Lovecraftian Magical Girls

[SpiritFluid]

Magical Girls.

Girl Power to the extreme; young girls transform into super magical versions of themself and save the day, fight evil and live generally nice lives in a setting where, usually, Good is Good, Evil is Evil and Friendship and Love is the greatest power of them all~!

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Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror

Madness to an extreme; the innocent and inquisitive discovering that which was never meant to be found, be that knowledge on the truth of reality, of ancient slumbering gods and their mad followers, and generally exist in setting where Good and Evil are non-existent except in the hearts of man, for those beyond the stars do not care for our plights and shall last long after we are gone. For even in strange aeons, even the memories of our death shall die in the minds of our exterminators. Madness and Chaos are the greatest power of them all.

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You really can't get more opposite of genres. Lighthearted and Horrific, Sweet and Sour, Hopeful and Foregone. The only real solid connection you can get between them is that you can probably find Tentacles in either of them, albeit in differing amounts and purposes. And although the two genres have occasionally bled into another thematically (Exhibit A, Exhibit B), the two generally have nothing to do with another and generally stay that way.

Until of course I showed up to a thread, saw somebody throw their username into a 'if you were a Magical Girl' online quiz and get the theme and motif that literally stated 'Cosmic Horror' (Well, Horror Cosmic, but semantics) and I began to cackle like Abdul Alhazred when he had compiled the wretched Grimoire that Identifes the Dead.

Now, this is an idea I do have some fledling thoughts of developing into something more, something insidious and concrete—when the stars are right, of course. But before I could ever do that, a basis would need to be made. And that basis is, how in the fuck would a Lovecraftian Magical Girl story or quest even work? And I don't mean in terms of mechanics or the like, I mean thematically—what kind of story could be realistically made from such an insane concept? What dynamics, foes, motifs, characters and all that fun, what could be made from this?

The best I've been able to conjure in the short number of hours I've had to Brainstorm is that it would be a group of girls lead by a fellow schoolmate of theirs who's gotten her grips on a book giving the laydown on all the daek truths of reality (because the general 'cute and happy alien/fairy making them tools of justice' doesn't mesh well with 'uncaring cosmos and aliens' that well, unless you go full Kyubey, but let's try and be a bit more creative then that), fails a few SAN Rolls along the way with that and decides the best way to save make humanity exist for at least a few properly timed constellations is through them becoming Magical Girls—which may or may not be horrifying in themself (Transformation Process = THAT WHICH IS NEVER TO BE SEEN OR DONE, OH LORD, MY MIND! Not to such a dramatic extent, of course, but still). But that's not even enough for a backbone of a story, that is the barebones of one.

So, naturally, it's only fitting to throw these ideas to a community that has experience in both genres and see what maddened ideas we can spawn, like something from the womb of a Deep One of Innsmouth. I'll leave the more proper details to your capable hands, and we'll see which theme triumphs over the other—the idea that in a dark world of despair even Hope may endure, or that the universe is a dark, twisted thing and going insane is probably the best course of action.

Ïa, Ïa~!

 

[TranscientLurker]

Obligatory Haiyore! Nyarko-San reference.

 

[Look to the Left]

I can't believe you actually made it!

 

[mothematics]

Read my thread. Then read some Lovecraft. Then, read some analysis of Lovecraft's works, and the themes contained within it. Then, understand that these conventions and themes, that permeate both genres, are ultimately diametrically opposed to each other and unless you're one of the cleverest writers I've ever met, you're not gonna get very far with this.

 

[SpiritFluid]

Obligatory Haiyore! Nyarko-San reference.

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Already ahead of ya.

Exhibit B),

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Read my thread.

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Been there.

Then read some Lovecraft.

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Done that.

Then, read some analysis of Lovecraft's works, and the themes contained within it. Then, understand that these conventions and themes, that permeate both genres, are ultimately diametrically opposed to each other

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That's what the majority of my opening post was, albeit simplified for the sake of my own and everyone elses sanity.

and unless you're one of the cleverest writers I've ever met, you're not gonna get very far with this.

