History Literature / WhiteTrashWarlock

* TheDogbitesBack: The true fate of [[spoiler: Adam and Bobby's father. A teenage Bobby came home and found their father beating Adam and acting as though this time he would really kill Adam, so Bobby smashed him in the back of the head with a hammer.]]

** In the second book, [[WellDoneSonGuy Silver]] finally confronts his father, the King of Swords. [[spoiler: When it becomes clear that the king is no longer fulfilling his duties and is now perfectly happy to let the mortal world die, Silver

** Adam's Great-Grandpa John genuinely loved Adam's uncle Jimmy. [[Spoiler: Didn't stop him from sacrificing him and stealing his life. When Adam sees John's memories of the incident, he finds John tearfully cutting up the body for disposal while thinking that the grief and pain he's feeling will make the spell stronger.]]

* EvenEivilHasLovedOnes:

* AlmightyJanitor: A janitor Adam bumps into in Robert's hospital turns out to be a [[Psychopomp Reaper]].

* BatmanGambit: In the second book, Silver goes to negotiate relations with the sea elves of the Court of Cups. He [[spoiler: attacks a travelling Argent and Vic without them knowing it was him. They assume it was the Court of Cups and go to investigate. This results in them [[BigDamnHeroes being at the negotiation hearing when the Sea Elves betray Silver]]-- all of which Silver was planning on.]]

* AlmightyJanitor: A janitor Adam bumps into in Robert's hospital turns out to be a [[spoiler: Reaper]].

* FinallyFoundTheBody: In the second book, after decades of not knowing, the Binder family finally learns the fate of [[spoiler: Uncle Jimmy]].

* HalfHumanHybrid: Downplayed, as they're mostly humans, but it is confirmed that practitioners have elven blood and it's why they have access to magic.

* ImHavingSoulPains: In book three, Adam's warlock wound flares up frequently, causing him pain. The only time it settles down is after he learns [[spoiler: he can kill demons by "feeding" them to the wound, letting it chew of ''them'' instead of ''him''.]
* LandOfFaerie: Alfheimr, a section or offshoot of the [[EldritchLocation Other Side] where the elves live.

* AbusiveParents: Adam and Robert's father was an abusive monster. Adam doesn't remember much of it, but the parts he does still give him nightmares. Robert, being ten years older, has a clearer memory of their father and it's partly why he hates Adam's magic so much. Their mother let the abuse occur as she herself was a battered woman, but even after their father is gone, she remains emotionally distant and verbally abusive to Adam.

* TheChosenOne: [[spoiler:Robert and Adam's lineage had been crafted over god knows how long by Death so that Adam would be just the right amount of mortal and immortal to kill The Spirit once it possessed Robert.]]

* TheDulcineaEffect: [[spoiler:Adam decides to save Vic, a man he had just met, from a Reaper, using magic he isn't even sure would work. It's lampashaded by the Reaper that he has no reason to do it, Adam jokes that it may be because he finds him hot. Adam later says that he would have done that for anyone, because he didn't think anyone should have died then.]]

* GreaterScopeVillain: Death. [[spoiler:Over a long period of time, it crafted Adam's bloodline so that he'd be the perfect being to finally kill The Spirit. Furthermore, she was the one that pushed Bobby into committing Adam to the Liberty House, in order to make Adam hate Bobby enough that, when the day would come and Bobby got possessed by The Spirit, Adam would be willing to kill him.]]

* HalfHumanHybrid: Downplayed, as they're mostly humans, but it is hinted then confirmed that practicioners have elven blood and it's why they have access to magic.

