Here's where I'm putting up tropes for the story my sister and I are collaborating on (we're dreaming of a webcomic that I write and she draws). These tropes are tentative and might change since we're not near the actual writing stage yet, and since my sister came up with the premise and character first so she can veto things.
The story focuses on Doran O'Callaghan, a fairy raised by humans who helps people that are having trouble with fairies or other paranormal creatures. Sort of a human-monster diplomat, though he'd be better able to do his job if the Fairy Queen didn't hate his guts.
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Tropes That Apply to Doran and His Family
James Doran aka Conleth O'Callaghan
- Brutal Honesty: Like most fairies, he Cannot Tell a Lie, and unlike most fairies, he doesn't have the skill in rhetoric and subtlety to make up for it.
- Celibate Hero: At age forty, he has never felt significant interest in anything romantic or sexual. Maybe it's just how he was made, maybe it's a side effect of being raised by a different, incompatible species.
- Changeling Tale: As an infant, he was made to be a Doppelgänger for a kidnapped human child. However, the family actually kept him when they found out, and raised him alongside their human son once they had rescued him from Fairyland.
- The Comically Serious
- Creepy Good: He tends to give off an Uncanny Valley effect of being almost human, but not quite. Seven feet tall and oddly thin, with resting stern face, sallow skin, green eyes that glow in the dark, canine teeth that are not only unusually large but unusually numerous, and (as it turns out) white blood.
- Dark and Troubled Past: He doesn't think the trauma outweighed the happy times, but he was abandoned by his biological parents in exchange for a human child they planned to use as a tithe to hell, then grew up isolated and off the grid to avoid assassins sent by the Fairy Queen, then experienced the violent deaths of his parents and brother.
- Face of a Thug
- Friend to All Children: He is far more careful of how he comes across to children - will slouch or sit down rather than towering as he usually does, will talk softer and in some ways mirror his mentor, Ellen.
- Happily Adopted: The O'Callaghans were an extremely close family (they had to be, especially after going into isolation).
- Last-Name Basis: He's known as Doran to pretty much everyone except his four surviving family members (Bridget, Ellen, Roderick, and Robbie), to the extent that Jon (who comes from America where surnames are sometimes used as given names) thought Doran was his first name.
- Little Hero, Big War: As a baptized fairy, he is much less magically powerful than most members of his species (as many of their powers originate from their tithe to hell), and most of the creatures he deals with early on are relative small-fry too. While he eventually gets heavily involved in large matters such as the Shadowfolk Incursion and the Gaian Revolution, the part he plays is still smaller than many.
- No Social Skills: When younger, he was very Literal-Minded and had difficulty reading faces and voices. He understands social subtext much better nowadays, but still struggles with small talk and any conversation that has no goal except socializing.
- The Stoic
- Super-Strength: One of the powers a fairy can still keep after experiencing baptism.
- Terse Talker
Morrigan
- A Boy and His X: A curmudgeonly fairy and his oddly smart, oddly long-lived crow.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude
- Clever Crows: Even more than standard for crows. She certainly seems to understand most of what Doran says.
- The Confidant: Doran is a Terse Talker to most people; he'll only let out his secret worries, idle jokes, etc., when he's alone or with Morrigan. This stems from before he knew that she was anything more than an oddly smart crow.
- Creepy Crows / Creepy Good: especially in her larger, defensive form.
- Dark Is Not Evil
- Nearly Normal Animal: She seems to have human intelligence or close to it (she turns out to be sapient, as one of Gaia's messenger crows), but she can't talk except by mimicry, and she doesn't particularly care to get other sapients to notice her intelligence.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Once Doran understands her intelligence, she graduates from quasi-pet status to something more like this. She's certainly his most constant companion, anyway.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: Downplayed. She doesn't like to use mimicry, only uses it when she urgently needs to get a message across, doesn't understand grammar or syntax, and sometimes gets the meaning of a word nearly correct but a little to the left. Nevertheless, she can, technically, talk.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting
Ellen Healy
- Fairy Godmother: An inversion - she's the human godmother to a fairy godson.
- Family Portrait of Characterization: There are several seen throughout her house, and most of them involve the O'Callaghans, hinting at how familylike their relationship was and how much she values family.
- Foil: To Doran. Ellen excels in human/fairy interaction because of her knowledge of human folklore and her social skills in de-escalating potential fights, detecting deception, and making quick judgements. Doran does because of his inside knowledge - well, not of fairy culture, but at least of what being a fairy is like. When he struggles in social situations he sometimes finds himself mirroring Ellen.
