Line #55 Webcomic/ShatteredStarlight


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shatteredstarlight.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Sucks to be you, MagicalGirl]]
3
4	Farah Shaughnessy is a MagicalGirl. Or rather, she ''was'' a magical girl. Now that she's a young woman things don't seem so magical anymore. Instead of saving Montreal from the forces of Chaos and Entropy, she’s just trying to hold down a decent job, pay her rent and get her life together a decade after the breakup of her team. When strange things start happening around her and old enemies start to reappear, Farah has to make a choice: face the things she’s been running from all these years or put down her astral weapon and walk away for good.
5
6	''[[http://www.shatteredstarlight.com Shattered Starlight]]'' is an online graphic novel by Nicole Chartrand, the creator of ''Webcomic/FeyWinds''. The author promises it will eventually explore mature themes as it deals with the oft-ignored implications and ramifications of common magical girl tropes, mainly how an adolescence spent fighting magical monsters would not be a good preparation for a successful adult life.
7	----
8	!!Tropes found in ''Shattered Starlight'' include:
9
10	* AlliterativeTitle
11	* AnArmAndALeg: Farah's cat Tripod is missing his front right leg.
12	* AntagonistInMourning: Faye runs across her ancient enemy's former [[TheDragon dragon]] leaving flowers in the graveyard at what is implied to be the grave of one of Farah's former teammates.
13	* AmbiguouslyBrown: Farah. Dark skin + straight pink hair + Irish name = ??? Considering her former teammate, she might not be entirely human herself.
14	* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Lily asks Aeslinn if Orion's presence means that his aunt Phaedes is back, hitting the nail on what she and Farah are worried about but are in too much denial about to say out loud. The second girl then admits that she doesn't know.
15	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: When Farah learns she's being reassigned:
16	-->'''Farah''': ''What?!'' A transfer? ''You can't!'' W-where?! Space? [[ReassignedToAntarctica Antarctica]]? The ''{{suburb\|ia}}s?!''
17	* ArtShift: The flashback at the beginning of chapter 2 is drawn to look like anime screencaps.
18	* TheAtoner: Farah volunteers as a bodyguard (and cuts off an enraged former teammate's objections) with" "It's the least I can do."
19	* BigBad:
20	** Orion's aunt Phaedes, ruler of the Sidereal Empire was this to Farah's team, and appears to be making a resurgence on Earth.
21	** Another group of magical girls is attacked by a mysterious woman that seems to be independent of Phaedes, implying another candidate for the role.
22	** Later strips reveal that there have been multiple incidents of former minions of unrelated villains acting up recently as well, further complicating things.
23	* BilingualBonus: A given because the setting is Montreal, the most cosmopolitan city in francophone Canada. All of the signs are in French as required by Quebec provincial law and all of the characters are bilingual. The author provides translations for the French in the comments if it's particularly important.
24	* BreakingTheFellowship: ''Something'' happened to break Farah's team apart, but there aren't any details yet.
25	* BrokenBird: Farah still hasn't recovered from the breakup of her team.
26	* CoveredInScars: Farah has multiple scars on her legs, and presumably other body parts.
27	* DeadpanSnarker: Farah's boss The Empress Celestial. Not that Farah doesn't give her cause.
28	* FinalBoss: Aeslinn refers to Phaedes as this for their magical girl team
29	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
30	** The background images in the prologue hint at why the surviving Flower Rangers and Star Guardians are all ShellShockedVeteran[=s=]: ugly glimpses of blood and mayhem, lost teammates and slaughtered enemies, and horrified ReactionShot[=s=], culminating in a battered and bloody Farah prostrate before someone wearing evil-looking CombatStilettos. Each team has one member glimpsed in the prologue who is still unaccounted for in the narrative.
31	** Later, Orion is seen leaving flowers at the grave of someone named Rachel Melrose, whom Farah apparently was coming to visit as well.
32	* FramesOfReference: Aeslinn used to wear severe-looking square-lens glasses as a teen. These days she's either going* without or switched to contact lenses, though it's possible they were PurelyAestheticGlasses to hide her HellishPupils
33	* GenderFlipped: Frederique introduces Leon as "acting Ranger Peppermint". He does not appear amused.
34	* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Phaedes, who rules the Sidereal Empire. She was the BigBad for Farah and her team, and is apparently making a resurgence.
35	* GratuitousFrench: The comic is set in Quebec and Farah apparently [[IncrediblyLamePun swears by]] bilingual profanity.
36	* HalfHumanHybrid: Aeslinn on her dad's side. She's actually distantly related to Orion through him.
37	* HellishPupils: Aeslinn's pupils are vertical slits, like a cat's.
38	* HiddenDepths: Lily appears immune to the WeirdnessCensor that affects normal bystanders.
39	* ImprobableWeaponUser: Farah's Astral Weapon (the Blade of Stars) is a hockey stick. One of her brother's old hockey sticks to be exact, and as he was at least a head taller than she is it's actually far too long for her and she'd have to cut it down considerably if she wanted to play hockey with it. The fact that her astral weapon magically imbued a battered old hockey stick instead of manifesting as itself is our first clue that she's not a typical magical girl.
