Destructive Harmonics/Characters

The Band

Band Tropes

• Anti-Hero: of a type difficult to place precisely. Type 4 at the absolute worst, (or possibly Type Ones with more talent and self-esteem), since they honestly do care for their manager and each other, and they don't deliberately create most of the chaos that surrounds them.
• Artist Disillusionment: they don't hate their fans, exactly, but sometimes they find them irritating and a bit disturbing even by Nightmare Fetishist standards (not without reason - it's not as if the amount of Serious Business in their fandom encourages sane and temperate behavior.)
• Bunny Ears Lawyer: for all their other failings and eccentricities, they're all talented musicians.
• Crouching Ditz Hidden Badass: they're surprisingly good at handling bizarrely dangerous situations even without Artemisia's help. (It's the mundane dangers they have more trouble with.)
• Cuteness Proximity: to greater or lesser degrees. Given their Nightmare Fetishist tendencies, this is sometimes provoked by unlikely creatures.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Maenad is popular with women of all orientations.
• Fiction 500: "according to the IRS, we officially have too much money."
• Five-Man Band
• Floral Theme Naming
• Freaky Is Cool: all of them, to varying degrees, sometimes to the point of Nightmare Fetishism.
• Genius Ditz
• Heavy Mithril
• Multinational Team: American, Canadian, Swedish.
• Power of Rock
• The Rock Star
• Self-Deprecation
• True Companions
• Twofer Token Minority: possibly all of them, depending on how you define "minority."
• Weirdness Magnet

Valerian Nightshade (Teuila) (lead vocals, lyricist)

• Berserk Button: Brutalist architecture, mostly because she thinks the name is false advertising considering the lack of portcullises, dungeons, spiky metal bits, and poles on which to impale the heads of one's enemies.
  • And don't question her gender or femininity.
• Bi the Way
• Big Breasts, Big Deal: she falls into the Indifferent subtype for the most part.
• Big Girl: very much a Type 3. She's a bit of a marshmallow for a very tall, perpetually black clad former dominatrix turned heavy metal vocalist.
• Boobs of Steel: she's not a combatant, but she is the most physically powerful person in the band as well as the most well-endowed.
• Bottle Fairy: she likes the beer.
• Brawn Hilda: her size, deep singing voice, and intimidating aura have given her an undeserved reputation for butchness, at least among those who don't find these sorts of qualities potential turn-ons.
• Cute Little Fangs
• Daddy's Girl
• Dark Is Not Evil
• Dark Messiah: speculated to be so by those who think Maenad are people of metaphysical significance, but Val herself denies it.

"For God's sake, people, I am not the Messiah!" "She's a very naughty girl."

• Darkness Von Gothickname
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: she does, at least. Her outstanding suckitude at matters mathematical probably contributed a lot to her lack of respect for her own intellectual prowess.
• Eyes of Gold
• Face of a Thug: her naturally intimidating appearance is an advantage in her current job, but caused her problems in high school.
• The Hero - for a rather loose definition of "heroic."
• Heroic Bastard: her parents' relationship ended when her mom went back to South Africa, and they never did wind up getting married. Val has her father's last name because he's the one who raised her.
• Holier Than Thou: averted. She's a Christian, and neither outstandingly depraved nor outstandingly virtuous.
• Hollywood Pudgy: in-universe. She is, while not dangerously overweight, not a petite woman by any means, and she gets subjected to the same crazy standards as most other female celebrities.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover
• Make Me Wanna Shout: unintentional variant. She gave up on Death Metal because her lower register tended to break things and make listeners acutely uncomfortable.
• Of Corsets Sexy: on occasion.
• Statuesque Stunner: she's 6'3" in her socks.
• Stout Strength: she deliberately cultivates this.

"For one thing, toned fat looks better than flabby fat, in my opinion, and also, if people still insist on giving you crap about your looks, it's easier to fling them across the room."

• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo
• Team Mom: sometimes functions this way when Artemisia is elsewhere.
• Verbal Tic: she, uh, tends to use a fair amount of, y'know, speech fillers.
• Woman in Black

Lilja Lakebetonika (lead guitar)

• Alliterative Name
• Bishie Sparkle: when she's being particularly fabulous.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: she has worse tolerance than Violet, who is tiny.
• Dead Twin Brother
• Defrosting Ice Queen: while she doesn't lose all her arrogance, she gradually becomes a little friendlier and more emotionally open with her bandmates.
• Forgets to Eat: she tends to lose her appetite when she's under stress. Excellent for maintaining her slender figure, not so great for keeping her energy up on long, demanding tours.
• Icy Blue Eyes
• Insufferable Genius: only when it comes to music.
• The Lancer
• Lethal Chef: she's managed to ruin ramen, toast, and tea. Fortunately, she knows her limits.
• Lipstick Lesbian: with occasional forays into Anything That Moves, although she prefers women for the most part.
  • Oddly enough, she doesn't actually wear makeup offstage except for media appearances, but she spends enough time on hair care to make up for it.
• Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places
• Petite Pride: at the very least, being on the flat side hasn't hurt her body image any.
• Picky Eater: justified, since she has a lot of allergies and food intolerances.
• Rapunzel Hair: the longest in the band.
• She's Got Legs
• Statuesque Stunner: she's a little over 5'10" in her socks, and quite pretty if you like thin, leggy, flat-chested blondes.
• Tall Blonde and Bishoujo: this is her public image, although she's actually rather insecure and neurotic in her private life.
• Team Prima Donna
• Transsexual
• The Unfavorite: her parents were preoccupied with her chronically ill twin brother (both before and after his death) and didn't pay much attention to Lilja unless they needed a blood donor.
• Vanity Is Feminine: although, to be fair, fame tends to make people self-conscious.
• Verbal Tic: she very rarely uses contractions and occasionally falls into mild Poirot Speak, although her overall grasp of English is pretty good.
• Woman in White

