Let's make a magical girlfriend show!

Well, I was thinking maybe friends, family and rivals of our heroines.

Talking of which, y'know how Magical Girlfriends tend to either have sisters or be only children? Ladies and gentlemen, I propose we give our girlfriend a brother.

edited 28th May '16 8:22:23 AM by fruitstripegum

A younger brother. The magic lady could be highly protective of her younger brother.

I'd go for an older brother. If he was to be the heir to whatever the alien is princess of, it could put him in an interesting position in the story, and give him something to do when he appears. Not that the girl couldn't be protective of him - he could be shy/not very good at ruling/weak/something else, which would make for some curious character dynamic between him and his "little" sis.

edited 29th May '16 6:57:13 AM by Kakai

An older brother who's also a Extreme Doormat sounds interesting. Should he have the same powers as his sister?

I like the brother idea, but we should be wary of extending human concept like the line of succession to a throne, to beings which are bound to be very different. In fact, if the aliens in question are indeed capable of seeing the future, even the concept "brother" should probably be A form you are comfortable with.

edited 1st Jun '16 4:52:11 AM by InigoMontoya

I must admit I don't quite get it - how does seeing the future impact the concept of male sibling? While I understand that the parents would probably be able to scry the future to see the gender of their children, and that the brother would probably scry for presence of another sibling in the future, why would it impact the nature of their family relation?

Though I get the problem that we have aliens, so they don't have to follow "our" rules of... well, ruling. Which kinda makes me think that we'll have to figure out the alien society...

Okay, we're having a bit of a communication breakdown here What I meant was that such an ability means the aliens are from another dimension/beyond spacetime (think for instance the 5-dimensional beings from Interstellar), with Magical girlfriend being a God in Human Form, and thus they may not have or need physical reproduction. I realise I could have phrased that more clearly the first time round

"Which kinda makes me think that we'll have to figure out the alien society..." Well, just the barebones. Enough to make the character's alien-ness interesting and the relationship with her brother understandable to the reader/viewer. Obviously we'll need to go into a lot more detail if we want to involve her in intrigues from her home world, but I'm starting to think that there could be more original plot lines to develop. After all Earth has plenty of douchebags who can serve as antagonists. My idea would be to avoid both Trouble from home and They look like us now and instead simply go for a world in which the presence of aliens is well-known and she has to hide from hordes of crazed fans wanting to marry her, people demanding prophecies, people threatening her for not prophesying what they think she ought to, etc.

Hm, I see. I don't think we have to go this hard on the "s" aspect of sf, but I see what you mean. Though the fact that we call her "princess" suggests a specific system, one which involves some manner of parentage, and, therefore, siblings.

I admit I love me some complex worldbuilding, but I can see what that'd be better.

So... as an idea for alien society: there are many species, but princess' ones came to rule over them all thanks to their ability to see the future. Existence of aliens is a known fact on Earth, but because princess' ruling parent is... dunno, anti-war or somesuch, they simply set up embassy here, where the princess is stationed and which she doesn't like because of the reasons you've given. As a bonus, we could have many different aliens interacting with people because Earth is, thanks to its independance, free of big space country's taxes or somesuch. That could help involve the cop girl - trade opportunities = crime syndicates, after all.

I admit, the main draw of this idea for me is that we could milk the "alien" setting without leaving Earth or dwelving into princess' nation's politics. But I won't insist on it.

Sounds great! I like your world-building ideas. As for the link with crime, I had another idea for your consideration: ability to predict the future = insider trading. Magical Girl hired a private security firm which, unbeknownst to her, has ties to the underworld, to protect her and her family on Earth after her latest incident with an overzealous fan. However, they quickly found a more efficient way to milk her: they threaten to kill her brother (who doesn't have the same abilities as her) in order to force her to give them stock tips which always pan out. Non-magical Girl is a brilliant but naïve Ivy League student working as an intern at the Securities and Exchange Commission during her summer break. She becomes obsessed with finding that mysterious investor who is never wrong. Things get a lot more complicated when she finds her and falls in love with her. Now they must free Magical Girl's brother while hiding from the mob and a federal law enforcement agency.

What do you think?

edited 2nd Jun '16 12:09:56 PM by InigoMontoya

Not bad, but didn't we already agree that the Muggle girl should be a cop?

It's still law enforcement.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against her being a local police officer.

I like your ideas , but there's one problem I see - an investor who never goes wrong will be noticed by more people than one brilliant student; there are thousands of people in this business. If the knowledge of aliens is known to Earth, the fact that vast majority of them is ruled by a prescient species is likely a known fact as well, so if somebody is preternaturally good at stock exchange, the authorities will likely turn first to the one being on the planet who they know can see the future.

Perhaps, to modify this a bit, the muggle cop girl gets sent by her bosses to ask the princess what the hell is she thinking doing something like this - in secret, to avoid a diplomatic scandal - and the two of them try to figure out a way to free the brother while hiding cops' involvement in the case and falling in love? We could add something like the mob having a spy in the police force to cut off this "escape route" for the girls and force them to rely only on themselves.

Oh yea, what does alien culture think of homosexuality and, by extension, the magical girl's muggle girlfriend? Or did the alien parents see into the future, saw the muggle girlfriend as someone who will be very useful in the future, and thus let the magical girl date her?

How does seeing into the future work? It's a lesser version of time travel that can get wonky.

edited 3rd Jun '16 5:05:13 AM by hellomoto

Sufficiently Advanced Aliens have no trouble with Homosexual Reproduction. I'm more worried about the fact that they are from different species.

edited 3rd Jun '16 6:50:27 AM by flameboy21th

Well, isn't EVERY Magical Girlfriend story an Interspecies Romance?

I mean, Lum is an alien; Belldandy is a goddess; Jeannie is, well, a genie; Rose Quartz was an alien gem in human form, etc etc.

I'm just saying that aliens would worry less about homosexuality.

And yes, our story IS and Interspecies Romance, but the species barrier can be an obstacle for our couple to overcome.

edited 3rd Jun '16 9:12:36 AM by flameboy21th

Excellent! This makes better sense than my original proposal.

edited 4th Jun '16 11:01:21 AM by InigoMontoya

@Hellmoto: the original idea (oracles) was that she doesn't see anything, rather, people close to her get visions of the future. We've reworked the show's main concepts quite a bit since then though, so I don't know if that still stands...

Could work nicely with a case of Can't Spit It Out, where that turns out to be unnecessary as Muggle girl sees them together in a vision.

I'd suggest that the alien species doesn't have sexes, rather it is divided between those who inspire visions and those who receive them. Humans can also fulfil the latter role. All healthy alien individuals can reproduce with one another. There may be cultural taboos about some pairings, though, which could be analogous to homosexuality. Magical girl looks like an ordinary girl while on Earth (except maybe for a few detail), but that's not her real appearance of course, and it's implied that she could just as well have chosen to appear as a human male.

I like this. Then... would her brother be just "sibling", or is using word "brother" just a matter of convenience, to differentiate between "senders" and "receivers" of visions?

Is it too late for me to join the fun?

Not at all! The more the merrier!

Hey guys, I've been thinking - maybe we should start picking names for our characters.

Personally, I like the name "Ritsuko" for our cop girl - what do you guys think?