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A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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To deconstruct the magical girl genre we have to break it into its constituent parts. 'Magical' and 'girl'. These two words are in tension with each other- these stories ask us to suspend our disbelief on this point, because we know from our experiences that girls are not, generally, magical. And it is specifically the girls who are magical, not women or boys. It is not the story beats that define this genre, but the subversion of roles in media- young girls are not usually revered as warriors and heroes. This exclusiveness does not apply to the villains of these stories, who can be of any age and gender. Good versus evil often ends up a matter of female vs male, or youth vs maturity.

Wait, am I doing this right?

And yeah, Fresh Precure is really fun! It's funny how much the quality can vary in big projects like that, with so many people involved. I adore Eas and her character arc, but I hated almost every moment the baby was on-screen. Her arc hits a lot of my favorite tropes so I still rate Fresh pretty high, but I don't think I'd ever rewatch the entire thing.
 
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Embler said:
And yeah, Fresh Precure is really fun! It's funny how much the quality can vary in big projects like that, with so many people involved. I adore Eas and her character arc, but I hated almost every moment the baby was on-screen. Her arc hits a lot of my favorite tropes so I still rate Fresh pretty high, but I don't think I'd ever rewatch the entire thing.
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The baby?
 
To be honest, Madoka works because it is almost agonizingly, painfully, playing the magical girl genre very straight at its core. That is, where magical girl shows often run on the idea that emotions are big and sincere and powerful and htat adolescent emotions and femininity are sources of power in and of themselves, Madoka wholeheartedly agrees. A young girl's joy can save the universe, a young girl's wish for a better world can create beauty or justice where once there was none. A young girl's despair is the most earthshattering and cruel anything can be. Magical girls, while they suffer and struggle, can also become incarnations of hope.

None of these ideas are really critiqued or torn apart. They are taken incredibly seriously. In contrast to "what if the cutesy mascot characters kidnapped and graphically tortured the protagonist's family to death" (thanks Asuka...).



Aranfan said:
The baby?
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Chiffon.

I'll admit Chiffon worked for me personally, because she comes across as basically omnipotent and having to take care of a very sweet toddler who can also break the rules of reality any time she gets sufficiently upset is just the kind of fridge horror I am here for tbh.
 
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Shadell said:
To be honest, Madoka works because it is almost agonizingly, painfully, playing the magical girl genre very straight at its core. That is, where magical girl shows often run on the idea that emotions are big and sincere and powerful and htat adolescent emotions and femininity are sources of power in and of themselves, Madoka wholeheartedly agrees. A young girl's joy can save the universe, a young girl's wish for a better world can create beauty or justice where once there was none. A young girl's despair is the most earthshattering and cruel anything can be. Magical girls, while they suffer and struggle, can also become incarnations of hope.

None of these ideas are really critiqued or torn apart. They are taken incredibly seriously. In contrast to "what if the cutesy mascot characters kidnapped and graphically tortured the protagonist's family to death" (thanks Asuka...).




Chiffon.

I'll admit Chiffon worked for me personally, because she comes across as basically omnipotent and having to take care of a very sweet toddler who can also break the rules of reality any time she gets sufficiently upset is just the kind of fridge horror I am here for tbh.
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What?
 
Fresh Precure is really interesting because it definitely leans very heavily on the core basic idea of a twist on the Precure concept and one or two twists along the way, and honestly when you look back at the story a colossal amount of it is in service of one of those 3 or so things, but it does it so well that it's hard to really dislike it for it. You can definitely argue that otherwise it doesn't really do that much per se and it definitely ends up neglecting much of its cast, and that when it does need to wrap up the main plot, it ranges from really good when focuses on its core characters to deeply questionable, but it's definitely a very fun show. I think if I were to revisit Precure (Which I do want to do at some point), it probably would stop being my favorite, but it's definitely a very strong exploration of a decently common concept outside MG media while still using traditional magical girl thematics and aesthetic. (Also Episode 23, or the end of the first arc, remains one of the strongest magical girl episodes I've seen tbh, it's so good, I would honestly be inclined to reccomend it on that one episode alone. The second act villain is also imo definitely one of the best, like, Played Straight villains Precure has had, only season that comes close is Smile imo.)

Terrabrand said:
Monokuma meanwhile is like. I haven't played the games myself but my understanding from what I've seen and read of derivative fanworks and such is that Monokuma basically shows up, gets brushed off as weird, and in his literal first scene kills someone.
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It's his second or... third? Appearance, my DR memory is a little foggy. Not his first but very early on, and he basically foreshadows really heavily that if you fuck with him Very Bad Things will happen, so you kind of know he's probably somebody you should take really seriously, in addition to just being really ominous and creepy, as noted by the characters themselves, from the jump.

