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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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?'"
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.
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.
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.
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 DitzWeirdness 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 & Dragons and its alignment system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
other Maenad-verse characters
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Muse Abuse: some of the celebrities in Erica's Roman ŕ 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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 Ingénue: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 VillainMad 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.