Building on the previous Magical Girl Costumes info page.
Leif: Um, Thorn? I have even more questions about your country’s magical outfits.
Thorn: W-well, it’s a good thing we have a new magical girl to help answer them! All yours, Atarangi.
Atarangi: In general, a magical girl’s outfit is shaped by her personality and her power level. Every different person gets their own distinct outfit when they transform.
. . . but sometimes, outfits can start to synchronize. If a group of people thinks of themselves as a Team, and they go through power-upgrades together.
Big revisions to the outfit only happen when you reach a personal “level up.”
Smaller changes can happen in response to outside events. For example . . . if someone else has an incredibly powerful level-up, and you’re around to get hit by the spillover.
You can’t repress a power-up, or “downgrade” your outfit’s appearance. If you wanted to hide your transformation . . . the best you can do is remember to keep a heavy coat on standby.
You could take parts of the outfit off . . . even rip off jewels or frills, if you really wanted . . . Of course, the next time you transform, they’ll come back. In their original condition.
Most of the time it’s not a concern! By default, we like and feel comfortable in our costumes . . . but that’s not inviolable. Trauma can disrupt it. For example — a lot of magicals who were badly affected by Kudzu got new sun-shaped accessories. Some of them vanished when his influence was removed. Others will keep appearing with every transformation until a level-up overwrites them.
Thorn: Say, Atarangi, you didn’t happen to be badly affected by Kudzu, did you?
Atarangi: No. I wasn’t in that area.
Thorn: Great! On an unrelated note, do you have any plans for Kolpovision?
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Is there a point where magicals would realize that’s probably their last level up/costume change?
Not unless you count “on their deathbeds.”
Or while fighting with clearly superior opponent.
What about losing a limb or some other body-altering event? Would the costume get minor updates (a color-coordinated prosthetic, for example, or a new pair of glasses)
Also, I don’t know if this is going to be addressed in the future and therefore is a spoiler, but does Atarangis outfit change if she’s one of her headmates instead of her, or can they not access the magic, or do they have the same outfit?
To the first one, I’d assume so, as the first Magical Girls Costume page outright says the costume will include any prosthetics or other adaptive devices.
I’m guessing that only Aratangi has access to the Magic, just because that’s room for drama if, say, Aratangi is metaphorically taking a nap while one of her headmates is out and about, or Aratangi can’t be get into the driver’s seat for whatever reason.
My concern: Were any magicals traumatized badly enough that they couldn’t bear to have Kudzu’s influence on them, effectively ending their careers as they’d have a panic attack seeing their Sun Accessory when they transformed?
I wouldn’t be so sure: it IS possible the prosthetic/glasses appears only on next level up.
I consider the idea of magical girl who, after each transformation, spends half minute angrily tearing off the sun accessory and stomping on it funnier.
Oh, undoubtedly there are some who do, but not everyone responds to trauma the same way. We can have both.
Going from her comments in the third panel of http://leifandthorn.com/comic/every-body-17-23/ , I would guess that Atarangi is the only one with magic or with access to the magic (which comes out to be the same thing in the end, but do have slightly different implications, heh). It’ll be interesting to see if that’s the case, though!
I would say only one with magic from the regular set. The comments implied that usual systems have big number of headmates with just some of them being active regularly … so I would totally expect there is another one with magic who will only show in some plot-convenient event.
If it’s a major traumatic event like losing a limb, they’ll probably be in recovery for a while, so their first transformation post-trauma will be enough of a Special Occasion that it’ll be updated — maybe a full-on level-up, maybe just a new prosthetic.
If they already have one in daily life, it’ll stick around, just with a magical glow-up. Similar to the way their hair can get a fancy restyling. (Did you ever see Yuuki Yuna Is A Hero? One of the girls there uses a wheelchair, and when she transforms it basically turns into the bottom half of a cool mecha.)
If they get an assistive device in a less dramatic way, like being prescribed glasses for the first time, same thing — it’ll get magicked up as part of the transformation.
There’s probably a bunch of other situations I’m not covering, but overall, yeah, a magical-girl costume is going to adapt to their disability. (Except maybe if they’re in a severely depleted state where other things are also going wrong.)
As for Atarangi, this strip shows her next to a mirror that reflects Kallie, who isn’t wearing the costume — that’s your big foreshadowing for now!
Never saw Yuuki Yuna Is A Hero but made a little search. Are you talking about Togo Mimori? Seems she don’t get cool mecha on normal transformation, just some advanced one …
Okay, yeah, I was conflating two different things. Her original transformation in the early episodes has a less-elaborate mobility device, and the mech gets added later.