Musa Hawthorne (drummer)

• Black and Nerdy
• Bottle Fairy / Lady Drunk: sits somewhere between these two, as she's more jaded than the stereotypical Bottle Fairy but more playful and less bitter (usually) than the usual Lady Drunk. She is, however, the heaviest drinker in the band under normal circumstances.
• Cool Big Sis: she's a few years older than the other girls, has the most worldly experience, and winds up listening to a lot of their personal problems that they don't consider urgent enough to take to Artemisia. However, she resists being thought of as the Team Mom.

"How about I'm the 'cool aunt who's a bad influence?'"

• Does Not Like Shoes: she plays the drums barefoot.
• Erudite Stoner
• Hartman Hips
• Hazel Eyes
• Immune to Drugs: which has its downsides, like the reduced efficacy of most painkillers.
• Meganekko
• Occidental Otaku: with a particular fondness for Mind Screw anime.
• Oh My Gods: she tends to invoke the deities of Ancient Egypt in various creative ways.
• One-Note Cook: she's not bad in the kitchen, but she has a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea of recipes that contain no alcohol in any form. (Pasta sauce: vodka. Potato soup: white wine. Brownies: coffee liqueur.)
• Sad Clown: in a way, she's a bit of a mess underneath the amiably cynical sense of humor.
• The Smart Guy: she's the most book-smart person in the band proper, although this doesn't keep her out of trouble.
• The Southpaw
• Stepford Smiler: she's got a lot of issues relating to her family and her old band that she does her best not to think about. When they come up anyway, Drowning My Sorrows tends to come into effect.
• The Unfavorite

Yanang Bai (rhythm guitar)

• Bifauxnen: the only one in the band with short hair, and was mistaken for a boy more than once before she got famous.
• The Big Guy: she's a tiny Hmong woman, but has the attitude, and she's strong for her size.
• Biker Babe
• Boisterous Bruiser
• Butch Pansexual
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: she's not as technically incompetent as Lilja, but her recipes tend to be excessively spicy even by most Southeast Asian standards.
• Cute Little Fangs: in-story, they're unusually prominent yaeba. Her immigrant entrepreneur family didn't have the money for cosmetic dentistry, and by the time she could afford to have them straightened they'd become part of her image.
• Dark Is Not Evil
• Eskimos Aren't Real: she believes that mistletoe is a myth.
• F** Hag: more during her days in LA than now, given the lack of males of any orientation in the main cast.
• Friend to Bugs: she has a pet tarantula.
• The Gadfly: particularly towards Violet, in an effort to test the boundaries of her usual niceness.
• Hell-Bent for Leather
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold
• Knife Nut
• The Ladette
• Nightmare Fetishist: even more so than the rest of the band.
• Odd Eyed: light brown and almost black.
• Pet the Dog: she's been putting her younger siblings through college since she made it big.
• Shonen Hair: she developed her particular variation during her punk days, as a result of having hair that was naturally about sixty percent cowlicks.
• Unconventionally Cute
• Unknown Rival: to Rachel Maddow, temporarily, after discovering that Ms. Maddow came out ahead of her in an online "Hottest Butch Women" list.
• Woman in Black
• Yaoi Fangirl: more specifically, Bara fangirl.

Violet Aciano (bassist)

• Adult Child: she wears barrettes and collects stuffed toys.
• Ambiguous Disorder: she's a bit of an odd duck even apart from being a Genius Ditz Weirdness Magnet musical prodigy. This was actually one of the reasons for her aunt's overprotective behavior during her childhood.
• Author Avatar: not exactly, but she does have the most interests (marine biology, baking) and personality traits (vegetarianism, love of animals, odd sense of humor, highly-strung nervous system) in common with her creator.
• Beware the Nice Ones: normally, she's a kind and cheerful young woman, but she can be a little emotionally volatile at times. Her bandmates have exaggerated this tendency and live in fear of Violet really losing her temper and bringing on The End of the World as We Know It.
• Chaste Hero: she's the only band member who's still a virgin, and if she isn't oblivious to Yanang's occasional crude flirtation, she hasn't said anything.
• The Chick: lampshaded.

"Officially, I'm the bass player, but my real job is to keep the two guitarists from killing each other."

