''Bright Reversions'' is a currently unfinished work of fiction by Floria. It is set in a world similar to late nineteenth century Earth, with the addition of magic and supernatural powers, intelligent nonhuman races, and some SteamPunk style retro high tech. It centers around a half-orc female soldier, Boudicca "Bodie" Skullsplitter, but has a large cast.

Major Characters include:

Boudicca Thekla "Bodie" Skullsplitter/Agrotera: the central character, as much as the story has one. A former elite soldier who retired to live a peaceful life as a veterinarian in a frontier town, but wound up back in action due to unforeseen circumstances, and finds herself challenging the secret masters of the world.
* ActionGirl
* {{Bifauxnen}}: she's pretty butch, but in an attractive way if you like large greenish women. Oddly enough, she has trouble passing for male among her own people, but does so quite successfully among humans.
* CombatMedic: Bodie's first job when she joined the military. Concentrating on killing people came later.
* DeadpanSnarker
* HalfHumanHybrid: orc mother, human father. It was a consensual and in fact rather happy relationship, contrary to stereotype.
* HeroesLoveDogs: she likes other animals, too.
* ISeeDeadPeople: Bodie can see ghosts. Given all the dead people she encounters in her profession, this can be rather stressful.
* KindlyVet: Bodie functions as this for the small frontier community she retires to, although her training for this was rather informal.
* LukeNounverber
* ScarilyCompetentTracker: not as extreme as some, but she did once successfully track a ghost (being mildly psychic helped).
* SpyCatsuit: Tanis manages to get her into one of these (technically a "dark elf spelunking suit"), ostensibly for reasons of stealth enhancement. While it is easy to move in and surprisingly durable, Bodie thinks he may have had [[CovertPervert other incentives.]]
* TheSquadette: Bodie during the war.
* StupidSexyFlanders: Bodie has a way of attracting gay guys and straight girls. She does make a convincing (if rather bishie) man in the right clothes, but Marius had no such excuse.
* SugarAndIcePersonality: Bodie tends to come across like this, although she's normally less brusque than some examples of the trope. However, members of her own culture (who tend towards the BoisterousBruiser side of things) would be more likely to see her as a mild ShrinkingViolet.
* TeamMom: during the war, Bodie was one of these to her male fellow soldiers, despite being younger than most of them.
* WarriorPoet: she's a highly competent ActionGirl whose actions are driven by a search for a purpose in life beyond "being really good at killing people." She also enjoys classical literature.

Tanis Darienzan: a male dark elf. Has an unconventional interest in surface-world culture and technology, despite his people's traditional xenophobia. Also something of a steampunk tech geek.
* {{Adorkable}}
* GadgeteerGenius
* LovableNerd: although he's had to be tougher than average for this character type, given the kind of society he grew up in, that doesn't stop him from being rather adorkable.
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: subterranean dark elves are ''supposed'' to be AlwaysChaoticEvil, and too proud of their own culture's accomplishments to find much good in anyone else's. Tanis is closer to NeutralGood and fascinated by the culture of humans and other surface dwellers.
* NonActionGuy
* OccidentalOtaku: in a way, as he learned most of his human language and customs from his massive consumption of exported popular culture.
* TechnoWizard: he built his own clockwork laptop. And it has internet access! (By telegraph.)

Ekaterina/Katya/Kittie/Sekhmet: an international spy/assassin/general untrustworthy type, and an old friend and lover of Bodie's mother Maria. She and Bodie generally meet as enemies, but it's not certain that Ekaterina truly regards her as such. She loves revolvers, cats, and Chinese food.
* ActionGirl: mostly focused on handguns. She has some DarkActionGirl elements, but her amicable relationship with Maria is atypical for that trope.
* TheBaroness: a Sexpot as a young woman, leaning towards the Rosa Klebb side of things once she hits middle age. Her clothing choices are unconventional for the trope, however.
* BavarianFireDrill: one of her non-combat talents. Her ability to act like she knows what she's doing - and has a right to be doing it - in almost any situation has helped her more over the years than her ImprobableAimingSkills.
* CutenessProximity: just get her near a cat.
* ChildSoldiers: began working as an assassin for the Aristoi in her early teens.
* DarkMagicalGirl: in her youth she actually has many aspects of the character type, but without the magic. She starts out working for the Big Bad (the Aristoi), who fill the "abusive parental figure" role, and initially confronts the hero (Maria) as an enemy, before the protagonist wins her over and they become allies and close friends (although given what Katya gets up to even then, calling her "won over to the side of good" would be pushing it.)
* {{Determinator}}: she's obsessive, but in a constructive way.
* EnfanteTerrible: when she was eight, Katya tried to kill one of her instructors after the instructor ordered her to kill her own kitten.
* EnigmaticMinion
* TheFakeCutie: she was very cute as a young girl: tiny, with long golden hair, huge blue eyes, and refined manners - and no more trustworthy then than she was as an older woman.
** By the time she reached her twenties, she was [[TheBaroness a bit more overtly intimidating]].
* FreudianExcuse: if she hadn't been brought up specifically to be an amoral minion of a heartless international conspiracy, she'd probably still be an obsessive, twitchy, attention whore adrenaline junky, but she'd probably be nicer and saner about it.
* TheGunslinger: type A. She's a petite woman, and considers bullets the great equalizer.
* ICallItVera: Artemis and Apollo, her revolvers.
* KindHeartedCatLover: despite her amorality in other aspects of her life, she is very kind to cats.
* NecessarilyEvil: she tends to think of herself this way, although she's less self-flagellating about it than some examples of the trope.
* PsychoLesbian: possible subversion, as her obsession with Maria tends to lead her in heroic directions.
* RevolversAreJustBetter: justified, in that given the tech level of the setting, they were the best handguns around when she was learning to shoot.
* {{Tykebomb}}: raised from the cradle as an operative for the setting's AncientConspiracy. [[FreudianExcuse It screwed her up a bit.]]
* WildCard

