What Is This Black Magic You Call Science?

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
They'll blind you with their science.

With only one orange eye, she had the power to change history.

What Is This Black Magic You Call Science? is a story of ambiguous morality; it's an episodic Web Original fiction written by TV troper Threnody. Sadly a Dead Fic -- it was last updated in 2010.

You can find it here.

Heroes:

Villains:

Side Characters:

  • Moriah Rune: The Morality Pet of Chryseis' soul, Moriah is a little girl with distant parents who lives with the subject of Case 1, Boris Rune. Had her neck snapped by Mocha. Chryseis wears her treasured hair-flower as a brooch.
  • Azrael: Lycoris' husband/the father of Chryseis and her siblings. Though he eats people, he's a demon, so he couldn't really be called a cannibal. Breaking the Fourth Wall is one of his hobbies.
  • Lycoris: Azrael's wife/the mother of Chryseis and her siblings. Is a cannibal who eats anyone who finds her attractive... which sucks, since she's unavoidably beautiful.

Tropes used in What Is This Black Magic You Call Science? include:
  • A God Am I (Most of the main characters on both sides are gods. The heroine, for example, comes from a line of gods.)
  • Beauty Equals Goodness (Averted, gutted out and flipped upside down; Chryseis, the heroine, is of average beauty [and has a ton of injuries]; Mocha and Polly are beautiful. Lycoris is also head-turningly beautiful... but she's a cannibal. Also, Azrael, Chryseis' somewhat questionable father, is depicted as being very attractive by some people.)
  • Chivalrous Pervert ( Aggie)
  • Covert Pervert (Salem, and, to a lesser extent, Chryseis)
  • Crossover (Albion, Case 3)
  • Crossover Cosmology
  • Cursed with Awesome (Chryseis' powers/appearance. Also Mocha's fate.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything? (So, there's this dictator, who uses charisma and power to go through the ranks, and maintains Fascism, slaughtering disobedient folks left and right, and prejudicing against people of certain religions and beliefs. Oh wait...)
  • Fantastic Racism (Chryseis is hated by the people of Nifl for her viteligo, prosthetic limbs/missing eye, orange eye color, and white hair, which are traits of the goddess of 'evil'. She and Salem are also both hated for their liberalist views.)
  • Faux Action Girl (Averted/lampshaded by Chryseis:)

Unlike must heroines in this situation— where the dashing, rich, and studly hero saves her, has them fall in love over the span of five seconds, and they get married or something—, Chryseis was not going to be rescued, and she knew this.

  • Gas Mask Mooks (Mocha is usually seen wearing one.)
  • Genre Savvy (Most of the characters know their tropes, and Chryseis' father Azrael often recognizes his existence as a fictional character.)
  • God Mode Sue (Averted in that Jack and Chryseis need to eat untapped human fear/souls to get to full power. Chryseis, being a victim of Chronic Hero Syndrome, would sacrifice ultimate power for the fate of humanity.)
  • Grey and Grey Morality (And how!)
  • Karma Houdini ( Mocha seems this way, until she's forever stuck as a dragon.)
  • Lampshade Hanging (Many things [see Genre Savvy].)
  • Norse Mythology (Lots of references, including the World Tree, the three countries being 'Nifl'[heim], 'Muspel'[heim] and 'Vana'[heim], and the three planes being Asgard, Midgard and Hel.)
  • Power Trio (At full power, Jack, Valentine [Chryseis' conwoman cousin] and Chryseis have full domain over mind, body, and environment [respectively]. In the entire universe.)
  • Save This Person Save the World ( Boris Rune is implied to be this.
  • Scaled Up (Jack's true form is a huge seven-tailed snake. Mocha can turn into a dragon, and in the end, she's forever stuck as one.)
  • The Faceless (Jack usually doesn't have one, since he's heavily inspired by the Terrible Trivium of The Phantom Tollbooth.)
  • The Four Gods (Said to be the source of harmony throughout the omniverse, and their existence is kept valid by the Three [Jack, Chryseis and Chryseis' cousin Valentine] being alive.)
  • Yum Yum (Polly pulls this a lot.)