Webcomic / Nevermore

"It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived who you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee"

— "Annabel Lee", by Edgar Allan Poe

Nevemore is a sapphic romance webcomic by Kate Flynn and Kit Trace (aka Red & Flynn) loosely inspired by the various works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Can be found here.

The webcomic provides examples of:

• Alien Sky: The in-between world of Nevermore is in perpetual twilight with a reddish orange sky.
• Ambiguously Evil: The staff of Nevermore Academy claim to have good intentions, but have a generally sinister presence and aren't particularly friendly. The talking raven that seems to oppose the Academy is also rather ambiguous.
• Arranged Marriage: Lenore's father was going to force her into one before she was crippled. Annabel Lee was also forced into one by her father.
• Bedsheet Ladder: Lenore makes one in order to escape her room and chase after the Raven. She has to use it as her blanket that night.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • Lenore and Duke quickly bond over their shared troublemaker status.
  • Averted with Annabel Lee and Ada. Ada believes that she and Annabel are bound to be friends due to their shared "poshness". Annabel does not feel the same way, but is happy to let Ada think they're friends.
• Custom Uniform: Nevermore's standard uniform consists of a dress shirt, a black coat with the emblem on the back, pants or a skirt, and long buckled boots, but all the students wear their own take on it.
• Cute Monster Girl: Some of the female students' Spectres might count. Annabel Lee looks exactly the same as a Lady in White, except with a hole in her chest, and Eulalie's Chimera form also only changes her clothes
• Dark Fantasy
• Declaration of Protection: Lenore and Annabel Lee make a mutual pact to look out for each other early on. Lenore promises to herself to protect her friends Duke and Pluto as well.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: A vicious deconstruction of the Hysterical Woman trope is the Flashback B-Plot's theme. It is explored that a woman need barely step outside of her role in society to be labeled "hysterical" and cast aside, and those who do act out irrationally only do so out of frustration from not being listened to in the first place.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • The 19th century doctors who "treated" Lenore's injuries when she was still alive were staggeringly sexist. Not only did they think a woman was too fragile for physical therapy, the injuries left her unable to bear children so Lenore wouldn't need the freedom of walking, and left her crippled in a wheelchair.
  • Annabel Lee's father forced her into an Arranged Marriage in order to preserve his reputation. Annabel hated the idea of being a lady of the house, but the best she could do was delay the inevitable.
• Destroy the Abusive Home: In a flashback, Lenore set fire to her family's mansion before going to find Annabel. Extra fittingly, she started the fire in the attic room where she nearly wasted away as an invalid.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Lenore repeatedly and fearlessly snarks at the deans.
• Driving Question: How did everyone die? So far it's known that Annabel Lee died shortly before her wedding by her lover's hands, Duke drowned, Morella died performing a Heroic Sacrifice, Berenice got hit by a car, Eulalie died in a fire, Monstressor got tied to the railroad tracks and run over by a train, Ada got an axe wound to the chest, and Lenore and Annabel Lee possibly died together.
• Face Your Fears: The theme of the admittance exam. Hopeful students must traverse a hostile maze of thorns, and survive random environments based on different phobias. It is speculated that the point of such a dangerous test is to drive out the students' Spectres.
• Food as Characterization: In episode 38, the students of Nevermore are presented with the food they would have chosen as their last meal.
  • Lenore receives a rack of venison, which reminds her of when Theo used to bring home deer for dinner.
  • Pluto receives a bowl of fish and chips, a fairly mundane and childish dish compared to some of the others. Duke is quick to point out that fish matches his cat motif as well.
  • Duke receives an ortolan, a songbird that is considered sinful to eat.
  • Ada receives champagne and beluga caviar, a highly expensive meal traditionally enjoyed by aristocrats. However, she hates the taste of it, implying she never actually tasted it when she was alive. When offered some of Morella's shepherd's pie, she dismisses it as "peasant food".
  • Morella receives a shepherd's pie, an easy-to-make comfort food.
  • Annabel Lee receives Earl Grey tea and scones, a fashionable light meal in 1800's England.
  • Eulalie receives Taiyaki, a fish-shaped cake sold as street food in Japan. She happily points out that her fish-shaped meal matches Pluto's fish and chips.
  • Berenice receives Oysters Rockefeller and gin fizz, a food and drink popular in New Orleans.
  • Montressor receives steak, beans, cornbread, and a glass of bourbon, all common Southern-American cuisine.
  • Will receives a bowl of peaches and a glass of water, befitting his status as The Generic Guy.
  • Prospero receives espresso and cannoli, a casual Italian meal considered refined and fashionable.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Lenore and Annabel knew each other when they were alive, but both lost their memories when they arrived in Nevermore. Lenore eventually recovers her memory of their first meeting, while Annabel only remembers their last moments together.
• Ghost Amnesia: Neither Lenore nor Annabel remember anything when they first arrive at the gates of Nevermore, and need to be informed that they died. This seems to be the case for all the students, but the cast's memories steadily come back in fragments as time goes on.
• Goth: Unsurprisingly for a Poe-inspired work, gothic imagery is prominent throughout the series, most noticeably in Lenore's appearance.
• Gothic Horror: While the series is not primarily horror, the mystical forces surrounding Nevermore Academy can lead to some frightening imagery.
