is a fantasy webcomic by Míriam Bonastre Tur about twins Dani and Dorian Wytte, who happen to be young witches. When Dani and Dorian miss the bus that was supposed to take them to their first day of magic school, they fear they'll be punished by their parents — so they decide to find a mentor to study with. After some searching, they eventually meet a soothsayer named Pendragon and decide to live with him to learn new skills in magic. As the story progresses, the Wytte twins are joined in their adventure by Nico, Monica, and Mark. Monica, the princess of the kingdom, is on a mission to rescue her betrothed William from evil witches who kidnapped him. Nico, Dani, and Dorian join Monica on this mission oblivious to the greater evils they will encounter along the way, which can only be described as a battle between good and evil.The series ran through 2015-2020. After it ended, the series got a physical book from Clarion Books in 2021, becoming one of the first series in Webtoons to do so. This had the consequence of the series archive being behind a daily pass on Webtoon however (it only goes up to the 21 episode without it) in a effort to support the book.
Hooky contains examples of:
- Afraid of Their Own Strength: Dani is afraid that she could really kill someone with her magic. Considering her raw power and lack of control, this fear is fairly justified.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Nico has a crush on Dani, who likes Mark, who likes… nobody really. Then there’s Dorian’s crush on Monica, who’s engaged to William.
- Animesque/Manhwa-Esque: Not at a glance, but the character designs definitely take cues from Asian Comics.
- Ambiguously Gay: A lot of Damien’s behaviour around William seems to suggest a crush, but it’s unconfirmed. Things are made even more confusing when Damien wakes William with "true love's kiss" after giving another character a speech about how they didn't necessarily have to want him romantically to wake him. Though he does express reluctance about doing it himself.
- The ambiguousness on Damien’s end is dropped in Chapter 159 where he outright states that he loves William. The issue is on William’s end as he can’t seem to distinguish between his royal duties and what he actually wants.
- All ambiguity has been tossed out the window by the last arc, as William finally realized what he wants and kisses Damien.
- Arranged Marriage: Monica and William.
- Badass Adorable: Dani and Dorian are cute kids who happen to be incredibly powerful witches.
- Badass Bookworm: Dorian loves to read. He can also memorize any spell he’s read, and perform it almost perfectly on the first try.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Dani and Dorian are sweet kids, but don’t hurt their loved ones. Dorian seriously contemplates black magic when he sees Dani about to be burned at the stake. Dani goes on a short Roaring Rampage of Revenge when Alex is stabbed.
- Big Brother Instinct: Mark towards the younger kids.
- Book Dumb: Mark repeated a year of school.
- Break the Cutie: The entire series is seeing just how much pain and heartbreak Dani and Dorian can go through before they break.
- Burn the Witch!: Currently outlawed, but witches have been burned in the past. A crowd attempts to burn Dani when she’s mistaken for a witch that had been killing children. In the past, Angela Wytte was nearly burned after Damien accidentally outed the family as witches. Only the king’s intervention saved her.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The initial chapters are about the hijinxs of two cute witch siblings, which makes the comic look like a typical lighthearted Slice of Life with magic. Later, Dani, one of the two siblings, an innocent and kind Cute Witch, who only wants to make friends is almost burned to death by a mob who thinks she was the witch who killed their children, with Dani desperately begging for her life. When she is rescued, she is traumatized and in tears.
- Character Death: Alex is killed by a soldier. Later on, Dani and Dorian’s dad is killed during the battle in the desert. As an act of revenge, Angela Wytte murders Monica's parents, the king and queen, in their sleep.
- Character Development:
- Monica goes from spoiled and prejudiced against witches, to a more worldly girl who uses magic herself and eventually calls herself a witch and dedicates her life to fighting for her friends.
- Dani. She starts of the series being the most optimistic of the twins and the most eager to befriend humans. Unfortunately, after the time-skip happens, Dani’s been through so many Break the Cutie moments that she’s barely recognizable as the new Queen of Witches.
- Characterization Marches On: Early chapters portray William as resilient and competent against his captors. Monica's memories of him during a flashback show him as much more bumbling and naive, and this characterization seems to have returned by the time he's rescued and stays with him for the rest of the series.
- Master Pendragon is much mellower in earlier chapters, but he loses this fairly quickly once the plot starts to pick up and he shows his true colors.
- Coordinated Clothes:
- The twins always wear matching outfits, which is easy, since they only dress in black and white. When Dani decides not to do magic anymore and dons a red T-shirt and denim bib overall, Dorian points out that they don't match anymore.
