Indian Magical Girl Warrior

Hey there, folks and folkettes.

I kinda need some help. See, I'm planning to write a Magical Girl Warrior story with an Indian protagonist, but I'm having a few problems.

• For starters, how can I make sure she's not Indian In Name Only? I've decided on some things (her name's Suhkvinder Singh, and her magical girl outfit includes a choli, dupatta and (following her Frilly Upgrade) kamarbandh), but there's more to it than that, isn't there?
• Second, I've decided that the story should be somewhere in the middle of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism (not as optimistic as Sailor Moon, but nowhere near as pessimistic as Puella Magi Madoka Magicka), but I'm also thinking about having a cult as the Big Bad. Is that too dark? Although, I am also thinking about having the bad guys run a cake shop as a cover for their evil actions, but again, I have no idea how to make that work.
• And finally, I'm thinking about making her element Star Power, but how should I make that work? Should I have her just conjure up weapons out of starlight, or give her attacks similar to Cure Fortune, Cure Twinkle and Cure Etoile? The only thing I know about this for certain is that I'm going to have the Dark Magical Girl create weapons (mainly a war hammer) out of shadow.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Edited by fruitstripegum on Feb 8th 2020 at 7:22:31 AM

1. I advice you to read up on indian culture, mythology and belief-system as background info in order to make her feel authentic. They got quite the history after all.

2. A cult would work, even as a legion, where there is no distinct leader per say but individuals acting as a whole by complementing with their unique skills in unison for the cause. And them running a cake-shop also work, since "just because they're evil, it doesn't mean they can't honestly do good things as well. It's just that they find evil more beneficial, that's all."

3. Why not just a fraction of the power known as "Big Bang"? That's where the stars are coming from after all, and it could work as a 3-D printer, in terms of conjuring what she can imagine, from the core material of the universe. However, the speed of conjuring it may differ depending on how big or how complex the structure is. The power of creation, vs the power of destruction (The dark magician girl) who may work on the same principle, but the destruction caused from her tools, are due to anti-matter and matter colliding with one another and not from the same principles matter vs matter does it.

Just suggestions.

Not a bad idea, but I'm not sure I want her to be a Reality Warper. And I'm still not sure the cult's a good idea.

I guess I need to think it over. In the meantime, here's my idea for the plot of my story:

Ordinary High-School Student Suhkvinder Singh encounters a magical chinchilla and is given a magic silver ring which enables her to transform into a magical costumed warrior known as the Paladin so that she can fight the forces of evil, find the magical Feathers of Light and prevent the escape of a Greater-Scope Villain which was sealed away 10,000 years ago.

And here are some of the characters:

• Suhkvinder, the Paladin. She has an 18-year-old elder sister named Shirin who is training to become a hairdresser, and a father named Panjit who is a White Collar Worker – her Missing Mom is dead. Her Frills of Justice consist of a pale pink short-sleeved choli; a short silver dupatta draped over her left shoulder; a ruffled knee-length skirt in a slightly darker shade of pink; pale pink flat soled shoes; silver bangles and bright silver eyes and hair, with plaits that just about reach her lower spine. Her Frilly Upgrade consists of a gold dupatta; a gold collar, hem and edges of her sleeves; a slightly larger gold petticoat; little gold stars on the front of her shoes; gold bangles and a gold kamarbandh. Her Transformation Trinket is a silver ring with a pink jewel in the shape of a five-pointed star set into the bezel, and it is later upgraded to one composed of two twisted bands of gold – one plain, the other rose-gold - with a silver star embedded into the metal. Her element is Star Power.

• Orchid, the Mentor Mascot who has taken the form of a white chinchilla.

• The Cult of Shadows, the evil organization which serves as the Big Bad. They are looking for the Feathers of Light, which Sukhvinder has to find as the Paladin to find. They are lead by Brother Caligo and the other members of his order (Brother Umbra, Sister Nox and Brother Obscurus), and his followers are called Acolytes. Their Monsters of the Week are called Tenebra.

• The White Goddess, a young woman wearing a white bodysuit, white gauntlets with jewels on the backs of the hands, white boots, a long white cape and a white visored helmet that covers everything except her mouth. She wields a sword and is the Mysterious Protector.

• Lorelei, the Dark Magical Girl appropriately known as the Dark Paladin. She has purple eyes, and can create weapons out of shadow, although she prefers to use a war hammer to battle.

Edited by fruitstripegum on Feb 8th 2020 at 3:10:13 AM

It's not really reality warping if all that's made are objects. And if complexity is added in, the options are limited of how knowledgeable she is about them.

Example: A watch.

If she only knows what a watch looks like, she gets just that, an empty shell without clockwork.

If she does know the parts and how they work, she gets a functional watch.

Nothing she creates might last very long though, as matter being constructed in such a hasty manner don't last for long, returning the materials back to the cycle of cosmos where she drew them out from. Allowing the source of her power to never get depleted, unless she abuses it like modern society is abusing this planet's resources as it does.

And in regards to the cult.