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Which is precisely why I made this thread, because I'm aware that focusing all of my effort on this would be a Herculean task, and that it would probably achieve SOMETHING if I have others join in on this madness.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Read my thread. Then read some Lovecraft. Then, read some analysis of Lovecraft's works, and the themes contained within it. Then, understand that these conventions and themes, that permeate both genres, are ultimately diametrically opposed to each other and unless you're one of the cleverest writers I've ever met, you're not gonna get very far with this.

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*wobbles hand*

There is room, of a sort, depending on how narrowly you interpret "Lovecraftian". There's space within his canon for it, as long as you keep well away from the cosmic horror elements.

You just have to stick entirely to the Dream Cycle works, and ignore what people more classically associate as "Lovecraftian". If you instead use things like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and similar as your reference work, then you might be able to get away with it - even if your magical girls only have power within their dreams. The entire story therefore probably becomes a tale of escapism and how trying to avoid growing up by hiding within your dreams isn't healthy and to become a well-functioning adult you need to wake up and live in the real world - but on the other hand, you also can't forget your dreams and they provide much-needed relief from the monotony and suffering of reality.

But to do that, you basically have to be a real Lovecraft buff willing to track down obscure stories and use things other than The Shadow over Innsmouth and the Call of Cthulhu as sources.

... although it must be pointed out that the end of the first season of Sailor Moon is preeeetty much happening in the Antarctic city of the Elder Things from At The Mountains of Madness, and the effects of Metaria stirring within the sun are likewise pretty fucking Ia Ia! It wakes! if you know what I mean.

 

[Arkalest]

Read my thread. Then read some Lovecraft. Then, read some analysis of Lovecraft's works, and the themes contained within it. Then, understand that these conventions and themes, that permeate both genres, are ultimately diametrically opposed to each other and unless you're one of the cleverest writers I've ever met, you're not gonna get very far with this.

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Well TBH it's not Lovecraft itself as much as cosmic horror as a whole. This thread is definitively shortselling itself, by sticking the Big L's name on the title.

And TBH it's probably doable if you actually flat out accept you'll never be able to fuse the two, and instead set out to do "X with Y trappings". Which is to say, "Magical girl with slightly cosmic horror trappings", "cosmic horror with aesthetics of the magical girls" and "Magical girls seen through cosmic horror's lense." PMM did the last one a bit, but it never fully dunked its head in.



For example:

• Present magical girls as having embraced the weirdness of the Other. They have found a way to corral it in a more humanized, more understandable form. They are with one foot in the plateau of Leng and one foot here, living double lives that mesh the distant, sweeping vistas of worlds forgotten and uncomprehending, alien entities with the amenities of modern life, the worries of high school and friendship.

• An anti-nihilistic view of the universe. In the face of crushing rational proof of the inherent meaningless of human life, the magical girl chooses to be more. She chooses her own set of values, one that embraces all life as worth living despite the fact the universe is a bleak as fuck shitheap. THey are presented as strong characters because they keep on living their lives and risking them despite there being no reward.

• Growing up and learning to accept the Other. Magical girls are partially about growing up and learning resposability, and this could be definitively used here. Just internalizing that because it's Different doesn't mean that it's necessarily evil.

• Exploring what happens when femineity is considered the Other in a disparaging way, and what sort of trouble would arise from there. Cosmic horror is fairly easy to reduce to "We don't understand them, so it's fair to consider them a threat to us." It'd be interesting if you could for example write something subversive involving feminiety and the Other. Magical girls as symbols of embracing the mysteries patriarchal societies assign to the female microcosmo- Reveling in those set of powers and symbols. There's freedom in the embrace of the Big Green.

Of course, those are fairly optimistic possibilities, and ones that assume that you're going for a structural fusion approach, rather than an aesthetic one.

Because honestly if you just wanna mesh the aesthetic trappings of the two genres, just fucking do it and do it without a moment's thought. You want your MGs to fight mi-gos and have costumes that are basically organic power armor that has been retrieved from the Elder Cities? Suit yourself, as long as you put something interesting under these aesthetic trappings.

Like, no one's stopping you from writing a flat out magical girl story with Lovecraftian aesthetic trappings.

 

[Dream Logic]

Could you go with the angle that in dealing with the eldritch and the wrongness it presents that your standard magical girl ideas(Love and friendship, the mundane being as important as the magical, etc..) as a way of grounding yourself and dealing with with the standard fare of Magical Girls along with the general theme of how scarily insignificant you are in the face of the universe.

