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Magical Girls are Real, How do They Affect History?

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    • King Washington

    King Washington

    Semi-Depressed Lurker
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    Starting in the early 1950s hundreds of thousands of girls (usually in there early teens for some reason) across the globe find themselves experiencing a vision we're a voice tells them they now have the responsibility to use their powers to protect the weak and bring hope to the downtrodden. The newly minted "Magi" wake up with a number of supernatural abilities.
    • They all have basic abilities like super strength, speed, and reflexes, a healing factor, and the ability to magically enchant things.
    • They can transform into a costume which they find aesthetically pleasing.
    • they all have a unique power (everything from the ability to fly to stopping time for a few seconds) along with the ability to summon a weapon (everything from a sword to an axe to a gun).
    • They manifest a familiar (think dæmons from His Dark Materials) which take a form of something the Magi would find cute.
    Meanwhile Wraiths, manifestations of the collective suffering and anguish of humanity, begin appearing and wreaking havoc across the globe. They are entities who's only goal is to inflict as much pain and suffering upon humans as possible. They have the ability to raise the corpses of the dead as thralls and despite being capable of being physically destroyed by conventional means, only a magical weapon can permanently destroy them as otherwise they will be able to reconstitute their physical form within a matter of days.

    Cue governments across the globe freaking the fuck out and history being completely derailed.
     
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    • To be honest, this is actually two different (albeit related) aspects.

    First is the question of what the existence of people with apparently magical abilities means, especially if it includes opponents who can only be dealt with via these magical abilities. This is explored a bit in Fresh Precure, where the reaction of the authorities is mostly "let the magical girls handle the monsters of the week, and try to handle general security using general crowd-control techniques". Kind of like allowing specialists to deal with specialist situations.

    The second is what the existence of magic means, especially if it involves the usual magical girl ideas of an alternate dimension of magic. This is explored in Doki Doki Precure, where the end result is beneficial trade and diplomatic relations, leading to magical technologies being shared. I would say this is a much bigger impact on history than magical girls themselves.
     
    You end up with a fantasy kitchen sink, because, if you have all of the magical girls, you have all of the monsters. Vampires and werewolves and zombies, oh my!

    Also, "My grandmother was a magical girl".

    I think it's something like if more than say 1% of the population as a whole has a trait, for example, being a magical girl, it's sufficiently common that pretty much everyone will know at least one magical girl.

    Given 1950s world population is 2500 million, hundreds of thousands is under 1% of total population, but I suspect it is well over 1% of all children of the right age to become magical girls.

    What's the attrition rate like, I'm assuming 0, or effectively 0.

    Can magical girl team A fight the monsters that magical girl team B does, or are they all highly specialized?

    If you have regular monster attacks, I could see something like magical girls in the national guard (or local equivalent). You have girls, or more likely women, presuming that 'girl' is just a starting condition, working similar to fire fighters, or perhaps ambulance staff, depending on just how often invasions happen.

    Some people are on shift for this shift's incursions, others are off shift, and others are on leave, but possibly getting called in if the apocalypse is on.

    Once there's magical women, I rather imagine that magical girls would be more like the army reserve or sidekicks; the adults do the bulk of the fighting, but the younger generation get some supervised action so they're not completely green when its their turn.
     
    I'm curious whether or not ex-magical girls (assuming they retired after reaching adulthood) would they unionize? I assume they would. Because without bogus anime logic to get in the way, I expect retired magical girls would likely form some kind of support network or other for active magical girl. How would a Magical Girl Union effect the modern age in addition to the existence of magic, supernatural creatures of all sorts and all that nonsense?

    But the real question is magi-tech, and whether or not it could be mass produced. Depending on whether or not it functions as a short cut or simple a side-grade would either have a large or near non-existent effect on the tech industry. Which by itself would have an even bigger effect on jobs, amenities and appliances.

    Although 1950 would be like five years after the second world war, right? The Cold War might actually turn into World War III: Electric Boogaloo with Magic, maybe? Assuming the Wraiths aren't considered more important.

    Ugh, now I'm thinking of Magical Girl Child Soldiers...

    That said, I'm not really a history wiz, so I could be blowing things wildly out of proportion.
     
    H341ZP1Z said:
    Although 1950 would be like five years after the second world war, right? The Cold War might actually turn into World War III: Electric Boogaloo with Magic, maybe? Assuming the Wraiths aren't considered more important.
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    The Cold War was really more of an arms race then anything else. I see MG becoming anything from the new super soldier/spy to the new nuke depending on power level and abilities. A single person with a long distance teleport would be a nightmare military intelligence wise.
     
    Well amongst other things such a sudden and dramatic change could only reasonably be ascribed to a god or godlike entity, so there's gonna be some religious fun as some people decide that magical girls are caused by either god(s) or devil(s).

