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Are you ready to fulfil your destiny, and become magical girls?
Sweet Dreams or occasionally Sweet Dreams: Defend Against Nightmares is a webcomic by Claire Greenhalgh about a trio of Magical Girls going about their daily lives in their hometown, and fighting the Nightmares that show up every night after the sun sets. It started on New Year’s Day 2018, with an increasingly infrequent update schedule. It currently seems to be on hiatus. It used to be hosted on Tumblr but has since moved to ComicFury and can be read here.
Not to be confused with Aaron Patterson’s 2008 thriller novel.
Sweet Dreams provides examples of the following tropes:
- Artificial Limbs: Tabitha has a prosthetic left arm starting just below her shoulder.
- Big Friendly Dog: Pippa is a Saint Bernard who’s large enough for Lorelei to ride around on (at least while she’s transformed.)
- Canine Companion: Lorelei has a service dog named Pippa, though it’s yet to come up in the comic precisely what Pippa’s assistance tasks are.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Purple for Tabitha, blue for Charlie and pink for Lorelei.
- Curtains Match the Window: We’ve yet to see anyone with magic powers who doesn’t fit this trope when they’re transformed, including animal companions.
- Everything's Better with Sparkles
- Familiar: All magical girls and sorcerers appear to have one, they resemble small, cartoony animals with a colourscheme and visual motifs (such as stars or lightning bolts) that matches the girl they’re connected to.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: Tabitha only wears one glove, due to only having one arm.
- Frills of Justice: The Starry Trio’s outfits all have simple lace trims on most of their garments.
- Handicapped Badass: The main three girls are Magical Girl Warriors and all appear to be disabled in some manner. Tabitha has a missing arm and a prominant scar through her, potentially blind, left eye, Charlie uses a motorised wheelchair, and Lorelei has hearing aids and a service dog.
- Henshin Hero: Well, it is a magical girl comic.
- Magical Accessory: The main girls’ Power Crystals take the form of chokers when transformed, and more simple necklaces when not. Valkyrach’s seems to be a belt buckle.
- Magical Girl Warrior: Fighting monsters which according to the site’s ‘about’ page are the physical manifestations of people’s nightmares is the nightly duty of the setting’s magical girls and sorcerers.
- Missing Mom: Neither Charlie or Lorelei appear to have mothers.
- Power Dyes Your Hair: Transforming changes a girl’s hair and eyes from their natural colouration to match her colourful Transformation Trinket.
- Scars Are Forever: Tabitha has a particularly noticeable one both in the prologue and the first chapter, which is set after a 3 year timeskip. Valkyrach is practically covered in them, though they don’t look as deep as Tabitha’s one does.
- Shock and Awe: Valkyrach is able to blast blue lightning bolts at her enemies.
- Transformation Name Announcement: Shown on page 23 for The Starry Trio.
- Transformation Sequence: Pages 23-25 show one off for the main girls. Page 24 is probably the best single-page example though.
- Transformation Trinket: The girls hold theirs aloft before transforming.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Schoolgirls by day, Magical Girls by night.