* TheDogbitesBack: The true fate of [[spoiler: Adam and Bobby's father. A teenage Bobby came home and found their father beating Adam and acting as though this time he would really kill his son, so Bobby smashed him in the back of the head with a hammer.]]
* TheEmpath: Part of how Adam's magic manifests is an ability to feel what others are feeling. This led to him failing out of high school as the emotional weight of all the other students overwhelmed him, as well as made his stay in Liberty House all the more tortuous, as he was then enclosed with the mental and emotional anguish of the other patients.
* TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest: Adam was head over heels in love with an elf named Perak, who supposedly loved him back and taught him how to control his magic. Perak was the only respite Adam had in his time at Liberty House, and when he abandoned Adam out of nowhere, leaving no trace and never contacting him again, Adam was certain that the traditional fickleness of elves kicked in and Perak simply lost interest in him. Since then, Adam hasn't been able to form any kind of lasting romantic connection and he's developed a deep mistrust of elves.
* TrashyTrailerHome: Adam and Robert grew up in one, and Adam currently lives in one with his aunt. Tilly Mae still lives in her trailer in Oklahoma, though it's in the middle of the woods as opposed to a trailer park.
* TragicStillbirth: Robert and Annie have been trying to have a child for ages, but so far they've had three miscarriages. The post-miscarriage depression is what opens Annie up to being possessed by the malevolent Spirit over Denver.

* TheUnfavorite: Adam to his mother Tilla. She dislikes the fact that he is a witch and gay and closes off at the mention of either. However, she gets [[CharacterDevelopment a little better]] by the third book.

White Trash Warlock is a 2020 novel by David R. Slayton and the first of two Adam Binder Novels.

* TheDulcineaEffect: [[spoiler:Adam decides to save Vic, a man he had just met, from a Reaper, using magic he isn't even sure would work. It's lampashaded by the Reaper that he has no reason to do it, Adam jokes that it may be because he finds him hot. Adam alter says that he would have done that for anyone, because he didn't think anyone should have died then.]]

* EvilIsVisceral: The spirit just looks like a massive, floating organ. Which makes sense again considering it's [[spoiler: an ancient heart of an Eldritch Abomination]].

* FantasticRacism: Silver and Argent's father may be responsible for helping keep the mortal world safe from eldritch abominations, but that doesn't mean he wants a human as an in-law.

* {{Patricide}}: The ultimate fate of [[spoiler: Mr. Binder. Bobby killed him when he was beating a very young Adam, and he and his mother buried him by a pond out in the woods on their property.]]

* {{Psychopomp}}: Reapers are people chosen by Death to lead dying humans into the afterlife. They manifest as some kind of possession, sleeping inside an individual until they come across someone whose life needs to be claimed. Not everyone becomes a Reaper, and not every dying person gets a Reaper to escort them. Adam has no idea how the system works, and he doesn't want to know.

* WoundThatWillNotHeal: Creatures that go through the warlock's ritual suffer physical and spiritual wounds that will pain them forever. [[spoiler: Adam wounds his soul this way when using the ritual on himself to create a weapon that can hurt "Mercy.")]]

* SpannerInTheWorks: [[spoiler:Annie. Over their life, Death planned for the Binder brothers to be the major targets of The Spirit. Robert was supposed to be possessed by it and Adam was supposed to kill him, fueled by years of hatred and resentment. Annie becoming The Spirit's host was not at all planned or wanted.]]
* TheUnfavorite: Adam to his mother Tilla. She dislikes the fact that he is a witch and gay and closes off at the mention of either.

* WellDoneSonGuy: Silver is afraid of his father's disapproval, to the point where he [[spoiler: stops becoming Perak and cuts it off with Adam in order to stay in his father's good graces]].
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: A few chapters are focused on the childhood of the Binder brothers, and the various events surrounding their father that made their life difficult. Chapter 38, for example, describes the day that Adam was taken by Bobby to Liberty House.

Adam Lee Binder is a twenty-one year old high school drop out and former mental patient struggling to make ends meet while living in a trailer park with his great-aunt Sue.
He is also a witch, which complicates things, especially since seeing and hearing magic is what got his brother to put him in the mental institution to begin with. When he isn't struggling to find work, he devotes his time to tracking down a malevolent warlock who has been targeting supernatural beings and binding their pain into cursed artifacts-- a warlock he is afraid may actually be his missing father who walked out on the family when Adam was a very small child.

-->''White Trash Warlock'' (2020)
-->''Trailer Park Trickster'' (2021)

* EvilReactionary: In the second book, the Court of Cups want to rid the world of humanity and revert back to how things were before humans existed. [[Spoiler:The King of Swords agrees with them]].

