Grove. Mosaic. Trumpet.
One day, Wren wakes up covered in blood, suffering from memory loss, and surrounded by the remnants of some strange cult ritual. SPINES is the story of her search for answers, and the deadly, powerful people she encounters along the way.
SPINES is created, written, and directed by Jamie Killen and narrated by Wren Jones, and complete as of May 2018. It has also been adapted into novel format, along with two previously Patreon exclusive short stories.
Beware of unmarked season 1 spoilers.
Spines contains examples of:
- Arc Words: Grove, mosaic, trumpet. We find out what each one refers to as the story progresses.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Splinter successfully activate the Trumpet, leading to the expected chaos, with entire parts of the world destroyed. However, Wren gets a message from her future self explaining that they survivors do eventually form a better world for themselves, with she and Shan settling down in a commune among other Gifted and many of the problems of wealth inequality gone forever.
- Blessed with Suck: Some magical gifts, like controlling the weather with your emotions, or setting things on fire as you sleep.
- This is especially prominent after the Trumpet sounds, and all humans suddenly have access to their powers. Australia is covered by a solid diamond shield, half of India straight up disappears, and most of the people in Scandinavia are in a trance they can't be woken from, to name a few effects.
- Body Horror: Some of the powers of Wren's tiles and even Wren herself, can veer into this territory.
- Episode 307, with Wren's description of the two mosaics and their mating process has this in spades.
- Born of Magic: Mosaics are made by ritually combining the tiles to create new people with all the tiles' abilities combined.
- Compelling Voice: Seemingly one of the more common gifts. Wren uses hers to great advantage, using it to acquire groceries, an apartment with the rent paid, and even a computer and car after she wakes up with nothing.
- Identity Absorption: Mosaics are created by the ritual combination of gifted people, or tiles. The mosaics will have bits of knowledge and memories from each of their tiles, as well as similar physical characteristics.
- Irony: Iris was thought to be the likely new leader of the Seekers. Instead, she ended up being the leader of the Splinter.
- Plant Person: Shan. They have vines growing from their arms and legs, as well as bark-like skin. Being around technology of electricity and metal for too long is hard on them, while being surrounded by nature is calming.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Invoked with successful mosaic pairs, like Wren and Zachary; they're designed to produce pheromones keyed to each other so that they'll want to get it on, as it were. After all, it makes the process of making the Trumpet much, much easier.
- Time Master: One of Wren's powers is that she can slow time. Zachary can move people around in time, potentially sending the into the past or future. They both get their time powers from Lexi, the gifted used as one of their tiles.
- Weirdness Censor: Several examples:
- Regular people don't seem to be able to see Carson's flesh sculptures, though they do know something is wrong with the area they're in.
- Nor do they see Lexi's "children", for all they can tell something has changed about the areas of the city her sandstorms hit.
- Strange happenings caused by gifteds in general rarely get reported on in newspapers or other media. When they do get reported on, it's something huge that can't be covered up, like when Ayesha creates all the creatures in all the dreams she can sense and causes the destruction of the city. In that case, it's declared some sort of chemical disater.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: Wren finds herself stuck in a dimension where this is the case. Her powers don't work on it.