- She also foils Alan Campbell in how she handles aging, disability, and guardianship of children. Her sight and mobility have been increasingly impaired of late, but she accepts help from family, neighbors, and Irish government programs, whereas Campbell won't let his existence become known to the government even though the statute of limitations has run out on most of his illegal activities, and only accepts help as a means to control the child he "adopted" as a servant (in contrast to Ellen's respect and protectiveness of kids).
- Friend to All Children: Very grandmotherly in most of her interactions with kids. (Not a big hugger, but will give you life advice, verbal comfort, a hand on your shoulder if you want it, and unhealthy fried food.)
- The Mentor: Was this to Doran when he started on the path of human/monster diplomacy.
- Miniature Senior Citizens: To be fair, she was always under five feet tall. (Her husband Michael was barely taller.)
- Muggle with a Degree in Magic: She knows more about fairy incursions on the human world than almost anyone of her species, and has even come back from Fairyland three times alive.
- Parental Substitute: Took in Doran and his sister Bridget after their parents and brother were killed.
- Happily Married: To Michael Healy, a mechanic, until his death of old age. He accompanied her to Fairyland on at least one occasion.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: She and Michael always wanted children but could not have them, which is why they became attached to the O'Callaghans so quickly.
- The Social Expert
- Team Mom
Jenny and Colm Doran aka Janet and Colman O'Callaghan
- Coupled Couples: They were this with Ellen and Michael Healy on their journey through Fairyland.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best
- Friendly Target
- Happily Married
- Hero of Another Story: Their adventure in rescuing their son(s) from Fairyland can fill its own flashback chapter.
- Interspecies Adoption
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Jenny. If it weren't for her eyes being blue instead of green, she would have looked exactly like the ethnic group of fairies that Doran comes from - you know, the ones that use their own children as doppelgangers to steal similar-looking human children as tithes. Unfortunately, her son Brendan inherited her hair and complexion and Colm's green eyes.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Colm was more extroverted, talkative, and open with his emotions than Jenny.
Thomas Doran aka Brendan O'Callaghan
- Ambiguous Disorder: Showed some possible traits of autism (was overstimulated by certain settings and noises, went nonverbal sometimes, had trouble making and reading standard physical expressions of emotion, and so on). Some of these traits were shared by her mother Jenny, and others ran in her side of the family, so she helped him deal with it better than many 1980s parents would, though she never learned she could get him diagnosed with anything.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. Both James Doran and Jon Butler have a dark-haired younger brother named Thomas.
- Twin Desynch: He and Doran originally looked extremely alike and shared a lot of the same habits (it's common for fairies to work in somewhat similar ways to autistic humans), and Jenny and Colman had to take care never to dress them alike. The only visible difference was that Doran's eyes glowed in the dark. However, when puberty set in, Doran grew to seven feet tall while Brendan reached "only" six foot six, and Brendan filled out while Doran remained deathly thin.
Bridget, Rod, and Robbie Power
Characters Who First Appear in Chapter One
Jonathan "Jon" Butler and Eloise Martin
Local cryptid-loving conspiracy theorists date each other
- Adorkable: Jon openly, and Eloise secretly.
- Agent Mulder: Jon has always been pretty sure there’s Something Out There, and obsesses over cryptids and legendary creatures. Eloise doesn't believe to quite the same extent, but she’s too indulgent of Jon’s enthusiasm to count as an Agent Scully.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: You wanna see a cryptid? How about one that kidnaps your friend and younger brother?
- Big Brother Instinct: Both Jon and Eloise feel this for Jon's younger brother, Thomas.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Jon especially comes across this way sometimes.
- Cuteness Proximity: Eloise is not-so-secretly very affected by this.
- Deadpan Snarker: Eloise subtly pokes fun at the more embarrassing-to-her things Jon does.
- Foil: Their youth and (once Thomas is safe) light-heartedness contrasts with Doran's stoicism and Born in the Wrong Century attitude.
- Ham and Deadpan Duo: Jon is the Ham, while Eloise is the Deadpan Snarker. But in scenes with Doran, they are both the Ham to his Deadpan.
- Muggle Best Friend: They become Doran's most recurring companions besides Morrigan and Ellen.
- Nice Guy: They are both very genuine examples, another contrast to Doran's Byronic Hero traits.
Thomas Butler
The Leannan Sidhe
Characters Who First Appear in Chapter Two
Lucas Campbell
Alan Campbell
Big Ears
Characters Who First Appear in Chapter Three
The Shadow-Spirit
Characters Who First Appear in Chapter Four
Gaia
Tabitha
Characters Who First Appear in Chapter Five
Naomi
Naomi's Mother
Characters Who First Appear in Chapter Six
The Fairy Queen Dun
Later Characters
The Ankou and His Companions
The Dullahan
Epoch and Nagendra
Father Monday
