An Earthquake on an Autumn Morning
is a The Stepford Wives Continuation Fic by Autumn Leaves.
One evening, Dale Coba finds himself increasingly unsettled by the goings-on in Stepford. First a man planning to move to the town abruptly cancels his plans, and then Coba suddenly notices that all the children in Stepford seem to have left – all for different but seemingly aboveboard reasons.
As Coba visits Ed's house in search of answers, he is in for an enormous shock.
Tropes featured in the fic:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Proud and self-assured Dale Coba, leader of a killing cult, pathetically begs for his life in his last moments. Or rather, tries to, because his whole body is paralyzed, so the begging only happens in his thoughts.
- Apocalypse How: Stepford is obliterated by an explosion, causing the titular earthquake across North America.
- Bittersweet Ending: Heavily on the bitter. The men and robotic wives of Stepford all die in an explosion, leaving their children orphaned. However, their plan ensures that nobody would get their secrets of robot production and repeat the Stepford scheme, and Anne has been saved from Stepford and her marriage has improved. Meanwhile, Robot Charmaine is implied to have gone to Heaven.
- Children Are Innocent: The anti-Coba plotters realize that the children have no part in the murder scheme and therefore make sure to evacuate every child in Stepford before blowing up the town.
- A Day in the Limelight: Robot Charmaine, who is little more than a plot device in every sense of the word in both the book and the movie, is far more prominent here and the focal character in the third part of the fanfic.
- Destroy the Evidence: The main reason why the anti-Coba plotters decide to destroy their robotic wives who replaced the murdered real ones, even after Robot Charmaine greatly helps them and clearly breaks out of her programmed subservience — if anyone sees and researches the super-realistic robots, the story of Stepford may repeat.
- Drowning My Sorrows: The anti-Coba conspiracy begins when the repentant men go out of town to drink and forget – and end up running into each other.
- Dying as Yourself: In a variation. Robot Charmaine begins to glitch as the bomb is prepared, showing that she is Just a Machine after all… and then her thoughts show that she breaks out of it at the last moment and dies as her own person.
- Evil Is Petty: Lampshaded by Ed as he recalls the incredibly shallow reasons that led to his murder of Charmaine, primarily the fact that she enjoyed tennis and he didn't."I killed her over some fucking tennis!"
- Faking Another Person's Illness: One of the schemes the anti-Coba conspirators use to get the children away from Stepford before destroying the town is sending telegrams claiming their grandparents are deadly sick and want to see their grandchildren for the last time.
- Good Is Not Soft: Robot Charmaine is a complete sweetheart, but she is the one who thinks up the plan to let Dale have some Laser-Guided Karma by Gaslighting him and then letting him watch the bomb's preparation.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: Robot Charmaine, a Stepford wife programmed to be a Stay in the Kitchen Sex Slave, develops a personality beyond that after joining the anti-Coba conspiracy, eventually deciding to become a secret agent and the family's breadwinner — something that sadly never comes to pass, as she is killed in the explosion with everyone else.
- Hidden Depths: Robot Charmaine only joins the conspiracy because she is programmed to follow her husband's lead, but ends up an active contributor, enjoys the work immensely, and dreams of becoming a secret agent.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Dale Coba constructed Robot Charmaine to be especially subservient to her husband, since Ed and the real Charmaine's marriage was especially loveless. As a result, when Ed joins a conspiracy against Coba, Robot Charmaine follows him without a murmur. Which leads to a doubly ironic turn when she gets so involved in the conspiracy that she begins to break out of subservience and develop her own personality.
- Holding Hands: Ed and Robot Charmaine hold each other's hands in the last seconds before they are killed in the town-wide explosion.
- Implied Infernal Destination: As mass murderer Dale Coba dies, he feels "scorching hot". Granted, it might be because he dies in an explosion, but Robot Charmaine is killed right next to him and feels "a gust of fresh breeze".
- Irony: The marriage of Ed and Robot Charmaine is thick with tragic irony by the end. Robot Charmaine, created to be especially passive even compared to the rest of the Stepford wives, becomes the one to achieve actual personhood. Ed, who never loved the real Charmaine, not only breaks down with remorse over having murdered her but falls genuinely in love with Robot Charmaine.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: After some of the members of the Men's Association repent of killing their wives and grow bored with their robotic counterparts, they tend to refer to the latter as "it" (or "doll", or, at one point, "apparatus"). Robot Charmaine, having developed actual personality traits, is the only Stepford wife consistently referred to as "she".
- Karmic Death: Dale Coba dies after a period of Gaslighting, terrified and helpless, just like the women he killed. In addition, his last thoughts go over in circles with multiple repetitions of the same phrases, similar to what the robotic women sound like when they glitch.
- Morality Pet:
- Walter had his wife killed, but he genuinely loves his daughters. When he hears them complaining that their mother has grown different, it's what cements his Heel–Face Turn.
- In a particular case of tragic irony, Ed grows genuinely fond of his robot wife after she develops actual personality beyond subservience – i. e. the very reason he killed the real Charmaine. He begs the other men to let her escape the planned explosion, and when that fails, holds her hand until the end.
- My God, What Have I Done?: It turns out many members of the Men's Association have grown remorseful over killing their wives and bored to death with the robotic replacements. It drives them to obliterate the town.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The three POV characters in the fic are the unrepentant killing cult founder Dale Coba (Mean), his repentant ex-follower Walter (In-Between), and the innocent Tragic Robot Charmaine (Nice).
- Once More, with Clarity: The first part of the work depicts Stepford's destruction from Coba's point of view. The second explains several plot points from the first from Walter's point of view, and the third part again shows the explosion scene itself from Robot Charmaine's perspective.
- Shallow Cannot Comprehend True Love: Dale can't figure out why a man could prefer a real wife to a robotic docile beauty.
- Straight Edge Evil: Unrepentant mass murderer Dale Coba disapproves of Walter drinking whiskey in the middle of the day, musing that it's unhealthy.
- Taking You with Me: In the end, the repentant members of the Men's Association kill both themselves and the non-repentant ones to stop the murder spree of wives.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Robot Charmaine doesn't realize she is one of the robots that her husband and his friends talk about – until she hears him mention "the real Charmaine" and freaks out.
- Took a Level in Badass: Robot Charmaine goes from a subservient Stepford wife whose existence revolves across her husband and the housekeeping duties to an inventive and driven woman who, as Royal tells her, would make a great secret agent. Sadly, it can never come to pass since she is killed in the explosion.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Almost half of the members of the murderous Men's Association here grow to bitterly regret the killing of their wives. From among the canon characters, these include Walter, Ed, and Royal.
- Tragic Dream: In her last moments, Robot Charmaine dreams of becoming a secret agent and the family's breadwinner and of moving away from Stepford to a nicer place. The author's notes in the story reveal that with her robotic nature, Charmaine doesn't fully understand death.
- Tragic Robot: Robot Charmaine believes herself to be the real Charmaine, dotes on her husband and children, and realizes she wants to become a secret agent after helping with the anti-Coba conspiracy to stop the Men's Association's murder spree. Then she realizes that Charmaine was one of said spree's victims and that she is just a robot who replaced her and who will be destroyed in the planned explosion of Stepford. She is absolutely shattered by the news and frightened of her impending end, even if she doesn't fully understand what death means. Thankfully, she is implied to have gone to Heaven despite being a machine.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The men who have turned against Coba try not to think on whether their robotic wives are people, since they plan to destroy Stepford, and it's easier to think that a bunch of dolls would be destroyed with it than to consider that they would have to kill a crowd of living people.