assume this is a powerplay of some sort, because directly after anthony puts his foot down, just twenty minutes later they pull off to do something about it.

Now, i believe that during this car ride anthony sobered up and realized that he's in a precarious situation.

he's in for all he knows fantasy land with no idea what's going on yet the knowledge of a impossible foe looming on the horizon

william dragged him here without his permission, and is the only one who really has a plan

william vastly outpowers him.

also i wanna note, william says he should've made it self driving at the 2 hour mark, but for some incomprehensible reason keeps driving for another 3 hours even though he could instantly solve that problem?

look, he literally put pinged in quotation marks. he's full of shit and he knows it. It's a power play, to see how much anthony is willing to listen to him and what he was willing to put up with.

Also more condescension from William, literally how is anyone supposed to interpret that last comment in a positive manner?

As iterated before, from brockton to toronto was a 9 hour drive, and he spent 5 hours driving to some arbitrary location before stopping and upgrading the car with tinkertech for 2 hours and 4 minutes, then with the upgraded tinkertech thanos car he flies over lake ontario, then specifically touches down to drive normally again to their destination.

The majority of the fucking journey was driven normally, and it took around the same time to get there, william what is wrong with you?

This is another reoccuring theme with william, he fucking loves driving. He loves his thanos car so much, i swear he has an obsession with it. expect him to take any excuse to drive, anywhere at all.

like for some reason he's so committed to driving its just insane.

Now, after he upgrades his car, he then goes to find anthony.

This i'd argue is an integral part of the fic. Anthony had wandered off while william was busy fucking with the car, so he goes and tests out his powers.

This, is where I'd like to propose my theory. I believe that during this time anthony used PM to create a power that lets him read william's mind.

Anthony, feels some weirdness coming from william. Knowing that he's read the book of the place he's in, and also that william vastly outpowers him, he'd want to have something to be able to work within the bounds of what he expects out of him, while also gathering more information.

Take note of the language here, anthony didn't modify the power in anyway, relating to tighten's power. Also, note how panicked anthony sounds. He's clearly uncomfortable about being able to cause this amount of destruction. Also note how anthony specifically went to burn a crewmate into the tree, relating to william's obsession with memes.

Also how fucking william speaks to anthony, what the fuck is that? literally it's so odd what language he uses. weirdo authority play.

Most of the time in this fic, william doesn't notice anthony existing except to test him on meme references, anthony doesn't initiate conversations because I believe that he generally just doesn't like this guy.

Ok so after that, they fly the car over lake ontario, in which they touch down to drive normally again after that. Now, previously william was complaining about how he should've made it autopilot, yet mysteriously after he upgrades the car he still controls it?

He's in control of accelerating and decelerating, and this is like, pitch black nighttime, so presumably this guy is just rocketing across lake ontario completely blind because he refuses to let anything else drive his baby.

Now after that, they reach their destination, which is where their old homes are (note: they give enough information to literally dox themselves, i'm not kidding)

Their plan was to build a base, which alright i guess, but what is this dialogue?

He's clearly freaked out, anthony knows william can kill him without much thought. These aren't friends in a cyoa, this is a hostage situation. Anthony is here against his will.

Then they proceed to literally manually dig out a base, despite william having scope. I can only assume this is another powerplay.

after they do that, william goes to make his stupid little freddy fasbear army manually instead of using scope (this guy is mentally unwell) he just gibbers this to himself

he's literally brainrotted. there isnt even anyone else here. i still count this as a comedy fic because the line isn't funny itself, but the mental image of this guy standing in an empty warehouse talking to himself like this kills me

Also another thing to note is that he routinely tests anthony on what he's referencing, as yet again what im assuming to be some sort of weird power play, or a form of self assurance.

After this, they plan on attacking villains of toronto, which is somehow entirely unique to this fic aside from like 1, but that's an OC fic. find a cyoafic who's first cape battle is in toronto lmao.

Anyway, they want to do the power hiding thing that everyone does, so they agree to only use tinkertech stuff (creating an even bigger reliance on william)

william even fucking thinks like this. it's actually hard coded into his brain. what is wrong with you

This is another reoccuring theme about william. he often expresses like this weird sort of hatred when things aren't the same as our earth. Any differences he has to hyper specifically note. Personally, I think it's a form of his homesickness coming into play, lashing out at earth bet for daring to be different than what he knows.