40	* LateForSchool: Referenced [[http://www.shatteredstarlight.com/shattered-starlight/page-6/ here,]] complete with "toast hanging out of mouth."
41	* MagicalGirlGenreDeconstruction: Has started to show some of the realistic results of a MagicalGirl lifestyle, especially after growing up, with Farrah showing some signs of PTSD and having trouble keeping a regular job (being fired from her last one after she used a magical attack on her boss), the team aparently having broken apart after some event hinted to have ended with a member dying, and the former team mentor is now near-constantly drunk.
42	* MagicalGirlWarrior: Farah and several supporting characters are all former magical girls who grew up to find there's no career path for magical women.
43	* MentorMascot: Lepus, Guide of the Skies (AKA "Bunny"), who has unfortunately become a washed-up drunk in the decade since the Star Guardians fell apart.
44	* MyGreatestFailure:
45	** Farah was supposed to be the leader of the Star Guardians. That didn't go so well.
46	** Bunny's in the same boat and appears to be handling it worse than Farah.
47	* OurElvesAreDifferent:
48	** Aeslinn: Pointed ears: check. Snooty Attitude? check. HellishPupils? check. Archaic sounding pseudo-Gaelic name? check, check and double check. (the conventional spelling is ''Aislin''.)
49	** There's also the Sidereal Empire, which the former refers to as SpaceElves, she herself is half human half Sidereal on her dad's side, and BigBad is the Empress Phaedes, with her nephew Orion as her Dragon.
50	* PuttingTheBandBackTogether: Played with: with the Star Guardians evidently a lost cause (One teammate just got married, another recently gave birth to twins, the third hates her guts and the fourth goes unmentioned, either missing, dead, captured or perhaps even gone over to the other side) if Farah wants a new team she'll have to assemble a RagTagBandOfMisfits using other over-aged castoff magical girls.
51	* ReassignedToAntarctica: ''Cafe Le Dead End'' as far as Farah's concerned, though she actually expresses a fear of literally being reassigned to Antarctica (or outer space) in chapter one.
52	* RedEyesTakeWarning: Orion has red eyes, noticeable
53	* RetrauxFlashback: [[https://www.shatteredstarlight.com/shattered-starlight/page-55/ Farah and Orion's first confrontation]] is drawn like a subtitled anime from the '90s-2000s.
54	* SealedEvilInACan: Phaedes and her forces were supposed to be sealed off from Earth, but Orion's presence and the Cthonians grabbing Lily's necklace hints that she's found a way to break that seal.
55	* SelfDeprecation: in a meta example, when Farah objects to her new job at the Cafe, The Empress Celestrial replies "You were an art major, it'll be second nature."
56	* SeriousBusiness: baking muffins, apparently.
57	* ShellShockedVeteran: Farah exhibits some classic signs of PTSD. She's jumpy, hostile and quick to anger. Leon does too, threatening Farah and Aeslinn with a rather large chef's knife when they won't shut up and let him bake his muffins in peace.
58	* ShoutOut:
59	** Farah lost her last job after she used her magical powers to clobber the boss in a situation reminiscent of Bob Parr's departure from [=InsuraCare=] in the ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles''.
60	** The walls of the Empress Celestial's office are filled with portraits of magical girls, each detailed just enough to be recognizable to the knowledgeable reader without infringing anyone's copyright.
61	* SplashOfColor: The art is largely monochrome, except for certain characters' hair and/or eye colors.
62	* TeethClenchedTeamwork: One of Farah's new coworkers is her former Star Guardians teammate Aeslinn. They don't like each other much these days.
63	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Farah always goes straight to her most powerful magical attack "Lance of the Northern Lights" regardless of the situation or the potential for collateral damage. It's probably appropriate to use it on an alley full of cthonic monsters; not quite so appropriate to use it on her annoying muggle boss for "acting like a bag of dicks".
64	* TransformationSequence: Played with. While there is an example of teenage Faye's transformation sequence in the prologue, these days Farah does just summons her weapon and does her magical girling in her regular civvy outfit of leather jacket, blue jeans and pink knee high Chuck Taylors.
65	* UncertainDoom: A mysterious villainous attacks a magical girl group, but we don't see what she does. It's not for a few strips that we learn that she only roughed them up a bit.
66	* UnusualEars: Aeslinn sports a pair of pointed ears that are almost anime-grade.
67	* UrbanFantasy: Set in UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}}, where magical girl battles often delay the Métro.
68	* TheWatson: Lily's newness to the magical scene makes a convenient excuse for exposition.
69	* WeirdnessCensor:
70	** "Bystander magic" apparently prevents muggle witnesses from remembering monster attacks, though it takes a while for it to kick in.
71	** Aeslinn's non-human features don't seem to attract any comment or attention either.
72	** As Farah notes, even the magical characters have to deal with enough weirdness on a regular basis that they tune background stuff out.

Context Webcomic / ShatteredStarlight