- Monica insists that the couples that go to the king's gala together wear matching outfits. She buys Mark an expensive, fancy rose-colored suit to match her dress.
- Crystal Ball: Pendragon uses this in his work, being one of the few capable of seeing into the future with accuracy through his gift of clairvoyance. This power ironically makes him blindsided to the idea of change within the twins after it becomes clear one of them will become the King of Witches, and causes him to effectively hamper the progress of the twins in the hopes of preventing their rise.
- Nico is eventually shown to be a clairvoyant upon rummaging through Pendragon's old home, where he finds himself the only one capable of locating William through Pendragon's old crystal ball.
- Curse Escape Clause: William is put under a curse of eternal sleep by Angela Wytte, which can only be broken through a true love's kiss.
- Deconstructed Trope: The prophecy in a fantasy world that foretells great things for one of the main characters... Except, instead of a heroic act, it's about one of them turning into the King of Witches.
- Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: In a way, this is the series, pre-time skip. Trying to figure out which twin will become the King of Witches, and stopping them before they snap.
- The Dreaded: Angela and Hans Wytte.
- Eventually Dani becomes this after the time skip.
- Driving Question: Which twin will become the King of Witches?
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite the many terrible things that happened throughout, they eventually managed to expel the demon that had a hold over Dani, and and found out that Dani cursed herself to stop feeling emotions so she would stop being hurt. The promise to end the war and build a brighter future broke Dani's curse on herself and brought her and her memories back. The last few chapters are essentially epilogues and finishing up the romantic arcs.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Angela and Hans Wytte are Anti-Villains who love their kids. To a lesser extent, Hilde Wytte also loves her family.
- Everyone Went to School Together: Damien went to school with Alex, Barry, and Noah in his childhood for a brief period, though none know of this due to them not interacting.
- Fantastic Racism: Witches are regarded with fear and hatred by many non-witches. In turn, many witches hate non-witches. The conflict is not helped at all by the long and bloody history between the two sides.
- George Lucas Altered Version: Some of the original illustrations were lost to a broken laptop, so the first sixty pages had to be redrawn when the series went to print. Not to mention the reformatting that had to be done.
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: In the witches vs. non-witches conflict, neither is "good" or "evil". They're just two groups of people who've been hurt and hurt others in return. And unfortunately, innocents, witches and non-witches alike, get caught in the crossfire.
- Half-Identical Twins: Dani and Dorian have identical features and can only be told apart by their hairstyle and clothes.
- Handsome Lech: Amir, the foreign prince with multiple wives.
- Important Haircut: Dani cuts her hair short when she resolves to give up her magic.
- In-Series Nickname: Dani is short for Daniela.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Although Dani and Dorian develop strong friendships and crushes on other characters, they are still the closest to each other, first and foremost. Dani even goes through Sanity Slippage and ends up as an Ophelia after she thinks she sees Dorian die.
- Love Potion: once, Dani (with the help of Monica) brews one to make Mark fall in love with her. It doesn't work as intended, instead making Mark hate Dani.
- Love Triangle:
- Nico likes Dani, Dani likes Mark, and Mark cares for Dani but as a friend.
- Another, even more complicated example: Dorian likes Monica, but Monica is determined to find Will. Once she does find him, however, she realizes she may not be in love with him. And Will is determined to marry Monica as his duty as prince but later on realizes he doesn't love her.
- Then there’s William, Monica, and Damien. William and Monica have been engaged since childhood and they choose to go forward with it after the timeskip, but purely for political purposes as Monica needs both the people’s and the royal army’s support in case her plans to save Dani go wrong. As for Damien, it’s confirmed he has feeling for William that go beyond friendship, but he chooses to be okay with that because of the circumstances of William’s engagement. And William realizes he loves Damien.
- Missing Mom: Nico’s mother died to protect Pendragon, and Mark’s mother is only mentioned as not being around.
- My Greatest Failure: Several characters blame themselves for awful things that weren't necessarily their fault.
- Damien believes its his fault his mother got burned, even though he was just a child and had little control over the situation.
- Master Pendragon admits time and time again to secretly wanting to kill the Wytte twins. He can never bring himself to do it, and as things grow more complicated, he bemoans that he should have just killed them when he had the chance. After realizing the mess he made due to his attempted murder of Dorian, he just gives up thinking he just made too big of a mess.
