My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character‎ is a shared-world crossover fan work, hosted on Bob Schroeck's "Drunkard's Walk" Forum but deliberately not linked to that story except by the occasional Shout-Out.

Thanks to a multi-cause multiversal snafu, people from various works of fiction are being deposited into "Refuge", a reality that would otherwise be a universe indistinguishable from Real Life beginning in late-2016. Trustworthy natives (including the self-insert characters of the writing circle who are outnumbered by Original Characters) are originally tasked with making sure these refugees – locally called "displacees" – have a place to live, but will end up taking on additional responsibilities ... especially when some displacees decide they don't like the arrangements in their new universe. Some will jump at the call to defend their new homes. Others will refuse it. Many will not be called at all. And they all have places in this world.

Much like the 1990s' Revenge Wars, the story is an inversion and deconstruction (to a greater or lesser extent) of the Trapped in Another World concept; instead of the original characters and self-insert characters being transported to another world, characters from other worlds are being transported to the original characters and self-insert characters, and real-world economics and law enforcement play at least a small part in the narrative. (However, My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character does not have the built-in animosity that the Revenge Wars characters had for the SIs.)

Writing of stories set in the shared-world began in 2016. For reasons that will not be discussed here, the setting was retconned in 2022 and 2023. This page primarily applies to the revised edition of the stories.

This page includes tropes and other information about story elements that as yet exist only in the authors' working notes (some of which have been mentioned on the forum, or are available to writers and pre-readers on the work's private wiki). WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware. Anything that hasn't happened yet in any of the published stories is marked as a spoiler, but not everything that is marked as a spoiler are things that haven't happened yet in any of the stories that were published either before or after the retcon.

You can read the published stories here; sort them by thread to put the list into reading order.

As of early 2024, the writing team have begun reposting the stories on Archive of Our Own.

Compare Planeocracy.

As a Mega Crossover fanfic, My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character incorporates elements from the following works:

An incomplete list:

This Mega Crossover fanfic specifically does not incorporate elements from the following works:

Tropes used in My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character include:

A-E

  • An Aesop: The Sailor Moon dub's infamous "Sailor Says" segments are mocked by Hotaru in Everyone's a Critic.
  • Alien Among Us: The displacees. Even the ones who aren't from space.
  • Aliens in Cardiff: Played straight and played with. Hoping to find a displacee in New York City? Sorry, try New Jersey instead... at least until the Muppet Theater shows up or somebody actually sees John Munch or Napoleon Solo. London, England? No, Kent County, UK and Dublin, Ireland. Toronto? Try heading up the road to Ottawa. Detroit? You'll have to cross the river to Windsor. And the largest collection of AI displacees are nowhere near Silicon Valley, having ended up in Boston instead. However, some displacees did appear in Montreal and Los Angeles, including in the latter group one with an interest in cinematography.
  • Alternate Realm Boon: Although many displacees already have their own special powers and talents, some of them acquire additional powerups on top of what they could already do. And all displacees also gain the ability to speak the dominant language of the area in which they arrived like a native.
  • Ascended Fanboy: The apartment managers were recruited through venues where fans of the various works were known or expected to congregate, and were selected in part for their familiarity with the works whose characters they would be playing host to. Played with in the case of the manager of the residence in Nova Scotia, which houses the cast of Ranma ½ -- he's rapidly growing to detest his tenants.
  • Aside Glance: Pretty much guaranteed any time Ferris Bueller is part of a story -- for instance, in Everyone's a Critic he winks at the readers when telling Cameron about an Internet theory that claims he is a figment of Cameron's imagination.
  • Better Than a Bare Bulb: Played With, Invoked, and Played for Laughs, usually by Rob:

After a beat, he added, "And I just lampshaded that. All The Tropes has ruined my life."

"I'm not sure. But she's the Goddess of the Future, so she had to be have been foreshadowing something," replied Rob as he half-consciously adjusted the lampshade on one of the room's lights.