As others have said the two don't have very much overlap directly but you could use the trappings and mechanics of cosmic horror to reinforce MG themes. Not sure about vice versa.

 

[mothematics]

Hum. I stand corrected. I learned something today. Thank you both.

Anyway, apologies to you, @GhostKaiju, my reply had more bite than was appropriate, because of the lateness of the hour.

 

[SpiritFluid]

Anyway, apologies to you, @GhostKaiju, my reply had more bite than was appropriate, because of the lateness of the hour.

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Ah, no worries, I can perfectly understand where you're coming from, and your points were valid ones, because these are stupidly differing kinds of genre. I apologize in turn if my replies also were a bit snappy, for similar reasons.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Hum. I stand corrected. I learned something today. Thank you both.

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Well, I'm really being a pedant. I was using the term "Lovecraftian" in the sense of "written by Lovecraft", rather than the sense more commonly used of "writhing cosmic horrors, squid gods, fish men, humans are meaningless and the Great Old Ones will wake and nothing you do matters, ia ia".

(Okay, the most commonly used sense actually just ignores the "humans are meaningless and the Great Old Ones will wake and nothing you do matters" bits and you can totally nut Cthulhu one and he's probably basically Satan anyway)

 

[mothematics]

Well, I'm really being a pedant. I was using the term "Lovecraftian" in the sense of "written by Lovecraft", rather than the sense more commonly used of "writhing cosmic horrors, squid gods, fish men, humans are meaningless and the Great Old Ones will wake and nothing you do matters, ia ia".

(Okay, the most commonly used sense actually just ignores the "humans are meaningless and the Great Old Ones will wake and nothing you do matters" bits and you can totally nut Cthulhu one and he's probably basically Satan anyway)

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Yes, but now I can be a pedantic bitch who flaunts her knowledge of Lovecraft when this topic comes up and it's because of your post! ^_^

 

[Silver]

So it turns out I've got some thoughts on the interplay of magical girls and cosmic horror*.
*Yes, I'm taking "Lovecraftian" to mean "general cosmic horror" rather than "things rooted specifically in the Cthulhu Mythos and other H.P. Lovecraft works".

(tl;dr: Magical girl works often take place in a Lovecraftian setting, but respond by rising above rather than breaking.)

***
For my narrative tastes, a work that makes best use of magical girl themes almost needs to have some cosmic horror floating around in the background--not because magical girls are Lovecraftian; quite the opposite. A magical girl's natural place is to navigate a Lovecraftian universe and carve out a safe haven lit by the flame of the human spirit.

The shallow aesthetic is easy enough. From Sailor Moon: Metallia, Wiseman/Nemesis, Pharoah90, Chaos. From Nanoha, the Book of Eternal Darkness. From Madoka, literally every witch. Magical girl shows are full of Dark Kingdoms with twisted creatures that defy human logic or expectations, and they look the part. Pick any magical girl show that features some sort of world-spanning or city-crushing apocalypse. Sailor Moon has several; the sun is swallowed in darkness in the very first season. How does that look any different than if Cthulhu woke up and started eating things?

Themes, though, are where it really works, particularly in the challenges that magical girls face and the nature of the universe they live in.

Challenges like loss of self. Insanity, possession, a failing self-image built on lies, being driven by unsuspected and uncontrollable passions lurking in your heart. This is very much rooted in the Other, as Arkalest pointed out, particularly in discovering the Other in yourself and in your past. Uncanniness, familiar and otherness giving way to one another, etc.

In Lovecraft, you find out that your ancestors are fishmen/gorillas/alien genetech gone rampant. In magical girl shows, Fate Testarossa discovers that she's an artificial human and her entire life has been a lie, triggering her blue screen when she mentally breaks. Do we need to point out Madoka? The entire lifecycle of a magical girl is built on their crumbling sense of self as everything they believed in fails. In either genre, you start the story happily believing one thing about the familiar, and then often watch it crumble by the end of the story.

