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A Tale of Magic is a Prequel series to the book series The Land of Stories. They are both written by Chris Colfer.

In the Southern Kingdom, magic and women reading is outlawed. This is a problem for Brystal Evergreen, a fourteen year old Bookworm who discovers she is magical through a book. When she is exposed, she’s sent to a “correctional facility” to cure her of her “condition.” But then, Madame Weatherberry comes along, stating she has permission from the king to take Brystal to a school for magic. Brystal goes to the school with her classmates Skylene, Tangerina, Xanthous, and Lucy. All seems to be going well until Madame Weatherberry embarks on a mission, and doesn’t return...

Currently, there are three released novels: A Tale of Magic, A Tale of Witchcraft, and A Tale of Sorcery.

Tropes:

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    #-B 
  • Abusive Parents:
    • Most magical children, especially ones with abilities prevalent from birth, are abandoned or killed.
    • Tangerina, Skylene, and Emeralda were all abandoned by their biological families.
    • Brystal’s father orders his daughter to be nothing but an obedient housewife. He disowns her when learning she’s a fairy.
    • The father of Xanthous resented him because his mother had a Death by Childbirth. He also beat his own son for playing with dolls.
  • Accidental Misnaming: Lucy calls Madame Weatherberry, ‘Madame Whateverberry’ when they first meet. Granted, this probably wasn’t accidental.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Stitches in the book is stated to have an abnormally large mouth and her eyes are not only mismatched in color but in shape. On the cover for the book, she has none of those things except for the heterochromia.
  • Aerith and Bob:
    • Lucy is the most straightforward example, with her currently being the only main character with a relatively common name.
    • Brystal’s middle name and her mother’s first is Lynn.
    • Celeste is downplayed. It’s still pretty rare, but you’d have a better chance of coming across someone named that rather than a Tangerina.
    • Barrie’s wife is named Penny.
  • Alliterative Family: All of the Evergreen siblings names start with B.
  • Alliterative Name:
    • The first letter of the monarchs names correspond with the first letter of their kingdom. The only exception is King Champion, ruler of the Southern Kingdom...which later gets nicknamed the Charming kingdom.
    • Tangerina’s first and last name both start with T.
    • All of the products Rosette’s family sells are this.
    • Mistress Mara. Lucy calls her ‘Double-Em’ once and she immediately turns it down.
  • Analogy Backfire: Lucy says Brystal can’t fire her from the council and uses an example from her past as a Circus Brat as an example: one troll in a music group kept eating the fans, so they kicked him out. But without him, the music suffered, and people stopped showing up. Brystal then points out an alternative Lucy hadn’t considered: maybe people stopping showing up because they were being eaten.
  • …And That Little Girl Was Me: It’s revealed Madame Weatherberry’s story about the witch and Horence was actually her story.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Tangerina's specialty is to control bees. Her hair is a literal bee hive with real bees living inside it.
  • Armor-Piercing Response: Lucy tells Brystal that she’s making them train as if she’s preparing them for war. Brystal then yells at her that maybe they are. This is the first time the students learn the true dangers Madame Weatherberry is in.
  • Animal Motif: Lucy is associated with birds because she later becomes Mother Goose.
  • Anti-Magic: Bloodstone is the only thing Brystal’s ever witnessed that can cut through her magical barrier.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Lucy suggest horrible things that could have happened with her reciting the witchcraft incantation, she puts Xanthous turning inside out next to Tangerina multiplying.
  • Ascended Extra: The main characters of the series are the Fairy Council, who had a much smaller role in the original series.
  • Asleep in Class: After staying up virtually all night reading, Brystal finds ways to hide the fact that she’s sleeping in class to avoid severe sleep deprivation.
  • Back from the Dead: Horence was a man who had a Forbidden Love with a witch. When this was discovered, he was murdered. The witch, in her heartbreak, tried to bring him back, but only succeeded in bringing back a shell of him.
  • Bad Bedroom, Bad Life:
    • Brystal’s room at the correctional facility is the size of a closet. In contrast, her room at the academy literally changes to suit her as much as possible.
