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The Borribles: Difference between revisions
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Action Girl]]: Sydney and Chalotte.
* [[The Alleged Steed]]: What Sam the Horse appears to be at first.
* [[Anyone Can Die]]: Major characters can and do die for real here and there. Life for the average Borrible is, as the saying goes, nasty, brutish and short.
* [[The Artful Dodger]]: Knocker in particular, but any of the more heroic Borribles fit this archetype.
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* [[Brats with Slingshots]]: The classic forked-stick-and-rubber-band slingshot (called a "catapult" in British parlance) is the traditional weapon of all Borribles, and they eagerly embrace its high-tech descendent the wrist rocket. Borribles are deadshots with catapults; they can -- and do -- kill both Rumbles and adult humans with well-placed shots.
* [[British Accents]]: On display throughout. The Borribles generally speak in a lowerclass dialect (although Sydney demonstrates enough upperclass mannerisms that one wonders who her family was before she ran away and Borribled).
* [[Call to Adventure]]: Issued in the form a message to each of the tribes of London, asking them to dispatch a single unnamed Borrible to Battersea to be trained for the Great Rumble Hunt.
** Also directly made by Spiff to Knocker moments after the Adventurers depart, when he sends Knocker to join them under the guise of being a "historian" while tasked with a secret mission for Spiff.
* [[Chaotic Neutral]]/[[Chaotic Good]]: The Borribles are by nature extreme individualists dismissive of all attempts to regulate them. They do recognize good and evil, and although their interpretations are somewhat colored by their culture, do come down (more or less) on the side of good.
* [[The Chessmaster]]: Spiff.
* [[Children Are Innocent]]: Thoroughly subverted. A child has to be very much ''not'' innocent to become a Borrible. And if you consider Borribles just mutated children... well, there are ''no'' innocent Borribles. (Although Sydney comes close at times.)
* [[Cool Horse]]: What Sydney thinks Sam is, at least. The other Adventurers are less sure at first -- but Sam does pull off the occasional heroic stunt (for a horse), and seems not at all bothered by traipsing all over (and sometimes under) London with them.
* [[Crapsack World]]: England in the 1970s was not a happy land -- this is the time and land which gave the world [[Punk Rock]] and the first [[wikipedia:Special Patrol Group|British police with guns]].
* [[Disney Death]]: {{spoiler|Knocker, at the end of the first book, appears to have died during the group's escape from the Wendle tunnels; they discover in the second book that he didn't die, but was captured and used as slave labor.}}
* [[Earn Your Title|Earn Your Name]]: The ''only'' way to get any kind of name as a Borrible: until you've earned a name by an impressive feat of daring {{spoiler|such as assassinating a leader of a rival gang}} the best you can expect is to be referred to as "hey, you!" The plot of the first novel is driven in part by the protagonist's desire to get a ''second'' name (which is not unprecedented; one of his associates has several names, each commemorating some memorable deed).
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* [[Lawful Evil]]: Pretty much all government is portrayed this way. When the police are allowed to physically mutilate a prisoner without any kind of trial or due process first ''in order to turn him into a good little citizen'', it's hard to see them as anything else.
** Borribles also view the Rumbles this way, and what little we get to see of Rumble society suggests it might be justified.
* [[Least Is First]]: Instead of choosing the most skilled and cunning named Borribles of London for the Great Rumble Hunt, a team of unnamed new Borribles is assembled, and given [[Training From Hell]].
* [[Like Reality Unless Noted]]: The world is very clearly 1970s Earth -- except for the immortal elfin children and the intelligent rodents each maintaining their own civilizations in the cracks and crevices of human civilization.
* [[A MacGuffin Full of Money]]: The Rumbles' box of money which Spiff secretly charges Knocker with retrieving (under the guise of being a "historian" documenting the Great Rumble Hunt); it directly drives the ending of the first book and much of the plot of the second.
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* [[The Runaway]]: Every Borrible starts out as a runaway child before metamorphosing.
* [[Satisfied Street Rat]]: Spiff, Flinthead and many others, despite not technically being adults.
* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]: Firmly on the Cynical end, at least as far as the narrative point of view is concerned. The Borribles themselves seem to sit on the balance point, aware that it's a [[Crapsack World]] and that life frequently sucks, but still managing to be surprisingly happy and occasionally even light-hearted among it all.
* [[Street Urchin]]: The base state for a Borrible; a very successful Street Urchin turns into a Borrible.
* [[Take That]]: In addition to the scathing satire of ''[[The Wombles]]'' found in the Rumbles, the rag-and-bone man Dewdrop and his son 'Erbie from ''The Borribles'' are vicious caricatures of ''[[Steptoe and Son]]''.
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* [[Token Black]]: Orococco.
* [[Tomboy and Girly Girl]]: Chalotte and Sydney, respectively.
* [[Training From Hell]]: The Adventurers are basically run through an over-the-top boot camp to ready them for the Great Rumble Hunt.
* [[The Unmasqued World]]: Authorities know of the existence of Borribles and establish special police squads to deal with them. The average citizen has heard of Borribles, but usually has never seen one (at least knowingly). Rumbles own automobiles and drive them in the street in broad daylight.
* [[Urban Fantasy]]
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