  • Bait and Switch Comment: Accelerator reminds Sailor Jupiter of her sempai. The one who she dumped.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Kazakiri Hyoga, to begin with. It comes as a surprise to her that other girls have anatomical features that she doesn't. Because of various circumstances, this doesn't last.
  • The Big Board: One is jury-rigged during The Big Raid.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: Planted on Jaune Arc by Pyrrha Nikos after and because she watched her animated counterpart die at the end of V3 of RWBY.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Ferris Bueller retains his awareness of and ability to talk to the audience.
  • Butterfly of Doom: A literal one enticed Andy's Right-Hand-Cat Cujo into flipping a lever, activating a mad science invention.
  • Calling Me a Logarithm: Played with, in that "troglodyte" was meant as an insult, but not to the person who asked what the word means.
  • Cats Are Magic: Cat Síth, Luna, Artemis, Diana, Chiyo-chichi, President Aria, and Maya - from most to least magical. Schrödinger (Misaka 10032's cat), however, is just a cat.
  • Caught the Heart on His Sleeve: A non-romantic example when ITEM first shows up in Ottawa and Rob volunteers to go meet them.
  • A Chat with Satan: Both literally and playing the trope straight, in the epilogue to "Channeling Mana".
  • Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Defied. When Ami Mizuno visits the displacees from Mahoromatic and everybody calls her Sailor Mercury despite her never using her codename, she finally realizes that she's a celebrity in the setting.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Invoked during Some Uncomfortable Questions:

Bob: "<snrk> What are the odds that somebody is actually running some underwater residence south of Hawaii where Godzilla, Cthulhu, the aliens from Pacific Rim, Reptilicus and the Varga are all hanging out playing pinochle with cards the size of tennis courts? And when they get bored, that's when they show up in Venice?"
Brent: "Don't worry guys, I'm a great pinochle player!"

  • Compulsory School Age: Played Straight and Averted, Depending on the Writer. Rob's stories have his characters place out of high school if they're smart enough; only half of these characters continued to university. On the other hand, Brent's stories have the youngest Undine forced to attend high school despite having been about to graduate in her own universe – at least it's only part-time. The younger girls from K-On! find themselves enrolled at Franklin Township High School literally within minutes of arriving at Douglass Gardens Apartments (and later, Ascot and Ryunosuke Natsume are enrolled in a nearby elementary school). And a secret no one suspected is revealed when the girls of Kickstand Cottage discover that one of their number is not required to enroll at the local high school.
  • Crapsack Only by Comparison: Frenda's opinion of the living arrangements.

Frenda: Are you sure this is the right place? It basically looks like a dump - why would Railgun be living here?
Shiage: It's hardly a dump, unless you compare it to either of the Tokiwadai dorms.

Ruiko Saten: "I'm never going back to Academy City. Ever."
Misaka 10032: "You said that already, Misaka Niiko points out."
Ruiko Saten: "It's worth repeating. I'm never going back to Academy City."

  • Don't Call Me "Sir"!: "Young lady, 'Mr. Waters' is my father. Call me Harley."
  • Doorstopper: Firefox estimates in reader mode that it takes four hours, give or take a half hour, to read the introductory story. Most of the followup stories are much shorter.
  • Doppelganger Crossover: Believed to have been averted in-universe:

"Remember that I showed everybody one episode of the anime that was made about you, and everyone complained about the voices being a little bit wrong?"
"You said it was because we weren't in this universe, so they had to use voice actors instead."

  • And then played with when Japanese seiyuu start visiting their characters.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: Played with by "Residence 51" in Colorado, which sits atop a half-completed underground base which seems to have been built in the 1980s by the US government or a military contractor, but was abandoned and apparently forgotten before it was finished.
  • Exact Words: When the undines of Aria ask to be sent to Venice, Sebastian smugly arranges their delivery to Venice, California rather than Venezia, Italy on the grounds that if they had wanted to go to the Italian city, they should have used its proper name.
  • Extra-Strength Masquerade: "Malleable causality" adjusts people's attitudes (and sometimes memories) toward strange people and things (the displacees) appearing in the setting ... until it's overloaded by too many strange people and things showing up at once.