Now, the rest of this chapter has some of the most inexplicable writing ever, which is why i classify this fic as a mystery.

For those who want a fun challenge, stop here and go and check the reblogs for a logic puzzle. spoiler: the goal is to fully comprehend the chain of events and actions in chapter 4.

First, william drives (of course he's fucking driving) to location #1, a parking garage. Now, they walk (for some reason) over to the commercial district, walk into a random skyscraper in the commerical district. This is because the villains they are hunting for are the Family Compact, a group of OC villains that are described as british aristocrat versions of the E88. This is location #2.

Now, note the following actions.

They walk INTO the building, through revolving doors, common sense dictates that they enter into a lobby, then walk into a bathroom to change into their cape costumes, then they leave that bathroom in their cape costumes, and before they 'sighted' the front desk, but before they make a move they disable cameras from where they are, then interrogated the clerk.

So, this sounds kind of fucking impossible right? because somehow you would need to walk through the lobby to the bathrooms, exit the bathrooms (while now in costume) with presumably no cameras there to see you walk in as a civillian, walk out then change into a costume, then be able to take out security cameras from presumably where the bathrooms are, then finally interrogate the receptionist, then leave and do the same thing.

Now, that doesn't really add up if you think about it, because surely the lobby has cameras, and how would the receptionist not see you and so forth.

Me and my friend took cracks at how the building layout went.

these weren't really satisfactory, as you might imagine. After that though, we realized that william actually dropped the name of the building, First Canadian Place. We know it's in toronto, so it was easy to look it up, and my friend found the actual fucking schematics of the building.

This wasn't it, but there's a second connected building that does finance.

which is the floor plan for the finance building, called the TMX market centre.

on their website, they actually have a virtual tour https://marketcentre.tmx.com/gallery.html

this is the receptionist's desk, and we believe that they came from here.

if you go through that hallway, as you can see there's an exit and a restroom.

Going by the first chapter,

we can see that they left on april 8th, 2011 which is a friday, drove around 9 hours, then built a base. So realistically this could be around sunday or saturday, and the tmx market centre isn't open on weekends, and the First Canadian Place and the TSE building are linked up to each other

So yes, the passage does make sense.

For some reason william loves to write in and include a shit ton of landmarks and building names, and i can only assume he was autistic enough to literally research not only a place that would feasibly have ties to the family compact, but also plan out a way to walk in and interrogate a receptionist. also gotta love how he instinctually targets canada's trade center.

Anyway i just wanna say this entire thing is strange

like, william why did you grab the gun out of his hands to shoot out the camera, presumably you gave him the damn thing he knows how to use it. is he just mansplaining? he gives it back right after too lmao.

now this passage does lend credence to the anthony used pm to make a mind reading power. there are a few more times similar where william notes they did things at the same time/they were thinking the same thing, but in a baffling display of escalation-

-anthony threatens the life of this random guy and they leave (by the same way). feels kind of out of character, so i assume he mind read and decided to escalate to endear himself to william, who is honestly really bloodthirsty.

so they leave location #2, then after that they walk around for 15 minutes (why do these guys fucking walk everywhere when they can fly and teleport) so they can see the prt hq in ontario, decide once they walk all the way that they dont want anything to do with the prt then leave?

what?

so okay, they were going to the prt building to gather information on the prt, instead of idk looking it up on pho or something, i dont even know what information they wanted to get and once they get there after a 15 minute walk of not teleporting or flying or anything they just look at it and no mention of thinker power scanning or anything just dfucking arbitrary decide that they dont wanna do anything.

this is killing me

this place is location #3, and they decide to finally use their fucking teleportation powers.

actually my mistake, they dont use their teleportation powers yet, instead they opt to 'backtrack to city hall' to find an alley to teleport from, but mystifyingly they just walk back the entire fucking length. so 30 minutes wasted.

they spent 30 minutes in total to fucking walk to the prt building, 'gather information' which i assume was just what the fucking building looks like BUT THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHERE IT WAS SO CLEARLY THEY FUCKING GOOGLED IT, so they just walked for 30 minutes for no fucking reason then came to this random spot to teleport. okay im done.

so as william briefly scrambles on how to relate something to memes, then they make an teleporter that is distinctly flashy, then teleport back to location #1, where the fuckin thanos car is. in the middle of a parking garage.

okay, this next part you're going to need to stay with me, im just gonna screencap the entire thing.

