Darth Wiki / Bright Reversions

Bright Reversions is a currently unfinished work of fiction by Floria. It is set in a world similar to late nineteenth century Earth, with the addition of magic and supernatural powers, intelligent nonhuman races, and some Steampunk style retro high tech. It centers around a half-orc female soldier, Boudicca "Bodie" Skullsplitter, but has a large cast.

Major Characters include:

Boudicca Thekla "Bodie" Skullsplitter/Agrotera: the central character, as much as the story has one. A former elite soldier who retired to live a peaceful life as a veterinarian in a frontier town, but wound up back in action due to unforeseen circumstances, and finds herself challenging the secret masters of the world.

• Action Girl
• Bifauxnen: she's pretty butch, but in an attractive way if you like large greenish women. Oddly enough, she has trouble passing for male among her own people, but does so quite successfully among humans.
• Combat Medic: Bodie's first job when she joined the military. Concentrating on killing people came later.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Half-Human Hybrid: orc mother, human father. It was a consensual and in fact rather happy relationship, contrary to stereotype.
• Heroes Love Dogs: she likes other animals, too.
• I See Dead People: Bodie can see ghosts. Given all the dead people she encounters in her profession, this can be rather stressful.
• Kindly Vet: Bodie functions as this for the small frontier community she retires to, although her training for this was rather informal.
• Luke Nounverber
• Scarily Competent Tracker: not as extreme as some, but she did once successfully track a ghost (being mildly psychic helped).
• Spy Catsuit: Tanis manages to get her into one of these (technically a "dark elf spelunking suit"), ostensibly for reasons of stealth enhancement. While it is easy to move in and surprisingly durable, Bodie thinks he may have had other incentives.
• The Squadette: Bodie during the war.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Bodie has a way of attracting gay guys and straight girls. She does make a convincing (if rather bishie) man in the right clothes, but Marius had no such excuse.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Bodie tends to come across like this, although she's normally less brusque than some examples of the trope. However, members of her own culture (who tend towards the Boisterous Bruiser side of things) would be more likely to see her as a mild Shrinking Violet.
• Team Mom: during the war, Bodie was one of these to her male fellow soldiers, despite being younger than most of them.
• Warrior Poet: she's a highly competent Action Girl whose actions are driven by a search for a purpose in life beyond "being really good at killing people." She also enjoys classical literature.

Tanis Darienzan: a male dark elf. Has an unconventional interest in surface-world culture and technology, despite his people's traditional xenophobia. Also something of a steampunk tech geek.

• Adorkable
• Gadgeteer Genius
• Lovable Nerd: although he's had to be tougher than average for this character type, given the kind of society he grew up in, that doesn't stop him from being rather adorkable.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: subterranean dark elves are supposed to be Always Chaotic Evil, and too proud of their own culture's accomplishments to find much good in anyone else's. Tanis is closer to Neutral Good and fascinated by the culture of humans and other surface dwellers.
• Non-Action Guy
• Occidental Otaku: in a way, as he learned most of his human language and customs from his massive consumption of exported popular culture.
• Techno Wizard: he built his own clockwork laptop. And it has internet access! (By telegraph.)

Ekaterina/Katya/Kittie/Sekhmet: an international spy/assassin/general untrustworthy type, and an old friend and lover of Bodie's mother Maria. She and Bodie generally meet as enemies, but it's not certain that Ekaterina truly regards her as such. She loves revolvers, cats, and Chinese food.