• Cloudcuckoolander: she has her moments, although it can be hard to tell how much of the weird stuff she says is an honest reflection of how she sees the world, and how much is her odd sense of humor at work.
• The Cutie: as much as someone in a band like Maenad can be, at least.
• Hair Decorations
• Feminine Women Can Cook: she's fairly feminine compared with her bandmates (although more girlish than womanly) and shows the most interest in the culinary arts, although she concentrates more on sweets than on real meals.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals
• Granola Girl: she's a vegetarian, loves animals, doesn't wear leather or fur, drinks a lot of herb tea, recycles her soda and vodka bottles, and enjoys walking around barefoot in warm weather. To Yanang, this makes her practically the Anthropomorphic Personification of hippiedom.
  • She does, in fact, eat a lot of granola, but that's mostly because she likes it and other kinds of sugary cereal don't react well with her weird metabolism.
• Innocent Blue Eyes
• Mini-Dress of Power
• Moe: she's quirky, innocent, the band's "younger sister" figure, and with her hair down and its natural color, she looks a lot like Regina Spektor.
• Not Good with People: a mild Type One for the most part, although she does have her moments of slight misanthropy.
• Parental Abandonment: her parents died when she was young, and she's lived with her aunt and uncle ever since.
• Prisoners of Pollyanna: while she's not officially held to stricter standards of purity than the rest of Maenad - their manager tries to keep her away from hard drugs, but that's more out of pseudo-parental concern than a desire to preserve her image - some of her fanbase does hold her to exaggeratedly lofty standards of innocence for an adult woman in a decidedly non straight-edge rock band. She's been criticized as a Bad Role Model For Young Girls for doing things like wearing skirts shorter than school dress codes allowed and consuming alcohol in public when she was of legal drinking age.
• The Southpaw
• Strange Girl
• Sweet Tooth: unfortunately, she suffers from mild low blood sugar on occasion so she can't overdo it.

Liana

Maenad's original bassist, who left the band in 2007.

• Call to Agriculture: she eventually moved to a small organic farm in rural New England after leaving the band.
• Ill Girl: why she left Maenad. She had health problems that were aggravated by the stress of touring.
• The Pete Best: for Violet
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
• Straight Man
• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo

Maenad employees and associates

Artemisia Mandrake

The long-suffering manager. A small, geeky, quietly hypercompetent Norwegian-British woman a little older than Musa. The band knows just enough about her to know that she has Hidden Depths, although they're not entirely sure about the details. Yanang has speculated that she's actually a killer robot lawyer from the future, or at least a cyborg.

• Action Girl: she's a trained martial artist. This comes in handy more often than you'd think in her line of work.
• Anti-Hero: probably a Type 4. She can be ruthless, but she needs provocation.
• Badass Bookworm: or as the girls put it, "ninja librarian."
• Battle Butler
• Brainy Brunette
• British Accents: RP with a hint of Norwegian if you know what to listen for.
• Hot Chick in a Badass Suit
• Hypercompetent Sidekick
• Iron Lady: mostly when dealing with other high-powered businesspeople, although she's not a pushover at any time.
• Lady of War: polite, dignified, and can kick your ass in a skirt and sensible pumps.
• Mama Bear: do not threaten any Maenad member's life or long-term welfare. Artie will not be happy.
• Meganekko: although her personality is more in line with the Stoic Spectacles stereotype, she does have a nerdy side as well, since she shows some familiarity with pre-fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons and its alignment system.
• Must Have Caffeine
• Only Sane Man
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: in a way, although it's oriented towards the impact people could have on Maenad and its members rather than their conduct toward Artemisia herself. Artemisia is fully conscious of this.
• Rapunzel Hair: she normally camouflages it with a conservative updo, but it reaches below her waist.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Her hair's actually very dark brown, but she fits the high-contrast aesthetic.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: slightly. Her eyes are distinctly reddish (although more maroon than true red) and she can be pretty ruthless, although she's not gratuitously evil.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: she can do a Gendo Ikari impression regardless of where she is in relation to the light sources in the room. Now that is a talent.
• Stoic Woobie: she's been putting up with Maenad and the associated, sometimes life-threatening craziness for years.
• Straight Man
• Sugar and Ice Personality: she's not one for showy displays of emotion, which she considers unprofessional and potentially dangerous, but she cares in her way.
• Team Mom

Ivy Choi

A Chinese-American record producer who's been in the business since the seventies, although due to a few peculiarities of her medical history, she looks a bit younger than she is.

• Bob Haircut
• Bottle Fairy: she's the only character who can keep up with Musa in the Withnail and I Drinking Game.
• Cool Big Sis: like Musa, is in the position of "older and more worldly, but not really maternal."
• Cute Little Fangs
• Heroic Albino: well, she's on the protagonists' side, and she's certainly not evil, at least.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: the combination of very pale hair + bangs + trademark big sunglasses makes her look rather like an older, Asian Lady Gaga with a slightly more conservative fashion sense.
• Record Producer
• Sunglasses At Night: she has enough issues with light sensitivity that she decided to just wear them all the time.
• Super Senses: relatively mundane version - she has ears like a bat. In terms of capabilities, not appearance.
• White-Haired Pretty Girl

Doctor Alaria Ajowan

Maenad's physician. She's mysterious and eccentric, but undeniably good at her job.