    Considering only females get to be superpowered magical people, the especially patriarchal cultures are not going to take that well at all. On the other hand, equal rights stuff is going to go very differently when some of said women can shoot lasers at bigots. With only girls having the powers I'd expect to see a gradual but measurable shift towards matriarchism and away from patriarchism in general, just out of pure practicality.

    With most of the people developing magical powers being teenagers, they're going to be making a lot of incredibly stupid hormone-fueled decisions, which will undoubtedly cause problems. Assuming some degree of sense prevails eventually, locating new magical girls and ensuring they have the emotional and psychological support necessary to not burn their school to the ground because they were bullied before becoming living weapons is going to be a major priority.

    Stalin (and numerous other similar assholes) is almost certainly going to get blown up by an angry magical teenager before anyone figures out how to deal with this shit. This may or may not help in the long-term.

    Some will probably decide that they are queen bitch of the universe and take over chunks of the planet, and unless another, more moral magical girl is around to stop them they will probably get away with it.

    Conventional armies and warfare would adapt to very different roles, given that a powerful magical girl with the right unique ability could single-handedly dominate any battlefield. Militaries and governments all over the world are likely to prioritize collecting as many magical girls as possible, through more positive, less coercive methods in some countries, through anything up to and including mental conditioning and outright enslavement in others.


    Long-term, I'd expect the magical girls to eventually be in charge if only through attrition. Maybe ending up with something like the Silver Millennium? Tricky to say for sure, but those magical girls who survive and gain experience will eventually become magical women, and at least some of them are going to desire political power, and with them being both objectively superior to normal humans and necessary to defend humanity against Wraiths, they're going to have a lot of support.

    We can, for example, probably expect at least one female magical woman president by 2000.
     
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    I think a question needs to be asked. Are new magical girls added to this? And if so how? Do girls with potential just gain powers upon reaching the appropriate age? Or does a new MG gain powers each time an old one dies? Each effects the world in a different way.

    If they new girls simply become MG if they have potential, I can see things like bloodline families of high potential forming. Or girls trying to train themselves in hope of becoming an MG. Maybe as time goes on government facilities training high potential girls.

    If a new girl gains power only after a death of a preexisting MG, it would mean that after each death a potentially international manhunt goes on to find the next MG, depending on if the nearest girl with potential gets it or the girl with best potential gets it. Also, depending on fatality rate, if its low there could be quite a generation gap, with most MGs being older with a few girls if varying ages thrown in. Which could potentially slow progress.
     
    Well I'm going to point out something that hasn't seemingly been addressed. If dead bodies can be raised from the dead will burial continue to be mainstream on a global scale. I think that depending on the implementation of necromancy that'd be a solid no. That's massive change in and of itself and is practically guaranteed so long as their isn't a sort of time limit on the materials for necromancy or some sort of shenanagins with protected grave sites.
     
    The closest thing to this I can think of is the Wild Cards universe, though that's more supers and not mahous.

    I'd expect something like the brighter side of the Wild Cards 50s combined with aspects of the Sleepless Domain government.

    I think in the 50s you'd see Magical Girls as propaganda tools, though eventually some would be "outed" as communists, especially the dark-skinned ones.

    You'd definitely see the colonized world see mahous as a tool of equality/freedom fighters, and you'd probably see several as Joan of Arc types.
     
    Magical girls having unique abilities is likely to make things less predictable and more transitory. If for example a magical girl with the ability to mass-transmute elements appears in say, France, then presuming she's willing France suddenly has access to large amounts of rare and valuable elements - as long as she lives. Nations, groups and factions will swing back and forth in terms of their capabilities as magical girls with strategically important abilities appear and then die.

    They all have basic abilities like super strength, speed, and reflexes, a healing factor, and the ability to magically enchant things.
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    Meanwhile Wraiths, manifestations of the collective suffering and anguish of humanity, begin appearing and wreaking havoc across the globe. They are entities who's only goal is to inflict as much pain and suffering upon humans as possible. They have the ability to raise the corpses of the dead as thralls and despite being capable of being physically destroyed by conventional means, only a magical weapon can permanently destroy them as otherwise they will be able to reconstitute their physical form within a matter of days.
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    Given the underlined, you're probably going to see some kind of normal human "magical girl support squad" with weapons enchanted by the girl. Things like snipers firing enchanted bullets and such; since she probably can't mass produce magical items and normal humans getting close to a wraith is probably a bad idea, she'll likely concentrate on enchanting things that are used in small numbers at long range for a decisive effect. Even if they still aren't a match for one, if they have weapons that actually endanger it that'll let them force the Wraith to divide its attention between them and the magical girl.
     
    Most people here gave good answers so far. Hey OP where do the mg powers come from?
     
