History Webcomic / Blindsprings

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: [[spoiler:The moment Tristan bursts through a barrier meant to stop Gravers, Tammy and Harris decide to evacuate than bother trying to slow him down.]]
* LongHairIsFeminine: The lenght of a girl's hair seems to be proporsional to how feminine a girl is. Street is more tomboy than Imogen, Irelia is more feminine than Deidre and all of them have ''nothing'' of Tammy, with the longest of hairs and her love for lace and proper manners.

->''"Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was young and kind and innocent, and lived with the fairies in the great forest. She was alone. But she didn't mind. She had her duties to attend to.\\

* KidsAreCruel:
** Imogen is bullied by her classmates because of her Orphic blood. Lampshaded by the AltText.

** Rhiannon, the little girl Graver, appears to enjoy causing carnage and pain. However, she also seems to be either bipolar, suffering dissociative identity disorder or just BrainwashedAndCrazy from the Graver magic -- when her brother talks her down from a rage, she temporarily turns into a tearful, scared little girl.

* UnEqualRites: Rather thoroughly fleshed out, if not outright deconstructed. Why do Academists hate and disdain and fear Orphics? Firstly, because their WitchSpecies BloodMagic allowed them to create oppressive kingdoms the world over, where normal people are lowest in the social ladder. Secondly, their magic is InTheBlood (literally) and takes no real training to learn, and is based on "nonsense" superstition and talk of spirits. Whereas academic focus on RitualMagic that takes years to learn and master, and is slower to cast. Orphics for their part hate Academists for oppressing them and forcibly applying {{Power Nullifier}}s to all of them in the form of seals, essentially rendering them no better than a normal human, except they are treated as a second-class race instead.

* VelvetRevolution[=/=]TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: [[spoiler:The Academist revolution didn't intend to kill all Orphics, just seal them with Master Gregoire's Great Seal. But after the Llyns were taken prisoner a failed rescue attempt convinced their guards that keeping them alive was too risky so they executed the whole royal family exept Tamaura and Aliana. The Academists, seeing they went too far, tried to paint the incident in history's pages as a NecessaryEvil deed.]]

** On page [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-one-hundred-and-ninety-six Page 196]] we get this from Rajani.

** On [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-two-hundred-and-six Page 206]], once again from Rajani
-->'''Rajani (To Harris)''' [[spoiler: The High Priestess. Your mother.]]

** On Page [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-two-hundred-and-forty-four 244]].

** Rajani sliced open Harris's arm with an earring [[spoiler: without even knowing if he's Orphic and able to heal himself or not]] without even having a backup plan to heal him in case she was wrong as she can't use magic and [[spoiler: was entirely depending on him to have Orphic magic to heal himself with]]. She basically endangered his life on a whim even though there are other ways that she could have used to prove her point. Even Kadi in the comments says that Rajani made a mistake and is blaming Harris solely because his response wasn't what she had planned.
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: Book 2's prologue is set 300 years in the past, at the times of Orphic rule in Aberwelle, and it will be focused on Tammy's duties as a priestess and Aliana's bachelorette party.

* YouCanSeeThatRight: Harris in page 168 is the only one who notices Indra at first.

** Discused. Imogen's sister, Irelia, is convinced that something's fishy about the coincidence of Tammy's arrival in Kirkhall and the spirits' sudden resurgence because it seems way too convenient. Ember doesn't care as long as [[spoiler:the spirits would help the Orphics overthrow the Academics.]]

* FantasticRacism: There is a lot of hate towards Orphics. It is somewhat comparable to the treatment Irish immigrants faced during the potato famine, but then add posters proclaiming the danger of even child orphics and people handing out "Mothers Against Orphics" pamphlets, proclaiming them criminals. Then there are the random checks [[GodwinSlaw which are comparable to Nazi Germany's]] [[FantasyCounterpartCulture treatment of Jews, complete with the needed paperwork.]]

* FlowerInHerHair: Tamaura has these. When [[spoiler:she leaves the forest]] they [[http://blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-thirty begin to disintegrate]] to emphasize how far away from nature she is now.

* GodzillaThreshold: The events on Chapter 5 forced Asher to authorized the use of [[HumanWeapon Gravers]] as a means to security.

* IgnorantOfTheCall: [[spoiler: Harris]] until he learns TheCallKnowsWhereHeLives

* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:The Empress' contract with the spirits modified Tammy's seal and "corrupted" her magic in a last ditch attempt of the Empress to get a hold on magic. Basically, she saw her youngest as a tool and when Tammy tried to protest, the queen reminded her that such thing was "her responsability and duty".]]