    • Downplayed with Brystal’s childhood room. No mention of it being bad is made in the first book, but in the second, Brystal is shocked at how she never noticed how cold and small it was. She then concludes that the differences may be more metaphorical than literal.
  • Bad People Abuse Animals: At the correctional facility, the chickens are over cooped and the cows are malnourished.
  • Bait-and-Switch:
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Brystal tells her brother she illegally read and performed magic because she wanted life to be different. Brooks then tells her, who could very likely be in prison for the rest of her life, she got her wish.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Don’t tell Madame Weatherberry that magic is a choice. It brings out the Snow Queen.
    • Women correcting men is this for Brystal’s father.
  • Big Dam Plot: The first chapter of the second book focuses on how the Western Kingdom’s dam has a leak and the Fairy Council fixing it. It’s a very quick fix until Lucy uses her speciality for trouble to break the entire dam. Five out of the six Fairy Council use all their effort to repair the dam, the only one excluded being Lucy for...obvious reasons.
  • A Birthday, Not a Break:
  • Blatant Lies:
    • Brystal tries to tell her mother the reason the reason why a candle was burning in her room all night is because she’s afraid of the dark. Her mother recognizes her lie and knows the truth: she was up all night reading books.
    • The dwarves try to deny a child is in the mine, despite it showing up on the Magic Map.
    • Lucy says the reason she was hiding wasn’t to avoid the lessons, but because she thinks she saw her lucky shamrock...that she lost four years ago.
  • Blessed with Suck: Magic is referred to as a gift, but it comes with...heavy social stigma, to put it lightly. Magic is also uncontrollable at first, and this can have negative consequences; Xanthous caused his mother to have a Death by Childbirth because giving birth to him burned her so badly.
  • Book Burning: One of the banned books is mentioned to have ashes on it.
  • Bookcase Passage: The banned books are hidden behind a bookcase.
  • Bookworm: Brystal loves reading so much she viewed it as the only joy in her life for fourteen years.
  • Brainy Brunette: Brystal has dark brown hair and is seemingly the only girl in her town who wants to be something other than a wife and mother.
  • Brick Joke: Around the middle of the second book, Stitches asks Lucy if she wants to know why she’s called Stitches, which Lucy declines. Near the end, Stitches creates a voodoo doll of one of the soldiers, and gleefully proclaims that’s why people call her Stitches.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The Edgars held Pip as a prisoner in their facility for basically her entire life. When she’s about to get magically transported to the people who have caused her the most harm, she knows exactly who it’ll take her. When she’s teleported to the Edgars, they can’t tell her apart from all the other countless girls they’ve abused. Pip becomes overcome by the realization that these people caused her years of misery and scars that will never heal...and they don’t even remember her name. Her rage is what allows her to cast a vex.
    C-O 
  • Call-Forward:
    • Madame Weatherberry tells Brystal’s parents that she’ll be a sign of inspiration and kindness in the future. This is fulfilled when she becomes the Fairy Godmother.
    • Lucy makes multiple references to birds because she later becomes Mother Goose.
    • A village in the Northern Kingdom, which Snow White will rule in the future, is named “Appleton.”
    • The last name of Barrie’s wife is Charming.
    • Lucy often gives people an In-Series Nickname, a quirk she still has in the Land of Stories.
    • Rat Mary is mentioned to be one of the witches Mistress Mara transformed into a lynx.
    • When Brystal is between life and death, she sees unplanted trees labeled with the names of her children, grandchildren, Ezmia. Mistress Mara tells her the trees will be people she’ll meet later in life if she survives.
  • Cerebus Retcon: Spanky's mole people conspiracy theory is introduced as a gag, but later Spanky dies because he wouldn't accept that the mole people weren't real.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • Lampshaded. The narration points out that Brooks’s ability to manipulate comes in handy for giving Brystal any hope to make it out of the courtroom alive.
    • Brystal makes the chocolate cake she made for Barrie again for Lucy’s birthday. This strengths their relationship.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Mrs. Vee was so disturbed by the bloodstone arrow she had to resign from cooking indefinitely. When the Fairy Council comes to fight the Three Thirty-Three, Mrs. Vee returns, and uses her speciality with cooking to use culinary as weapons, causing them to win the fight.
