World Building/The Azar Universe

The AZAR universe is a fictional world from which its creator has built a number of spin-offs (generally acting as internal speculative fiction and occasionally crossovers into other universes, generally of games). It easily reaches Troperiffic levels of subverted and inverted tropes, occasionally averted tropes, and, once in a blue moon, tropes played dead straight.

Not to be confused with The Azar Project, a charitable organization doing things from making computers for children in economically disadvantaged situations to free webhosting for freeware developers. Interestingly, or perhaps not-so, it was created by the same troper who created the AZAR universe itself.

Note - this article is not yet complete. Check back in a week or two.

The Azar universe is home to:

Spinoffs (including crossovers of The Azar universe include:

• A Nice Day In The Park: A Furtopian Web Original forum role-play that went (and is still) way Off the Rails. The crossover component comes from the creator role-playing a character from a number of the works. Not to mention the inclusion of his space fleet. Gosh how it went Off the Rails.
• TX 2: A mod for the game Transcendence.
• The Rauthor: A mod for the game Battle for Wesnoth.
• Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Eternal Command: A mod for the game Supreme Commander.

The AZAR itself ranges in portrayals, though is consistently attempting to achieve a Utopian state of existence, be it just a small start-up non-profit organization or a universe-spanning empire of Energy Beings. This striving for perfection may lead some (both in and out of universe) to find the AZAR to be very Mary Suetopia-esq in nature - they are trying to make a perfect world for themselves, though not (usually) at the expense of others.

The AZAR Universe contains examples of:

• Acceptable Target: They come from the author's list of acceptable targets, and include fundamentalists, sport hunters, vegetarians, and vegetables. Mostly done in parody.
• All Powerful Bystander: Small Puppy - he's too concerned getting hugs and cuddles to do anything else. Until he realizes that controlling others into giving him hugs and cuddles is more effective.
• And That Would Be Wrong: Subverted. The azarians will consider options humans will throw out the window immediatly, and vice versa. Each views much of the other's morality to be Blue and Orange Morality.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Selenite, only occuring the the continuities with the Rauthaur.
• Author Avatar: Played with, at something of a meta level.
• Badass Adorable: Small Puppy, sometimes named (varying from work to work). Small puppy is small, and a puppy. Who has been genetically and cybernetically enhanced by Avan to be both virtually immortal, genius-level (if rather innocent and oblivious), a small cute puppy that never grows up, and shoot massive energy beams of death. In one continuity, written mostly for fun, Small Puppy outlasts even the AZAR itself, founding a galactic Empire that practically worships him, all so he can have hugs and cuddles. Any wolves in these works apply really, but Small Puppy takes the cake.
• Blue and Orange Morality: Humans and Azarians view eachother's moralities as this.
• Big Badass Wolf: Pretty much any wolf (including wolf-form azarians), except Small Puppy, simply by the merits of Small Puppy being Small as opposed to Big.
• Cuteness Proximity: Young wolves. Not much more needs to be said.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Avan. To the point he plays with tropes in-universe quite extensively, all to his advantage.
• Defied Trope: We're dealing with a world of Genre Savvy characters here. What do you expect?
• Didn't Do The Research: Subverted - though one may think that Avan calls small baby wolves 'puppies', the author reveals that he does indeed know that wolf cubs are called cubs, not puppies, but prefers to call them puppies simply since its cuter.
• Precious Puppies: Small puppy is small. And Cute. Azarians love small baby wolves (even though they are technically cubs, not puppies).
• Funny Animal: The physical forms of the Azarians, for the most part. They are mentally far different from humans though.
• Genre Blind: Only the dumbest of the dumb characters get this treatment. Wrong Genre Savvy is used more commonly.
• Genre Savvy: Lots of people, especially the Azarians.
• Go Mad From the Revelation: Played straight and inverted, depending on perspective; many humans saw this as happening to Avan, while he sees that those who are mad are the ones who never had the revelation. Sanity can be relative... Or is it?
• Gone Horribly Right: See below - this is the perspective of some other humans.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The AZAR to the humans, though for Avan, it had 'gone wonderfully right'.
• Hive Mind: The AZAR's semi-collective central mind approaches this.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Azarians are bullet-proof, suffocation-proof, and even death-proof, to a degree, though in instances where the AZAR comes into conflict with races they have only just met (including the humans when the Azarians were first created), their enemies won't know this.
• Invoked Trope: We're dealing with a world of Genre Savvy characters here. What do you expect?
• Lampshade Hanging: Avan does this a lot in his monologues about creating the AZAR; usually covering how the AZAR has an extremely high number of defied and subverted tropes.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Depending on the continuity, some versions of the AZAR use small wormholes to protect their ships by projecting one end to intercept a projectile, and the other to send it away from the ship (more often then not returning it to its sender). Turns out they can also project exit wormholes right into an unshielded enemy ship, causing it essentially shoot itself from the inside-out.

