Magical Girl Spleens
is a web original story written by twitchtipthegnawer and posted on Archive of Our Own. It follows the adventures of Annabelle Baker and five other totally normal people who are suddenly gifted the power necessary to become magical girls (and boys). The only problem? Totally normal people can't work these powers at all.
Magical Girl Spleens contains examples of:
- Artifact of Power: The magical girls and boys get their powers from a series of blades they use in combat. Corrupted Ones gain their powers from a different artifact called "shards."
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: Whisper and Lily Clover's character designs certainly seem to think so.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: In chapter eighteen. While nothing too far outside of what can be found on earth, Whisper and Lily Clover definitely don't function at all like humans.
- Body Horror: And how. Corrupted Ones are described with no detail spared and no body part left un-mutated.
- Brain/Computer Interface: At the end of chapter fourteen. Alien tech sure is creepy, huh?
- Cast Full of Gay: Is every character specifically homosexual? No, but there isn't a heterosexual to be seen, so this falls under that trope.
- Color-Coded Characters: Annabelle is blue, Claire is pink, Lola is orange, Sonia is green, Merlin is red, Felix is yellow, etc. Almost inevitable for a magical girl story, but a bit odd to see in a written medium.
- The Corruption: Zigzagged. The shards have no sentience and are not malevolent, simply attaching themselves to humans at random. However, there's no denying their corrupting influence on those they sink their teeth into, so to speak.
- Ephebophile: Annabelle, to Claire.
- Exotic Equipment: In chapter eighteen. Leave it to a fanfic author to include all the details when the aliens get down and dirty.
- Exposition Beam: Annabelle's head-butting attack triggers this. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's useless.
- Eye Scream: How Lola gets her powers.
- Healing Factor: While it allows the magical girls to fight much more powerful monsters, it also puts a time limit on their powers.
- Heel–Face Turn: In chapter sixteen, Annabelle has a heart-to-heart with Whisper that ends remarkably well.
- Higher-Tech Species: The villains, justified in that they have space travel in the first place.
- Insectoid Aliens: Whisper and Lily Clover are evocative of this trope, though they have shades of Frog Men as well.
- Magical Girl Warrior: Annabelle, Claire, Lola and as of chapter eight, Sonia. Felix and Merlin are male examples of this trope.
- Mini-Mecha: At the end of chapter fourteen, Whisper pulls one out to go toe-to-toe with the magical girls.
- Monster of the Week: How the story begins. New chapter, new Corrupted One.
- My God, What Have I Done?: What kicked off the whole plot. Whisper was only trying to help.
- No Accounting for Taste: Merlin thinks this of his relationship with Felix.
- Non-Mammal Mammaries: Justified. It's still part of the alien's reproductive cycle, just not the way mammals might think.
- Posthumous Character: Lily Clover. Hers is the Plot-Triggering Death, after all.
- Sadist: Claire is one.
- Stalker without a Crush: Lola is this.
- Team Pet: Cotton is this, though he might wish he wasn't.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Sonia, though they don't put it to the test too much.
- Twincest: Felix and Merlin's whole deal. At least, according to Felix.