  • Circus Brat: Lucy spent the first thirteen years of her life in a traveling band.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Spanky spends his spare time trying to expose an Ancient Conspiracy of mole people that are behind wars and rigged elections. They don't exist. Spanky made them up so he could blame them for all his problems.
  • Contrived Coincidence: What are the chances dwarves, a species that digs gems, would find an abandoned child with the magical ability to make gems?
  • Crazy Cat Lady: Lucy says that, no matter what happens, she’s going to be one of these because she may be a witch. She doesn’t even like cats!
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: The religion that is mandated by all the officials in the series is clearly based off Christianity.
  • Creepy Doll: Stitches has a doll motif going on and is intrigued by anything morbid. Her true appearance is that of a doll, and she can make voodoos.
  • Crying Wolf: Barrie was told to always try and give maximum punishments to accused criminals. He follows this when setting a punishment, unaware that it’s for his sister. Brooks begs him not to, telling him he’ll regret it for the rest of his life. Barrie thinks his brother is trying to humiliate him by feeding him false information, like he had done earlier, so he goes through with his punishment.
  • Darker and Edgier: The removal of fairy tales and the added stuff such as bigotry and mental health makes this series have a much bleaker tone than the original.
  • Death by Childbirth: Xanthous’s mother died giving birth to him due to burns.
  • Didn't See That Coming: When Brystal makes Lucy a cake, she didn’t think Lucy would realize the only way she could know it’s her birthday is if she was eavesdropping on her.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Mistress Mara turns students who misbehave into lynxes. This may not seem so bad, if it weren’t for the fact that the curse lasts for one hundred years.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • Magic is considered a sin and a choice and is punishable by death in most areas. The main source of this claim is a religion that’s completely coincidently similar to Christianity. There’s also facilities meant to cure people of their magic.
    • Brystal has a disorder that prevents her from performing magic the way she intended. It’s called magiclexia.
    • In the sequel, Brystal struggles with feelings that she’s a failure. She constantly feels like she’s in a bad mood. While it’s revealed she was cursed, the author has referred to Brystal’s struggles as her depression.
  • Double Take: When Barrie is frantic about his wedding, he goes to his mother and rants, with a brief hello to the sister he hasn’t seen in a year...then he realizes his sister he hasn’t seen in a year is here.
  • Dragon Tamer: The residents of the Dragon Keys, a dragon sanctuary.
  • Evil Makes You Ugly: Carried on from the original series. The more witchcraft one performs, the more grotesque they become in appearance.
  • Evil Teacher: Not only does Mistress Mara turn girls who misbehave into lynxes for one hundred years, but she never cared about teaching in the first place; it was all a front for her plan with the Three Thirty-Three.
  • Eyes Never Lie: Brystal realizes the Snow Queen is Madame Weatherberry after she looks into the Queen’s eyes and recognizes them as her teacher’s.
  • Family Eye Resemblance: Brystal and her father have the exact same eye shade and astigmatism.
  • Fantastic Racism:
  • Fauxshadow: An intentional version. Xanthous says the reason his father beat him was because he was doing a horrible thing he wasn’t supposed to do. What said thing was is a mystery for a good portion of the book. Instead of it being something like evil witchcraft, Xanthous was playing with dolls.
  • Floating Continent: The Alchemists' floating city. They can drive it around the world.
  • Forbidden Love: Relationships between magical beings and humans is either illegal or heavily stigmatized. Horence was a normal man who was killed for being in love with a witch.
  • Forced Transformation:
    • Madame Weatherberry turns unicorns into mice and ogres into turtles.
    • Brystal unintentionally reverses the aging process of a gryphon.
    • Mistress Mara turns her students into lynxes for a hundred years if they misbehave.
  • Foreshadowing: Has it’s own page.
  • Forgot About His Powers:
    • Inverted. Xanthous is hesitant to shake Brystal’s hand when they first meet because he’s used to burying everything he touches, forgetting he had the Muter Metal on.
    • When the students take the knocked out Mrs. Vee to bed, they physically carry her up the stairs, exhausting them all. Then they remember they could have used magic to get her up. Lampshaded by Xanthous, who says he “keeps forgetting that’s an option.”