* EvilReactionary: In the second book, the Court of Cups want to rid the world of humanity and revert back to how things were before humans existed. [[Spoiler: The King of Swords agrees with them]].

* OurFairiesAreDifferent: Aside from elves, there are also every other kind of magical being running around, including gnomes, who run the Gaoler's Guardian tower.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Argent is an elven queen, and though that doesn't necessarily mean the same as it does for humans (her father is a king and of higher rank than she, and her brother is a knight and a prince, but also will be the one to inherit his father's title), she is still the main figure of authority overseeing the issue in Denver, and despite having pseudo-god-like power, she is willing to listen to Adam's ideas, and she takes the protection of the mortal world seriously.
* RichSiblingPoorSibling: Robert left Oklahoma and his family behind in order to live a normal life. He became a doctor and lives a comfortable upper-middle class existence. Adam is an unemployed high school drop out and former mental patient who lives with his great-aunt and does odd jobs around the trailer park they live in in order to scrape by.

* TarotMotifs: Tarot motifs appear throughout the novel: the hierarchy of elven royalty seems reflective of suite of swords, and when Adam goes spirit walking, he lies in bed in the same pose as characters from different cards as a way to help himself focus. It turns out, Elves on the Other Side can tell what pose and card he used, and take it as a sort of announcement of his intentions.

* RuleOfThree: Part of Adam and Sue's magic works in patterns and feeling/recognizing those patterns when they happen. Many times, this manifests in threes. Example: a Saurian Adam encounters in the first chapter mentions Denver, then later Robert calls Adam to visit him in Denver. Sue tells Adam to expect a third-- and then Tanner tells Adam that his father acquired a cursed pool-cue in Denver. Adam and Sue both acknowledge that ''clearly'' he has to go to Denver.

* WeHaveReserves: The King of Swords knew that the Spirit would return, and that he would need the aid of mortal practitioners to vanquish it as their ancestors had done. Unfortunately, times have changed, and neither humans nor elves are as powerful as they once were, meaning that the elves kept sending human mages into a meat grinder hoping that the next one would be able to succeed when the rest failed. This is made worse when we learn that [[spoiler: the King intentionally sent his agents out into the world for decades to find humans with a knack for magic, then teach them how to control it in the hopes that one day they might be useful, essentially grooming a generation of cannon fodder]].

* WoundThatWillNotHeal: Creatures that go through the warlock's ritual suffer physical and spiritual wounds that will pain them forever. [[spoiler: Adam wounds his soul this way when using the ritual on himself to create a weapon that can hurt "Mercy.")

The sequel, Trailer Park Trickster, is set to come out October of 2021.

* OurElvesAreDifferent: Elves are unanimously more magically powerful than humans, and they live in a spirit world/dimension adjacent to the mortal world that can be accessed by spirit walking. They have a hierarchy system of kings and queens and knights, and the ones at the top are akin to minor gods. The most powerful are called "Guardians" and live in magic towers that are supposed to look over the world and ensure nothing magical is going terribly amiss, and the Guardians can only interfere if they are petitioned directly (usually by a mortal practitioner).

* EvilIsVisceral: The spirit. Which makes sense again considering it's [[spoiler: an ancient heart of an Eldritch Abomination]].

* WeHaveReserves: The King of Swords knew that the Spirit would return, and that he would need the aid of mortal practitioners to vanquish it as their ancestors had done. Unfortunately, times have changed, and neither humans nor elves are as powerful as they once were, meaning that the elves kept sending human mages into a meat grinder hoping that the next one would be able to succeed when the rest failed. This is made worse when we learn that [[spoiler: the King intentionally sent his agents out into the world for decades to find humans with a knack for magic, then teach them how to control it in the hopes that one day they might be useful, essentially grooming a generation of cannon fodder].
* WellDoneSonGuy: Silver is afraid of his father's disapproval, to the point where he [[spoiler: stops becoming Perak and cuts it off with Adam in order to stay in his father's good graces]].