F-J

  • Familiar: Carried over from canon:
    • Sakura has Kero-chan and bishonen Yukito Tsukishiro, and all of her cards as familiars.
    • Fate has Alph/Arf as her familiar.
  • Fan Nickname: Invoked In-Universe when Bob casually mentions "The Outers" to Mamoru Chiba, then has to stop and explain the fan usage to him when he expresses confusion.
  • Fiction 500: Ciel Phantomhive has enough available cash to purchase, renovate, and furnish over fifty apartment buildings and complexes at the same time, at the beginning of the story.
  • First-Name Basis: More because of a change in circumstances than a change in relationships, most of the displacees end up adopting Western interpersonal conventions rather quickly.
  • Fish Out of Temporal Water: Many displacees are of the "Traveling to another world whose culture is somehow similar to that in a different time period of their own" variety. People from worlds resembling both the past (Jack of Kinrowan, The Wild Wild West TV series, etc.), wildly alternate near-presents (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and mutually-exclusive futures (Firefly, Aria, etc.) have appeared in the present-day setting.
  • For Halloween I Am Going as Myself: Literally. Kuroko thinks her Tokiwadai school uniform is good enough to wear to the Halloween party.
  • Fountain of Youth:
    • Rob Donaldson is rejuvenated to a physical age of 25 just before Academy City shows up.
    • Hayakawa seems to be experiencing a much more subtle youthening -- something he can certainly use, since although he's one serious tough survivor, he is in his 90s, after all.
  • Genius Bonus: The company that delivers a boat to Venice is called "Ekman Transport". It's also the name on the side of the truck that delivers Emily Pollifax and her husband to Douglass Gardens Apartments.
  • Girlfriend in Canada: Molly Ritter, daughter of the liaison to the Okeechobee, Florida displacees' residence, has a "snowbird" boyfriend who spends half his year in Toronto. Naturally she gets playful "Boyfriend in Canada" ribbing from her friends.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual / See-Thru Specs: The Ah! My Goddess megami have their canon "debugging" glasses. Thanks to a wish, everybody in residence at Rob's apartment building at the time has a less-powerful version that lets them see through magical disguises – and a few of the characters actually wear them.
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Whether it's clearing out a nest of Grimm in Atlanta or reducing an Unseelie stronghold near Ottawa, the more martial residences work together whenever they're asked.
  • Good Angel, Bad Angel: Invoked in the initial story: Brent finds himself interviewed by a pair of six-inch-tall Celestials, Risky and Safety. During the interview he asks Risky, tongue-in-cheek, if they shouldn't be standing on his shoulders. "Not my department, I don't do temptation," Risky basically replies. (This despite having already hopped up on his shoulder and whispered suggestions to him.)
  • Guardian Angel: Peorth specifically identifies post-transformation Hyoga as one. In practice, she's more the Zoroastrian sort than the Christian sort.
  • Halloween Episode: "Halloween in Another Reality"
  • Here We Go Again: The final line of Moving Days, Part I, uttered by Bob when a second batch of displacees arrives in exactly the same manner as the first.
  • Hero of Another Story: Invoked In-Universe in Moving Days, Part I: In response to their obvious dissatisfaction with finding out they are supporting characters for Hokago Tea Time, Bob tells the members of OnNaGumi that in an infinite multiverse there inevitably must be universes where they are the stars of a popular franchise, and the members of Hokago Tea Time are supporting characters for them. It doesn't seem to help.
  • Hold Up Your Score: Yang does the verbal equivalent to rate Jaune's first kiss with Pyrrha:

"Not bad, loverboy," she said. "I'll give you a 6 out of 10."

  • How Do I Shot Web?: After being transformed from a collection of forces to a half-human-half-angel, Hyoga has no idea how to use any of her abilities other than switching forms, flying, and understanding languages; she has to learn how her other abilities work (or not work)... and, for that matter, what her other abilities are.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Rob's Author Insert character is at least One Head Taller than any of the women living in his apartment, with the exception of Mii.
  • I Have Boobs - You Must Obey!: Averted when Mii and Rob first fall under Drosselmeyer's influence. She tries to invoke the trope, but he asks her to Please Put Some Clothes On instead.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: A Little Slice of Heaven on the Gulf ends with Kaji and Misato both saying this as a result of Kaji being contacted by HAL 9000.
  • Innocent Fanservice Girl: Mimi Hanyu, because of her background as a theatre major before being possessed by Mimete.
  • Invoked Trope: Rei Ayanami hears about her expies, and decides to dress as Yuki Nagato for the Halloween party.
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: Invoked in one item of marginalia in the in-universe book So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe: where the book states that "If you meet a self-aware program or android, it's a displacee", Chii from Chobits has indignantly commented "'It'? I self-identify as female."
  • It's Quiet... Too Quiet: Lampshaded during the story that brought the undines into the setting.