  • For the Evulz: It’s noted some of the chores at the facility don’t have a purpose, implying they’re just there to make the girls suffer for no reason.
  • Frequently Full Moon: Averted. The ceremonies at Ravencrest are done during a full moon for tradition’s sake, but it’s acknowledged a full moon only comes once a month, and that some girls will have to take longer to be enrolled than others.
  • Full Moon Silhouette: The cover of A Tale of Witchcraft has a full blood moon on it.
  • Full-Name Ultimatum: Brystal is called “Brystal Lynn Evergreen” by her father when correcting Brooks. He does this again after Brystal changes the law.
  • Gonna Need More X: Lucy says this when all the magical people arrive to the academy at the end.
  • Green Thumb:
    • Rosette and her family’s speciality is gardening. However, as she points out, they don’t literally have green thumbs.
    • Sprout’s speciality is gardening. Her true appearance has transformed into having features of a plant.
  • Grows on Trees:
    • Madame Weatherberry’s carriage has a plant that grows breakfast items, like bagels.
    • Rosette’s family have trees that grow pretty much anything.
  • Happily Adopted: Emeralda says she’s happy living with her adopted dwarf family.
  • Hated by All:
    • In the first book, magic is considered a crime and a sin worthy of death, and some literally hunt magical people down for sport.
    • The goal of the Three Thirty-Three is to make the magical community fall back to this. They try to do this by framing Brystal for mass murder.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • Subverted. Brystal says she isn’t going to leave Bootstrap unless Madame Weatherberry frees the other girls as well. Pip then asks Brystal if she’s nuts and orders her to leave.
    • Xanthous was planning to drown himself in a lake because he couldn’t think of anything else to stop the fire.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: A common theme among the villains is that they hate how society hurts innocent people because of prejudice, and end up hurting innocent people to get justice.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: One of the trials to get to the Sorcerers' Vault is facing "the deadliest creature." The trial room just has a mirror. The deadliest creatures are the humans doing the trial. A bit strange when you consider there's a goblin in the room too.
  • Hypocritical Humor: The prologue for the first book states the monarchs are doing the very thing they’re accusing magical people of.
  • I Am a Monster: Xanthous says that if Madame Weatherberry learns about his past, she’ll think he’s a monster, implying that he views himself this way.
  • Ice Palace: The Snow Queen transforms the Northern Palace into this.
  • An Ice Person: The Snow Queen and Madame Weatherberry are both a Weather Manipulator, including control over snow.
  • I Lied:
    • Madame Weatherberry lies about being optimistic. She’s been angry about society’s unacceptance of magical people her whole life.
    • Madame Weatherberry admits her story about her hand being burned was a lie to get Emeralda to the school.
  • Immortality Immorality: The Immortal got her immortality by literally scamming Death, and avoids suspicion by faking her death every few decades, then killing one of her daughters and assuming her identity.
  • Innocently Insensitive: When Lucy finds Brystal with the Snow Queen’s frozen body, she exclaims they’ve been given the perfect opportunity to kill her, unaware she’d be killing what’s left of her former teacher. To add salt to the wound, Brystal just learned Madame Weatherberry seperated her soul from the Snow Queen. While they’re still connected, this is the first time Brystal learned she can talk to Madame Weatherberry without worrying about an evil queen possessing her. So now Lucy is going to make her lose that too.
  • In-Series Nickname:
    • Lucy briefly calls Xanthous “Xanny.”
    • Emeralda is occasionally called “Em.”
  • Insistent Terminology: Madame Weatherberry is very adamant that she and her students are fairies, not witches.
  • Interspecies Adoption: Emeralda, a human, is Happily Adopted by her dwarf father.
  • In Touch with His Feminine Side: Downplayed. Xanthous enjoys playing with dolls, but besides this, has seemingly no interest in traditionally feminine things.
  • Ironic Echo: Brystal’s father tells her to not address him as such, claims that she’s no daughter of his. Later, Brystal says the same thing, but with father instead of daughter.
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: Brystal’s father has fully embraced That Thing Is Not My Child!. He exclusively refers to his only daughter as ‘it’ when he sees her for the first time in a year.