* AbusiveParents: Adam and Robert's father was an abusive monster. Adam doesn't remember much of it, but the parts he does still give him nightmares. Robert, being ten years older, has a clearer memory of their father and it's partly why he hates Adam's magic so much. Their mother let the abuse occur as she herself was a battered woman, but even after their father his gone, she remains emotionally distant and verbally abusive to Adam.

* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The artifacts Adam seeks out to destroy are bound in bone and iron, and they are powered by the torturous death of a magical creature whose pain is bound into the piece bone.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Argent is an elven queen, and though that doesn't necessarily mean the same as it does for humans (her father is a king and of higher rank than she, and her brother is a knight and a prince, but also will be the one to inherit his father's title), she is still the main figure of authority overseeing the issue in Denver, and despite having pseudo-god-like power, she is willing to listen to Adam's ideas and takes the protection of the mortal world seriously.
* RichSiblingPoorSibling: Robert left Oklahoma and his family behind in order to live a normal life. he became a doctor and lives a comfortable upper-middle class existence. Adam is an unemployed high school drop out and former mental patient who lives with his great-aunt and does odd jobs around the trailer park they live in in order to scrape by.
* SelfMadeMan: Despite coming from the same place as Adam, Robert put himself through medical school and became a doctor.

* TarotMotifs: Tarot motifs appear throughout the novel: the hierarchy of elven royalty seems reflective of suite of swords, and when Adam goes spirit walking, he lies in bed in the same pose as characters from different cards as a way to help himself focus. it turns out, Elves on the Other Side can tell what pose and card he used, and take it as a sort of announcement of his intentions.
* TarotTroubles: Sue can see the future on her own in bits and pieces when her Sight kicks in, and she also does Tarot readings on the side. When she does Adam's, he gets "Three of Swords", "Lovers" and "Death-- which while initially interpreted symbolically, all become very literal as the novel progresses. Later, Adam tries his hand at using the tarot deck Sue gave him, and comes up with the same results each time: The Tower, Page of Swords, Knight of Swords. he again interprets these symbolically at first, but it becomes clear that the Tower is literally the Guardian Tower he has to visit, and the Knight of Swords is Silver.

* EldritchAbomination: The "spirit" that's attached itself to Annie and others is a colossal,floating, eyeball-encrusted, tentacled, bleeding monstrosity. [[spoiler: It is also the heart and last remaining organ of an even bigger, more monstrous eldritch abomination from before creation]].

* Psychopomp: Reapers are people chosen by Death to lead dying humans into the afterlife. They manifest as some kind of possession, sleeping inside an individual until they come across someone whose life needs to be claimed. Not everyone becomes a Reaper, and not every dying person gets a Reaper to escort them. Adam has no idea how the system works, and he doesn't want to know.

* StraightGay: Adam is into men, as is [[spoiler:Vic]]. While Adam isn't particularly camp in general (becoming exasperated once when a woman asks him for fashion advice), he especially tries to hide his sexuality growing up in a rural backwoods town in an abusive household with his bigoted father.

* TheDogbitesBack: the true fate of [[spoiler: Adam and Bobby's father. A teenage Bobby came home and found their father beating Adam and acting as though this time he would really kill his son, so Bobby smashed him in the back of the head with a hammer.]]
* TheEmpath: part of how Adam's magic manifests is an ability to feel what others are feeling. This led to him failing out of high school as the emotional weight of all the other students overwhelmed him, as well as made his stay in Liberty House all the more tortuous, as he was then enclosed with the mental and emotional anguish of the other patients.

* WeHaveReserves: The King of Swords knew that the Spirit would return, and that he would need the aid of mortal practitioners to vanquish it as their ancestors had done. Unfortunately,times have changed, and neither humans nor elves are as powerful as they once were, meaning that the elves kept sending human mages into a meat grinder hoping that the next one would be able to succeed when the rest failed. This is made worse when we learn that [[spoiler:the King intentionally send his agents out into the world for decades to find humans with a knack for magic, then teach them how to control it in the hopes that one day they might be useful, essentially grooming a generation of cannon fodder].