• Bio Augmentation: she acquired lab-grown prosthetic eyes (which she grew herself) at some point in the past.
• Bollywood Nerd: she doesn't talk about her past much, but she seems to be South Asian, and she's definitely a science geek.
• Bunny Ears Lawyer: she has a slight Mad Scientist streak, but it doesn't interfere with her work.
• Dark Is Not Evil: she's not a bad person at all, just a bit creepy and eccentric.
• Dark-Skinned Blond
• Defector From Decadence: she was rejected by her former colleagues for using her discoveries to do things like create assistive technology for people with disabilities instead of making Super Soldiers.
• Strange Girl: sort of a grown-up version, given her interests and overall aesthetic.
• Uh-Oh Eyes: she grew them herself! They work just fine, but their appearance is a bit disconcerting.

Margerit

Maenad's chef, a highly skilled, basically unflappable Danish woman.

• Chef of Iron
• Frying Pan of Doom
• The Quiet One
• Supreme Chef

Employee #00314, aka "Pi"

The world's unluckiest roadie, who has been Maenad's loyal employee for several uncomfortably eventful years.

• Hollywood Cyborg: let's just say it's a good thing that Maenad's medical plan covers cybernetic prosthetics.
• Iron Butt Monkey: his employers' house has tried to eat him alive on more than one occasion, and yet he carries on.
• Mauve Shirt
• Only Known by Their Nickname

Maenad minions

• Ambiguously Brown: Ruby
• Ambiguously Gay: Ruby
• Blind Without'Em: Alejandro
• Brawn Hilda: Ruby
• Dark Action Girl: Ruby
• Geek Physiques: Carey is the skinny type
• Genki Girl: Roxanne
• Lovable Nerd: Carey
• Mauve Shirt
• Meganekko: Layla
• Nerd Glasses: Alejandro
• Sassy Secretary: Layla, at times, although she's choosy about when to bring out the snark.
• Semper Fi: Ruby served in the Marines at one point. Unfortunately, rumors about her sexuality didn't improve her career prospects in the military.
• Theme Naming: after various One Woman Songs (or the male equivalent)

Doctor Magnolia Oakmoss

Band therapist and Southern Lady. She has her little quirks, but who doesn't? And she has such lovely manners.

• Bunny Ears Lawyer: when her habit of murdering people is out of the picture, she's a perfectly competent therapist, and she does manage to help Maenad.
• Catch Phrase: "Why, bless your heart..."
• Cute and Psycho: she's very feminine and always minds her manners, when she isn't murdering people. Fortunately, she's managed to behave herself while working for the band.
• Girly Girl: compared to her, everyone in the band is a bit butch.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck
• The Shrink: doesn't fit any of the usual stereotypes, since she's competent at her job, but has some fairly serious personal failings of her own.
• Southern Belle: she never wears white before Easter, and you will pry her hairspray from her cold, dead hands.
• Sweet Home Alabama: she's very Southern in some ways (big on the hairspray and sweet tea), but open-minded enough to get along reasonably well with a multiethnic group of bisexual rock stars, even if she does think their fashion sense needs work.

Families

Valerian's family

Valerian grew up surrounded by the relatives on her father's side (the Teuilas, most of whom settled in Hawaii), but didn't meet her mother or any of the other people on the South African side of her family until she reached her twenties.

• Apron Matron: Huihana Teuila (Val's grandmother) is not to be messed with.
• Big Beautiful Woman: most of Val's older female relatives.
• The Clan: at the very least, she has a lot of relatives compared to her bandmates.
• The Fundamentalist: Huihana, although she mellows a bit eventually.
• Gentle Giant: Kamani, Val's father, at least when he isn't in the ring.
• Goth: Valerian's mother. How do you think Val wound up with a middle name like Nightshade?
• Missing Mom
• Professional Wrestling: Kamani's primary occupation, although he's also a B-Movie and TV actor, and he focused more on acting once he hit middle age.

Violet's family

Violet was orphaned as a preschooler, and grew up living with her aunt and uncle in Beaver Tracks, a small town on the British Columbian coast.

• Jewish Mother: Jewish aunt, actually, but a similar shtick.
• Jews Love to Argue: some of her relatives are like this.
• My Beloved Smother: Violet's aunt was annoyingly protective of her, both from her innate personality and out of a belief that Violet was particularly fragile.
• Nephewism

Artemisia's family

Artemisia's parents are Magnus Ravnen, a Norwegian supervillain with a cult fan following, and Lily Mandrake, a British accountant Magnus originally hired to help look after his "legitimate" financial interests.