• Haunted House: The class' first proper lesson takes place in "Mystery Manor", an archetypal dark mansion with a thunderstorm backdrop. It just happens to be on a landmass floating in a void.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: When Lenore and Berenice notice the effects Berenice's Strigoi bite has on Will, they volley a bunch of words to describe it back and forth, confusing each other, before Eulalie outright says he seems drunk.
• Inconvenient Attraction: Back when they were alive, Lenore immediately picked up that Annabel sought to use her for her own ends and that angered her. However, attraction to the young woman (and the sheer loneliness she'd been suffering as an invalid) drove Lenore to allow Annabel into her life.
• Jerkass: Ada, though she has some Pet the Dog moments. Montresor is even worse, and is the closest thing to an antagonist the comic has at the moment.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Duke is a troublemaker who gives Pluto a pretty hard time, but he's ultimately a kind and loyal friend.
• Just Friends: An amusing moment in Episode 29.
  Annabel Lee: When we were alive, do you remember?
  Lenore: I... I remember meeting you, yes. We were friends, right?
  Annabel Lee: Yes. Yes! Friends. Good friends.
• Lame Comeback: In Episode 45, Lenore responds to Annabel's comment that she looks like death warmed over with, "You look nice today...Stupid."
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The dining hall erupts into chaos (aside from a stoic Annabel) when the deans drop the bomb that only one graduate will be allowed a second chance at life.
• Mythology Gag: The series has several winks and nods to the Edgar Allan Poe works that inspired it:
  • Each episode begins and ends with the animated image of a beating heart.
  • Lenore and Pluto both have Animal Motifs related to their source works — a raven and a black cat, respectively.
  • Duke's chosen last meal is an ortolan, which his literary namesake eats at the beginning of the poem.
  • The poem "Eulalie" describes the titular character as having violet eyes, which her Nevermore counterpart shares.
  • For the first lesson, Lenore is equipped with a pendulum.
  • In episode 46, two students named Arthur and Madeline are mentioned.
• Nice Guy / Nice Girl: While Lenore may be Hot-Blooded, she's one of the nicest characters on the series. Morella and Pluto are also very nice.
• No Full Name Given: The last names of the Nevermore students are yet to be revealed, likely as a result of Ghost Amnesia. Lenore's family name is conveniently struck from Theo's obituary.
  • Episode 65 reveals that Lenore's last name is Vandernacht and Annabel's is Whitlock.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Nevermore students each have a Spectre form, which can range from the standard floating phantasm to demons and monsters.
• Plague Doctor: The "Shadow Man" Spectre, wielded by Prospero, resembles one.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Lenore and Duke find common ground as delinquents instantly and become each other's closest ally.
• Pocket Dimension: The academy uses these as environments for the students to test their powers in.
• Scary Scarecrow: One of the students at Nevermore has a scarecrow Spectre. It appears to have power over Creepy Crows.
• Shout-Out: Episode 21 shows Past!Lenore being locked in a room after being declared hysterical. Staring at the ugly flower wallpaper every day leads her to experience Sanity Slippage and rip the wallpaper down in a way that is very reminiscent of The Yellow Wallpaper.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: Lenore's Ragtag Bunch of Misfits versus Annabel Lee's posse of snobbish jerks.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl:
  • Lenore is a short-haired, scrappy Butch Lesbian. Her Love Interest, Annabel Lee, is an elegant, glamorous Lipstick Lesbian. Noticeably, Annabel Lee's uniform includes a skirt, while Lenore's uniform has pants.
  • Lenore's roommate Morella is a sweet, timid girly girl. She also wears a skirt as part of her uniform.
• Took a Level in Badass: Any student who manifests takes a level. A good example of this is Morella, who goes from hiding under a table from monsters to battling them with a sword and shield.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: A student traditionally unlocks their Spectre by reexperiencing the same emotions they felt at the moment of their death. Needless to say, this tends to be a very traumatic thing.
• True Companions: Lenore, Duke, and Pluto become dedicated to each other after the entrance exams, to the point that Lenore swears to get them a second chance along with her and Annabel, or die trying.
• Twice Shy: Justified with Lenore and Annabel Lee. In the Victorian Era, homosexuality was a taboo concept, so it's understandable that two women from high-class families would be reluctant to acknowledge their mutual attraction out loud.
• Was It All a Lie?: Lenore asks Annabel Lee this when the latter claims to have been a False Friend. Annabel says that it was, but Lenore refuses to accept that answer.
• Wight in a Wedding Dress: Annabel Lee's Spectre form is a Lady in White, which resembles an undead bride with a giant hole in her chest where her heart would be
• Will They or Won't They?: Lenore and Annabel Lee.
  • Did They or Didn't They?: Annabel and Lenore were friends in life, and their mutual attraction seems to have originated in the world of the living. However, because Lenore (and the reader) only see a few early memories of their friendship, it's unclear if they were involved at some point before their deaths.
• Wham Episode: Episode 65. The reader sees a flashback from Annabel's perspective for the first time as she is made aware of Lenore's apparent death. Lenore's parents and Annabel's father are Unseen No More. It is revealed that Annabel has panic attacks that she is forced to hide, adding new context to her previous behavior. Also, Lenore and Annabel's last names are revealed.
• Wham Line:
  • In episode 38, the Deans give a toast to the students who passed orientation...
    ...and to the one lucky student amongst you who will be born again.
  • At the end of episode 42:
    Past Annabel: I'm sorry, Lenore. This is to be our final meeting.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Lenore appears to wear a boy's uniform, with pants instead of a skirt like the other girls at the Academy.

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