Nathan Cameron
In an alternate 2009, YouTuber Nathan Cameron decided to honor the worst movies, TV shows, and internet videos (primarily focusing of Youtube Poop) in the world, doing it in a way that parodies Award Shows (kinda like the Golden Raspberry Awards, only it's for "the best of the worst, and the worst of the best"). This "Award Show" takes place atop the roof of a building, where the weather is unusually snowy. However, this "show" is interrupted by a trans-dimensional vortex, which spews out giant octopus tentacles that smash everything in their path. Characters from the CD-i Games appear and cause chaos and discord...
And the man behind it all... is Aran Ryan of Punch Out
Wow, Didn't See That Coming.
Yeah, right!
Oh, BTW, Aran has wicked-awesome powers in this version of him, the kind that rival the Elder Gods... Oh Crap.
Tropes
Within the "show"...
- Alien Geometries: "Their" world is supposedly this, although it is never seen; the cameras would break from the sheer Mind Screwiness of it.
- Anyone Can Die: No one's safe from Aran and his monster team, although the kids don't die, they're just turned into People Of Mass Destruction by the monsters. They disappear in the end.
- Badass Normal: Nathan Cameron. It's his show, damnit, and it's his duty to keep things in check! Abnormal Irishmen be damned.
- Creative Sterility: Humans are said to be (one of) the most imaginative beings in the universe, able to take its own image and twist it into horror after horror, hence why the chaos beings appear as superpowered Italian plumbers, a goofy swordfighting elf, and an insane & pragmatic Irish boxer.
- Cosmic Horror Story: a lighthearted (but still demented) take on it.
- Did You Actually Believe: said by Hectan (from The Wand Of Gamelon), and later, Aran, due to Nathan's steadfastness.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu: Nathan Cameron tries to beat Aran Ryan by calling his bluff. Needless to say, it doesn't work... not quite, anyway...
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: Punch Out, tee-hee-hee... Nathan actually gives some pretty effective hits to Aran as the story goes on, but none more effective than in the end, where he causes Aran to explode, sending his mooks back to the world from which they came.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: By defeating the evil hyper-dimensional beings, Nathan saved the world, but his audience and crew are all dead. So much for that Award Show.
- It is also implied in the epilogue that Nathan might be slowly turning into an Aran-Ryan-alike for all his trouble. Uh-oh...
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: By defeating the evil hyper-dimensional beings, Nathan saved the world, but his audience and crew are all dead. So much for that Award Show.
- Eldritch Abomination: The giant tentacle mass, and to an extent, Aran Ryan. Nathan says that Aran gained his madness and powers by winning a staring contest with Cthulhu by whopping him in the eye, causing him to change into the demigod of insanity and chaos. (not the god, but the demigod)
Comment: "Wait, do you mean that he really existed once? But he said himself that he was nothing but fictional and-- wait-- AAAHH!!" |
- Family Friendly Firearms: Mocked. When the hyper-dimensional mooks pull out the cutesy laser guns, the police respond by pulling out real guns. However, the mooks were Immune to Bullets and they vaporized the cops into Pink Mist.
- Minor Major Character: Hectan. He's supposedly as Badass as Aran with his own set of powers to boot, but he's only in the spotlight for the middle of the show, everywhere else he's nothing but a background brawler.
- Order Versus Chaos: Definitely! Although Nathan isn't really that ordered, his dedication to the order of the show is enough to assign him as the chaos-calmer. He states that his fight with the chaos beings is definitely not a matter of "Good Versus Evil". (More on that in the "outside of the show" folder)
- Person of Mass Destruction: Aran Ryan, and later his altered human minions.
- Photoshop Filter of Evil: In the end, the remaining camerawoman tries to get Nathan to talk about his feelings about the terrible catastrophe, but Nathan suddenly turns around in a flurry of liberal faux-shaky-cam to reveal that he's a little on the Irish maniac side and DOES NOT WANT TO BE INTERVIEWED! His "Aran" side has his hair in a similar style to Aran's, doing an Aran-Ryan-esque voice, while the effects screw up his appearance until he looks like an impressionist painting with bleeding colors.
- Punch Punch Punch Uh Oh: Aran can't be harmed by "wimpy little human punches", but a crowbar to the back of his head is enough to stun him for a short while. Nathan applies the crowbar liberally.
- Sanity Has Advantages: During a fight with Nathan, Aran began to fight like a proper boxer, giving Nathan a fair challenge before saying "What the hell am I doing?!" and launching an energy ball at Nathan's groin.
- Shut Up Kirk/Shut UP Hannibal: The main hero and villain, Nathan and Aran, try to outspeech each other about the right to invade dimensions and cause chaos.
- Starring Special Effects: Aran and his motley crew.
- Super Empowering: Mocked. When a bystander watching The SBIG Awards on his computer stared into Hectan's eyes, he became a Brainwashed wannabe wearing an idiotic costume, blessing Hectan for his "powers", which included X-ray vision (nothing more than thinking in 3-Dimensions) and flying (running really fast with some amateur Parkour). He's later arrested for punching an "evil" pair of Half Identical Twin babies.
