[OCs] Gather 'round children it is time for Eric to kick the Commodified Suffering Of Magical Girls Being Sold To Gross Otakus So They Can Jerk Off To It in the dick
Turns out what is ACTUALLY going on is that there is a society of absurdly powerful magic users who know that magic is a renewable resource and that you can't use it up. If anything it's getting stronger as time passes
They send out familiars who look like cute bunnies and shit to children who look like they're ABOUT to gain magic that try and convince them that the familiar is the SOURCE of the magic
I think they exist throughout the universe and are being drawn to Earth by the enormous power signatures of these absurdly powerful mages that have been eating the magic of children for decades to maintain their power and extend their lives
immediate character concept: sweet, typical magical girl-y protagonist sort of girl, close to 18, determined to do as much good as she can in the time she has left. has Seen Some Shit but still believes in the system she's taking part in. i'm thinking she's a descendent of a really long line of mahous, and she's the latest one to get her powers
maybe some rich/influential family, one of their patriarchs is probably one of the ancient mages and is purposely keeping this bloodline going so he can keep feeling off it
doesn't know the truth of the system and reacts to finding out not by breaking but by deciding she's going to tear it to shreds with her bare hands and build something better that actually benefits people
like "This was p. tough but I want to do as much good as I can in the time I have" VS "Everything about this is shit so it's a GOOD FUCKING THING that it was absolutely necessary or I suffered for no reason"
i think my girl is probably also very fond/protective of younger kids - i'm thinking maybe her family's line of mahous is famous and the name they use has been passed down from generation to generation#
so when she finds out she's been taken advantage of and that she's been encouraging children to fight and believe in a system that exploits and harms them she's ready to burn the whole thing to the fucking ground
like she went through enough Magical Anime Suffering that she hates the whole system but doesn't think there's an alternative so she's just kind of. resigned?
yeah i might just stick to the vague idea of "familiar who rebelled and is now being hunted and treated the same as the monsters basically because they're now a risk"
A thought copy-pasted from Prof's plurk: the whole 'talking animal familiar' thing, could maybe do something with the trope of the cute magical mascot actually being a more powerful person/creature stuck in a smaller, weaker form for Plot Reasons.
I'm thinking that maybe all the talking animal sidekicks are actually people who signed up with the magical elite for a term of basically indentured servitude while transformed into a nonhuman form in exchange for access to power or resources they would otherwise never have.
considering my character's apparent role in the story at the start (jaded experienced magical girl with tragic past), I have a clear path for identifying appropriate PBs
(Also, they might not be complicit in the sense of knowingly setting out to do that? More of a 'I signed up for something I knew was potentially a little shady but I had no idea it was this bad, holy shit, I'm out' thing.)
Largely amoral, but she will sell to those who aren't part of the established order if they can buy, so she's one of their best chances at breaking this whole thing open, so she sort of ends up being a good guy by default.
I'm thinking something in the Han-Solo-archetype 'career criminal reluctantly discovers their few remaining moral standards by virtue of becoming fond of the protagonists and is dragged into the good fight despite their protests' vein.
also do familiars have 1) innate magic like mahous 2) magic linked to an elder magi so they serve as a 'remote link eyes and ears' thing 3) idk something else
She's probably into an even mix of 'stuff that the elder magi publicly disapprove of but privately couldn't give a shit about because it doesn't do jack shit to the status quo' and 'stuff the magi would probably be pretty pissed about, but it's not like they really need to find out about it, right?'
(Might be a good plot hook if one of her 'more illegal than they'll tolerate' schemes blows up in her face and she's gotta get out of town in a hurry, it'd explain why she's taking a risk on helping the more heroic types if she's already gotten herself in deep shit.)
magical girl setting where fighting the monsters has a sanity loss element, except it actually doesn't and that's a convenient lie being spread to justify killing mahous when they go rogue
rogue familiar probably got killswitched but they had enough willpower or w/e to resist it so they're a monster all the time now and it makes things a tad awkward
Maybe magical potential has something to do with how willing you are to confront this strange thing that Doesn't Fit With Reality, the willpower to make yourself look at it straight on and acknowledge it for what it is even when your brain tries to squiggle away from it at right angles because What The Fuck Is This.
Not, like, full-on madness inducing unknowable sight or anything, just something that makes the mind get super uncomfortable and gloss over whatever it saw with an automatic Nope, Let's Not.
That's a huge portion of RL social conditioning, the idea that there's a limited amount of things that aren't actually limited, like "rights" or "power"
Like, if magic basically requires a person to have a certain degree of mental flexibility and personal drive, then these people must have had those qualities to get the magic to start all this in the first place.
And in a really twisted way, they are still showing those qualities, by being cunning enough to come up with this horrible exploitative plan and ambitious enough to follow through.
Hm... possibly split the difference: the general public doesn't know, but there are maybe some old blood magical families who've been in on the secret of Magic Existing for generations?
Consider: because we're in a magical girl show here, and can have fun with metaphors being slightly more literal for coolnesses' sake, the black market isn't just a series of dubiously legal transactions via various contacts you may or may not admit to having as per real life- although it is also that, of course.
A bunch of people on weirdass supernatural souped-up bikes and vans and even weirder shit, lugging around their illegal as all hell magical goods and meeting up in the dead of night
1) innate magic like mahous
2) magic linked to an elder magi so they serve as a 'remote link eyes and ears' thing
3) idk something else