Okay seriously, why is Thorn okay with this? He knows Kudzu is a threat, but he’s really okay with inviting the fucker to watch Kopolvision? With others? Does this not strike anyone as a big fucking red flag?
With others trained professionals? I would be more concerned if he would invite Leif or someone else who can’t defend.
Leif is also invited to the Kolpovision party.
As for why Thorn is inviting Kale… He’s said so himself, back in the denouement of The Show Must Grow On. Thorn is choosing to trust that Kale won’t backslide, and that the Ceannic government has done their due diligence.
Remember: Kale insists that he was Controlling Minds and Killing for a reason that no longer applies.
Doveryáy, no proveryáy. We still don’t have applicable proof that Kale is truly reformed or that he won’t get set off.
“Trust, but Verify.”
tha is basically my thought. Kale’s earned some measure of trust, it’s time to verify by actually exercising that trust.
I imagine that Kale’s mentioned the party to his therapist, and his therapist has passed this up the line to Kale’s handlers and is excited about Kale making friends on his own, and that friendship offering Kale a hand to take a leap of faith and get out of his mildly-unkempt safezone.
Kale and Thorn see separate therapists, but since their therapists work in the same office, I imagine there can be a small amount of HIPAA(analogue)-compatible exchanges of information to some extent.
Thorn is VERY mindful about triggers. (Though Thorn might not know Kale’s triggers, he’s learned to be mindful of Leif’s Compulsions)
Thorn is vetting the guest list, and as above, has screened for anyone that was directly affected by Kudzu.
Hit submit too soon.
The question is: How will this go?
Kale is fully locked down. Double bangles all the way across his wrists. What does it mean? If he DOES freak out, there will be no searing.
We’ve seen Kale nervous before, and he first sought to help in any way he could, then once he knew he couldn’t, chose a defensive posture when more pressure was applied, shrinking in on himself.
I’m gonna put these odds out into the universe.
α- 1:4 something goes wrong.
1:3 Kale breaks down, Thorn had a retreat point ready for him.
1:10 Kale breaks down, Thorn leaves the party to walk him home.
1:5 Kale handles it well.
1:20 Kale breaks down, and Leif reaches out to metaphorically stabilize him.
β-1:4 Thorn gave Hyacynth JUST enough info that she goes full Tumblrkind self-sacrifice on Kale.
1:2 Kale snaps and yells at Hyacynth to just LET ME DO IT FOR MYSELF.
γ-1:4 Someone (other than a blood relative of Thorn) recognizes Kale’s condition.
1:3 they’ll assume he’s a victim.
1:40 they’ll suss out he’s Kudzu.
1:20 They’ll make a fuss.
δ- 1:4 everything goes fine for KALE.
1:20 Leif finally reveals what his parents did.
1:70 Leif finally reveals what his parents did, because someone recognizes him, and he’d rather Thorn hear it from his mouth.
1:80 nothing goes wrong for anyone.
1:800 Lord Imri and Lady Stanzia crash the party.
Aw man, how important do I have to be for Lord Imri and Lady Stanzia to crash one of *my* parties??
I imagine they’d crash if they found you interesting, but the quickest way I can think of to ATTRACT that attention would be having the cheek to straight-up invite them à la that one image post I keep seeing make the rounds that sugggest newlyweds invite multimillionaires or more to their weddings, on the off chance they’d send along a perfunctory gift to a stranger/actually show up.
Kudzu can’t currently access any of the powers that made him dangerous. In terms of posing a physical threat, any of Thorn’s heartsword-wielding colleagues would outrank him.
Also, depowered-and-observed Kale has been moving freely among others for more than a year at this point (…and building up a track record of not murdering any of them). He’s not going to suddenly become more risky to the people at this party than he was to the people last week at the grocery store.
Finally, keep in mind that Kale’s rehab is a formal government project — it’s not like he escaped from prison and is on the run. He has handlers. There’s a team of professionals monitoring his progress, with contingency plans in case anything goes wrong. Thorn hasn’t brought it up much, because it would be awfully tacky to say “gosh, it’s nice to know there are people who are prepared to show up and put you down like a rabid dog if necessary,” but he knows it’s true.
That mirror in panel two, and her words make me wonder if that’s foreshadowing that Atarangi’s headmate might have a different costume… That would be a trip, and also a realistic way for her plurality to come out to the team.
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