- Surreal Horror/Surreal Humor: The SBIG Awards is made of these.
- Tastes Like Diabetes: the tea party scene atop the tall building at the prologue is made of this, complete with loads of sweet treats, lots of smiling, tea-drinking ladies, and tiger cubs. Needless to say, with the above tropes at play, the damn thing had to implode! Everything cute atop the building was sucked into a vortex of no return to show that something has Gone Horribly Wrong in our world!
- The Treachery of Images: Aran and his ragtag gang of YTP misfits are only seen in our world in their computer-generated, semi-physical forms. Their real forms cannot exist in our world without Dividing By Zero. They have fun with the humans by trying (and failing) to convince them that they are nothing in this world but digital information.
- Nathan can comprehend it, but only through Bellisarios Maxim.
- Writing Around Trademarks: Nathan had a video he posted some time ago, using an old song called "Merv Griffin is 14 Feet Tall", but YouTube blocked the song by request, eliminating "the funny", and forcing Nathan to tear it down. Without a remnant of the music video left on YouTube, Nathan wanted to redo the song as a Take That to YouTube's copyright policies, but since none of his crew could do anything right music-wise, they decided to redub the song "Hugh Lanard is 14 Feet Tall" (Named after his sadistic junior-high gym teacher) with the replacement name sung drunkenly and off-key in contrast to the artist's clean, dry tone. Nathan played it as an "honorable mention" for "worst editing in a music video".
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The tentacle mass appears to be too many octopus tentacles, and then some, but what they're actually attached to... OH SHI--
Outside of the "show"...
- Agent Mulder: Nathan, who believes that the chaos beings of his movie (which he dubbed "chaotizans") are real, and are balanced by the orderly "virtuizans", who are purely about justice, law, and order... no matter what.
Nathan: "'Expect the unexpected' goes for both chaotizans and virtuizans, but do you actually believe you can expect something as unexpected as chaos?!" |
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: Nathan's strange dreams give him the most inspiration for his works and beliefs. To respond to the above trope, his mind actually is the explorer of the chaoti-verse.
- Catch Phrase
Nathan: "(Noun Phrase) and all that jazz." |
- Crazy Awesome: Leo.
- Critical Backlash: The reason why Nathan made The SBIG Awards.
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Nathan says curiosity is a chaotic trait because of its chaotic implications, but he also favors it over staying put, even though he says the latter is the most orderly thing to do.
- Disappeared Dad: Nathan's dad was his favorite mentor until a mysterious illness took him away when Nathan was only 11. Every crappy movie he's done since is a tribute to him, since they made movies together long ago.
- Does Not Understand Sarcasm: Charles Gibbon, who everyone calls Charlie. He also falls for April Fools "news stories", hence why he hates that holiday.
- Dumb Muscle: Charlie again. He isn't a total idiot, more like a Genius Ditz, as he has great technical skills in model-making and special effects as well as his strength, but he isn't that knowledgeable in world cultures, thinking Aran Ryan was a Scotsman when he first saw him.
- Fiery Redhead: Leo, being an auburn-haired quarter-Irish, fits part 2 of this trope, part 1 has been mildly present since childhood, even before he knew that was a stereotype of the Gaelic, and then he embraced it in his Aran Ryan persona.
- Filk Song: The surreally caustic "Merv Griffin is 14 Feet Tall", which seems to wail on about everything that ol' Merv himself isn't, from his (metaphoric) height, to his weight, and even his attitude. Nobody knows who sung this song, or what type of medication he was taking when he made it (or lack thereof), except that he's responsible for the downfall of Nathan's original "Merv" music video when he emailed YouTube to block the music.
- Impersonation Paradox: Leo's Aran Ryan impression might've been pretty accurate in the movie, but the more he does it elsewhere, the more it seems that it's neither the genuine Aran nor just Leo doing an Aran impersonation, but a strange blend of both... Hmm...
- Internet Backdraft: "That damn tea party scene". Many overly-sensitive women, animal rights activists, and Trolls alike have bashed Nathan for the scene, many calling him a sexist ogre and "cute-killer".
- Its Popular Now It Sucks: Nathan thinks popularity is overrated, especially when supposedly "good" movies fail to deliver. However, he's not Fan Dumb, he's just cautious, and eccentric times 10. He loves good-good movies, just as much as good-bad movies, but popular-good won't cut it until he hears from his friends about it, and even then, he might not consider it.
- He often considers the good-good movies that failed to win the most awards.
- Nathan judges a good-good franchise by how much crap it had to go through, I.E. the Super Mario Bros with that cartoon and that movie, the Street Fighter series with its movies and that cartoon, and Punch Out with... Blue King Hippo... Needless to say, the last three pass his judgment with flying colors.
- Karmic Trickster: Nathan and Leo.
