The Dementia of Magic
is a fantasy webcomic about the adventures of two siblings, Alex (a mage) and Matt (a thief).
The Dementia of Magic provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: There is a lot of background information on the website and in the explanatory notes.
- The Archmage: Salthalus is one of the most powerful mages on the continent.
- Artistic License – Space: Perhelion (Perfect Equinox) somehow happens only every 4 years (does this mean equinoxes are imperfect the other three years?).
- Back from the Dead:
- Howard is revived, with great difficulty.
- Stephanie's bird carries her to the Healing Spring after her death and revives her by dive-bombing past the guardians by surprise.
Word of God says this won't work a second time. - The Necromancer gets back up after being stabbed by Lucien, but it's implied it's actually one of his ghostly colleagues that took over the body — their attitude implies the original wouldn't have minded.
- Bewitched Amphibians: Stephanie turned Simon into a giant frog.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Stephanie is a talented and inventive mage, but doesn't finish her projects or take proper care of her pets. After she comes Back from the Dead, she finds a way around this, at least in the illusion field, by stealing an illusion-crafting device.
- Bucket Booby-Trap: Alex doesn't need a door, since she can dump the bucket by telekinesis.
- Conscription: The King of Landis conscripts all able-bodied men to fight a dragon. His profile explains that he panics and drafts people whenever confronted with a problem he can't solve, but he's otherwise a good king who cares for his people. It happens so often that people make a habit of ducking over the border.
- Cursed with Awesome: Simon is turned into a frog, which means he can jump thirty feet and pick things up with his tongue.
- Draft Dodging: Whenever Landis announces conscription, much of the population flees to neighboring countries.
- Dramatic Irony: Alex hopes seeing the harvest festival in Roslori will take Matt's mind off Stephanie, but she doesn't know the show will be run by the latter's estranged family, so something Stephanie-related is bound to happen. Stephanie, posing as a goddess, sends the tribesmen to pillage the city, and the siblings end up having to explain to the family that their disappeared daughter is a confirmed recidivist murderer, attempted mass-murderer, and thief.
- Door Jam: A rockslide traps Alex and Matt in a cave with a dragon.
- Fatal Flaw: Stephanie's biggest flaw is her impatience.
- Find the Cure!: When Alex is poisoned, Matt must track down a cure.
- Forced Transformation: Marzos turns Matt into a chicken briefly.
- For the Evulz: Stephanie kills and torments people because she likes having power over them. She committed regicide for the sheer shock value, and modified a poison to take longer to kill someone just so she could watch them suffer for longer.
- Forgot to Feed the Monster: How Matt notices Stephanie is not as competent as she pretends to be.
- Functional Magic: Alex is an apprentice mage, so there's lots of this.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Alex gets no credit for slaying the dragon that had been ravaging Landis.Alex:...then I killed the dragon, not that anyone seems to care...
- Healing Spring: There is a whole city built around the Healing Springs, which can cure even death.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Simon lives with the shame of not having been able to save his sister.
- Inept Mage: Alex's spells are not very reliable, at least partly due to her inexperience. Neither are Stephanie's, but in her case it's mainly because she's impatient. She's also much less trained in magic than Alex, since she was raised as an acrobat, not a mage.
- Interrupted Declaration of Love: Every time Phinn tries to tell Matt how she feels, something interrupts her.
- It Only Works Once: For the centaurs that guard a Healing Spring, they don't let anything get by them twice.
- Language of Magic: Howard casts spells in a graphical language. It's computer-like, complete with a deprecated element.
- Loveable Rogue: Matt is a professional thief.
- Made of Explodium: Dwarven machinery is unreliable and tends to explode. Its makers think this is part of the fun.
- Mad Scientist: Cesol and many other dwarven engineers make dangerous machines with little regard for safety.
- Magic Misfire: Miscast spells often produce “nasal flies”. The bigger the spell was meant to be, the more are produced.
- Magic Mushroom: Raikkes are striped mushrooms which enhance magic.
- Mistaken for Evidence: Quertia thinks Alex stole her mushrooms. She only finds out the truth later.
- No One Could Survive That!: The mages are a bit too certain there's absolutely no way Marzos could come back from being shoved into Another Dimension.
- Oblivious to Love: Phinn has a crush on Matt, but he has no idea.
- Our Elves Are Different: There are Forest Elves and... Beach Elves? Neither likes the other much.
- The Prankster: Alex does practical jokes, often by magic.
- Prodigal Family: Stephanie poses as a goddess and sends tribesmen to attack Roslori's harvest festival, which is being run by her long-estranged family. This gives them a rude awakening about their daughter's true nature.
- Puppet Queen: Queen Janis Breznial, prisoner in her own castle.
- Right Behind Me: Don't call Quertia a “crazy old hag” when you think she's not around.Alex: There's the hut the crazy old hag lives in...
Matt: Good, and there's the log next to the hut the crazy old hag lives in...
Quertia: And here's the old hag who lives in the hut at the end of the log in the middle of the swamp. - Speaks Fluent Animal: After his Forced Transformation is reversed, Matt retains the ability to speak to chickens.
- Tailor-Made Prison: Marzos was imprisoned by other mages, but escaped.
- The Pen Is Mightier: Matt uses both a feather and sword to kill Stephanie.
- Thin-Skinned Bully:
- Stephanie hates being laughed at, which is rather problematic when you grow up in a family of entertainers. When she infiltrates the troupe playing The Sinking Castle, she pounces on the part of the Only Sane Man of the play. And when the explorers laughed at her for her tacky goddess act, she had them murdered by her subjugated tribe.
- The king who had a playwright executed for writing a satiric play (the aforementioned Sinking Castle) also qualifies.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Matt throws a sword to cut down a chandelier.
- Trauma Button: Mentioning Phinn's ravaged hometown while running away wasn't the best of ideas.
- The Undead: The Necromancer is accompanied by a bunch of "soul shades" which he explains are colleagues of his that perished in a lab accident. They still work together, though it's a bit hard because the soul shades are repelled by magic script. And strangely, so is Lucien.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Marzos wants to explore other worlds, and doesn't care about the risk to his own.
- You Do Not Want To Know: During her conversation with the necromancer, Alex expresses that she has a lot of questions but heavy doubts about wanting to know the answers. The necromancer picks up on this and explicitly witholds some information on grounds that she doesn't want to know that, either."Oh, don't worry. I have my reasons, and I have no doubt you are fully capable of understanding them. However, from how you were acting earlier, I am quite certain you don't truly want to know."