• Anti-Villain: Magnus, before he retired.
• Badass Long Robe: Magnus is a fan of "medieval chic."
• Brainy Brunette: Lily
• Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: like his daughter, he's a fan of swords.
• Happily Married
• Harmless Villain: Magnus is competent and creative, but isn't psychologically cut out for real evil. His legitimately employed daughter is actually more ruthless.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Magnus is thin but tall (over six feet), Lily is around 5'2".
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: they're both good at their jobs, but Lily has the common sense, attention to mundane details, and financial aptitude to complement Magnus' Mad Scientist / Mad Artist tendencies.
• Meganekko: Lily
• Noble Demon: Magnus again.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: both of them, although Magnus has blue eyes and Lily's are brown.
• Redemption Promotion: Magnus gets a lot more done when he's behaving constructively.
• Retired Supervillain: Magnus. He's a bit too nice to be a Retired Monster.
• Wicked Cultured: Magnus writes poetry and is a fan of classical music.

Musa's family

Musa's family hails from a smallish, mildly depressing (at least by Musa's standards) city in Eastern Washington. Her immediate family consists of her parents Frasier and Lantana, her older sister Erica, and Musa herself.

• Cool Old Lady: Great-Aunt Saffron. She's the only relative whom Musa actually likes.
• It's All About Me: Erica is the queen of this.
• Muse Abuse: some of the celebrities in Erica's Roman à Clef and Very Loosely Based on a True Story novels bear an awfully strong resemblance to the various members of her sister's band. This has not helped family harmony any.
• Parental Favoritism: Frasier and Lantana spent a lot more time and energy on Erica than on Musa. Both sisters acknowledge this, although they both feel that this state of affairs has somehow wronged them. Erica's more vocal about it.
• Peek-a-Bangs: Erica
• Writers Suck: Erica's not exactly a Butt Monkey, and she has some talent, but she's also monstrously self-absorbed and totally lacking scruples.

Yanang's family

While Yanang and her siblings were born in the United States, the older generation are all immigrants. One of Yanang's uncles fought in the Secret War and claims to have CIA connections of an unspecified nature, her parents earned their living in a more mundane fashion by opening a Southeast Asian fast food joint in East LA.

• An Immigrant's Tale
• Open Minded Parents: eventually. They're just happy their wayward daughter is managing to earn a living at something she's good at.
• Screw Politeness I Am a Senior: Yanang's grandmother, after her stroke cost her most of her "brain to mouth" filter.
• Theme Naming: after various Southeast Asian culinary herbs. Bai Horapha (Thai basil), Bai Makrut (lime leaves), et cetera.

Lilja's family

• Ill Boy / Littlest Cancer Patient: Lilja's twin brother Lars.
• Parental Favoritism: their parents were so preoccupied with Lars's medical issues that they didn't pay much attention to Lilja unless they needed a blood donation. This preoccupation extended to after Lars's death.
• Soap Opera Disease: Lars unfortunately suffered from this for much of his childhood.

Other Characters

Erik Mortiisson (a Norwegian-American lumber baron and the former owner of Maenad's Cool House)

• Affably Evil: he thinks of himself this way.
• Cool Old Guy
• Eccentric Millionaire
• The Hedonist: he devoted his retirement to (mostly relatively harmless) debauchery and scandalizing his children and adult grandchildren.
• Shout-Out: Mortiis is the stage name of a Norwegian musician.

The Assassin

• Ascetic Aesthetic: her apartment.
• Combat Sadomasochist
• Dark Action Girl
• Evil Albino: possibly albino. Definitely evil.
• Fan Disservice: a scarred-up but otherwise attractive woman who runs around naked and brutally murders people.
• Full-Frontal Assault
• Knife Nut
• Psycho for Hire
• Psycho Lesbian: has a rather squicky obsession/crush on Artemisia.
• White-Haired Pretty Girl

The Apprentice

• Good Thing You Can Heal
• Iron Butt Monkey

Laugh of the Medusa (Musa's first band, a mid through late nineties feminist Alternative Rock group)

• Bifauxnen: Sage, the drummer.
• Darkskinned Blonde: Musa bleached her hair in those days.
• Dysfunction Junction: towards the end of their career, they were worse than Maenad when it came to mental health and basic functionality.
• Floral Theme Naming: Musa (lead vocals, guitar), Yuri (bass), Lotus (guitar), and Sage (drums).
• Four-Girl Ensemble
• The Nineties
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Lotus's appearance was based on Tori Amos.
• The Ophelia: Lotus, particularly on the last tour when the stress started getting to her and her mental health took a serious downturn.
• Shout-Out: the band name is a reference to a feminist essay by Helene Cixous.

Ginger Sorel

Violet's best friend from high school, a half-Quebecois city girl whose family moved to Beaver Tracks when Violet was fifteen.

• Dark Is Not Evil: she's a firm believer in this, and as a good-hearted Nightmare Fetishist, is an example herself.
• New Transfer Student
• Nightmare Fetishist: she sought Violet out as a friend because Violet gave the impression of being the least "normal" girl at their school.
• Perky Goth: friendly enough to bring Violet out of her self-imposed shell.
• Satellite Character: played with. She's only in the story because of her friendship with Violet, but when they were in school together, Violet was Ginger's sidekick.
• Strange Girl: by the standards of Beaver Tracks, at least, although as far as teenage girls with moderately non-mainstream interests go, she's not that eccentric.