Maria Cairngorm/"Bill"/Manya/Britomart: Bodie's mother, although Bodie was actually raised by her maternal aunt and uncle (and has their last name). She's in the military like her daughter, but much more well-known.
* TheAce
* ActionGirl
* ActionMom
* EvenTheGirlsWantHer
* EyepatchOfPower
* [[AFatherToHisMen A Mother To Her Men (And Women)]]: while she didn't have a lot of time for her biological child, she was a mentor for many young soldiers.
* AllLovingHero, BoisterousBruiser: Maria is an odd mixture of these personality types when she isn't killing people. The fact that she's so darn likable, as well as one of the greatest warriors of her generation, winds up making some people rather nervous.
* SweetPollyOliver: early in her career.


Doctor Valeriya Perunovna Termena: one of Maria's antagonists. She's a scientist and weapons designer who wants to TakeOverTheWorld as soon as she has sufficient money and support. As well as her scientific talents, she has superpowers gained through self-experimentation.
* BadassBookworm: she's primarily a scholar, but she does handle her steampunk BFG well.
* DeadpanSnarker: especially when she's young.
* DelicateAndSickly: subverted - she suffered from a chronic illness when she was young, and her first impressive act of Mad Science was a successful search for a cure - but she wasn't particularly cute when she began her research, and the side effects didn't improve her looks at all.
* EmperorScientist: her goal in life is to become one of these.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: according to Valeriya, you can do what you like to interchangeable minions (although since help is hard to find, it might not be a good idea to kill or incapacitate them), but abusing your girlfriend is just wrong.
* MadScientist
* MeaningfulName: her patronymic, Perunovna, translates roughly as "Thunder's daughter." Rather appropriate for a PsychoElectro.
* CombatTentacles
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: she mostly builds things, but also shows a strong grasp of chemistry and biology.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: the serum that turned her into a lightning tentacle person, although she did test it on a few mice first to make sure that it wouldn't make her explode or something. However, since the serum was designed to cure a medical condition that she herself had, this is justifiable.
* PsychoElectro: she learned during her boarding school days that punching people was unladylike - so she zaps them instead.
* PsychoLesbian: has some elements of this, although the main expressions of her craziness tend to be outside her love life.
* RedRightHand: the experiment that gave her her powers left some ''interesting'' marks.
* ScaryShinyGlasses
* {{Ubermensch}}: Valeriya ''wants'' to be one of these, at least. One of her {{Character Filibuster}}s is about the importance of knowing the difference between immutable natural law and mere social convention, and she's a firm believer in the power of human effort over abstract historical forces.

Captain Aleksandra Ivanovna Markova/Aleksander Ivanovitch Markov/"Sasha": Valeriya's girlfriend. A former SweetPollyOliver who was kept on after her gender was revealed because that particular military installation was desperate for halfway-competent personnel. Pretty, cheerful, and rather eccentric, but with a bit of a violent streak.
* {{Bifauxnen}}: she resembles the Classical "beautiful boy" ideal more than most actual young men do.
* BishieSparkle: parodied.
* CampGay: weird sort of semi-double-subversion. During her Sweet Polly Oliver days, some of her acquaintances assumed that "Aleksander Markov" was this way, because of "his" dandified appearance and "unmanly" interests, and were rather surprised that Markov was such a flirt with women. Then Markov was revealed to be female - but still liked girls.
* CuteBruiser: she's cheerful, cute, and normally about as intimidating as dandelion fluff - but she hits ''hard'' when she wants to.
* CutenessProximity
* GenkiGirl
* MoralityPet: for Valeriya. They have a genuinely loving relationship, in an odd sort of way.
* NightmareFetishist: the fact that she's Valeriya's lover should be ample evidence.
* PerkyFemaleMinion
* TomboyishName: Sasha counts as such, at least in Russian.