  • Jekyll & Hyde: The twist of the first book is that the Snow Queen is the Split Personality of Madame Weatherberry.
  • "Just So" Story: In-Universe, the folktale of The Daughter of Death. It goes that Death's daughter loved life so much that she avoided her father and learned to live forever, and Death missed her so much that he created tools like disease to help catch her. That's why some people live longer than others. The story is true, though some of the details are off.
  • Language of Truth: The Tree of Truth can only speak the truth, albeit not having the ability to look into the future or people’s exact motivations.
  • The Last Of These Is Not Like The Others: The new rules established are basic rights for magical people...and, to Lucy’s suggestion, the tambourine being the nations instrument.
  • Lethal Chef: Subverted. Mrs. Vee jokes about her food being bad, but she’s actually great at it. In fact, it's her speciality.
  • Literal Split Personality: Madame Weatherberry finds a way to split her soul from the Snow Queen.
  • Love at First Sight: When Brystal sees Seven at her brother’s wedding, she feels happy for the first time in weeks. She sits next to him at the wedding and they have an instant connection. Turns out, Brystal had a curse put on her, and it only turned off when she was near Seven. She mistook feeling normal around Seven as love. Seven is also the Righteous King and wanted her dead the whole time.
  • Loved by All: It takes a single year for the world to go to hating fairies to absolutely adoring them. Dolls and costumes were made of them, for pete's sake. Brystal in particular is this, with being known as the Fairy Godmother and all. The goal of the Three Thirty-Three is to make her, and eventually all fairies, lose this adoredness.
  • The Makeover: Mistress Mara’s necklaces not only hide the deformations witchcraft causes people, but they fix other insecurities a person had. Lucy thins out and claims she’s “practically a model” while she wears one.
  • Making a Splash: Skylene’s speciality is controlling water.
  • Magic Map: Madame Weatherberry has a map that keeps track of all magical people. The map is never wrong and updates.
  • Meaningful Echo:
    • Madame Weatherberry recites a line from her book almost word for word, causing Brystal to realize she wrote it.
    • Xanthous repeats to Brystal what she told him about secrets to get her to open up.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Madame Weatherberry’s first and last name have snow and weather in them, relating to how she’s a Weather Manipulator. Her middle name is more subtle, with it being Celeste, which is derived from celestial, which means relating to the sky.
    • Tangerina, Skylene, Xanthous, and Emeralda’s names mean orange, blue, yellow, and green. This is a prominent color in their design and is later the color they represent in the rainbow Fairy Council.
      • Emeralda Stone is also a reference to her gem making speciality.
    • Lucy’s magical specialty is trouble, so her name being the feminine form of the Devil’s is fitting.
    • Rosette and her aunt’s name, Flora, refers to their speciality of gardening.
  • Mess on a Plate: The meals they feed at the correctional facility is slop.
  • Middle Name Basis: Madame Weatherberry’s first name isn’t Celeste: it’s Snowy.
  • Mismeasurement: Lucy gave Mrs. Vee an inch of the sleeping salt instead of pinch.
  • No Indoor Voice:
    • The Snow Queen shouts most of her lines.
    • Most of the conversations Brystal and her father have us through shouts.
  • Not Like Other Girls: In the beginning, Brystal feels like the only girl in the world who cares about anything other than being an obedient wife.
  • The One Guy: Xanthous is the only male at the main group. In the first book, he was the only male in the entire academy.
  • One Person, One Power: Downplayed. Every fairy can do numerous spells, but they have one “speciality.” A speciality comes so naturally, it can be uncontrollable.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Prince Gallivant Victorious Heroic Courageous Champion is known as Seven, a nickname that he got for being the seventh in line to rule.
  • Only Mostly Dead: The Three Thirty-Three assumed Brystal died, when in reality, she was in the space between life and death, which Death let her go from.
  • Our Demons Are Different: The demons are shapeshifting creatures made of fire. They're actually a fairly peaceful species when they're not being magically forced to cause massive fires that threaten all life on the planet.
  • Overly Long Name: Seven’s full title is His Royal Highness Prince Gallivant Victorious Heroic Courageous Champion of Chariot Hills, Duke of Southwestington, Lord of Southeasternshire, Earl of Southnorthernburry and a bunch of other things he can’t remember at the moment.