    Mariadreaming9 said:
    If they new girls simply become MG if they have potential, I can see things like bloodline families of high potential forming. Or girls trying to train themselves in hope of becoming an MG. Maybe as time goes on government facilities training high potential girls.
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    This one actually has some really game changing implications, suddenly hereditary privilege is actually a thing.
     
    On the other hand if the empowerment is at random, you constantly have members of oppressed groups being given superpowers while "a voice tells them they now have the responsibility to use their powers to protect the weak and bring hope to the downtrodden".

    That's constant fuel for unpredictable revolutions across the world, given that I don't see many oppressive groups being bright enough to pick the obvious solution of "Well, just stop being exploitative tyrants and an angry glowing teenage girl won't show up and smash your face".
     
    Avernus said:
    On the other hand if the empowerment is at random, you constantly have members of oppressed groups being given superpowers while "a voice tells them they now have the responsibility to use their powers to protect the weak and bring hope to the downtrodden".

    That's constant fuel for unpredictable revolutions across the world, given that I don't see many oppressive groups being bright enough to pick the obvious solution of "Well, just stop being exploitative tyrants and an angry glowing teenage girl won't show up and smash your face".
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    ...The nasty thing is I suspect this might lead-long term into civilization as a whole getting knocked on it's butt big-time.
    Sure, individual/smaller MG groups could say, protect their local town or villiage from Wraiths...
    But basically, we'd have to solve alot of problems about resource management very fast if minorities/disenfranchised groups could randomly spit out operatives capable of thrashing armies. Cross that with the major paradigm change of Magical GIrls and Monsters you need the Magical Girls to fight...I dunno. On the one hand, easy enemy for Humanity to unite in fighting against. On the other hand, easy source of conflict within humanity. I could see major collapses happening across the world, with many nations demolished and others suddenly becoming the best Humanity has to offer seemingly by pure blind luck.
     
    ...For a more POSITIVE spin on things, consider the timing politically-
    everyone's getting ready for WW2, but then this thing with MGs and Wraiths happens.
    Suddenly those plans go out the window thanks to the game-changes that just went down, and history changes.
     
    Zaealix said:
    ...For a more POSITIVE spin on things, consider the timing politically-
    everyone's getting ready for WW2, but then this thing with MGs and Wraiths happens.
    Suddenly those plans go out the window thanks to the game-changes that just went down, and history changes.
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    World War II broke out in 1939. The MGs started to appear in the early 50s.
     
    King Washington said:
    The girls are chosen at random
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    So there's no guarantee that the girls would be particularly moral, or even somewhat sane. Well, that could cause some issues.

    Edit: what about physical abilities. Would a girl that has no limbs be able to be chosen and if so would her powers compensate so she could still physically fight?

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    King Washington said:
    Around 20,000 girls are chosen each year.
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    Are they chosen at the same time or is it staggered over the year? Because if its within one specific 48 hours or so worldwide each year, I could easily see that day becoming some kind of holiday.
     
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    Random in the statistical sense, or more like Heromaker's Legacy, where attempting to game the system is... discouraged?

    Something like putting a watch on someone in the target demographic ensures they won't be chosen?
     
    Ended up like some darker Madoka fics where majs basically rule entire fiefdoms, while some works for government as elite hit squads
     
    King Washington said:
    So a couple things:

    • The girls are chosen at random.
    • A Magi's powers are not inheritable and cannot be passed down to children.
    • Around 20,000 girls are chosen each year.
    • A Magi's powers are given to them when they are chosen. Humans are otherwise completely magicless unless they've been given an enchanted object.
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    What happens when a magical girl grows up?
     
    So, we really need to hear some more about how capable these magical girls are.

    Strength: how strong? do they get required secondary Powers if they're really superhuman, like the ability to lift arbitrarily heavy things without tearing them apart or just pushing themselves into the ground?

    Speed: how fast? If really fast, does this come with secondary powers like heat and wind resistance?

    Reflexes: ? Does this translate into improve thinking speed?

    Healing factor: is this tactical healing closer to wolverine, or just the ability to survive and recover from anything that doesn't kill her outright?

    Enchantments: what kind of things can be enchanted? How difficult is it? As a baseline, if a magical girl wanted to spend all of her available time working on enchanting guns that can hurt wraiths, how many can she turn out in a week? What kind of powers are granted?

    Your magical girls have any sort of enhanced durability? If so, how much firepower can they tank comfortably?

    As far as unique powers go, can you give us some specific examples? If she can fly, is this on average supersonic flight? is firepower rivaling nuclear weapons available for blasters? Any sort of mind control, especially permanent or large-scale? Teleportation without error? Scrying? Permanent matter transmutation?

    Depending on the answer to this question, you we could be looking at a range of superhumans from just barely more powerful than an Olympic level athlete with a magic weapon and a street level superpower, all the way up to Superman light.
     
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