SaltedPastichio said:
Is this common for Magical Girl shows? Good guys doing (war) crime seems to come up often in discussion of these shows.
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I'm curious what shows you have in mind here?

I honestly think Rebellion has a much stronger argument for a non-played straight story than the main series does- it both does the traditional MG aesthetic significantly more authentically than the show proper in its first 20-30 minutes (with some dark stuff for spice because, well, it's a Madoka movie), and the core idea of the finale is that the power of love can be equally powerful when it turns into a destructive obsession just as it can when used for good ends- in fact you could very credibly argue the birth of Girlboss Homura Homulucifer is in many ways a sort of twisted echo of Madoka's choice in the series conclusion. I'm not sure I'd call that deconstructive per se, but it definitely is playing around more with the thematic tropes much more than the original series can lay claim to.
 
My big issue with Madoka is that it is to magical girl stuff what Watchmen was to comics. With a very similar impact.
 
I think I'd have a more positive opinion of Madoka were I not familiar with Urobuchi's other work. You know how Sam Levinson's Euphoria became a lot harder to defend after The Idol came out? Similar case for me with Urobuchi, given how surprisingly sexist a lot of his work before (Saya no Uta, Fate/Zero) and after (Kamen Rider Gaim) Madoka can be. Granted, not even those works are as sexist as The Idol, but that's a low bar to clear.

The other problem I have with Madoka is that I feel it got a lot of the credit for what a bunch of other MG series did first, such as Magic Knight Rayearth, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, and Sailor Nothing. My problem here isn't lack of originality, nothing new under the sun and all, but more how Madoka gets the credit for what these older works did
 
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Firehawk242 said:
My big issue with Madoka is that it is to magical girl stuff what Watchmen was to comics. With a very similar impact.
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Yeah ultimately, just like Watchmen, it had interesting stuff to say but it was 1) overhyped to the point of missing what it WAS trying to say and 2) spawned an entire genre of imitators that are way, way worse because they only saw the edge and not the heart.

At least Homura fans aren't as shameful as Rorschach fans.
 
The Laurent said:
What?
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mythfan12 said:
.... The fuck?
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During the big war before the start of the series where the Earth was invaded by magical monsters called Dias (in the series magical girls are born when a fairy synchronizes with a human, and there are fairies working with the Dias), and the magical girls were the super soldiers leading the offensive, the Dias captured the MC's parents and started sending them back to her, in pieces, to torment her.
 
Icipall said:
During the big war before the start of the series where the Earth was invaded by magical monsters called Dias (in the series magical girls are born when a fairy synchronizes with a human, and there are fairies working with the Dias), and the magical girls were the super soldiers leading the offensive, the Dias captured the MC's parents and started sending them back to her, in pieces, to torment her.
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And explicitly only to torment her, responding to her pleas for them to stop, she'll do anything etc with 'lol fuck you'. Just. No, it's not leverage. It's just to be evil.
 
Hearing how yikes MGSO Asuka is has actually made me feel better about Fool Bloom having a kinda similar premise to it, only way to go is up.

And since I'm a little worried about getting off-topic here, er, Ira Crocodile? Think having an amphibian for Wrath could fit in nicely with the Inferno.
Also, 'toxic yuri' is now a tag, don't know if that would be relevant to this story's interests
 
Icipall said:
During the big war before the start of the series where the Earth was invaded by magical monsters called Dias (in the series magical girls are born when a fairy synchronizes with a human, and there are fairies working with the Dias), and the magical girls were the super soldiers leading the offensive, the Dias captured the MC's parents and started sending them back to her, in pieces, to torment her.
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We get this first hinted at because she sees a mascot handing out something to children and it triggers a PTSD flashback.

ArlequineLunaire said:
Hearing how yikes MGSO Asuka is has actually made me feel better about Fool Bloom having a kinda similar premise to it, only way to go is up.

And since I'm a little worried about getting off-topic here, er, Ira Crocodile? Think having an amphibian for Wrath could fit in nicely with the Inferno.
Also, 'toxic yuri' is now a tag, don't know if that would be relevant to this story's interests
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If Spec Ops Asuka was a series about a former child soldier having PTSD and struggling to adapt to a world where she doesn't have to fight monsters weekly, it would be kinda cool. Sadly, unlike Fool Bloom, it's about, uh, well it's uniquely awful to the point that you can't look away.
 