Robert Candlemass

• Guy of the Week
• Jerkass
• Meteorite On Head
• Theme Naming
• Writers Suck

Adrian Negura-Bunget

• Affably Evil: he and Valerian actually got along very well. Too bad he was sent by an apocalyptic cult in order to knock Val up with the Anti Christ.
• Expy: while his personality is rather different, he looks a lot like Vamp from the Metal Gear series. He's also Romanian and a flamenco dancer.
• Guy of the Week
• Tall, Dark and Handsome
• Theme Naming

Susperia Tristwood

• Fainting: "anemia faint" variety, justified because she's borderline anorexic.
• Fragile Flower
• Girl of the Week
• Granola Girl: of a different variety from Violet - a little less "hippie" and a little more "leftist ideological purity."
• Staircase Tumble: fortunately, she lands on Pi before she can fall too far.
• Theme Naming

Lycanthia Darkwell

• Ambiguously Brown
• Plucky Office Girl
• Polyglot
• Punch Clock Villain
• Theme Naming

Doctor Love

• Ambiguously Brown: apparently dark-skinned, but the luchador mask he wears makes it difficult to determine much else.
• Casanova Wannabe
• Chivalrous Pervert: considers himself to be such, although women tend to find him annoying at best.
• Drugs Are Bad: according to Musa, he's a lot more tolerable when he isn't tanked to the gills on E and spiced rum.
• Large Ham: uses more CAPSLOCK in his dialogue than the rest of the cast put together.
• No Indoor Voice
• Third Person Person

Linnea Hammerfall

• The Fashionista: more alternative fashion than haute couture.
• Hot Mother Figure
• Open-Minded Parent
• Parental Substitute: for Lilja.
• Theme Naming: followings Floral Theme Naming for her first name, and Musical References for her surname.

Seax

The band

• Badass Long Hair
• Five-Man Band
• Norse Mythology: one of their major lyrical themes.
• Nakama
• Weirdness Magnet: not Maenad level, but there was that time they summoned the plesiosaur...

Aryn (lead vocals, Danish)

• Adorkable: despite the MANLINESS, he can be oddly sweet.
• Boisterous Bruiser
• Large Ham: he's what would result if the hypothetical biologically-impossible love child of Kamina and Liquid Snake were a Scandinavian heavy metal singer.
• Manly Gay
• Testosterone Poisoning: MANLINESS is a major factor in his decision-making process.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: yes, in Scandinavia. Aryn is a real man.

Didrik (guitar, Norwegian)

• Cloudcuckoolander: to be fair, as a psychic he honestly does perceive the world differently from other people.
• I See Dead People
• Moe
• No Social Skills: raised by lichenologists in the Scandinavian arctic, Didrik has problems with social skills.
• X Meets Y: Toki Wartooth meets Osaka

Hallbjorn (drums, Icelandic)

• Genius Bruiser
• Gentle Giant
• Only Sane Man: at times.
• Psychic Powers
• Token Minority: his father was a native Siberian, which makes him the only member of the band with recent non-Scandinavian ancestry.

Konstantin (bass, Swedish)

• Big Brother Instinct: his relationship with Amalthea has elements of this.
• Bishonen
• The Charmer: it works on everyone but his manager.
• Ditzy Genius: he's book-smart, but has a tendency to focus on specific details while Completely Missing the Point of a situation as a whole.
• Stoic Spectacles
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Elisa and Amalthea manage to get him into drag at one point. He carries it off quite well.

Matthias (Hardanger fiddle, Norwegian)

• Berserk Button: mentioning the Black Metal scene of his hometown is a good way to get him in rant mode.
• The Eeyore: mild example, intended as a reference to the "depressing side" of Scandinavian culture (Ingmar Bergman et al).
• Not Good with People: in all honesty, he finds goats easier to get along with.
• Parental Abandonment
• Preacher's Kid: his aunt, who raised him after his parents died in a "freak fishing accident," is a Lutheran minister.

Elisa (manager, Norwegian)

• Ascended Fangirl: became a band manager because she loved music but wasn't particularly talented at songwriting or performing.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: she normally dresses in Gothic Aristocrat style (similar to EGL, but with longer skirts and more grownup aesthetic), but she tones the frills down for business meetings.
• Fan Girl: of Artemisia Mandrake.
• Guile Hero: she has no combat training, but she gets things done.
• Meganekko
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: she looks a lot like Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko.

Amalthea Hunter

An American singer and pianist who made friends with the band on their first tour of America, and later provided soprano vocals for some of their songs. She's a DPI with sound-manipulation powers that she mostly uses to enhance her performances. She also has a rather high-functioning case of Williams Syndrome and an overprotective big sister who wishes she'd get a hobby that didn't involve hanging out with rock stars.