Aika: It's so quiet.
Alice: Maybe too quiet. Like... it's unnaturally still.

K-O

  • Kindhearted Cat Lover:
    • Kindhearted Cat-Lovers: Sakaki and Sebastian have a soft spot for felines.
    • Kindhearted-Cat Lover: Akari exemplifies this trope as well, but takes "lover" in a more romantic sense (just like she does everything else).
  • Kissing Under the Influence: Drosselmeyer's influence, shown in at least the Ottawa residence.
  • Knighting: Tomo's promotion to the nobility by Minako reminds Saber of a knighting ceremony, with the sword swapped for a transformation pen.
  • Light Bulb Joke: Referenced in "Channeling Mana" at the end of a discussion about politics.
  • Like Reality Unless Noted: The reality of late-2016, to be specific.
  • Lime: By writer consensus, this is as far as this story will go in deconstructing sexuality. The line has already been reached.
  • Literal Genie: Sebastian very knowingly and borderline maliciously plays this role when, in response to the Undines of Aria asking to be sent to Venice, he arranges their transport to Venice, California rather than Venezia, Italy.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: Over 500 with individual character pages on the work's wiki, and more who haven't been given even an outline character page yet. Needless to say, this means that many characters have been Demoted to Extra, including some popular characters such as Belldandy, Ferris Bueller, Ranma Saotome, Shirou Emiya, and Touma Kamijou.
  • Log Fic: "Some Uncomfortable Questions"
  • Look Ma, No Plane: When he needed to take a teleporter and a pilot to an aircraft, Accelerator controlled his own and their speed vectors in order to fly beside the plane close enough for the teleporter to get the pilot aboard.
  • Male Gaze: Jaune Arc is briefly disgusted with himself in Everyone's a Critic when he follows Pyrrha outside after she watches her animated counterpart die, and finds his first thought when he gets there is how nice her butt looks in the jeans she's wearing.
  • Marginal Note: So You Just Arrived From a Parallel Universe, an In-Universe book released as part of the project, is liberally sprinkled with marginalia written by everyone from Tomo Takino to Ferris Bueller.
  • Marilyn Maneuver: To be expected when somebody dresses as Marilyn Monroe for a Halloween party attended by metahumans.
  • May-December Romance: Rob and his fiancées friends who are girls once the Mind Control is broken (and then they angst about whether they want to go back to being more than friends). Verges on Wife Husbandry in that, during the Mind Control, he insisted on waiting until the youngest turned 18 before doing anything other than a quick hug. Once he's rejuvenated to 25 just before Academy City as a whole shows up, their physical difference in ages is reduced but their psychological differences in outlook remain.
  • Medium Awareness: Just as with the film he comes from, Ferris Bueller is aware that he and his friends are in a fanfic, and makes Aside Glances and other acknowledgements of the readers whenever he appears, if he doesn't actually have an opportunity to address them directly.
    • Similarly, Isis retains her awareness of the audience.
  • Mega Neko: Cat Síth and Chiyo's father.
  • Mood Whiplash: Everyone's a Critic initially seems like a comic piece about displacees watching or reading the works they come from. Then the reactions stop being funny... and then they start alternating...
  • Mundane Wish: When offered a wish by a representative of the Goddess Relief Office, Mihoshi Kiramitsu wishes for someone to help her and displacees like her understand what's going on. This results in Heaven and Hell jointly creating the residence/manager system.
  • Mutually Fictional:
    • At least initially, you couldn't find a displacees' residence where nobody had seen the original Sailor Moon anime before being displaced: Saten-san watched it before moving to Academy City, Kaorin is enamored by Sailors Uranus and Neptune, it was Momoko Takamachi's favorite show when she was her daughter Nanoha's age, Misato "really connected with" Sailor Moon before Second Impact, all of the Triomatic recognized Sailor Mercury by name, and the Sailor Moon S anime was in the middle of its first broadcast run in Tokyo when the Magic Knights were sent to Cephiro.
    • In the other direction, at least some of the Sailor Moon cast were familiar with Kimagure Orange Road before being displaced.
  • Ms. Exposition: Chiyo Mihama knows enough basic science, history, and mathematics to explain the basics of most points. She is a genius, after all. And she is more familiar with the Los Angeles area because, aside from Tina, she was the only one actually planning on living in North America.
  • Multiverse: Is set in a "Many Worlds" multiverse which is undergoing a massive crisis.
  • Nanomachines: Used in the Phlebotinum Du Jour and Magic From Technology senses of the trope, and usually supplied by Washuu-chan. Nanotech has been used to give multiple characters ridiculously fast medical treatment with a side-order of life extension.
  • Never Gets Drunk‎‎: Rob Donaldson, after the events of Donaldson en Kazakiri. If Fafnir's poison breath won't affect him any more, a mickey of liquor certainly won't either.
  • Never Heard That One Before: Invoked in Moving Days, Part I, when Bob notes he needs to call "Tetsuoooooo!" at Akira Wasa of K-On!. His wife notes that she's probably heard that "like a million times already".
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Described on the work's wiki as "Washuu-chan Breaks the Internet Multiverse", this is what starts off the entire story. As far as Washuu-chan knows, at least — Casey and Andy have evidence that they're the ones who broke the Multiverse, and Shinji Ikari is sure that it's his fault. The War Doctor might beg to differ, and then there's that whole dimensional rift Glory opened up in Sunnydale...
  • "No. Just... No" Reaction: Makoto Kino in response to seeing the Toon Makers Sailor Moon in Everyone's a Critic.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The mages, magical girls, aliens, time travelers, sliders or espers who have found themselves in the setting. The overwhelming majority keep their abilities secret, either to blend in more easily or to keep them as hidden advantages (or for both reasons).
  • Numerical Theme Naming: The first four Misaka Sisters seen in the story took personal names based on the final digit of their serial numbers, although one of them was quickly renamed when Mihoshi misheard the name.
  • Old Shame: In Everyone's a Critic, Satan suggests that the Casey and Andy web comic is this for Andy.
  • Omniglot:
    • Hyoga, after her transformation powerup. This is implied to be telepathic, in that she doesn't understand languages that nobody else alive speaks.
    • Also played with for Belldandy, who apparently can speak Alicia Florence's "Ara ara" dialect perfectly.
  • One Steve Limit: Averted repeatedly:

P-T

  • Pals with Jesus: It's common for a residence building to have a tutelary, and in some cases the kami (or demon) visits often enough that they're on a First-Name Basis with the building's residents.
    • The tutelary of Maison d'Orléans, Archangel Michael, shows up there almost daily, and has basically adopted Jehanne Romée as his little sister.
    • Just might be disturbingly literal for the girls of Kickstand Cottage, whose tutelary is a Celestial they'd already met in their home universe who bears a striking resemblance to a clean-shaven Jesus. In an as-yet-unreleased passage, he all but admits to their local liaison that he is Jesus, but at the same time warns that who Jesus is thought to be today and who he actually was might be two very different things.
  • Parental Substitute / Sink-or-Swim Fatherhood: In order to keep the Academy City girls from being separated in foster care, and then the same happening to the Sailor Senshi, Rob had to become foster father to them all. He made sure to get their permission first, but he still went from being a bachelor to having ten tween- and teenage daughters in a single week.
    • Happily Adopted: And then after she learns about the dark side of Academy City and decides she's never going back there, Ruiko Saten agrees to be adopted by Rob. As in real life, it will take a year in-universe for the process to be completed.
  • Pass the Popcorn: The Sailor Senshi appear to be consuming buckets of it while watching the various adaptations of their story in Everyone's a Critic -- and have enough of it on hand to throw at each other.
  • The Password Is Always Swordfish: At least for the first few days, at Aria House:

Brent: The network name is "Pokoteng", and the password is 'swordfish1!', that's digit 1 and exclamation mark at the end. Don't want to make it too easy to guess, after all.