so anthony and william get into the car for some reason 2 hours and 10 minutes pass, they make sure cameras are disabled and drive to a more discreet location to teleport back to base, then they go back to the command center to download and watch morbius, since morbius is around an hour and 44 minutes, then this amount of time passes. then after that, they do a bit of planning then get back into their car and teleport back to toronto.

so my first question was where did those 2 hours and 10 minutes go? even if you switch the 2 passages to before the 2 hours and 10 minutes it still doesn't make any sense-

I mean, why would it take them around 30 minutes to teleport back to their base and download and watch morbius, it doesn't take that long

then we assumed that perhaps the 'drove the car towards a more dimly lit location' meant they left the parking garage to teleport back to their base, which still doesn't feel like that much time but it still wouldn't make sense because why would they check to see if the cameras are disabled if they are going to leave the parking garage (ignoring the fact they teleported in here earlier). So this had to be on purpose.

Where did the 2 hours and 10 minutes go? was it just anthony and william idling in the car? was it anthony browsing pho while william's two wolves, one being common sense and the other being the compulsion to turn everything into memes trading seats in the brain for two hours and 10 minutes? did contessa come and knock them out for a couple hours, but they let it happen because she said live slug reaction?

what the fuck is going on?

so i reached out to the actual author to get some answers. Here lies the full fucking wog on the car situation.

'for the main point - you're assuming that they watched Morbius from start to finish in continuous go, and that they had go back to base to download the film, which definitely did not happen. they downloaded it in the car and watched it there. For a situation like that it's implied they paused the movie to make a comment or two, rewind a specific scene, etc. 30 minutes is a perfectly reasonable length of time to add to account for things like discussing the movie after watching it.'

(ran out of image space)

now, this still doesn't make any fucking sense.

i absolutely believe william is deranged enough to pause a movie and reference unfunny memes and make shitty jokes while anthony tries to watch the movie in peace, but this still doesn't make any sense.

initially i thought that the actions after the 2 hours and 10 minutes were in the past tense, which was correct, but it was still off. Even if that was the case, with this new critical wog information we know the absolute fact that they watched the morbius movie inside of the car.

So using this information, we can work out a brief sequence of events

at the end of the passage, they are said to 'head back to the garage to the thanos car, then teleport again back to toronto'

at first i thought that this means that they drove back to location #1, the public parking garage, deposited the thanos truck, then took some form of travel back (most likely walking knowing these guys), then after that, they walked all the way back to the parking garage, then teleported from there to a random lot.

combing through earlier chapters though, area 69 is said to have a garage with a fucking car elevator, so fuck me i guess. its so funny to me that william has a garage and an elevator for 1 fucking car, he's obsessed with the damn thanos car. they've spent more time in this fucking car than anywhere else. anthony wants out.

so the full chain of events is something like

they get into the car -> they teleport to the base -> they drive through the entire fucking base inside of the thanos car into the command center -> they download and watch morbius, with william pausing to make unfunny jokes and comments -> they drive through the entire base to the garage -> they exit the thanos car -> they get back inside and teleport again to toronto

idk why this entire chapter is a fucking logic puzzle, what the fuck is this shit.

this 2 hour 10 minute thing has actually made me cry laugh because it was so stupid

now i could talk in length about the party crashing scene, and how they just randomly fucking shoot the crowds of people with the dehydrator gun with no heed for collateral damage and how weirdly bloodthristy william is, but im going to summerize it because im tired. all you need to know is that there are some moments that make me think the mind reading theory is dead on.

then after this, also mystifyingly they act completely fucking normal when they talk to the PRT who come in after they party crash. like. fuckin you act like this to the villains and random guys and even to yourselves, but some how narwhal has a secondary shaker aura that makes these guys even speak normally in dms.

Okay, we're reaching the tail end of the analysis.

Now it's time to sit back and enjoy the completely distilled, top shelf pure cringe of the pho chapter. I don't think in my life ive seen a pho chapter as bad as this, and it still gets me even on my 4th reread of the thing. it's that bad.

They just

its beyond words really, you need to experience it for yourself.

anyway, that's the fuckin end of this bullshit. final fic rating: 5/5, peak fiction and has spawned an actual, no joke 20 hour discussion of this entire thing. truly mind melting stuff.

#Peak fiction #Everybody else go home stop making CYOA SI fics

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