Shadell said:
If Spec Ops Asuka was a series about a former child soldier having PTSD and struggling to adapt to a world where she doesn't have to fight monsters weekly, it would be kinda cool. Sadly, unlike Fool Bloom, it's about, uh, well it's uniquely awful to the point that you can't look away.
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It's basically like "What if magical girls became useful for imperialiism?" as its starting premise, and then goes into all of the tired awfulness which imperialists use to justify the necessity of imperial violence.
 
I'm writing my own magical girls story, and every time I sit down to write my #1 goal is making sure I balance the tone just right. It needs to stay earnest and genuine to its core ideals no matter how serious the topic happens to be. Like, if you don't actually believe that kindness and love can change the world, you've completely missed the point.

Which makes it so frustrating to look back at all the madoka imitators that didn't even try to, they just went "haha what if cute girls were mean and evil and killed people". At a certain point it starts to feel like the MCU effect of wanting to undercut every emotional moment with witty one liners because you're so afraid of emotional sincerity.
 
Shadell said:
Icipall said:
During the big war before the start of the series where the Earth was invaded by magical monsters called Dias (in the series magical girls are born when a fairy synchronizes with a human, and there are fairies working with the Dias), and the magical girls were the super soldiers leading the offensive, the Dias captured the MC's parents and started sending them back to her, in pieces, to torment her.
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We get this first hinted at because she sees a mascot handing out something to children and it triggers a PTSD flashback.
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It feels bad to find that amusingly absurd, but it is. Like...what is the connection? This is fiction, that's supposed to be foreshadowing, there should be some kind of clear connection. Does giving things to children trigger her PTSD??


Allegoriest said:
Which makes it so frustrating to look back at all the madoka imitators that didn't even try to, they just went "haha what if cute girls were mean and evil and killed people". At a certain point it starts to feel like the MCU effect of wanting to undercut every emotional moment with witty one liners because you're so afraid of emotional sincerity.
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That really does feel like the dominant tone in pop culture these days. Sincerity is for losers, kindness is a mistake, you have to stay detached and aloof and cool. Ugh.
 
Hey, has anyone here read Nowhere Stars ?
It kind of reminded me of this quest because they take place in a magical girl setting that's inspired by pre-Madoka stuff (although Nowhere Stars is more Princess Tutu than Pretty Cure) but they seem really dark because the main characters of both are in an absolutely terrible headspace.
Nowhere Stars had very freaky monsters of the week though. Definitely a post-Madoka work.
 
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Hi yes, everyone should read should read Nowhere Stars. Very good story about chronic illness and traumatized kids trying to do good, dark without being gratuitous and hollow like I was talking about. And its getting a fancy ebook with illustrations and an audiobook soon.

I'm not gonna shill my own stuff, by damn if I won't do it for the authors I look up to
 
I myself would frame the matter of tone and deconstructions differently, in that magical girl shows at their best heavily lean on teenage drama. Even Madoka does that, though the drama it leans on is specifically the fear of growing up, being overwhelmed with the dangerous and bleak world you grow into and trying not to grow into a person that your younger self would hate. It moves along the same space as other magical girl shows, it just directs attention to a part of the underlying matter that most shows conveniently ignore (similar to how this story acknowledges the usually ignored gender perrspective of it all). Where in others, we just get a snapshot of young idealism, madoka directly acknowledges that these things cannot last forever and has its characters confront the question of "so, what do you do afterwards", the answer to which is tragic, but still hopeful
 
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GreatWyrmGold said:
It feels bad to find that amusingly absurd, but it is. Like...what is the connection? This is fiction, that's supposed to be foreshadowing, there should be some kind of clear connection. Does giving things to children trigger her PTSD??
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IIRC correctly, it has been a while since I watched the anime, it did trigger her PTSD, making her remember the Dias that told her that they had taken her parents and had given her a box, which she learned held hand from each of her parent when she opened it.
 
Shadell said:
If Spec Ops Asuka was a series about a former child soldier having PTSD and struggling to adapt to a world where she doesn't have to fight monsters weekly, it would be kinda cool. Sadly, unlike Fool Bloom, it's about, uh, well it's uniquely awful to the point that you can't look away.
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I watched some of it as a form of self harm, but I managed to stop before I got too far in.
 
Nerdorama said:
Yeah ultimately, just like Watchmen, it had interesting stuff to say but it was 1) overhyped to the point of missing what it WAS trying to say and 2) spawned an entire genre of imitators that are way, way worse because they only saw the edge and not the heart.

At least Homura fans aren't as shameful as Rorschach fans.
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I really hate what the word "deconstruction" has become in the context of magical girls. Dudes keep thinking they're clever for asking "what if the source of their powers is evil and wants them to suffer???"

Like no that's not cleverly engaging with trope implications or anything, that's just having a twist. One that's played out and predictable at this point, at that.
 
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