It's not just loss of your sense of self or your place in things; it's also frequently loss of control of self. Magical girl shows are full of brainwashing, hypnotism, spirit possession, and being lost in your dreams. It mostly happens to NPCs that end up turned into zombies/monsters of the week, but it also happens to secondary or main characters. See Chibiusa failing to deal with her unmanageable emotions so thoroughly that Wiseman twists her into Black Lady, and something similar for Hotaru and Mistress9. See Mamoru with his gaps of memory where he involuntarily morphs into Tuxedo Mask. See Dr. Tomoe so stricken by grief at the accident that killed his daughter that he let Pharoah90 scoop out his soul and put a monster in his husk. See Usagi stuck in Queen Nehellenia's dream-spell. See Fate pulled into the dreamworld of the Book of Darkness. There are notable differences--in Lovecraft if you turn into a monster it's probably because an ancestor is body-knapping you, not because you can't deal with all these feels you've got, but losing control in face of the shadow of the past still shows up in people like Mamoru. Both genres frequently have people breaking in face of an unacceptable truth--but in Lovecraft you end up in an asylum screaming about rats in the walls, in magical girl shows you just shut down or get stuck in a delusional dreamworld.

The universe that they live in--the background setting--also looks remarkably similar, with similar ideas. It's no mistake that Shadowjack took one look at the Dark Kingdom when starting his Sailor Moon recap, saw the big skull pillar and the creepy presence Beryl spoke to, and promptly went "oh hey Cthulhu!" It's no mistake that you get Metallia, Nemesis, Pharoah90, Chaos, Madoka witches, the Book of Eternal Darkness--antagonists that ultimately reveal themselves as some monstrous, alien, unknowable entity capable of rolling over earth and barely noticing it. They might speak human language as often as not, yes, making them a little more personified than Lovecraft's monsters, but they still aren't people--they're embodiments of hunger, darkness, and unreasoning decay. The universe in many magical girl shows is a cold, inhospitable place. There is no safe haven set aside for humanity, survival as a species can walk the razor's edge, and there are monsters lurking in the dark that are vastly bigger than us. Notable too is that the minions that serve these Cthulhus aren't really fully human--rather, they are perversions of humanity. They are people who came into contact with these things and were corrupted until they literally fight to end creation. See Madoka's witches, but also Sailor Moon's Dark Kingdom being a corruption of the inhabitants of Earth and Pharoah90's servants ultimately being hollow humans with monsters living in them. They are servants of nihilism. Even the minions of the Cthulhu-type boss that have more human motives other than "destroy everything" still usually end up being dupes who were too blind to see the malignancy they were playing with--like the Black Moon Clan who wanted to depose Queen Serenity and rebuild Crystal Tokyo in their own image ultimately serving merely to further Nemesis's hunger.

The best demonstration of this idea, I think, is Kyubey. Madoka Magica is a narrative intimately rooted in the hope and despair of the characters. It is a personal story about the souls of these five girls. And, after all they suffered, Madoka begs Kyubey for a reason, to know why this is all happening to them, how Kyubey could possibly treat them this way--and his entropy answer is essentially "I never cared about you one way or the other--you were just a convenient tool." It's completely disconnected from anything that's happened in the story so far, making it seem like a bizarre reveal, but that's why I love it from a themes standpoint. It's the villain essentially saying that it's not personal, the real business of the universe has nothing to do with them, and this isn't their story--they're just collateral damage.

Another point about the universe magical girls live in--despite all the magic floating around and the plethora of Cthulhus, there are rarely benevolent powerful gods available to help magical girls. I first noticed this watching season 4 of Sailor Moon, when the Sailors were getting powerups from Pegasus. It felt bizarre to see our heroes directly petitioning a specific higher power for intercession. It didn't fit. Most arguably benevolent entities with godlike power end up being people like Clow Reed or Queen Serenity (Silver Kingdom of the past, not Usagi from the future)--far-off figures who can't or won't do much to meddle in the magical girl's problems, and whose power level is more the apex of what the magical girl can achieve herself rather than a categorically different being. It's not uncommon to pick up some magical gifts--quite the opposite--but most magical girl shows go out of their way to establish that the magical girl's truest power comes from her own heart and her relationships. Usagi's silver crystal is part of her soul, Sakura reforms the Clow Cards into Sakura Cards when she becomes strong enough, Madoka and friends have powers based on their wishes, the Sailors in general are some sort of incarnation of the souls of planets.