• Dojikko: she's a Genius Ditz with poor motor skills (for which she has an actual medical justification) and an upbeat personality.
• Genius Ditz: she has perfect pitch, plays the piano well despite her poor motor coordination in other areas, and could sing the phone book. She also needs a calculator and detailed instructions to do third grade math, has a terrible sense of direction, and can be rather naive.
• The Ingenue: she's sweet, friendly, guileless, has led a sheltered life, and thinks the best of people, although her fondness for hanging out with heavy metal bands and inviting them home for pizza and chocolate cake is atypical for the trope.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: her sound-manipulation powers are mostly non-destructive, but she can break things with them if she gets the frequency just right.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: when she was at a school for special-needs music students, she once tried to be this for an autistic savant classmate, much to his confusion.
• Moe
• No Sense of Direction: which is not uncommon for people with Williams Syndrome.
• The Rainman: she's a musical savant with some fairly serious learning disabilities.
• Spoiled Sweet
• White-Haired Pretty Girl

Other Characters

Niobe Hunter

Amalthea's older sister, a multimillionaire inventor and part-time adventurer.

• Brainy Brunette
• The Caretaker: of the "well-intentioned but smothering" variety.
• Gadgeteer Genius
• Insufferable Genius: she is very smart, but her tendency to believe that she always knows best extends to her friends and colleagues as well as her younger sister.
• Knight Templar Big Sister: she makes protecting Amalthea her top priority, sometimes at the expense of her sister's personal growth. This has caused conflicts.
• Powered Armor
• Promotion to Parent

Delilah Savage

An American Differently-Powered Individual, with an outstanding talent for not dying despite considerable provocation, who has, among other things, worked as an actress (in both off-beat Porn with Plot and legitimate drama), musician, and minion-for-hire. She ran away from home in her late teens due to her very conservative father's violent reaction when he discovered her transgendered tendencies, and has traveled extensively, including a sojourn in Scandinavia acting in low-budget experimental films.

• Action Girl: she eventually gets there with practice.
• Big Eater: a side effect of her healing powers.
• Celebrity Resemblance: in-universe, she looks more than a bit like Lilja Lakebetonika (perhaps not surprising, as they are both tall, skinny, fair-skinned, long-haired blonde trans women of Scandinavian ancestry), and she wound up playing a character based on her in There Will Be Glitter.
  • She also looks a little like a younger, more tomboyish Ann Coulter (tall, thin, a bit horsey looking, long, fairly straight blonde hair), and she capitalized on this with her "Anna: She Wolf of the GOP" porn character.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: her strength, agility, and stamina aren't innately higher than a normal person's, but her healing factor gives her a rapid recovery time which lets her keep up a more intense workout program than would normally be healthy.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: she's no squishier than a Badass Normal in her situation would be, but she does tend to run afoul of people with sharp objects a little too often.
• Healing Factor
• Immune to Drugs
• Poke the Poodle: after she ran away, she went through a period when she embraced Evil Is Cool as a reaction against the self-righteousness of her upbringing. In practice this involved going to a lot of Black Metal shows, wearing impractically skimpy clothing and too much makeup, getting a job as a security guard for a local Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Mad Scientist, and experimenting with every drug she encountered until it became clear that they didn't effect her enough to be worth the trouble. One advantage of a restrictive upbringing is that it makes rebellion easy.
• Preacher's Kid
• The Runaway: abused type.
• Sorry I Fell on Your Fist: Dee tends to get apologetic when friends or acquaintances hurt her. The incident with Sigyn Solefald is an extreme example.
• Transsexual
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?

Sigyn Solefald aka Queen Beruthiel

A talented but notoriously eccentric Norwegian musician. Was friends of a sort with Delilah during the latter's sojourn in Scandinavia, but their relationship became strained when Sigyn stabbed Delilah through several vital organs with a replica Viking short sword during an argument. She's also notable for being a Norwegian ultra-nationalist and racist against almost every ethnic group on earth, including Germans and Swedes (among other things, she believes that "pan-Germanicism" is an effort of stealth Germano-Swedish cultural imperialism bent on erasing Norwegian cultural distinctiveness.) In other words, she's a piece of work, although her music is generally considered pretty good by fans who aren't put off by her persona or her stylistic experiments.

• Alliterative Name
• Awesome McCoolname: although it's a pseudonym - her parents called her Christina.
• Black Metal: her early works.
• Bunny Ears Lawyer: she's very talented when she gets her act together.
• Cute and Psycho: she is a cutie. Too bad about the whole "Axe Crazy racist sociopath" thing.
• Draco in Leather Pants: despite her talent for spectacularly alienating people, she retains a core fanbase willing to forgive her anything. A few of them even sent Delilah letters in the hospital threatening her with various horrible fates if she pressed charges for the whole "attempted murder" incident.
• Expy: she's loosely inspired by Varg Vikernes - or, more accurately, by Greven-tan - crossed with an anime-style Cute and Psycho.
• Heavy Mithril: her stage name is based on a Tolkien character.
• Jerkass Woobie: she's kind of a horrible person, but she has rather serious mental problems that have never been treated or even diagnosed - because the people around her tend to dismiss them as either "artistic temperament" or as symptoms of her various moral failings - and, despite her considerable personal charisma, she's no good at maintaining friendships or collaborations.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: she is genuinely fond of her kitty.
• Large Ham: even when she takes off her stage makeup and doesn't sing, she never truly stops performing.
• Mad Artist: she apparently suffers from manic episodes as well as some kind of undiagnosed personality disorder.
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly: her later works.

