History FanFic / ToTheStars

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Aliens seem to be like this.

* FamilyDisunion: Ryouko's farewell party.

* HandsOnApproach: Ryouko expects this, but it turns out to be unnecessary.
* HappyMarriageCharade: Ryouko's parents.

Character page under construction.

* MagicalSociety: The Mahou Shoujo Youkai become this.

* [[{{Dropthehammer}} Drop the hammer]]: In the early days of the MSY, magical girls that committed atrocities such as serial murder were executed through the smashing of their soul gem using a "ceremonial hammer".

* FTLRadio: Exists.

* SufficientlyAdvancedAliens: The Incubators, as before. The Cephalopods also show signs of this: stolen pieces of their technology often make no sense whatsoever to human engineers. To the Cephalopods, human magical girls must appear to be this, though of course they're using actual magic.

* TheWikiRule: In-universe. Each chapter has two different wiki sources explaining about the theme of the chapter, complete with citations and direct links.

* AllThereInTheManual: Hieronym has a tumblr account dedicated to miscellaneous information from this series. It can be found [[http://ttshieronym.tumblr.com/ here.]]

* BookEnds: The final chapters of Book 1 and 2 ends with Ryouko leaving from Earth and begins with her returning to Earth, respectively. In the former, she leaves what she thinks as a boring tedium of Earth and sets out to find her purpose in the universe. In the latter, she finds out that [[spoiler:with her public status as Hero of Orpheus, her Parent's divorce, Grandmother's death, Asami's "ressurection" and a talk with Madoka about her plans leaves Ryouko uncertain of her future and wishing for some semblance of stable direction.]]

* CanonDiscontinuity: The ''[[Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaTheMovieRebellion Rebellion]]'' Movie; ''To The Stars'' started a few months after the series finished, with only the vague rumors of seaons 2 floating around, and the fic was well under way when the continuation movie was announced. Hieronym preemptively stated that the movie would most likely not be relevant to ''[=TtS=]'' on a very high chance that it would [[OutdatedByCanon joss]] the entire premise of the fic. [[spoiler: ''Rebellion'' did indeed joss the premise of the fic, but apparently it was similar to what Hieronym had in mind for the hypothetical post-''[=TtS=]'' story]].

* CosmicRetcon: The opening of chapter 16 mentions that wishes can change the past, and speculates that "the most powerful wishes are the ones we don't know about". Oh, how right they are. [[spoiler: Ryoko's wish may have done this.]]

* DysfunctionJunction: Evey member of the Mitakihara Four are broken:

** The Earth in 2100s before the Unification Wars, with extreme separation between the Ultra-Rich Hyperclass elite and the Ultra-Poor lower class caused by the near total automation of labor.

* FantasticCasteSystem: [[spoiler:The Magical Girls who alligned themselves with FE wanted to do this with humanity: With them on top, followed by the pampered elite and potential wish candidates, followed by majority of humanity to work menial labor, followed by the minority whose role was to spawn demon through their suffering.]]

* IJustWantToBeSpecial: [[spoiler: Ryoko's wish is essentially this]], as revealed in chapter 16.

* LivingDistantAncestor: Magical Girls can bear children and do not die of old age, so once the wraith-related attrition rates dropped with the rise of the MSY this became inevitable. Ryoko has a couple who do not get along that well.

* PraetorianGuard: Important leaders have have a few magical girls assigned to them as bodybuards, usually with more defense-oriented powersets, a telepath for communications and a teleporter for escapes.

** A classic countermeasure from telepaths to hostile mindreading is giving the reader a magically-induced cerebral hemorrhage, [[spoiler: Which Mami subconsciously did to her MHD minder who tried to read her, giving Mami intense headache (which the magical girls should not have in any otherwise). For extra irony, the MHD minder's name is Charlotte.]]

* [[RememberTheNewGuy Remember The New Girl]]: Yuma, especially for those who haven't read the spinoff manga ''Manga/PuellaMagiOrikoMagica''. She's somehow a member of the famous Mitakihara Four along with Mami, Kyouko, and Homura, but she wasn't in the anime at all, the manga doesn't reveal what would have happened to her in the anime, and this fic's story of how she became as important as the other three protagonists isn't brought up for quite a while.

* {{Seers}}: Magical Girls who specialize in Claivorance. [[spoiler:Within MSY there is a cadre of magical girls called the Far Seers who specialize in scrying the past. They feel as if the universe itself tries to spite them with how little results they get.]]

** {{Panacea}}: The nanomachines mentioned above not only accomplish clinical immortality, they also prevent pretty much all diseases, neutralize poisons (people take advantage of that to eat certain kinds of alien plants that contain enough toxines to kill several horses in one go) and even prevent mild forms of radiation poisoning (people take advantage of that to drink irradiated wine made during the apocalyptic Unification Wars).