- MacGyvering: Leo is the master of this, and along with Charlie, who needs stinkin' expensive film equipment when you got a video camera, some PVC piping, duct tape, and
a littleimagination? - Mad Artist: Nathan Cameron is rather eccentric, but how much so depends on who you're speaking to. Going among mad people and all that jazz.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Leo, from his girly screams to his guttural growls, is potentially the Mel Blanc of the New Media. He does a spot-on impersonation of Aran Ryan, which was one of the inspirations for SBIG.
- Leo likes to overdo it on the U.K. swears in his Aran voice.
- Mathematicians Answer: Nathan's specialty. Why? Yes.
- Metrosexual: Leo's a slice of this; he pays great attention to his hair and skin. Leo joked that if he were a Video Game character, he'd be an Aran Ryan/Narcis Prince combo.
- Conversely, he hates Man Hugs and Camp Gays, with his idea of "Bromance" being a night out at the pub. He does like it when people, even gays, compliment him on his hair.
- Misattributed Song: "Merv Griffin is 14 Feet Tall" to Weird Al Yankovic. It doesn't help that the guy singing it sounds kinda like him.
- Never Speak Like That Again: Leo and his Aran Ryan voice to Nathan, especially when Leo yells and swears in that voice.
- One Hit Wonder: Nathan worries he's becoming one of these because of the popularity of his SBIG Awards around his college and abroad. He even finds himself known as "that [1] SBIG guy".
- Not Himself: Leo. You can tell he's not going to be your Jerk With a Heart of Gold Metrosexual Quarter-Irish kid when he spends too much time in his Aran Ryan voice... then prepare to deal with the nearest equivalent to having the actual Aran Ryan in your midst... at full-power crazy, no less!
- Nathan finds that a lot of his dream-selves are like this, from being an immortal able to tell a horrifically-scarred and monstrously-huge Aran/Cú Chulainn to go screw himself, to becoming a Victorian gentleman sword-fighting a gentleman Aran (no less batty) atop a roof... gentlemanly...
- Clothes Make the Maniac: Leo finds himself more prone to feeling Aran-ish if he styles his hair like him or wears boxing gloves.
- Nathan finds that a lot of his dream-selves are like this, from being an immortal able to tell a horrifically-scarred and monstrously-huge Aran/Cú Chulainn to go screw himself, to becoming a Victorian gentleman sword-fighting a gentleman Aran (no less batty) atop a roof... gentlemanly...
- Real Men Wear Pink: Despite the tea party massacre, Nathan loves tea (herbal teas and Earl Grey are his faves) and believes that tiger cubs are freakin' adorable; why else would he include them in lieu of puppies, kitties or bunnies? His "manliness" is in his ability to take a punch, real or computer-generated, although the two sometimes become one and the same.
- Serial Escalation: Nathan Cameron's arrival involves a monorail train to the roof of the building, and it leaps over a raised gap in the track (like a freakin' stunt car, only loooooooooonger), and it crashes spectacularly into a giant mattress. Everyone on it inexplicably survives, albeit with a case of whiplash (except for Nathan, of course).
- Stone Soup: Nathan and his friends got help for their movie this way, along with asking undignifyingly nicely, and waving around what little cash they have. The movie's budget ended up to be $555.75, not counting the price of the stuff they borrowed; they brought it back after all, right? Right?
- They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: Nathan loves baaaad movies, and so if it's a trope (over)used in a bad movie, he'll use it in his own movies for good measure.
- Took the Bad Film Seriously: Nathan believes that his steadfast dedication to his bad movies is what makes them so bad. (So bad that they're good, that is)
- Throw It In: So many times that it actually outweighs the scripted plot, and yet fits awesomely. Nathan considers himself a coincidence magnet.
- Jive Turkey/Totally Radical: Nathan's speech is a mix of beatnik, hippie, and 80's dude. He picked it up from his dad, who picked it up from his dad. Dude...
- Sophisticated As Hell: Don't be surprised when Nathan speaks Antiquated Linguistics one minute and quotes Internet fads the next.
- True Neutral: Nathan, conforming to numbers 2, 4, and somewhat 13. Nathan's morals are fair, but he doesn't believe in the standard "good" and "evil", instead believing in a balanced mix between "chaotic" and "virtuous" traits. Nathan's unorthodox, nearly atheistic ("God" is not who you think "he" is) and posthumanistic (humans are nothing but cogs on the clockwork), viewpoint has made many people uncomfortable, especially a peer Fundamentalist Christian girl, practically a Straw Evangelist.
- He has experimented in other beliefs in his other movies, like sending his android protagonists to "techno-heaven", deconstructing Black and White Morality, and playing with all the Shades of Conflict, mixing them up on his easel, and painting happy little trees with them. Wait, what?
- What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs: Nathan's only real stimulants are chocolate and tea; everything he does is the product of his sober imagination.
- ↑ nutty/cool/little/damn/hot/cute/etc...