Afterglow is an Urban Fantasy Web Serial Novel by Webquail.
Josie Sawyer is a girl attending Overton Academy, a cushy boarding school in Olympia. Josie lives in a world where certain people, known as Anomalies, develop otherworldly mutations for reasons unknown. She wakes up one night to discover that her skin glows, and after a scuffle with Overton's resident bullies, finds herself coerced into working for a member of the prestigious Litwin family as the attention she garners draws more people like her from hiding.
Afterglow was originally published on Fictionpress and had at least 11 chapters, but was quietly deleted some time prior to July 2020. Chapters 1, 3, and 4 were preserved by the Wayback Machine
, but chapter 2 and every chapter from 5 onward seem to be unavailable anywhere.
Afterglow contains examples of:
- The Adjectival Man: A common naming convention for unknown or undocumented Anomalies. Josie becomes known as "the glowing girl," and an Anomaly known by "devil girl" is mentioned in the Anomaly crime archives in chapter 5.
- Aliens in Cardiff: A recurring theme. The main protagonist is an Anomaly who lives in Olympia, and others have appeared in Portland and Flagstaff, as well.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Alan and Shannon became friends in high school because they were both bullied.
- Axes at School: Literally. One of Josie's classmates, under the effects of 2015E's power attacks people with an axe at the Overton homecoming dance.
- Beware the Superman: Anomalies are widely-feared, thanks to the spooky nature of their mutations.
- Broken Tears: Shannon after watching Godhead kill the employees of Litwin Enterprises, only to find out that he's a friend from high school.
- Buffy Speak: Curtis referring to Godhead as "angelic Robocop".
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: Josie's reason for helping Kyle.
- Conveniently Coherent Thoughts: Zig-zagged. Shannon can understand thoughts, but hears them in sentence fragments that she has to piece together.
- David Versus Goliath: Josie's first fight is against Godhead, an armored, seemingly invincible maniac.
- Don't Go Into the Woods: Shannon and her friends, Drew and Marcy encounter an entity who gave them life-changing hallucinations 25 years before the story begins, in the Olympic National Forest. Shannon is still tormented by small-scale hallucinations, while Marcy dies before the story begins, and Drew goes crazy, eventually becoming Godhead. It's also where Josie's second confrontation with Godhead occurs.
- Dispense with the Pleasantries: Brooke quickly grows tired of Shannon's attempts at small-talk when she interrogates her.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: After the Godhead crisis, Josie is fed up with the distaste and fear her peers have for her.
- Emergency Broadcast: One is issued for northern of Thurston county when Godhead is en route. It gives Shannon the creeps.
- Fantastic Racism: Pretty much everyone who isn't an Anomaly has some degree of fear or disdain for Anomalies, thanks to the fact that all high-profile Anomalies were criminals or terrifying.
- Fantastic Slurs: Josie takes particular offense to being called a "subhuman".
- Feminist Fantasy: The main protagonist is the confident, if somewhat neurotic, Josie Sawyer.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The FSRA agents fit into this:
- Sanguine: Holly.
- Choleric: Alexander.
- Melancholic: Curtis.
- Phlegmatic: Lee.
- Giggling Villain:
- Godhead, after Josie's light goes out.
- Also Brooke after Shannon punches her in the face.
- Godzilla Threshold: The FSRA sends Josie, a known vigilante, to fight Godhead, and when that doesn't work out, they resort to bombing a national forest in an attempt to take him out.
- Good Morning, Crono: The story begins with Josie waking up from a nightmare, a few hours before she's supposed to.
- Hallucinations: Shannon is implied to suffer from minor hallucinations daily. Certain things set them off.
- Hearing Voices: Several people in an apartment building in downtown Olympia start hearing voices in their heads. It turns out that Shannon is causing them.
- Hero's First Rescue: Josie saves one of her classmates from a trio of bullies, accidentally using her new abilities in the process.