>>The AZAR tends to do with virtually everything they have.

• Lotus Eater Machine: The human world's western culture evolved into this, at least partially. The expectations of things going wrong is subverted however; the azarians and some other humans find it a meaningless existence, but the lotus-eater society manages to keep itself running.
• Mad Scientist: Avan, though the AZAR itself has a number of others too.
• Mind Hive: Avan's many fellow minds in his original human host.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Pretty much sums up the default Azarian physical form, justified in that it shortens the metamorphosis time between forms by providing some pre-built structures.
• Munchkin: The Azarians do this, in spirit, to their physical forms (and minds too, for that matter), improving themselves via whatever means possible, usually additional genetic modifiction, to be at the top of their game.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Most of the Azar's spacecraft. A number of the Azarians also qualify, under their own language.
• Nigh Invulnerability: Pretty much anything Azarian takes ridiculous amounts of force to kill - same goes for anything made of Rauthauran Selenite.
• No Continuity: More like multiple continuities, joined only by the presence of the AZAR.
• Our Dragons Are Different: They're really just Azarians in that particular form.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Rautharans. They fall into the separate species OR the virus sections, depending on implementation.
• Physical God: Anyone who uplinks to a completed Array; if the sudden exposure to the mind of existence doesn't fry one's consciousness. Small Puppy and some of the Azarians can get close to this, with the upgrades to their physical forms.
• Power Perversion Potential: Subverted and parodied - Avan could have any Azarian he wanted, but he fell in love instead with the AZAR as a whole, in an obsessive, patriotic way - meanwhile, as a parody, Small Puppy realizes he can simply command people to hug and cuddle him, rather than relying just on looking cute and fuzzy.
• The Red Planet: In the act of being terraformed.
• The Virus: A "quick, painless and non-contagious" version is used to assimilate willing people into the AZAR. There's rumors to be a not-so-non-contagious version hidden around somewhere just in case.
• Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty: The Azarians play by the rules they write - if it involves rewriting the rules, then so be it. The rewriting of rules and premises was also their entire reason for creation in terms of solving the Unwinnable goal of creating a Utopia.
• Shown Their Work: Baby wolves are distinctly pointed out by Avan not to be actual puppies, but since 'cub' isn't nearly as cute a term as 'puppy', he chooses to go with that instead. Also all the science behind the Azar's not-overly-futuristic technology (such as ADNR).
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Goes all over the place, and turns it up to eleven on either end. Generally highly cynical towards the crummier aspects of the human world, while highly idealistic to the progressive sides of both the human and azarian worlds.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: If it says, "Made in the AZAR", it's usually this.
• Story-Breaker Power: Often invoked at the climax, as several of the novels revolve around obtaining this. Needless to say, it explains the lack of a single continuity.
• Space Is Noisy: Averted - space is most definitely silent. The inside of a spaceship though... Not so much.
• Turned Against Their Masters: This happens, but only to a degree; the AZAR was created by their creator to help civilization, though by no means did that imply they were to be slaves to humanity, as those funding the creator thought.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Defied and Subverted for the most part as Avan and the other members of the AZAR's leadership refuse to 'be generous with the lives of others'; though at times it is played straight in more localized manners, such as any Azarian's willingness to sacrifice one's self for the AZAR.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: All the Azarians, though they are limited as to what they can shapeshift into.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Deconstructed quite extensively with Avan's introspective explorations.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: From the Azarian perspective.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: From both a human and azarian perspective.
• What Measure Is a Non Super: The Azarian's twist to What Measure Is a Non-Human?, considering the superiority of their mental and physical faculties.
• World Half Empty: The human world to the azarians. More like "World All Empty" to some of them.
• A World Half Full: The humans who embrace their lotus eater culture see it as this.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: With everyone being so Genre Savvy, this gets thrown in for laughs every now and then.