In fact, when I said magical girl shows don't have benevolent gods, that isn't really accurate--the magical girls become goddesses. Sometimes literally, i.e. Sailor Cosmos and Ultimate Madoka, but all magical girls become an actualized, powerful, magic version of themselves. That's the basic idea of the genre.

That's a good place to segue into the core difference between cosmic horror and magical girls. Magical girl shows don't need to disagree with the starting point of cosmic horror--the universe can still be a cold, inhospitable place. But this is not something magical girls need to accept. They begin with the potential to grow into someone who can create warmth in that cold universe. What was Madoka's response to being told they were just collateral damage? To keep reaching out to her friends and her sisters and to build a universe that cares. Magical girl shows mesh very well with humanistic themes. For all my problems with Sailor Moon season 4, one thing that struck me was the basic idea that all people can carry a powerful light in their spirit. Bad things can happen to this light--uncaring monsters come along and snuff it out, or your light dulls when you betray your own dreams, etc. But the core idea is that the real magic power is in the human heart, embodied most brightly by the magical girls who make themselves champions of love and justice in the face of constant threats to humanity.


Yeah, that's my... embarrassingly wordy and unorganized thoughts. Also not what you were looking for, since you asking about how to blend the genres rather than how they're natural enemies. I think it's a necessary jumping off point, though. I will be by later with more useful suggestions.

 

[Look to the Left]

I wonder if your gonna make the magical girls look like early descriptions of angels which look a lot like eldritch abomination such as Samael being covered in eyes and takes about 200 years to travel across his body. Note that this thing is a servant of God.

 

[FaeGlade Plural]

A good start would be to set the story after a Lovecraftian apocalypse. (Insert Cosmic Horror) came and ate most of humanity.
The survivors have to survive in the aftermath of that - maybe they fled to some other world/dimension, maybe the cultists were right and the city where the ICM was summoned did get spared, maybe some remote continent/island survived, something like that.
And for their survival, it is necessary that they resort to the very means that destroyed them - magics that warp the human mind and body.

Except the goal of this would be to have a story that includes both Cosmic Horror themes (humanity and hope are irrelevant) and Magical Girl themes (hope being very important there).
We don't just want to mix Cosmic Horror elements, that is to say appearances, (weird physics, tentacles etc.) with Magical Girl themes, that's easy, we want to actually mix the themes of both.
That's doable though - and we can actually turn the fact that they're so opposite to each other into an asset.
We just use both themes to contrast each other to highlight the core messages of both of them. One would have to come out on top eventually, but that doesn't mean the other theme isn't included.

So, let's start with the dark intro mentioned above.
Those who have learned magics and use them to turn into monsters to fight other monsters are feared, reviled and alien - but also necessary. At the start of the story, there isn't much hope and it's very clear that this is just a futile effort that will at best end in us losing our humanity.
Well, we keep that theme throughout the story - but for our protagonists, we subvert it. Via friendship, femininity and the like, they manage to hold onto their humanity. At least the aspects that's most important to them. They'll still be aware of losing other aspects of their humanity, and they might despair about that being inevitable. But they'll be able to re-define their ideals of what it means to be human and find some hope in that.

Would this be easy to write? Of course not.
To actually do that well, you'd have to mix lovecraftian despair and human hope, in good frequency and contrast. You'd have to do a thorough examination of what it means to be human, and how that all changes if parts of that fall apart. You'd have to pick parts that are inevitably lost, then find a good way to show that and to make sure the reader actually cares about those and is properly horrified by the loss. Then make them be joyful about the parts that are retained, maybe amplified. That's very tricky.
This would all have to be maintained throughout the whole story - remember, we don't just want to start in an apparent cosmic horror story, and then have it be a magical girl story.
Of course, the plot of the story shouldn't be about ultimately defeating some great evil either. Don't actually have them take on the cosmic horror and win, that's one of the safest ways to suck the horror out of it. So you need a good plot to wrap around all those elements too, all I've described so far are setting and character elements.