    P-R 
  • Passing the Torch:
    • Madame Weatherberry tells Brystal if she is unsuccessful in defeating the Snow Queen, then Brystal will have to start running the academy.
    • Brystal believes she will be killed in her surrender to the Three Thirty Three, so she tells Emeralda to take over the school and become the new Fairy Godmother after she’s gone.
  • Personality Powers:
    • Brystal, in a quite literal manner. She's so generous and quick to help people that compassion is literally her magical speciality.
    • Lucy, a mischievous, wisecracking character, has her speciality be trouble.
  • Playing with Fire: Xanthous’s special talent is fire.
  • Power Incontinence: Most magical people’s speciality comes so naturally, it happens even if they don’t want it to.
  • Power Nullifier: Since Xanthous has a particularly bad case of Power Incontinence, he’s giving a medal that ceases his powers.
  • Power-Upgrading Deformation: Carried over from the first series; witchcraft gradually distorts the user's physical appearance over time, so the more disgusting and inhuman a witch looks, the better at witchcraft they are.
  • Prequel: The series takes place when the twins grandmother was a teenager.
  • Pun: Lucy says they’re going to kick some ice when they go to fight the Snow Queen.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When King Champion tells Madame Weatherberry magic is a choice, she briefly turns into the Snow Queen as she yells “no it is not” one letter at a time to him.
  • Race Against the Clock: The Sequel Hook in A Tale if Witchcraft states that Brystal has one year to track and kill an immortal. If she fails, she dies.
  • A Rare Sentence: When Lucy is questioned how she knew Brystal was cursed, she says an invisible butler and a goat led her to a pumpkin in a witch’s closet.
    Lucy: Wow, that just sounds crazy when you say it out loud.
  • Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: The only girls who act stereotypically feminine are the mindless, supposedly brainwashed girls at the school for Future Wives and Mothers.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Snow Queen’s eyes are red. This is more apparent in the fact that Madame Weatherberry’s eyes aren’t.
  • Red Herring: Some guessed Maximus wouldn’t be the Righteous King simply because having the supposed bigot who wants magical people to be discriminated against again be the twist villain would be too obvious. They were right: Seven is the Righteous King and framed his uncle.
  • The Reveal:
    • For book one: Madame Weatherberry is the Snow Queen.
    • For book two: Seven is the Righteous King.
  • Rubber Man: Pip’s speciality. She can stretch her body like it’s made of clay. She uses this to get through the bars of her door at the facility to give Brystal some extra blankets.
  • Running Gag:
    • Lucy Goose’s last name is pronounced like Goo-Say, not like the animal. She will correct you if you get it wrong.
    • Stitches describes a bunch of terrible things...when someone remarks on how terrible it is, she responds that she actually loved it.
    S-Z 
  • Science Wizard: The Alchemists are magical people with a specialty for science.
  • Secret-Identity Identity: The last name ‘Bailey’, which Brystal goes by in the future, is revealed to be have been made up by her on the spot.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • The council of fairies was stated to be considerably younger than the Fairy Godmother and Mother Goose. Here, all of them are roughly similar ages.
    • It’s established that Mother Goose and the Fairy Godmother fought dragons in the Dragon Age. Here, dragons are already treated as a long dead species.
    • The Fairy Godmother got her title when she gave birth to her son. Here, Brystal adopts it when she was fourteen.
    • The Snow Queen’s original past was that she used to be ruler of the Northern Kingdom. When she was dethroned, she cried so much her eyes froze and later melted, which is why she’s blind. Here, she was never a royal and was blinded so she could never find her way out of the cave she was imprisoned in. This could be hand-waved away, as the story may have become bastardized over the years and no one was supposed to learn the Snow Queen was Madame Weatherberry, so a fake backstory had to be made up.
  • Sequel Hook: A Tale of Witchcraft ends with Brystal being given the task to kill an immortal with a time limit of one year. If she fails, she dies.
  • Show Within a Show: The Tales of Tidbit Twitch is a book Brystal was just about to finish before her mother confiscated it. She later learns Tidbit is actually a book series and she reads them to her classmates.