- Nice Guy: Downplayed, but Mark's definitely no bully, even though Nico does his best to convince everyone otherwise. He can be awkward and blunt, but overall, he's very friendly to the twins. He does have a short fuse when it comes to troublemakers, though.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Dani and Dorian have a black cat named Minino, and later Dorian gains a fire-breathing frog named Carlo as well as a dragon, Donato. A darker example, Dani has a dark spirit that possesses Minino following her around.
- Ocular Gushers: Of the beady, gel-like variety. As seen here.◊
- Official Couple: Three: Dorian and Monica, Dani and Nico and Will and Damien.
- Old Timey Bathingsuit: That is what Monica, Dani and Dorian wear when going to the beach. Oddly, Nico wears normal swimming trunks.
- One-Word Title: Hooky.
- Only Friend: In the past, Dani and Dorian were each other's, andMark was Nico’s.
- Parental Substitute: Pendragon is the closest Nico has to a parent. He isn’t a very good one.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Redish scales up to the torso, sharp teeth, can hypnotize and make you perceive them as more beautiful by singing, and live in a lake in an underground cavern in the desert.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Initially downplayed between Monica and William, with the former still holding feelings for Dorian, but nonetheless goes forward believing William is someone she can be happy with. Ultimately subverted, however, when it becomes clear that neither side is particularly happy in an actual romantic relationship with the other, with Monica unable to see him in such a fashion and William only doing so due to it being his duty.
- Plucky Girl: Dani was nearly burned at the stake, but retains her optimism and strong moral fiber.
- Precocious Crush: Dani has a crush on Mark, who’s at least a couple years older than her.
- Prejudice Aesop: A majority of the comic deals with the war between humans and witches. Some members on both sides really just want peace from the fear the other keep imposing on them (Witches uses magic to subjugate humans, humans hunting witches down), though, of course, there are the few jackasses who keep stoking the conflict as well. This comes to a head when Dani, after viewing what she thought was Dorian's, death. She unwittingly cast a curse on herself and became the much-feared Queen of Witches which only exacerbated things. It isn't until the end where her brother and friends, after a very lengthy battle and chase, get the two sides to finally talk things out and reach a shaky yet reasonable truce (It helped that one of said friends is a royal who has taken up learning magic). They later work together to heal their wounded. It's in this unity that finally breaks the curse and brings Dani back to normal.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Dani and Dorian, just like their parents. Damien averts this, as he has white hair and blue eyes, unlike the rest of his family.
- Revenge: Angela Wytte wants revenge for nearly getting burned at the stake.
- Rescue Romance: Subverted since Monica ends up falling in love with Dorian, and Will with Damien, although they do end up staying good friends!
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Monica and Will.
- Aisha is the first to head out to deal with the dragon attacking her kingdom.
- Sad Clown: Nico actually feels very inferior to his friends, who appear to surpass him in every way. He just hides it under a “cool” façade.
- Those Two Guys: Ivy and Anne, Monica's friends/ladies in waiting.
- True Love's Kiss: How William's curse of eternal sleep can be broken.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Dani is incredibly powerful, but has trouble getting her spells right.
- Weak, but Skilled: Aisha is shown to be capable in combative situations such as when she heads on her own to deal with the dragon attacking her kingdom despite not being a witch, but is of incredibly short stature. Downplayed in that she's more physically capable compared to the rest of the cast.
- Wham Episode: The witches’ invasion of the king’s ball. The king is a frog, Damien is the king of witches and now the entire kingdom, and Alex is dead.
- The chapters after the battle in the desert can feel like wham shots after wham shots. Dani and Dorian’s dad is killed in battle, their mom kills Monica’s parents in revenge, and then Angela kidnaps Dani. Finally, the arc wraps up with probably the most heartbreaking moment yet: Dani’s mental breakdown after she believes Dorian was killed, leading her to becoming the Queen of Witches.
- Wham Shot: Everything seems normal as Dani and Dorian fight during the witch attack on the king’s ball, until Alex is stabbed through her back and stomach.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: After Alex's death, Dani goes into a Roaring Rampageof Revenge. Nico manages to snap her out of it and scolds her for letting her powers get out of control. Soon after Mark shows up, Dani runs and cries into his arms to be comforted, solely to escape Nico.
- Younger Than They Look: Alex really thought Mark was old enough to drink.
- Aisha has been mistaken multiple times as being younger than the rest of the cast due to her short height, much to her chagrin.
See you next week! ❤