* TruceZone: The Order of St.Barbara in Paris, whose catacombs are one of the few places on Earth safe from electronic surveillance, making a popular place for very private conservations.

* TubeTravel: Larger human spaceships have FTT, Fast Travel Tubes, a transport network made possible thanks to the ArtificialGravity generators neccesary for such ships, so that diverting a little of their power for transportation didn't cost much.

* UndergroundCity: Human worlds have these as a part of planetary defense against orbital bombardment, and to force the aliens to waste time and resources sieging the planet. [[spoiler:And now Ryouko and co. are assaulting a rogue colony with [[ElaborateUndergroundBase substantial underground facilities]].]]
** To due to protest from its residents that did not want their city changed, the city of Paris has an actual underground city in addition to usual siege shelter cities instead of the usual skyscrapper fare that would have ruined the iconic skyline.

* PrehensileHair: One of the functions of the nanomchines every human carries in him.

* TotalPartyKill: [[spoiler:Orikio's group]] somehow [[spoiler:almost]] managed this against a group of Demons.

** Misa Virani is pretty much [[LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex Misaka Mikoto]] in the far future.

* NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: Erwynmark's small mining hometown is full of places named after him, [[spoiler:even more so after his death]].

* MysteriousWatcher: Joanne Valentin, with the extra uncertainty of not knowing whether she's good, bad, or just there.

* RousingSpeech: [[spoiler: Kyouko gave an ad-hoc "sermon"-style rally speech to snap out the rookies out of their stupor, which worked. The veterans on the team found it forced.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: [[spoiler:Someone mentions that since Mami is Ryouko's mentor, Ryouko is likely headed to Mami's command staff. Several chapters later, she gets transferred out of her current squad and promoted to 1st LT by command of Mami.]]

** Mami: riddled by lack of confidence and self-loathing due to all the shady stuff she had to do to ensure the survival of the MSY along the centuries, and is so traumatized by her past failures that she can't bring herself to try to make any new friends and keeps an emotional wall between her and everyone else. [[spoiler: It's also hinted she had many of her memories erased.]]

** There are various exemptions from combat for the magical girls, some less legitimate than others (those who respond to the disruptive demon attack in Paris display horrible battle skills and are speculated to obtain exemptions through their connections).

* DraftDodging: Many parents try to make sure that their daughters would not contract. Most of the time it doesn't make a difference or backfires.

* HotScientist: Patricia has shades of this.

* DoorStopper: 800k words as of September 2021 and the longest PMMM fic on AO3.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: [[http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/8444/ttsrelationshipchartsma.png Behold.]]

* TheWarRoom: It's actually a nice homely meeting room. [[LadyOfWar Field Marshal Mami]] wouldn't want to skip her customary [[SpotOfTea tea and cake]], after all.

* RaisedCatholic: Homura comes from a Catholic background. Kyouko might had one too, although her father being married and with a family could mean that she had an Anglican background instead.

Just to give prospective readers an idea of how long it is, the first 100K words alone cover just the first 24 hours of the story. Despite its length, ''To the Stars'' will capture your interest if you're at all interested in realistic assessment of how would the existence [[TheUnmasquedWorld and eventual public acceptance]] of Puella Magi affect mankind for the next few centuries, and what would it look like if magical girls were starring in [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness rather hard]] MilitaryScienceFiction set in an elaborate, massively detailed world of the 25th century.

* AliensAndMonsters: Hey, ViolenceReallyIsTheAnswer!

* AdaptationalSympathy: This series explains why Lina is such a condescending, arrogant Rich Bitch by saying that she was unpopular at school growing up and so craved recognition.

* DoorStopper: As one reviewer puts it:"...Fun fact: To the Stars is now longer than the first two Harry Potter books combined." It is also, as of September 2013, the longest PMMM fic on Fanfiction.net.

* BusCrash: Last we saw of [[spoiler:Misa Virani]], she was seen handing her [[SoulJar soul gem]] to another magical girl [[spoiler: before undergoing a suicide attack against an alien power core so her soul could be attached to a back-up cloned body if the team survived.]] It was expected that she would come back later in the story. Then in a later chapter it's revealed that [[spoiler: her soul gem [[FinalDeath terminally collapsed and disappeared]] off-screen two weeks later while being stored in wait for said back-up body to arrive. It's strongly suspected that she was actually assassinated.]] And then it's suggested that [[spoiler: Misa's Soul Gem may have been ''replaced'' by another one, meaning she may not be dead after all...]]