  • Slasher Smile: Mr. Edgar has a permanent one on his face.
  • Slipping a Mickey: When the kids are leaving on their adventure, they give Mrs. Vee something that’ll knock her out so she doesn’t worry or chase after them.
  • Slow Clap: Parodied. Lucy try’s to start one after Brystal’s "The Reason You Suck" Speech. No one joins.
  • Smelly Skunk: Witchcraft gives Pip Squeak some skunk features, including a tail. She uses her spray in battle and knocks soldiers unconscious. Lucy also calls her “Pip Stink” when they first realize she’s transformed into a skunk.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: One of the witches has the appearance of a snake.
  • Speech Impediment: Beebee has a stutter.
  • Speaks Fluent Animal: Tangerina can speak to pixies because their language is very similar to bees.
  • The Speechless: Horence is incapable of speech ever since he was brought Back from the Dead.
  • Split Personality: Madame Weatherberry turns into the Snow Queen. She views the Queen as such a different woman, Weatherberry refers to her in the third person.
  • Split-Personality Takeover: Subverted. Madame Weatherberry is going through this with the Snow Queen in the first book, with Brystal telling her to fight off the Snow Queen as long as she can. The Land of Stories seems to reveal that Madame Weather would eventually lose her battle. Instead, Madame Weatherberry figured out a spell to separate her soul from the Snow Queen. The two are still connected, but Madame Weatherberry is as free from the Queen as she possibly can be.
  • Sssssnake Talk: The witch with the appearance of a snake talks like this.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: It’s illegal for women to read in the Southern Kingdom and they aren’t expected to be anything other than obedient wives and mothers. Brystal’s father believes this to such a degree he doesn’t think a woman should correct anything a man says; even if said thing was that the sky was purple.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Brooks jokes that Maximus’s five sons look so identical he doubts even their father can tell them apart.
  • Sweetie Graffiti: Horence and Madame Weatherberry carves their initials in a tree back when they were in love.
  • Sweet Tooth: Lucy, despite being upset about being eavesdropped and left at the school, let’s Brystal stay because she brought her a cake.
  • That Thing Is Not My Child!: Brystal’s father orders her to stop addressing him as such, claiming that she’s no daughter of his.
  • Thinking Out Loud: Brystal’s habit of doing this is what caused her to recite the incantations and discover she is magical.
  • This Cannot Be!: Lucy’s reaction when she realizes Madame Weatherberry was the Snow Queen.
  • Time Skip: The sequel takes place a year after the first book.
  • Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Mr. Edgar is short while Mrs. Edgar is so abnormally tall she’s compared to a cucumber.
  • Title Drop: “A Tale of Magic” are the last words in the first book.
  • Token Evil Teammate: Lucy, given that her specialty is trouble.
  • Token Minority: Emeralda is the only canon person of color in the main group.
  • Two Beings, One Body: Brystal points out that Madame Weatherberry didn’t have a Secret Identity as the Snow Queen; the Snow Queen is instead a Split Personality that Madame Weatherberry is desperately trying to fight back. The next book reveals Madame Weatherberry has separated herself from the Queen as much as she possibly can.
  • Unicorn: These are one of the animals banned. They also pull Madame Weatherberry’s carriage.
  • Weather Manipulation: This is Madame Weatherberry’s speciality.
  • Wedding Smashers: Right after Barrie and Penny’s vows were about to be sealed, the Three Thirty-Three arrives trying to kill Brystal. They left such a destruction that even Brystal’s father asked her to repair their house with magic. The couple later officiate their marriage privately.
  • Wizarding School: Madame Weatherberry’s academy trains young fairies on their magic. Subverted that not too many people come to the academy after magic is legalized, with it being noted it’s going to be hard for people to open up about something they’ve been taught to hide their entire lives. But then, according to Lucy, every magical person comes.
  • Wham Line:
    • The Sorceress mentions she does both witchcraft and magic. She then says every magical being is capable of both.
    • After Brystal looks into the Snow Queen’s eyes, she gasps that she’s Madame Weatherberry.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Immortal was born into slavery and traded between owners many times. She wants to get revenge on humanity by burning all their cities with demons.

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