* TheLostWoods: The Wickwold forest's blindspring, in which we -- and Harris -- first meet Tamaura.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Harris at the end of Chapter one.
** Tammy after she gets Imogen, Street and herself sucked into a blindspring.

* PowerNullifier: Master Gremoire's Great Seal, which is the only known way to bind an Orphic's powers. All known big Orphic families are sealed, though some managed to avoid it by remaining undercover and others know how to use BloodMagic. In Tammy's case, it only stops her from using her own magic but not others, thanks to the thorny circle in her particular Seal. See LoopholeAbuse above.

* SecretLegacy: [[spoiler: Harris is the son of Layla, the Khalan High Priestess.]]

** On page [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-one-hundred-and-sixty-eight Page 168]] we get this gem from Harris.
-->'''Harris:''' [[spoiler:... Does no one else see the [[InvisibleToNormals huge tiger thing]].]]

** On page [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-two-hundred-and-six Page 206]], once again from Rajani

** On page [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-two-hundred-and-twenty-five 225]].

* YoungestChildWins: Aliana was very upset when Tammy was named high priestess.

* CooldownHug: Harris has to hug Ewan in order to activate the protective spell of his wheelchair and also to cool him down from his {{trigger}}ed state.

** Ewan's past involves a bombing attack, Tammy's accidental earthquake was enough to {{Trigger}} him so badly he forgot about the protective magic built into his wheelchair.

* KidsAreCruel: Imogen is bullied by her classmates because of her Orphic blood. Lampshaded by the AltText.

** Played straight later. Apparently, she can [[http://www.blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-two-hundred-and-thirty-two produce the exact same outfit]] a la TransformationSequence.

* IncestIsRelative: Just like in ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', the Orphic families married between each other in order to preserve their magic blood pure. It's implied that Tammy herself is distantly related to the Torstenn clan, as the last Empress look a lot like Ms. Thorne, nee Torstenn.

* VelvetRevolution[=/=]TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: [[spoiler:The Academist revolution didn't intend to kill all Orphics, just seal them with Master Gregoire's just created Great Seal. But after the Llyns were taken prisoner a failed rescue attempt convinced their guards that keeping them alive was too risky so they executed the whole royal family sans Tamaura (and possible Aliana too). The Academists, seeing they went too far, tried to paint the incident in history's pages as a NecessaryEvil deed.]]

* ChildOfTwoWorlds: [[spoiler: Harris can be considered this. Though we don't know who his father is just yet, we know that his mother was an Orphic High Priestess from Khala, and his father was from Abwerelle, where he grew up. Curiously enough, Rajani also claims that Harris himself is "a link between Khalan and Aberwellian magics". Though just how he is this has not yet been properly explained.]]

* AristocratsAreEvil: Gregoire seems to be of this mindset when it came to the old Orphic class, more of a product of their society. He notably sees Tammy as an exception because she doesn't seem to have come from the same place.

* InvisibleToNormals: Some magical things cannot be seen without an ability like TrueSight. These include spirits and blindsprings. [[spoiler:Curiously enough, Harris can see a spirit even when the rest of the Spiritualist can't until Rajani makes Indra visible.]]

* TheLostWoods: The Wickwold forest's blindsrping in which we -- and Harris -- first meet Tamaura.

* MagicAIsMagicA: Turns out that, unlike what Academists believed, Orphic magic has rules and restrictions, making Orphics NotSoInvincibleAfterAll. [[spoiler:As seen in WhamLine apparently there is only ''one'' magic in this world but two approaches: One relies on innate talents and communication with spirits (Orphics), the other on knowledge and practice (Acadeics), you do know however ''need'' the talent to excel at any of them.]]

* MysticalPlague: After [[FisherKing the ascend of the Academists and the overthrown of the royal family]], Aberwelle has being hit by a plague. It's implied it's because of the weak and/or imprisioned spirits, as they're connected to nature. [[spoiler:It's also causing magic to slowly dissapear from Aberwelle, and Rajani implied it's the cause of Layla's illness.]]

** Harris, to some extent. According to [[WordofGod Word of God]], because Harris spent so much time in the Wickwold Forest blindsprings as a child while playing with Tammy, the time-altering magic began to affect him, to the point where it ended up stunting his growth, so he appeared fairly small for his age for a good portion of his youth. However, once he left for Kirkhall and was away from it for long enough, he began ageing normally again and was able to grow to look like a fairly normal adult.