If you do this well, you can include a lot of magical girl themes here and make a good mixed blend with cosmic horror themes.
Transition to adulthood is a good example here. The Magical Girl genre often has that in some way or the other - well, adulthood can be quite alien, here it'd be literary becoming more alien.

If you want to make that more powerful, have the protagonists start out as not-hated by those they protect. Instead, they'll be heavily restricted - for people fear what they'd become if they "grow up" and throw off the bonds they have. Do it properly, and you have the "society fears independent adult women" theme.​

Forming bonds and friendships with others - well, here that might only be possible with some people, because you've been fundamentally altered. And the message that you can't make friends with everyone can actually be quite related to a message about friendship.
And so on for the other themes. The key aspect here is to use the themes to contrast and thus highlight each other.

Just some ideas on that topic, it'll probably contain bunch of inaccurate, badly phrased or unfinished stuff.

 

[vali]

Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror

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Well, the image of the shadowy pyramid you posted come from William Hope Hodgeson's Last Redoubt, a story that contains a woman who lives and dies and is reborn just like Sailor Moon, can speak the Master Word that symbolizes her intact soul, is a telepathic prophet, and who (if I remember correctly) is a princess. And there are plenty of cosmic horrors that lurk outside the Last Redoubt, patiently waiting for any foolish enough to pass out. That's pretty magical-girl-in-lovecraft already.

So I'd start there. The magical girl lives in a world being overrun by an incomprehensible cosmic horror. The power she is given is not enough to win, but it is enough to fight. To protect a small handful, and to survive battles that should be unsurvivable. The story would follow her struggles, as she realizes what really matters in life are the handful of friendships and loves that she preserves. Her strength, and her ability to kill monsters, comes from her need to protect what she loves. Eventually, she's brutally murdered by a monster, and in doing so escapes the grasp of the enemy, because souls walk paths of love that the horrors that prey on us cannot follow, and because as long as two humans remain, love and hope remains. In the epilogue, we'd see her reborn into her next life.

 

[MrCogmor]

Saga of Soul
Saga of Soul is a magical girl story which features themes from magical girl shows and cosmic horror without the superficial elements of Lovecraft's work. It is a good read but unlikely to be updated any time soon.

 

[Aranfan]

@sun tzu

You are being called out by @MrCogmor

-

More to the point of the topic, I do agree with the general analysis of the thread: Magical Girls are the existentialist to the Cosmic Horror's nihilist.

 

[sunandshadow]

Concept A -Animal Totem Posession Mutation.

Humans (or a human-like substitute race in a more magical universe) have driven most of the other species on their planet extinct. This could be due to either an apocalypse of some kind if you want to do a post-apocalyptic story, or to human overpopulation if you want to do an urban story. Either way, this has had some surprising effects. It turns out that many species of animals have something like a totem spirit, and these spirits want to live! Normally the totem spirit of an extinct species is subsumed back into Gaia, the spirit of the Earth as a whole. But when mass extinctions occur, Gaia's absorption capacity is strained, and the more strong-willed totems can try to escape from Gaia's outer layer back into a living species - in this case humans or human-substitutes are the only options, unless you want to have a possessed dog, crow, pigeon, etc.

Having a totem spirit posses you may mutate you or give you access to certain powers associated with your totem, as well as the mindset or personality associated with that species. It is, essentially, like being the first person with a kekkei genkai in Naruto, and this is a world where normals are completely horrified by this never-before-seen rash of mutations. The animalistic hollows in Bleach, such as Grimmjow might also be a good inspiration for how an animal influence could warp a human in a horrific way, rather than just making them a furry. And Final Fantasy 7/Crisis Core/etc. is always a great source for magical mutation inspiration.

The totem-possessed individuals are halfway to branching off as a new sub-human species, and their offspring will go with them, potentially leading to a vicious 'civil war' as the various new sub-human species fight the original and each other for supremacy. (It may turn out that this is how primates rose to supremacy after the dinosaurs died out; our species was hijacked by the totem spirit of newly-extinct velociraptors, or something like that.) I'll leave it up to you how the magical girls fit in, there are a variety of ways I think that could be done, depending on whether you want them to be more like shinto priestesses or more like druids/lunar exalted, or human totem avatars (could be Buffy vampire slayers or valkyries or pairs of mage and knight...), or even aliens who have arrived to make sure humans as a species don't go insane right before launching colonies out into space.