Victoria Promethea Paracelsus, "Metamorphosis"

• Affably Evil: even when she's a bad guy, she sees no point in acting like a jerk.
• Anti-Villain: when she's technically a bad guy.
• Badass Longcoat
• Body Horror: some of the offensive applications of her powers are pretty disturbing.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: she wouldn't get nearly as much use from her powers if she hadn't studied medicine and biology.
• Broken Bird
• Combat Medic
• Dark and Troubled Past: being the transgendered mutant child of someone who's basically a supervillain version of Fred Phelps.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: her friendship with Tea Liu has had this effect.
• Drink Order: Moroccan Tea (i.e., green with spearmint and sugar)
• Easy Sex Change: averted. She actually had considerable trouble finding a gender therapist who wasn't immediately put off by her Mad Scientist tendencies.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
• Evil Genius
• Green Eyes: unnaturally so, in fact.
• Heel Face Revolving Door
• Highly Adaptive Powers: "biological manipulation" can involve anything from healing, to controlling the muscles and nervous systems of others, to Voluntary Shapeshifting, to creating giant animated plant monsters. It's also useful for cooking.
• Large Ham: has her moments.
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: who actually has gone to medical school.
• Psychic Powers: biokinesis.
• Rapunzel Hair
• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo
• Vain Sorceress: mild example. She has used her powers to give herself a fairly drastic makeover (basically the Voluntary Shapeshifting equivalent of facial feminization surgery and SRS) and to keep her Rapunzel Hair in good condition, but she doesn't care about eternal youth or being the prettiest girl in the room.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: she wants to make the world safe for people who are different.

Teadora Ming Liu, "Psyche"

• Adorkable
• Asian and Nerdy
• Brain Critical Mass
• Disabled Snarker: at times.
• Genius Cripple
• Genius' Sweet Tooth: justified in-universe. Telepathy burns up a lot of glucose.
• Guile Hero
• Its Pronounced Tropay: It's Tay-uh, not Tee.
• Older Than They Look
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: one of the strongest telepaths in the setting, in a five foot tall (standing up), ninety pound package.
• Plucky Girl
• Polymath
• Psychic Powers
• Squishy Wizard: physically, she's no more robust than any other paraplegic academic in decent shape.

Shoshannah Diamond, "Kaiju"

• Big Eater: side effect of her powers.
• The Big Girl
• Blessed with Suck: her mutation isn't dangerous or painful, but it's impossible to conceal without advanced technology, she has a hard time finding clothes that fit properly, and her tail sometimes gets in the way.
• Cute Little Fangs
• Does Not Like Shoes: mostly because she has digitigrade feet with big curved claws.
• Gentle Giant
• Healing Factor
• Lizard Folk: she has scales, claws, reptilian-looking yellow eyes, fangs, and a tail.
• Nice Girl
• Prehensile Tail
• Super Strength
• Super Toughness
• Supreme Chef: she had to learn to cook from scratch, because with the amount she has to eat, she could never afford to live on takeout.
• Unconventionally Cute

Venus Envy

Kate Cadaver / Katherine Valentina Lovelace

Venus Envy's lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player, who also writes or co-writes many of their songs. She's smart, creative, and passionate, but has an unfortunate penchant for romantic self-destruction.

• Badass Longcoat: it's a Norwegian Army Coat rather than a trenchcoat or duster, but the aesthetic's still there.
• Meganekko
• Mood Swinger: particularly before she gets sober.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: she looks a lot like Brody Dalle with glasses.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
• Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll
• Spot of Tea

Dani Lilith / Clarissa Danielle Harlowe

Venus Envy's lead guitarist, and Kate's Foil and best-friend-turned-lover. Dani's talented, driven, and in many ways the cold to Kate's heat, although she's not as sensible as she thinks she is.

• Bifauxnen
• Broken Bird
• Must Have Caffeine
• The Runaway
• Tomboyish Name

Billie Jiang

Venus Envy's bassist, a quirky, dreamy woman with literary inclinations. She's also a werewolf, but there's medication for that nowadays.

• Asian and Nerdy - although she's more of a music and literature geek than an academic paragon.
• Cursed with Awesome - played with, in that lycanthropy is officially considered to be a bad thing in this setting, and it does have its drawbacks (involuntary shapeshifting, worries about infecting others, contact allergy to silver), but Billie still thinks it has its good points.
• Erudite Stoner
• I See Dead People
• Our Werewolves Are Different
• Triang Relations: Type 8, with her boyfriends.
• Silver Haired Pretty Girl

Zandra Mackenzie

Venus Envy's drummer. A cheerful and resilient transgendered redhead.

• The Chick / The Heart: her non-musical role as "the sensible, motherly, emotionally intelligent one" is what keeps everyone else's personal dysfunctions enough in check that Venus Envy can continue to function as a working band.
• Dye Hard: her hair's really strawberry blonde, but the red's become part of her image.
• Feminine Women Can Cook
• Silk Hiding Steel: not quite a straight example, as she is a punk rocker, but she's both the most traditionally feminine and the best at holding everything together in adverse circumstances.
• Team Mom
• Transsexual