Marianne Dumas/Athena: a young woman with a mysterious past, who discovers that the world is a much more complicated place than she thought it had been.
* ActionGirl
* [[ChildSoldiers Child Soldier]]
* EnfanteTerrible
* FauxActionGirl: she's actually a competent fighter, but the circumstances of her first appearance put her in way over her head, so the effect might be similar. A sword's not much good against a world-spanning conspiracy.
* HeroicBSOD: upon discovering what the aforementioned world-spanning conspiracy is up to. She gets better.
* LadyOfWar: eventually develops into one of these after taking a few levels in badass.
* MysticalWhiteHair: She's not explicitly magical, but has mysterious origins.
* PluckyGirl: most of the time, at least.
* SheFu: lampshaded, when a {{Mook}} comments on the ignominy of being "beaten up by a ballet dancer." This is a contrast to the less flashy approaches to melee combat of most of the other women.

Also includes examples of:

* ActionGirl: the majority of the female cast, including several minor characters.
* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: all the skin colors on earth, plus olive-green (orcs) and blue-black or very dark grayish blue (some dark elves). Since all humanoids are closely enough related to be genetically compatible, it would be theoretically possible for someone with the right ancestors to have a complexion that was a sort of muted blue-green.
* AmazonBrigade: the Furies.
* AncientConspiracy: the Aristoi.
* {{Antivillain}}s: well, possibly...
* TheAtoner: Gerard.
* AuthorAppeal: the costumes, the exotic-looking cast, the LesYay, and some of the cultural references.
* BadassLongcoat: standard outerwear for most of the cast. Valeriya and Tanis even have labcoat versions. Even non-longcoat wearing characters generally have some part of their outfit that can flap dramatically in the breeze.
* BadassNormal: Ekaterina, Marianne, several more minor characters. Maria might also count, depending on how much of an advantage you consider being an orc to be (they tend to be stronger than humans on average, but not dramatically so, and see better in dim light), and Bodie would be if she couldn't see ghosts (which is sometimes useful, sometimes [[BlessedWithSuck annoying]], and often doesn't come up at all.)
* BeastAndBeauty: Valeriya and Sasha are sort of a same-gender version.
* BigFriendlyDog: Brusi, Bodie's Orcadian Water Mastiff (a breed of dog that's basically a curly-haired Newfoundland)
* BunnyEarsLawyer: most of the cast has at least a touch of this.
* ButchLesbian: many characters have a touch of this, although none of them play it entirely straight. Maria and Bodie are more Butch Bisexuals, Valeriya is fairly masculine by the standards of her culture (mostly due to her unconventional interests and take-charge personality and being Big and Scary) but fairly feminine in matters of clothes and grooming, and Sasha has the fashion sense but comes across as less intimidating and more conventionally pretty than her skirt-wearing girlfriend.
* CastFullOfGay
* CodeName: usually mythological, inspired by the Victorian fondness for Classical references.
* CombatPragmatist: all the Furies are trained to be this - the justification is that, when you're fighting someone larger and stronger, going for his weak points is only fair.
* CuteLittleFangs: orcs and half-orcs have these.
* DeadPersonConversation: Bodie has these sometimes, especially with her dead psychic dad.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Elspeth's distress at the thought of Bodie's mother having married a foreigner, and her slightly too fervent denial that she could possibly be attracted to [[{{Bifauxnen}} "him"]] due to Bodie's ethnic heritage and lower social status.
* DracoInLeatherPants: Valeriya and Ekaterina, possibly.
* DuringTheWar
* MrFanservice: Marius Villiers, a troubled but gentlemanly, gay PrettyBoy with an [[ShirtlessScene aversion to wearing shirts]].
* NavelDeepNeckline: Parodied by Poppaea, who tends to walk around with unbuttoned shirts or dresses over a corset and camisole.
* {{Expy}} + GenderFlip: inspiration for several of the characters, before they started developing in their own directions.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Kyrillia for Czarist Russia, complete with patronymics, samovars, and horrific invasion-repelling winters. Counterparts to France, the British Isles, and Central and East Asia, among other places, also make appearances.
* FreakyIsCool: Sasha's attitude towards Valeriya's more unusual physical features. Of course, the PowerPerversionPotential helps. Tanis' fondness for surface-dwellers and their culture has a touch of this, given dark elves' traditional xenophobia.
* GoKartingWithBowser: Ekaterina takes Marianne out for dim sum and former-TykeBomb bonding at one point. Marianne is rather taken aback by this.
* TheHandler: Gerard, for Marianne during her younger days.
* HoneyTrap: Poppaea.
