shel

The Transsexual Chofetz Chaim

Mutant, librarian, poet, union rabble rouser, dog, Ashkenazi Jewish. Neuroweird, bodyweird, mostly sleepy.


I write about transformative justice, community, love, Judaism, Neurodivergence, mental health, Disability, geography, rivers, labor, and libraries; through poetry, opinionated essays, and short fiction.


I review Schoolhouse Rock! songs at @PropagandaRock


Website (RSS + Newsletter)
shelraphen.com/

Rewatching Madoka Magical and thinking about writing a Magical Girl story about burnout. She became a magical girl very young but now she's 30 and still "fighting evil by moonlight" and the monsters just won't stop coming.

I want it to be a metaphor for pink collar labor, where the monsters she's fighting are representative of the endless symptoms of a broken system that pink collar workers band aid and band aid never seeing anything permanently improve.

Trying to decide if it should be something she does in her spare time and the only thing stopping her from quitting is her conscience knowing without her the monsters will hurt people because nobody else can see them (in classical magical girl fashion)

Or if I should really lean into the pink collar metaphor and make being a magical girl a PSLF-eligible career. It's her entire life. It'll pay off her student debt. And she's a public servant so she can't go rogue and be a vigilante against the sources of systemic problems or she'll go to jail and lose PSLF eligibility.

What story do you think is more compelling?


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in reply to @shel's post:

I think the second option is more compelling personally, I feel as though the first idea kind of just makes it a bog-standard mahou shoujo if the main reason she's doing it is to protect people whereas the second has the nice built-in push-pull of the dual selfish/selfless motivations

Also [PORN ALERT] but this reminded me a little of an ongoing magical girl series-ish concept thing Kyu Bum Lee has going over on his horny twitter (@bumbumq) that's about elder magical girls coping with real-life stuff, dating monsters sometimes, etc. One of the recurring characters is a semi-retired magical girl named Beatrice who popped into my head reading this description

Semi-relatedly, since it's got a much more peppy/idealistic tone, there's some newish manga out called "Magilumiere Co. Ltd." that's basically "what if Magical Girls were Tech Startups" and has been doing some fun stuff with like magical girl workplace culture, etc.