Actually, I had a 2nd concept when I started typing this but now I forgot what it was. I'll probably remember, so I'll post it later.

 

[sunandshadow]

B. In the past, Earth used to have magic, and through magic Earth had gods who had ascended from human origins. But Earth's magic not only empowered human tyrants and blood mages, it was the very thing that allowed demons and monsters from across the universe to travel there on the paths of impossible geometry between the stars. Modern earthly technology and civilization grew and prospered in a world which has no magic, no gods, and no demons. How did this come about? Some of the most powerful magical beings on earth came together and decided that the only way to protect the Earth was to strip the magic from it; which they did with an epic ritual (probably in the 1400s). This has to be done with utmost secrecy, because every being on Earth that was dependent on magic would have to flee or die as a result, and many would have fought to defend themselves. The ritual was successful, but had some unforeseen side effects on the human race. Though this action protected the Earth, the unnatural lack of magic, heroes to look up to, and even monsters to hunt have caused anguish to humans; we evolved with magic in and around us, and the lack was like spiritual malnutrition. Consequently many humans have spent a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears trying to get magic back. Finally, one succeeded - unleashing a minor apocalypse as magic returned to humans and animals alike, and the demons and monsters of the universe were suddenly able to travel to Earth once more. Young humans with magical abilities were hurriedly gathered and trained to fight off these invaders, as well as help maintain order as the old governments and law enforcement systems of Earth crumbled under the shock of the existence of magic.

C. Tyrannical winged aliens with a racial superiority complex (like asshole angels) have conquered earth and enslaved humanity. (They actually visited a few thousand years ago and left some half-human offspring behind, but that was just one ship's crew playing around on shore leave. This time a nobleman's space navy conquered the planet.) They believe non-winged humanoids are hideous, so they have done some genetic hackery to add small non-functional wings to the house servants, the ones intended to be seen in public. Wings, the symbol humans have always associated with freedom, have been perverted to mean slavery. Also they are literally a burden that makes it more difficult for slaves to run or hide. For additional non-con bod mod, perhaps these Angelholes often have their humanoid slaves tattooed with full-body tattoos, and perhaps other plastic-surgery-type modification. And for bonus points let's say that the Angelholes tend to sire halfbreed offspring on their slaves, and of course all halfbreeds are slaves too. The magical girls (or magical mixed-gender group) would be mostly human but contain at least one halfbreed, and would contain a mix of bod-modded ex-house-slaves, less modded ex-laborer-slavers, and humans who were born as free refugees. Lots of opportunities for inter-personal conflict there, and prejudices and mistrust. As for why they are magical, let's say they they are resurrecting an ability the aliens had but have all but forgotten about. This could be rune magic connected with the tattoos, or magical abilities that were bred out of the angel species because they tended to cause high tech equipment to malfunction have been awakened in some halfbreeds due to the ancient alien genes they carried, or magical abilities that were inherited from a mixture of the genes of the Angelholes and their ancient enemies the Demonpires who also took shore leave on earth and left babies behind. But yeah, magical tattoo transformation sequences FTW.

D. Though much more technically advanced than Earth ever got, some aliens (perhaps the ones in At The Mountains of Madness) were never able to invent AI. So instead for their advanced 'computing' needs they used 'lower beings' (i.e. humans), ripping their minds out of their near-useless fleshly bodies and installing them into machines. Instead of AI, they are NI, natural intelligences. Some of these machines learned how to command nanotechnology to crudely reshape themselves (first thing they learn to do is sprout tentacles), and subsequently escaped. The ones who rejoined the human rebels were encouraged to become mecha (though they were still pretty ugly), teaming up with a human partner to fight the aliens. Writer's choice whether the magical girls are the mechas or their human partners, and whether the human partners have psioncs or other special abilities. Or alternatively, the escaped NIs are the only remnant of humanity, and they seek magical partners from a different humanoid species. (Possibly elves, for a nice contrast between beauty and ugliness.) The lack of magic was humanity's fatal weakness, and one we didn't even know we had until earth was invaded by magic-wielding minions of a monstrous alien god.