* StarCrossedLovers: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig Zagged]] in the weirdest way. First of all, Tamaura got into a MagicallyBindingContract with [[NatureSpirit Nature Spirits]] because [[spoiler: she wants to keep her older sister alive]] because of something [[MagicalSociety Academic Mages]] did. [[DoomedHometown We don't]] [[YouKilledMyFather know]] [[DeathByOriginStory what exactly happened]] to any or all of the members of the Llyn family to make Tammy hate Academists so much, [[NoodleIncident but we know it was bad.]] [[spoiler: [[TimeSkip 300 years later,]]]] Tammy meets Harris, who lives in a world where he has the means to become an Academic Mage, but is at first doubtful about it. Then, after knowing Tammy for a few years, he ends up [[DareToBeBadass wanting to become an Academist]] [[TookALevelInBadass to become enough of a Badass]] to save Tammy from the spirits. This makes Tammy upset and they leave on bad terms. [[TimeSkip Ten years later,]] [[HesBack Harris comes back]] a full-fledged Academist [[NiceJobBreakingItHero and “saves”]] [[DeliberatelyDistressedDamsel Tammy, who’s pissed off again.]] She now [[DiscussedTrope discusses]] the current [[WillTheyOrWontThey (and confusing)]] status of their relationship [[http://blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-thirty-three here.]] [[spoiler: Thus, the trope is [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig Zagged]] and [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] simultaneously, being that Tamaura can’t be in love with Harris not only because [[FaceHeelTurn he went to her sworn enemy’s side,]] but also because [[LoveMakesYouEvil he did so completely willingly for her sake]] and [[WeUsedToBeFriends she hates him/feels guilty for it.]]]] See also the MyGodWhatHaveIDone entry.

* TitleDrop: A "Blindsprings" is an alternative reality, invisible to those lacking the Sight, that it's connected to one or more spirits and are filled with great magic power. The Wayfarers, while unaware of their true nature, use Blindsprings as hideaways and because of the Academists' using Sigils all over the city and lack of "maintaince", Blindsprings all over the city (and possible, the country) are either dead or near-dead.

* MagicAIsMagicA: Turns out that, unlike what Academists believed, Orphic magic has rules and restrictions, making Orphics NotSoInvincibleAfterAll.

** Ewan' past involves a bombing attack, Tammy's accidental earthquake was enough to {{Trigger}} him so badly he forgot about the protective magic built into his wheelchair.

** Subverted when he decides to [[spoiler: TakeaThirdOption by making himself a tourniquet and bandage up his arm with pieces torn from his sleeve.]]
* DivineRightOfKings: The Orphics, a WitchSpecies, claimed that they needed to be in charge to satisfy the spirits and keep both the land and the magic alive. All this is true. Unfortunately, only Orphics can see spirits, so the common people assumed that they were just lying to justify their rule. It certainly didn't help that the ruling family was caring less and less for their kingdom as time went on, instead amusing themselves with trinkets made by the new academic magic. The first academist eventually used these trinkets to overthrow and execute all of them except one, who escaped with the spirits.

[[http://blindsprings.com Blindsprings]] is a fantasy webcomic by Kadi Fedoruk, involving magic, spirits and a forest otherworld.

->"Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was young and kind and innocent, and lived with the fairies in the great forest. She was alone. But she didn't mind. She had her duties to attend to.\\

"One day, she met a boy."

* CryCute: [[http://blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-seventeen Harris,]] [[http://blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-thirty you bastard!]]

* MagicAIsMagicA: Turns out that, unlike what Academists believed, Orphic magic has rules and restrictions, making Orphics NotSoOmniscientAfterAll.

* MagicAIsMagicA: Turns out that, unlike what Academists believed, Orphic magic has rules and restrictions, making Orphics NotSoOmnipotentAfterAll.

* ShockingFuture: Tammy is horrified by what has happened to Kirkhall and Aberwelle in her absence.

* ImportantHaircut: Tammy gets [[http://blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-forty-five some of hair cut]] because her huge hairdo was too noticeable. She now has [[HimeCut bangs]] and a ([[RapunzelHair still]]) [[BraidsOfAction long braid.]]

* BagOfSharing: [[http://blindsprings.com/comic/blindsprings-page-forty-three Imogen's backback]] is supposedly connected to an entire trunk sitting in her bedroom. Overlaps with BagOfHolding.