- His Name Is...: Subverted. A police officer attempts to kill Josie before she can reveal Diane Litwin's identity, but Alexander intervenes.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Josie's power is easy enough to use, she just can't figure out how to turn her power off.
- I See Dead People: Shannon occasionally sees split-second visions of Marcy, who died sometime before the story begins.
- Karmic Death: Jimmy Grant, a Utah-based televangelist who is earlier shown to despise Anomalies, is killed by Joshua Tucker and Brooke Del Vento in front of his congregation on live TV.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Josie and Steph, respectively.
- Light Is Good: The main protagonist does have light-based powers, after all.
- The Men in Black: The Federal Superhuman Research Agency, though their existence is public following the government leaks of 1989.
- Mid-Season Twist:
- Josie gets arrested by Norwood and Cressnik.
- Shannon was friends with Godhead in high school.
- Next Sunday A.D.: Takes place in 2017.
- Noodle Incident: Ruth and Alan are essentially a walking noodle incident. Working in a field that involves dealing with mutants, a number of cases they were assigned to wind up being this, including one that may or may not have left them hypnotized, and another that caused their clothes to smell like burnt flesh. Additionally, Holly is chided by her coworkers and constantly reminded to drink her alcohol in moderation, apparently because of a past incident.
- Numbers Stations: Alan is particularly fond of a number station that serves no clear function, and makes deciphering it a side project of his.
- Paranormal Investigation: Two detectives from Portland are assigned to track Josie down in chapter 5.
- Parental Neglect: It's implied that Josie's mother rarely answers her phone.
- Phlebotinum Battery: Josie's light is powered by the sun, something she doesn't realize when her powers burn out while fighting Godhead.
- Powers in the First Episode: Josie gets her powers at the end of chapter 1.
- Required Secondary Powers: Josie is able to look at bright lights without hurting her eyes. Subverted with Godhead, however, who isn't resistant to fire, including his own.
- Riot Grrrl: Shannon was in such a band in college, with her friend Marcy. Holly was a fan.
- Shame If Something Happened: Diane's way of getting Josie to work for her.Diane: "Bear in mind that the Fitzgerald family is offering a monetary reward for whoever can find the girl who assaulted their son. Also bear in mind that I know the identity of the girl who assaulted Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald yesterday morning. I’m very interested in working out a business relationship with her, but I also have nothing to lose from turning her in, should she refuse."
- Shout-Out:
- From Chapter 12:
Alan (to Alexander): "I'm so sorry we're your favorite duo of Portlanders."
Ruth: "You know there are other Portlanders that aren't us, right? We're not the only people who live in Portland."
Alexander: "You're the only duo of Portlanders I can think of."
Ruth: "I find that hard to believe." - Some Kind of Force Field: Godhead has one, and it can stop bullets.
- Super Registration Act: The FSRA is in charge of documenting and either containing or observing Anomalies.
- Superpower Lottery: Lee mentions that Josie is much stronger than most Anomalies, in terms of raw power.
- Super-Empowering: Anomalies get their abilities from beings called 'Wellsprings,' who can grant normal people powers just by touching them.
- Technicolor Fire: Godhead's powers create a distinctly yellow flame.
- Transhuman Treachery: A combination of constant discrimination and basic human nature leads several Anomalies to crime.
- The Unmasqued World: The existence of Anomalies was kept hidden by the government until 1989, when somebody leaked a government document detailing several captured Anomalies. Although chapter 13 reveals there's more to it than it seems.
- Who You Gonna Call?: Paranormal investigation is a growing field of detectives who specialize in dealing with Anomaly-related crime.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Curtis asks this question when the FSRA team is discussing how to deal with AEON. They agree it's the best course of action and call in snipers.
- You Are Number 6: Anomalies are assigned numerical names in the same way supernovas are named, the year they were discovered, plus a letter to indicate the order they were discovered in that year.
- Zombie Advocate: Shortly after Josie kills Godhead, an Anomaly rights movement called AEON forms in the darker corners of the internet.