  • Pinky Swear: Tomo offers this to Yomi, but given that they were just talking about yakuza, the implication is Yubitsume.
  • Playboy Bunny: Mii Konori's costume for the 2016 Halloween Party.[2]
  • Polyamory: With the (known) gender balance among displacees skewing so much that females noticeably outnumber males, this is a possibility for everyone in the stories. Consider also that characters from Tenchi Muyo! were among the earliest displacees, and there's at least one Reality Warper in the setting who enjoys forcing people into roles in a story. It's known to be more than a possibility in a small minority of the residences. (This plays out as For the Love of Many; as of February 2017 in universe (late-2022 in Real Life), Three-Way Sex has yet to be mentioned as happening anywhere.)
  • Precision F-Strike: Ami Mizuno's response to watching Toon Makers Sailor Moon: "What the hell was that supposed to be?"
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: During the Halloween party:

Yomi: "They're yakuza, Tomo. Ya-ku-za!"

  • Real Place Background: Most of the displacee residences (although not all of them) are or were real buildings, located where the stories say they can be found. Nearby real businesses and attractions which prove plot-relevant also show up in the stories. In addition, at least a couple stories include what are virtually travelogues through real travel routes.
  • Real World Episode: This project is what happens when hundreds of works simultaneously get Real World Episodes -- all in the same Real World.
  • Recursive Fanfiction: In Everyone's a Critic, Utena Tenjou reacts to having read the Symphony of the Sword stories from Undocumented Features, and Atsuko Natsume discovers both a goal to aspire to and a problem she never realized upon reading 1990s-vintage fanfiction about herself.
  • Refugee From TV Land: See the list under Mega Crossover. Many of the displacees got to watch their own television shows or movies when they arrived, often as evidence that they had changed universes.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Malleable Causality turns this trope Up to Eleven.
  • Rule of Three: A motif in Donaldson en Kazakiri. Some words are used three times in the same sentence, there were three encounters on the way back to the portal home, and three objections each were raised to the title characters returning to Earth.[3]
  • Rule 34: A comment made by Anthy Himemiya in Everyone's a Critic suggests that at least some of the displacees have been warned about Lemon fanfiction about them. And in the final scene of the same story it's obvious that Tomo Takino is reading one about herself and Yomi.
  • Scattered Across Time and Space: Common to larger groups of characters from long-running works. The most obvious example is the characters from A Certain Magical Index, whose arrivals were spread out over a full year and across two continents despite them leaving their own world at the same time.
  • Secret Path: The tunnel running between the Banzai Institute compound and the Roadhouse in Somerset NJ is the "go somewhere without being noticed" type.
  • Self-Insert Fic: With anywhere from two to five self-insert characters active at a given time in Real Life.
  • Shipper on Deck: Tomoyo, approaching The Matchmaker except that she does understand "personal space".
  • Show Within a Show/Fictional Document:
  • Side Bet: In the Halloween story: "Okay, who had 'As soon as she saw him' in the pool?"
  • Slice of Life: particularly in Brent's stories.
  • Snowball Fight: Told, not shown, in "Donaldson en Kazakiri" after the world has been saved but before the heroes leave Niflheim.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: Invoked for a bunch of folks, including The Misaka Sisters, Frenda Seivelun, Mahoro Ando, Pyrrha Nikos... and Gauron.
  • Spell My Name with an "S":
    • Rob is using Hepburn romanization, not Kunrei-shiki; hence, a certain character from A Certain Magical Index is named Kazakiri Hyoga here, not Kazakiri Hyoka. This will become a plot point once Academy City as a whole shows up.
    • Brent has changed two oddly-spelled names back to actual English-language names; thus, "Aika Granzchesta" is called "Aika Grantchester" and "Teletha Testarossa" is known as "Teresa Testarossa" in this setting.
    • Similarly, "Raimu" from Bakuon!! goes by "Lime" -- then again, this romanization was seen on a leaderboard during a race in the anime.
    • Also, this story uses "Cat Sìth" instead of the plural "Cait Sìth", because there's only one of him.
  • Spy From Weights and Measures: A whole group of them, ready to use the name "Crystal Millennium Naval Office of Bells, Charts and Buoys" once the secret is revealed.
  • Stranger in a Familiar Land:
    • The characters from the Jack of Kinrowan duology have, from their point of view, been sent three decades into the future without warning, with no way to get home. Ottawa seems familiar, but so many details are different.
    • In The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax, Emily Pollifax and her husband Cyrus Reed also find themselves nearly twenty-five years into the future, and as they're driven to the New Brunswick NJ area, she notes how much remains the same... and how much more is subtly (or not) different.
  • Sue Donym:
    • Accelerator's ID lists him as "Axel A. Rayder". Even he thinks it's a stupid name.
    • Similarly, Ascot from Magic Knight Rayearth is given the last name "Sumner" for his official paperwork.
  • Tarot Troubles: Sakura Kinomoto's cards foretell her difficulties two different destinies: in the Clear Card Arc (canon path) and in My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character (fanfic path).
  • That Came Out Wrong: After a young woman had been magically Twinned and the two were playing Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who got to choose where to live first:

"Mimi, stop playing with yourself during lunch."
Jayne snickered. Some of the others rolled their eyes.
"Okay, that came out wrong."

  • Title Drop: Everyone's a Critic provides one for itself, and one for the project as a whole.
  • "There and Back" Story: "Donaldson en Kazakiri"
  • Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Averted, despite the number of "displacee" anime characters, because the writers and thus the residences are located in Europe and North America. Tokyo is barely an afterthought in this setting to begin with, with only two known displacees (out of over 500) resident there as of Real Life 2022.
  • Translation Convention: Played straight, as characters who know Japanese or German may be speaking it to each other, but it's written in English. Also enforced, as most displacees were given knowledge of the local language (usually English) on entering the world. Also inverted, as characters subject to the convention in their home canon don't actually know the language, like how all but Akari from Aria don't know Japanese.
  • Trapped in Another World: Inverting the trope is the premise of the entire shared world; instead of the self-inserts going to a fictional world, fictional characters come to the shared world. (Hence the implied meaning behind the title: "My apartment manager is not an isekai character, but everybody else in the apartment building is!")
  • Truck-kun: Played with. During the events of The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax, Emily Pollifax and her husband are transported to a new timeline in a truck. When they inquire about it, the driver says:

"The truck, I have been given to understand, is a newly-traditional means of accomplishing the transition, although for your comfort it was decided that it was better that you were both inside it rather than in the street in front of it, as is the usual arrangement."

U-Z

  • Undead Tax Exemption: Averted. Either due to "malleable causality", the explicit efforts of the gods and demons, friendly hacking by HAL 9000, or a combination of the three, displacees generally enter the setting with (or quickly acquire) complete, consistent and fully-backstopped histories (including, yes, tax records where appropriate).
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Thanks to "malleable causality‏‎", nobody who notices that the displacees are displacees seems to care who they are... until the system breaks down when Academy City as a whole and the entire cast of Girls und Panzer show up on the same day and it becomes impossible to hide the fact that there are displacees present in the setting.
  • Void Between the Worlds: Invoked by name in The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax when Sebastian explains to Emily Pollifax and her husband that the truck they are riding in is actually traversing the Void and the view out its windows is a simulation presented for their comfort and sanity. When Cyrus expresses doubt about this, Sebastian invites him to roll down the window he's sitting next to to see the Void in all its unfiltered glory.
  • Waking Up Elsewhere:
    • In Moving Days, Part I, the cast of K-On! arrive in Refuge by waking up together in what looks like someone's living room. And the story ends with another batch of displacees -- as yet unidentified -- who have done the same.
    • Eddie Wilson, Mark Thackeray and Sam Tyler all basically woke up on the side of a street, having no idea where they were or how they got there.
    • In Outriding, Sailors Uranus and Neptune wake up in the same bed, in a hotel room on a different continent than the one they went to sleep on.
  • What Is This Thing You Call Love?: Becomes a Discussed Trope when the Misaka Sisters ask Sailor Venus about this on Valentine's Day.
  • With a Capital T: From Moving Days, Part I:

Over the next couple days we got Busy with a capital "B". (Which rhymes with "D", which stands for "Deadline"...)


  1. ↑ Yes, this averts the One Steve Limit. They're different romanizations of the same car name.
  2. ↑ And the writers discovered that as of late-2018 Pixiv, Safebooru, Zerochan, and E-shuushuu between them had fan art of every major heroic-side female from A Certain Scientific Railgun in the outfit except for Konori.
  3. ↑ Yes, we know that this is three uses of the Rule of Three.
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