What if it is the actual Big Bad itself that's basically using other people on the other side of its prison as meat-puppets in order to free itself, assuming direct control over individuals with low resistance to the hijack (such as people high on despair, depression, loss of life vigor and the like, making them empty shells already to take over) and making them spook themselves out in a makeshift uniform of whatever there's at hand, in order to obscure that fact and make these individuals as "members" of a whole.

This way, anyone could be used as a vessel for the big bad and summon the monsters (which, as a suggestion, could be based on the nightmares and horrors in each individual's mind, warped by the dark force empowering the Big Bad, to bring them into reality as monsters to fight.)

Just suggestions.

Not bad.

Or maybe, the cult could seek out people with those sort of problems and use them to summon the monsters (sort of Human Sacrifice, only non-lethal since too many deaths is going to seem suspicious).

I've had an idea for Suhkvinder's attack:

She clenches her fist, then unclenches it to reveal a bunch of little stars made out of Pure Energy in her palm, then either throws or blows them at the enemy. Haven't decided on a name, however - I've narrowed it down to Star Shot, Star Strike or Speed Star.

I was thinking about giving her a silver chakram, but a thrown ring seems a little too Sailor Moon-esque, and I want to avoid comparisons to Sailor Moon if possible.

I've a question about the Tenebra.

How can I make them work as Monsters of the Week? Having them appear once per chapter would be repetitive, and I can't exactly stretch a fight out throughout tan entire book, can I?

For the monsters of the week, try having them become smarter the more the lead character fights them. Have them do things like make use of their environment or learn the lead character's battle style so they can counter it. I know an anime called Figure17: Tsubasa & Hikaru that had its monsters of the week get smarter and stronger after every episode and it made great use of them. Just having monsters terrorize a city does get repetitive if they do the same things over and over again.

Question about the Tenebra

Are they all looking the same or do they differ from one another depending on who is the one summoning them?

As in, are they mirroring the mindset of their summoner and their darkest traits on the surface?

For example: A summoner with an eating-disorder might end up summoning a beast that ends up either binge-eating people like crazy, puke up what they eat once full, and then go back to eat more? Using acid attacks as a way to attack others with?

Or a summoner obsessed with one particular girl, ends up summoning a nightmare that will kill anyone and everyone sans that one girl which it resorts to abduct, alive, and then kill anyone trying to rescue her? (it's weak-spot being, also, that one particular girl who turns out to be the only one that can actually kill it without facing retaliation in return. Allowing a normal human to kill a beast others had hell to even try and beat beforehand.)

Things like that?

Is that a case with these monsters of the week here?

Actually...I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't thought that far ahead.

Not to sound ungrateful, but I was asking more along the lines of how do I have her fight more than one monster per story without it becoming repetitive? After all, I'm not writing a TV show.

Well, if they are based on the summoner, not only would it provide variety of the monsters, but also allow the main character to try and help these people with their issues by fighting and defeating the "monsters of their minds" that's haunting them, allowing them to gain insight and some control over their own destructive impulses, and finally, maybe, even leave the dark side controlling them in order to seek real help and move on with their lives for a better outcome.

And magical girls are meant to help people in need after all.

A possible message through the story.

Hmmm....not a bad idea. I'll keep it in mind in case I do decide to stick with the cult idea.

So, any idea on how I have her fight more than one monster per story without it becoming repetitive?

Well, one way would be to vary the reason these monsters are summoned for with their appearances.

some might be used as "distractions" while the real objective is carried out while the monster rampages and draws attention away from them.

some might be used as "meat-shields" to buy the villains time to get away from the main character who got to choose between stopping a imminent threat, or try and catch the villains at the expense of innocent lives.

Some might be just sheer "accidents" when they're summoned by unknowing civilians who manage to get "touched" by the antagonist's power by coincidence and cause a mess that may serve as a "false lead" for the main character in the story and hint for how the monsters work.

And some might even be used as "assassins" in order to deliver a deed that needs discretion from human traces of a crime.

There's plenty of ways to do this, as long one remember, that the monsters aren't the main threat of the story, but the antagonists who brings them out.

So, for example, she fights one monster in the first chapter, then three chapters later, she's fighting a different monster?

Something like that?

I've been thinking.

If the cult operates a cake shop, should the cakes themselves have something to do with the Tenebra? Like, I don't know, maybe the cult drops a piece of crystallised blood (from the Greater-Scope Villain) into the cake mix, and it reacts with anyone suffering from their darkest traits?

Good idea.

As long they don't do it with every cake then it would be fine.

And it wouldn't react immediately upon ingestion, in most cases, but get triggered by one of the cult's "regulars" whenever they're nearby and in need for a monster of purpose.

I guess it all depends on how much of the "red sprinkled powder" they put in the pastry they want to sell.

(I can imagine one of those monsters be created from a bullied kid at a birthday party, where nobody seems to come at first, he eats the cake, depressed and sad, and BOOM, a monster is born and ready to hunt the bullies down without remorse...)

Would be a good way to also leave a lead to the protagonists once they try to centralize the location of the cult by following these tiny leads once they notice them.