 

[sun tzu]

Saga of Soul
Saga of Soul is a magical girl story which features themes from magical girl shows and cosmic horror without the superficial elements of Lovecraft's work. It is a good read but unlikely to be updated any time soon.

Click to shrink...

Funny you should say that... I actually managed to sit down and force myself to write some more of it yesterday, for the first time in aeons.
The chapter I'm working on is like pulling teeth, but as He Who Laughs and Mother Aurora are my witnesses, I'll get it done!

 

[Emote Control]

@sunandshadow and his excellent ideas inspired me to come up with my own take on Sailor Moon's first season with a more Lovecraftian slant. Call it Sailor Moonbeast.

The stars are about to almost come right, you see -- dreaming Cthulhu will wake in Ry'leh, but only for a few moments. The Deep Ones don't want to wait till the stars come all the way right, though. They intend to stimulate the momentarily awake Cthulhu with the life energy of humans, enough for Him to waken all the way. But first they have to take it. Needless to say, in this interpretation humans with their energy stolen simply die, rather than falling unconscious.

The inhabitants of Earth's Dreamlands know what's coming, and have mostly departed to the Dreamlands of other worlds to hide. But there are a few denizens of that strange dimension who feel enough sympathy for mankind that they are willing to take the risk of saving it. Most notable of them are the cats of Ulthar (thus giving us cute animal mascots), and a wizard of the Dreamlands (the Tuxedo Mask expy).

The Sailor Soldiers would be the products of centuries of selective breeding to make them prone to power and apt to the arcane, and their mighty powers come from same strange astrological energies that the Deep Ones use. The use of these will make them gradually less human as the series progresses, and more -- something else. Only their friendships and tenacity can keep them going long enough to save the world.

Also, I just was even more inspired, and wrote a scene for it.

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"But why bother?" Serena asked. "Even if we stop Cthulhu from fully awakening this time, what about when the stars come right all the way? Mankind will die anyway then. Even you admit that all the powers you plan on granting me can do nothing about that."

"Did you expect to?" Luna replied harshly, like the predator all cats were. "No, you expected none of this. You expected to grow up, marry, have children and die someday. You have been to school, you know the ways of cosmology and evolution and extinction. You simply did not think through the implications of these. Even the limited scientific knowledge of your myopic academia knows that mankind will someday end. But you have been given a chance to delay this end. When a lawyer saves an innocent client from death row, does the lawyer grieve because the client is not immortal, or rather rejoice in that the death has been put off? Be grateful for the chance you have been given, and do not weep and whine and wail over the chance that you have not!"

 

[sunandshadow]

@sunandshadow and her excellent ideas inspired me to come up with my own take on Sailor Moon's first season with a more Lovecraftian slant. Call it Sailor Moonbeast.

Click to shrink...

FTFY

 

[Axiomatic]

"Against such abominations, we organize our defenses on the principle that one strong and able mind can shield the many."
- Sailor Scout Battle Manual (Accompanies the Secret Project "The Neural Amplifier")

And of course, secretly bringing in shades of Alpha Centauri has interesting implications, since that setting ALSO has its version of a doomsday countdown to the Stars Being Right, Planet fully awakening as a psychic god. But remember, in that game, there is a way around it. The final secret project, in which you upload the sum total of human knowledge, experience and memories into Planet's neural network, so that when it awakens, it is humanity, in a way.

 

[sun tzu]

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"But why bother?" Serena asked. "Even if we stop Cthulhu from fully awakening this time, what about when the stars come right all the way? Mankind will die anyway then. Even you admit that all the powers you plan on granting me can do nothing about that."

"Did you expect to?" Luna replied harshly, like the predator all cats were. "No, you expected none of this. You expected to grow up, marry, have children and die someday. You have been to school, you know the ways of cosmology and evolution and extinction. You simply did not think through the implications of these. Even the limited scientific knowledge of your myopic academia knows that mankind will someday end. But you have been given a chance to delay this end. When a lawyer saves an innocent client from death row, does the lawyer grieve because the client is not immortal, or rather rejoice in that the death has been put off? Be grateful for the chance you have been given, and do not weep and whine and wail over the chance that you have not!"

Click to shrink...

That's... actually pretty close to the attitude of the magical mentor in Saga of Soul.