Nothing Special
is a fantasy webcomic by one Katie Cook (Author of Gronk, as well as writer and artist of a few issues of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW)). Started in 2017.
The story follows one Callie Benson, seemingly ordinary girl... save for the fact her father is a daemon and has a portal that leads into the Spirit World, a world of magic and fantasy. While she's been there as a child, she's mostly grown up in the human realm. Though hasn't made much effort to make friends since she can see the spirits of dead plants. Things change when she meets a boy named Declan who just recently starting seeing the spirits himself. Just as the two start bonding, however, Callie's father goes missing and the two find that he's been taking to the Spirit Realm. Declan and Callie set off to find him, along the way gaining new friends and finding out some surprising revelations.
Can be found on Webtoons and is updated Tuesdays.
Has the following tropes
- Amulet of Dependency: The necklace Callie's father gave her. He enchanted it so that if anything should happen to him, it'll lead her to him.
- Arc Villain
- Season 1: Lyla once Callie and Declan manage to find Tom and find she was the cause of his kidnapping. Would be a nice reunion if Lyla didn't reveal herself to be completely bonkers.
- Season 2: Leir, this one is pretty obvious due to his way of dress and mannerisims when we're first introduced to him with his endgame being him wanting to steal the Poppyfield magic and make himself all powerful.
- Season 3: Nero, Lasser and Leir's father, who has been stealing magic from souls that arrive in his Meadow, and has collected the magic of every one of the nine muses save Callie.
- Crash-Into Hello: This is how Declan enters into the story, bumping into Callie while on the way to class.
- Endearingly Dorky: Virtually all the main cast. Callie and Declan are a bunch of film nerds and constantly make references to pop culture. Eventually they get Lasser into it after getting to know him better and introduce him to Earth books and movies.
- The Fair Folk: Naturally the Spirit World has more than a few unpleasant fae beings. Examples being Layla, a nymph who's more than happy to kill mortals for "decorations" around herself. Madam Laurel, who's very snotty and doesn't hold humans in high regard and Leir, a demon who's just looking out for his own interests.
- Forgotten First Meeting: Declan's known Callie since kindergarten, but, since Callie doesn't socialize with others, she barely remembers him at first.
- Hollywood Board Games: One can learn a lot about Callie and her father Tom's relationship from the simple fact that they like to play Scrabble. Tom is a Good Parent, so the two of them are always amenable to spending quality time together. It's also easy to see how, despite their different personalities, they know how to communicate with each other. A game of Scrabble is their way to settle disagreements and, even if they can get rather intense, there are no hard feelings afterward. Finally, that they are so good at that game is not surprising given how Callie is Brilliant, but Lazy and Tom is fairly knowledgeable since he runs a magic shop.
- Invisible to Normals: Anything magical are usually unseen by humans in the human realm.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Lasser had this problem in his introduction. He gets better as the story goes on.
- Our Fairies Are Different: They all have a specific Elemental Powers over Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Hybrids of elements are very rare.
- Our Nymphs Are Different: Nymphs' true forms are ethereal until they cover themselves in their element. In a dryad's case, for instance, this results in skin made of wood and a hair made of leafy canopy. Dryads can posses trees and transform people's souls into glowing motes of light they use as decorations of sorts.
- The Reveal:
- Not long into his first visit into the Spirit World, Declan reveals he's a fairy. Least a half of one. In chapter 2 we find out he's part fire and Earth fairy, a hybrid, something that is very rare.
- Callie herself is revealed to be a Muse. One of the main reasons her father tried to prevent her from going further past the border of the Draken City Market in the Spirit World was because doing so would alert others that she was in the realm, since the power of a Muse is very sought after. As well as to keep her mother from finding her.
- Callie's mother is a wood nymphand a tad... possessive.
- Not long into his first visit into the Spirit World, Declan reveals he's a fairy
- Serious Business: Word Tiles (aka Scrabble) for Callie and her father. It basically how they handle a lot of major decision making disputes between them. So much so Declan had learned not to interfere with them when they get into it after experiencing a previous offscreen showdown and pulls Lasser away until they finish.
- Time Skip: Season 2 takes place some time after the the end of high school. Callie and Declan have graduated and his grandmother has passed to which Declan has moved in with Mr. Benson shop in the Spirit World to be with Callie.
- Unpleasant Parent Reveal:
- Season one has Callie meeting her mother, Layla, who it turns out is a Wood Nymph who tried to smother her with moss as a child and has no problem killing mortals as she believes they would be happier as her spirit decorations. Callie is ultimately forced to kill her when she tries to force Callie into her service with her Muse powers.
- Zig-zagged a bit in season two with Declan meeting his grandmother, Laurel. While he is cordial with her, he's put off with her snooty personality, insistence on using a preferred name for him despite constantly telling her to call him his given one and her dismissal of Callie and Lasser as his friends.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Downplayed, but whenever Callie uses her powers to "inspire" someone to help her. Her friends usually call her out on it, chiding her for taking advantage of others then using them for what they were meant for. For the most part, Callie tries to justify it as aiding the group and she has. But her uses of it are starting to get a bit self-indulgent.