• Action Girl: mostly focused on handguns. She has some Dark Action Girl elements, but her amicable relationship with Maria is atypical for that trope.
• The Baroness: a Sexpot as a young woman, leaning towards the Rosa Klebb side of things once she hits middle age. Her clothing choices are unconventional for the trope, however.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: one of her non-combat talents. Her ability to act like she knows what she's doing - and has a right to be doing it - in almost any situation has helped her more over the years than her Improbable Aiming Skills.
• Cuteness Proximity: just get her near a cat.
• Child Soldiers: began working as an assassin for the Aristoi in her early teens.
• Dark Magical Girl: in her youth she actually has many aspects of the character type, but without the magic. She starts out working for the Big Bad (the Aristoi), who fill the "abusive parental figure" role, and initially confronts the hero (Maria) as an enemy, before the protagonist wins her over and they become allies and close friends (although given what Katya gets up to even then, calling her "won over to the side of good" would be pushing it.)
• Determinator: she's obsessive, but in a constructive way.
• Enfante Terrible: when she was eight, Katya tried to kill one of her instructors after the instructor ordered her to kill her own kitten.
• Enigmatic Minion
• The Fake Cutie: she was very cute as a young girl: tiny, with long golden hair, huge blue eyes, and refined manners - and no more trustworthy then than she was as an older woman.
  • By the time she reached her twenties, she was a bit more overtly intimidating.
• Freudian Excuse: if she hadn't been brought up specifically to be an amoral minion of a heartless international conspiracy, she'd probably still be an obsessive, twitchy, attention whore adrenaline junky, but she'd probably be nicer and saner about it.
• The Gunslinger: type A. She's a petite woman, and considers bullets the great equalizer.
• I Call It "Vera": Artemis and Apollo, her revolvers.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: despite her amorality in other aspects of her life, she is very kind to cats.
• Necessarily Evil: she tends to think of herself this way, although she's less self-flagellating about it than some examples of the trope.
• Psycho Lesbian: possible subversion, as her obsession with Maria tends to lead her in heroic directions.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: justified, in that given the tech level of the setting, they were the best handguns around when she was learning to shoot.
• Tyke-Bomb: raised from the cradle as an operative for the setting's Ancient Conspiracy. It screwed her up a bit.
• Wild Card

Maria Cairngorm/"Bill"/Manya/Britomart: Bodie's mother, although Bodie was actually raised by her maternal aunt and uncle (and has their last name). She's in the military like her daughter, but much more well-known.

• The Ace
• Action Girl
• Action Mom
• Even the Girls Want Her
• Eyepatch of Power
• A Mother To Her Men (And Women): while she didn't have a lot of time for her biological child, she was a mentor for many young soldiers.
• All-Loving Hero, Boisterous Bruiser: Maria is an odd mixture of these personality types when she isn't killing people. The fact that she's so darn likable, as well as one of the greatest warriors of her generation, winds up making some people rather nervous.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: early in her career.

Doctor Valeriya Perunovna Termena: one of Maria's antagonists. She's a scientist and weapons designer who wants to Take Over the World as soon as she has sufficient money and support. As well as her scientific talents, she has superpowers gained through self-experimentation.

• Badass Bookworm: she's primarily a scholar, but she does handle her steampunk BFG well.
• Deadpan Snarker: especially when she's young.
• Delicate and Sickly: subverted - she suffered from a chronic illness when she was young, and her first impressive act of Mad Science was a successful search for a cure - but she wasn't particularly cute when she began her research, and the side effects didn't improve her looks at all.
• Emperor Scientist: her goal in life is to become one of these.
• Even Evil Has Standards: according to Valeriya, you can do what you like to interchangeable minions (although since help is hard to find, it might not be a good idea to kill or incapacitate them), but abusing your girlfriend is just wrong.
• Mad Scientist
• Meaningful Name: her patronymic, Perunovna, translates roughly as "Thunder's daughter." Rather appropriate for a Psycho Electro.
• Combat Tentacles
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: she mostly builds things, but also shows a strong grasp of chemistry and biology.
• Professor Guinea Pig: the serum that turned her into a lightning tentacle person, although she did test it on a few mice first to make sure that it wouldn't make her explode or something. However, since the serum was designed to cure a medical condition that she herself had, this is justifiable.
• Psycho Electro: she learned during her boarding school days that punching people was unladylike - so she zaps them instead.
• Psycho Lesbian: has some elements of this, although the main expressions of her craziness tend to be outside her love life.
• Red Right Hand: the experiment that gave her her powers left some interesting marks.
• Scary Shiny Glasses
• Übermensch: Valeriya wants to be one of these, at least. One of her Character Filibusters is about the importance of knowing the difference between immutable natural law and mere social convention, and she's a firm believer in the power of human effort over abstract historical forces.

Captain Aleksandra Ivanovna Markova/Aleksander Ivanovitch Markov/"Sasha": Valeriya's girlfriend. A former Sweet Polly Oliver who was kept on after her gender was revealed because that particular military installation was desperate for halfway-competent personnel. Pretty, cheerful, and rather eccentric, but with a bit of a violent streak.

