Note: Unmarked spoilers through Arc 7 are present throughout; several trope listings and character entries additionally spoil later arcs.
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Protagonists
Shared tropes
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: Within the context of ethically dubious mages, cryptic cults, and other secretive players in the world of magic, they're ultimately trying to do the right thing. But their hands are only able to stay so clean.
Heather Morell
- Angsty Surviving Twin: To an extreme degree, although she learns Maisie is still alive early in the series. Heather often describes herself as only being "half a person" without Maisie, and constantly agonizes and stresses over.
- Broken Bird: The combination of the trauma experienced Wonderland, years of unintentional slips Outside, and the forced institutionalization she experienced during her adolesence, combined with her left behind twin lead to Heather being utterly miserable and barely functional at the start of the series. A significant focus of the series is her overcoming her horrible past to become happier.
- In-Series Nickname: Several: "Little bird" and "Shaman" from Zheng, "Big H" from Twil, "Heath" from Tenny, and "Heathy" from Lozzie.
- Magnetic Hero: Much to her continual surprise, Heather turns out to have a wellspring charisma, and a keen intuition for de-escalation and turning enemies to allies, and can command a room without so much as raising her voice. Multiple Outsiders and antagonists compare her composure and social skill to that of foreign royalty, even before she gets "engaged" to Sevens making her technically a princess.
- Twins Are Special: The fact that Maisie and Heather are extremely close identical twins proves to be the reason why the Eye is so persistent in using it's cultists to retrieve Heather; it doesn't understand that they are two different people, and is just trying to put the two halves of it's adoptive child/protege back together.
- Touched by Vorlons: Has spent the past ten years involuntarily having advanced and reality breaking math forced into her head by the Eye, and is therefore able to perform acts of magic with her "brain-math" that would take mages months of study and elaborate rituals to replicate. The experience may have also changed her from a normal human into a proto Homo abyssus, or Heather might have always been such; Heather raises the question but dismisses it as irrelevant
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Perceives her travels through the abyss as taking several years, while only four days have passed in Sharrowford.
Maisie Morell
- Emergency Transformation: Nothing Outside can remain human for long, and Maisie has been trapped in Wonderland for ten years; it's openly discussed by others that Maisie is almost certainly not at all human, and Heather believes she may not even have a physical body anymore.
Raine Haynes
- Badass Normal: Explored; in a group of mages, former humans, and people who were never human, Raine is the only one who is completely non-magical, and is still as threatening as any of the rest of them if not more so. However, after she gets shot in the Library of Carcosa, she's forced to confront the fact she ultimately has limits, and has no chance of matching everything Heather faces down.
- Empty Shell: Discussed. She was born without any inherent sense of self, and had to construct her entire personality from copying others and media, and struggled to do so for years growing up. She later describes herself as nearly feral during several low points when she was homeless; Evelyn's recounting of their first meeting has her describe Raine as less human than the monsters her mother made. It wasn't until she met Evelyn and later Heather to serve as her reference points who she existed to protect that she managed to build herself enough to be like other people. Even then, Raine has tremendous difficulty defining herself as separate from protecting and loving Heather and Evee, though her changing relationship with Heather and Zheng has her make steps towards doing so.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: Raine's sexuality and talent for incredible violence are two foundational parts of herself, and Heather is immensely attracted to both of them, though she admits she probably shouldn't find Raine committing murder for her attractive. Her relationship with Zheng thoroughly blends the two; both of them are natural fighters who adore fighting, and their sparring is explicitly compared to sex.
- The Sociopath: Invoked and discussed. Raine is adept at manipulating others, takes pleasure in inflicting incredible violence to her enemies, and feels little remorse in doing so; multiple characters, including Raine herself, casually refer to her as a sociopath. In practice, Raine is a long way from a true example of the trope. Although her entire personality is constructed, Raine is far from an empty, ambitious, amoral killer, and is motivated almost exclusively to protect Evelyn and Heather.
Evelyn Saye
- Functional Addict: Given the immense amount of chronic pain she experiences from her injuries, it's an open secret that she's addicted to prescription painkillers. Everyone around her treats it as making the best of a terrible situation, even when Heather and Raine both take care to avoid overusing the same pills after major injuries.
- The Lancer: Over time, as Heather becomes more confident and assertive in their quest to save Maisie, Evelyn deliberately cultivates a persona of being the strategist to Heather's leadership role, being the level headed cynic with the technical knowledge of magic compared to Heather's instinctual brain math and abyssal biology. She backs Heather's goals and aims completely, and is her closest friend, but is also the first to criticize her or counteract her impulsiveness.
Praem
Twil Hopton
- Our Werewolfs Are Different: Twil's grandfather bound her to a spectral, bipedal wolf, giving her all the classical strengths and weakness of werewolves in fiction, a fact which is continually lampshaded as unrealistic even in a world of mages and Outsider gods, although Zheng's familiarity with "skinchangers", as she dubs Twil, indicate that others do or have existed. Unlike most magic, Twil's wolf form is also not Invisible to Normals, which is used as shock therapy to break Nicole Webb into the know.
Lozzie Lilburne
- Eldritch Abomination: A Lighter and Softer take; Lozzie is far more Outsider than human and has been ever since communing with the fallen star, and it's clear that the human body she retains is only a small fraction of her true self. However, Lozzie is far more benevolent and carefree than most Outsiders and is consistently upbeat and cheerful around her friends. Even a reflection of her true self seen through Heather's abyssal senses is noted to be playful and as cute as a kitten.
Kimberly Kemp
Zheng
- The Nicknamer: Almost always refers to others by names or titles.
Tenny
Seven-Shades-Of-Sunlight
Brotherhood of the New Sun
Outsiders
The Eye
Ooran Juh
The King in Yellow
- Public Domain Character: Parodied; multiple characters refuse to believe that the King is real based on his fictional depiction, including the inhuman monster Aym.
Other
Church of Hringewindla
[[folder: Nicole Webb]]
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Faced with Heather torn between being forced to kill her or becoming a Corrupt Cop, she immediately and emphatically swears to keep Heather's secrets.
- Nicole quickly comes around on the bloody justice of the hidden world of magic. Although she takes pains to not get involved with anything illegal beyond a few light crimes, she quickly stops worrying about overhearing discussions of murder, kidnapping, and torture, but pushes Heather to cross the line only when completely necessary.
Felicity
Aym
- Transhuman Abomination: Like Ooran Juh, she's a formerly human mage who traveled the abyss; unlike Heather, she returned as something very different than human. She can take the appearance of a creepy young girl if she wishes, but the process is somewhere between uncomfortable and mortifying for her.
Saldis
- Transhuman: Saldis is not even remotely human anymore, though her metal shell retains the ability to recreate a human body on demand whenever she desires so.
Jan
June