* [[TinyGuyHugeGirl Huge Girl Tiny Bishonen]]: Bodie and Tanis.
** Valeriya and Sasha would be Huge Woman Tiny Bifauxnen.
* ImprobablyFemaleCast: borderline example, due more to authorial preference for writing female characters than anything deliberate.
* ISeeDeadPeople: Jin, Bodie's father, to a much stronger extent than his daughter does.
* LipstickLesbian: Ekaterina. She has very long hair, and, despite her practicality in most areas of life, a fondness for pretty dresses. Poppaea is a Lipstick Bisexual, although as much because her job depends on looking glamorous as from personal preference.
* LiteraryAllusionTitle: from Alexander Pope.
* LockedIntoStrangeness: psychics tend to gray prematurely, at a rate roughly proportional to the strength of their powers.
* MadScientist: Valeriya is the most outstanding example, but most scientifically inclined characters have a trace of it.
* MagicFromTechnology: Valeriya summons a creature from another dimension and accidentally gives herself superpowers - but she's a scientist, not a mage. Another character invents a procedure that can bring back the dead under certain limited conditions.
* MarshmallowHell: Valeriya has subjected Katya to this a few times.
* MayflyDecemberRomance: Bodie and Tanis' relationship has aspects of this, as half-orcs only live as long as ordinary humans, and dark elves can live for centuries.
* MotherRussiaMakesYouStrong: mild example, as the three major Kyrillian characters are all potentially scary people in their own ways.
* MsFanservice: Poppaea. Seduction is part of her job, so it fits.
* NonActionGuy: Jin and Tanis. Both manage to make themselves useful in other ways (Jin with his psychic powers and Tanis making up for Bodie's ineptitude with "modern" technology.)
* OfficerAndAGentleman: Marius Villiers, although [[BunnyEarsLawyer he has his share of issues and quirks.]]
* OurElvesAreDifferent: Traditionally, subterranean dark elves ''think'' that they're better than everyone else, but xenophobia and [[CardCarryingVillain Card Carrying Villainy]] have put their civilization at something of a disadvantage lately, and they've been in slow decline for the past couple of centuries, as other subterranean races have become relatively more powerful. The biggest current ideological split in dark elven society has been between those who believe that modernization is the best path to restoring their power (mostly mages, merchants, and professionals), and those who advocate a stronger embrace of ancestral tradition (mostly the clergy). Even among the "modernization" faction, "ideological debate" in practice seems to involve a lot of people getting poisoned or stabbed. There are also surface-dwelling dark elf communities, whose culture is more of a mixed bag.
* OurOrcsAreDifferent: ''Bright Reversions'' orcs are tall, muscular, greenish-skinned {{Boisterous Bruiser}}s with CuteLittleFangs. Their culture has Scottish and Norse influences, but the majority of orcs practice a fantasy counterpart version of UsefulNotes/OrthodoxChristianity. And they're not stupid or brutish, just mentally stuck in the Bronze Age in some ways.
* PetTheDog: most villains who get much in-depth character development get at least a little of this.
* PowerIncontinence: Valeriya had some trouble with this right after the acquisition of her electricity powers. Her control improves with time, although it never becomes one hundred percent reliable under all circumstances.
** Bodie can't shut off her ability to see ghosts, either.
* PsychicPowers
* ShoutOut: Zhenya, Valeriya's pet electric eel, is named after the PsychoElectro BigBad of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater''.
* SquishyWizard: most dark elves of a non-military inclination (the warriors are {{Fragile Speedster}}s.) Particularly Eris Darienzan, which is why Marianne was assigned to help her with the physical hazards of the mission they met on.
* SteamPunk
* SupernaturalGoldEyes: Some orcs and dark elves.
* SweetOnPollyOliver: Valeriya's initial attraction to Sasha, despite her normal preference for women. "So ''that's'' why all those dead Roman emperors liked boys!" Also, Elspeth's implied attraction to Bodie.
* SympatheticPOV
* TokenEvilTeammate: Ekaterina, in a way, in some situations where she and Maria worked together.
* {{Tsundere}}: Eris Darienzan, Tanis' younger sister.
* VillainsOutShopping
* WaifFu: played semi-straight with Marianne and Sasha (although both of them are trained members of the military and would only count as particularly petite when compared to Valeriya and Bodie), averted with Ekaterina (one of the reasons she focused on guns instead of melee is that most of the people she winds up trying to kill are considerably bigger than her 5'2" 110 lbs when dripping wet self.)
* WeirdScience
* WellDoneSonGuy: Maria's relationship with Bodie has elements of this dynamic, although Maria wasn't so much "unpleasable" as "not around much."

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