Vocational Death Cruise

Two of the organizers, PLOTTING

A letter of obvious origin arrives in the mailboxes of many characters around the multiverse. It invites them to join a competition simply titled 'Vocational Death Cruise' and watches as the contestants arrive, each expecting a different outcome. Vocational Death Cruise is a large-scale Ask Blog competition that challenges artists from around the tumblrverse to compete for a prize by drawing comics that meet a specific criteria by a deadline.

The story thus far can be found starting here.

This is a Collaborative Webcomic involving hundreds of authors. Character tropes should to the Ask a Pony page. Interaction tropes are fine. Character Tropes specific to the challenge with no basis in the actual character may also go here especially when considering Krampus as a villain is unique to the VDC and nowhere else

Tropes used in Vocational Death Cruise include:

• All Just a Dream: After Stoner Spike (somehow) dies from not smoking any weed for four days, he wakes up back in his bed at Twilight's house, his experiences on the cruise a dream. Time will tell if this is how future deaths will be handled.
• Anyone Can Die: Stated more than plainly in the rules.
• Art Shift: All over the place since each contestant has a different art style to them.
• Ascended Fanon: Any villain shown, really.
• Ax Crazy: Done literally when Pinkie Pyro was in the house of mirrors.
• Bigger Bad: Old Scratch qualifies, seeing as the Big Bad summons him with the corpse of Santalestia.
• Blatant Lies
• Canon Welding: More like headcanon welding.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The Scout of the TF2 ponies randomly dropped one shortly after boarding.
• Continuity Snarl: Since very few of the authors actually communicate, the players may find themselves overwriting continuity from the other contestants. This happens so frequently, the Moderators created a section to count against it.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Vocational DEATH cruise.
• Forged by the Gods: Creation's Ashes and Death's Scythe, among others.
• Deader Than Dead: After Teen Applebloom left the competition and was apparently killed inexplicably (which is the presumed fate of all eliminated or dropped out contestants), the blog was subsequently shut down. The blog has since been restarted...
• Devil in Plain Sight: She changed forms! In front of you! How is this confusing?
• Deal with the Devil
• Did the Research: Krampus- At least, for the players, who requested a villain to use and got the pivotal Big Bad.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Discorded Whooves sacrificing himself to save Inkie and Pony!Yusuke from the Horror.
• Harmful to Touch: The steam challenge. Inkie Pie even had her face torn halfway off...
• Hero-Killer: Krampus has actually killed several players, according to fan canon.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Most of the useful items in the competition expire quickly.
• Homage: Day 5 is shaping up to be one giant one to Homestuck.
  • Homestuck's and Vocational Death Cruise's use of Old Scratch is actually a reference to one of The Devil's many nicknames, who traveled with Santa in the adapted myths.
• Pony Popsicle: After the Scout flipped the table onto Werelight, she froze her solid in retaliation.
• Idiot Ball: Both averted, subverted, and played straight hard. The players have mixed feelings about the whole event, but they're not STUPID. At least, not most of them.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: What the hell ARE Artifacts, anyways?
• It Was a Gift: Most of the prizes are this in-game.
• Knight of Cerebus: Take a wild guess.
• Laser-Guided Karma: At one point, the Cutie Mark Crusaders got affected with Poison Joke. During the earthquake, Werelight Shine came and rescued them, promising to give them the cure to Poison Joke. But, as the Crusaders were close to figuring out who Werelight really is, Werelight instantly denied having a cure and ran away. Only to run into Poison Joke herself.
• Long Bus Trip: During the weeping alicorn attack, a few characters that had dropped from the competition early were sent the past and wound up on a battlefield, possibly severely damaging the time line of the world they were flung to.
• A MacGuffin Full of Money: The back room challenge. Subverted, hard.
• Monster Clown: The robotic clowns in Day 2, and Big Boss Bozo in Day 5.
• The Multiverse: Many personal universes from all over the land of Tumblr continuity get put in the same universe.
• My Little Pony: Many of the participants are ponies, but not all of them. The organizers however are all ponies.
• Rule of Funny: Multiple characters have maimed themselves only to recover later, and one even rips of thier face to get a few laughs.
• Shared Universe: Although tumblr contains several seprate universes, the island where the event takes place is a nexus universe.
• Shout-Out: LET ME TELL YA SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS VOICE NO ONE EVER SEES!
  • Whatever's in the briefcase, it sure is shiny.
  • Gamzee makes a brief appearance.
• Spoiler Title: Quite clearly a lot of folks are going to die. Thanks, title!
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: A running gag with the organizers. Even outside of the competition they deny when a new challenge has been posted.
• Tonight Someone Dies: Half the cast was killed in one of these.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: The name is probably just a gimmick. Probably. Right?