• Bifauxnen: she resembles the Classical "beautiful boy" ideal more than most actual young men do.
• Bishie Sparkle: parodied.
• Camp Gay: weird sort of semi-double-subversion. During her Sweet Polly Oliver days, some of her acquaintances assumed that "Aleksander Markov" was this way, because of "his" dandified appearance and "unmanly" interests, and were rather surprised that Markov was such a flirt with women. Then Markov was revealed to be female - but still liked girls.
• Cute Bruiser: she's cheerful, cute, and normally about as intimidating as dandelion fluff - but she hits hard when she wants to.
• Cuteness Proximity
• Genki Girl
• Morality Pet: for Valeriya. They have a genuinely loving relationship, in an odd sort of way.
• Nightmare Fetishist: the fact that she's Valeriya's lover should be ample evidence.
• Perky Female Minion
• Tomboyish Name: Sasha counts as such, at least in Russian.

Marianne Dumas/Athena: a young woman with a mysterious past, who discovers that the world is a much more complicated place than she thought it had been.

• Action Girl
• Child Soldier
• Enfante Terrible
• Faux Action Girl: she's actually a competent fighter, but the circumstances of her first appearance put her in way over her head, so the effect might be similar. A sword's not much good against a world-spanning conspiracy.
• Heroic BSoD: upon discovering what the aforementioned world-spanning conspiracy is up to. She gets better.
• Lady of War: eventually develops into one of these after taking a few levels in badass.
• Mystical White Hair: She's not explicitly magical, but has mysterious origins.
• Plucky Girl: most of the time, at least.
• She-Fu: lampshaded, when a Mook comments on the ignominy of being "beaten up by a ballet dancer." This is a contrast to the less flashy approaches to melee combat of most of the other women.

Also includes examples of:

• Action Girl: the majority of the female cast, including several minor characters.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: all the skin colors on earth, plus olive-green (orcs) and blue-black or very dark grayish blue (some dark elves). Since all humanoids are closely enough related to be genetically compatible, it would be theoretically possible for someone with the right ancestors to have a complexion that was a sort of muted blue-green.
• Amazon Brigade: the Furies.
• Ancient Conspiracy: the Aristoi.
• Antivillains: well, possibly...
• The Atoner: Gerard.
• Author Appeal: the costumes, the exotic-looking cast, the Les Yay, and some of the cultural references.
• Badass Longcoat: standard outerwear for most of the cast. Valeriya and Tanis even have labcoat versions. Even non-longcoat wearing characters generally have some part of their outfit that can flap dramatically in the breeze.
• Badass Normal: Ekaterina, Marianne, several more minor characters. Maria might also count, depending on how much of an advantage you consider being an orc to be (they tend to be stronger than humans on average, but not dramatically so, and see better in dim light), and Bodie would be if she couldn't see ghosts (which is sometimes useful, sometimes annoying, and often doesn't come up at all.)
• Beast and Beauty: Valeriya and Sasha are sort of a same-gender version.
• Big Friendly Dog: Brusi, Bodie's Orcadian Water Mastiff (a breed of dog that's basically a curly-haired Newfoundland)
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: most of the cast has at least a touch of this.
• Butch Lesbian: many characters have a touch of this, although none of them play it entirely straight. Maria and Bodie are more Butch Bisexuals, Valeriya is fairly masculine by the standards of her culture (mostly due to her unconventional interests and take-charge personality and being Big and Scary) but fairly feminine in matters of clothes and grooming, and Sasha has the fashion sense but comes across as less intimidating and more conventionally pretty than her skirt-wearing girlfriend.
• Cast Full of Gay
• Code Name: usually mythological, inspired by the Victorian fondness for Classical references.
• Combat Pragmatist: all the Furies are trained to be this - the justification is that, when you're fighting someone larger and stronger, going for his weak points is only fair.
• Cute Little Fangs: orcs and half-orcs have these.
• Dead Person Conversation: Bodie has these sometimes, especially with her dead psychic dad.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Elspeth's distress at the thought of Bodie's mother having married a foreigner, and her slightly too fervent denial that she could possibly be attracted to "him" due to Bodie's ethnic heritage and lower social status.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Valeriya and Ekaterina, possibly.
• During the War
• Mr. Fanservice: Marius Villiers, a troubled but gentlemanly, gay Pretty Boy with an aversion to wearing shirts.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Parodied by Poppaea, who tends to walk around with unbuttoned shirts or dresses over a corset and camisole.
• Expy + Gender Flip: inspiration for several of the characters, before they started developing in their own directions.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Kyrillia for Czarist Russia, complete with patronymics, samovars, and horrific invasion-repelling winters. Counterparts to France, the British Isles, and Central and East Asia, among other places, also make appearances.
• Freaky Is Cool: Sasha's attitude towards Valeriya's more unusual physical features. Of course, the Power Perversion Potential helps. Tanis' fondness for surface-dwellers and their culture has a touch of this, given dark elves' traditional xenophobia.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Ekaterina takes Marianne out for dim sum and former-Tyke Bomb bonding at one point. Marianne is rather taken aback by this.
• The Handler: Gerard, for Marianne during her younger days.
• Honey Trap: Poppaea.
• Huge Girl Tiny Bishonen: Bodie and Tanis.
  • Valeriya and Sasha would be Huge Woman Tiny Bifauxnen.
• Improbably Female Cast: borderline example, due more to authorial preference for writing female characters than anything deliberate.
• I See Dead People: Jin, Bodie's father, to a much stronger extent than his daughter does.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Ekaterina. She has very long hair, and, despite her practicality in most areas of life, a fondness for pretty dresses. Poppaea is a Lipstick Bisexual, although as much because her job depends on looking glamorous as from personal preference.
• Literary Allusion Title: from Alexander Pope.
• Locked into Strangeness: psychics tend to gray prematurely, at a rate roughly proportional to the strength of their powers.
• Mad Scientist: Valeriya is the most outstanding example, but most scientifically inclined characters have a trace of it.
• Magic from Technology: Valeriya summons a creature from another dimension and accidentally gives herself superpowers - but she's a scientist, not a mage. Another character invents a procedure that can bring back the dead under certain limited conditions.
• Marshmallow Hell: Valeriya has subjected Katya to this a few times.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Bodie and Tanis' relationship has aspects of this, as half-orcs only live as long as ordinary humans, and dark elves can live for centuries.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: mild example, as the three major Kyrillian characters are all potentially scary people in their own ways.
• Ms. Fanservice: Poppaea. Seduction is part of her job, so it fits.
• Non-Action Guy: Jin and Tanis. Both manage to make themselves useful in other ways (Jin with his psychic powers and Tanis making up for Bodie's ineptitude with "modern" technology.)
• Officer and a Gentleman: Marius Villiers, although he has his share of issues and quirks.
• Our Elves Are Different: Traditionally, subterranean dark elves think that they're better than everyone else, but xenophobia and Card Carrying Villainy have put their civilization at something of a disadvantage lately, and they've been in slow decline for the past couple of centuries, as other subterranean races have become relatively more powerful. The biggest current ideological split in dark elven society has been between those who believe that modernization is the best path to restoring their power (mostly mages, merchants, and professionals), and those who advocate a stronger embrace of ancestral tradition (mostly the clergy). Even among the "modernization" faction, "ideological debate" in practice seems to involve a lot of people getting poisoned or stabbed. There are also surface-dwelling dark elf communities, whose culture is more of a mixed bag.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Bright Reversions orcs are tall, muscular, greenish-skinned Boisterous Bruisers with Cute Little Fangs. Their culture has Scottish and Norse influences, but the majority of orcs practice a fantasy counterpart version of Orthodox Christianity. And they're not stupid or brutish, just mentally stuck in the Bronze Age in some ways.
• Pet the Dog: most villains who get much in-depth character development get at least a little of this.
• Power Incontinence: Valeriya had some trouble with this right after the acquisition of her electricity powers. Her control improves with time, although it never becomes one hundred percent reliable under all circumstances.
  • Bodie can't shut off her ability to see ghosts, either.
• Psychic Powers
• Shout-Out: Zhenya, Valeriya's pet electric eel, is named after the Psycho Electro Big Bad of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
• Squishy Wizard: most dark elves of a non-military inclination (the warriors are Fragile Speedsters.) Particularly Eris Darienzan, which is why Marianne was assigned to help her with the physical hazards of the mission they met on.
• Steampunk
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Some orcs and dark elves.
• Sweet on Polly Oliver: Valeriya's initial attraction to Sasha, despite her normal preference for women. "So that's why all those dead Roman emperors liked boys!" Also, Elspeth's implied attraction to Bodie.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.
• Token Evil Teammate: Ekaterina, in a way, in some situations where she and Maria worked together.
• Tsundere: Eris Darienzan, Tanis' younger sister.
• Villains Out Shopping
• Waif-Fu: played semi-straight with Marianne and Sasha (although both of them are trained members of the military and would only count as particularly petite when compared to Valeriya and Bodie), averted with Ekaterina (one of the reasons she focused on guns instead of melee is that most of the people she winds up trying to kill are considerably bigger than her 5'2" 110 lbs when dripping wet self.)
• Weird Science
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Maria's relationship with Bodie has elements of this dynamic, although Maria wasn't so much "unpleasable" as "not around much."

---