#re:witch

[gabbyp09]

[theyurihunter]

Re: Witch From Mercury/Shin G-Witch Episode 2 - Homework on the First Day? ___

The Benerit Group's response to Suletta's duel will not be immediate, they can't definitely prove that Aerial is a Gundam and are aware of that. The first half-ish of the episode will be giving time to Rajan Zahi and Dominicus to react to the situation and begin to make their moves, keeping a very watchful but distant eye on Suletta Mercury.

The lunchroom scene and Miorine's gamer moment shouldn't interfere, but now that there's no big court scene, the time will be dedicated to Suletta and trying to figure out the whole bride-to-be thing while juggling her first assignments in the piloting course. Note the material she's been given, I want Shin G-Witch to lean much harder in on the militarized school angle.

The pair bicker a bit with Miorine wondering how Suletta can be a pilot and not know some of this and Suletta's frustrated in-turn with Miorine's patient impatience but doesn't sense any malice from her.

This is a subtle change in Suletta's character in that she's a bit more perceptive of when people are trying to hurt/bully her. Think back to when she was unphased by the comment on her hairband in ep. 1, I think the original approach is actually very nuanced but for some of the characterization I'm aiming for, it would be difficult to work with. I imagine in Shin's version of that scene, Suletta would become agitated almost-but-not-quite to tears (gonna save that until ep. 4/equivalent like the OG) until things started exploding, to keep emphasizing her dual nature.

[alternativewinxcontinuity]

Something I noticed about powers and inheritance, at least as seen in canon...a boy born to a Fairy or Witch mother and a Hero father is usually a Hero, while a girl is usually a fairy or a witch (like her mother). Meanwhile, a Fairy/Wizard or Witch/Wizard pairing will have their children be either a fairy, a witch, and/or a wizard. There are technically male fairies (in Magical Adventure) but they didn't go into detail about it. Can girls be anything other than a witch or fairy? (Part 1)

Is wizard an option for girls? Conversely, can boys be fairies or witches? How does Wizard culture work in your AU? (Part 2)

I've spoken a few times about the gender thing re:witch|wizard|fairy|hero division, so I'll just quote myself real quick:

Gender is nothing more than a statistical average when it comes to the divide between (Witches and Fairies) and Wizards. Wizards are more likely to be male, Witches and Fairies are more likely to be female, but there’s always a (very) small percentage of female Wizards and male Fairies and Witches.

Despite appearance, the division of Fairies&Witches and Wizards is not a gender based one.

Though female Heroes are more commonly seen, male Fairies&Witches, as well as female Wizards do still occur.

^ This is actually why I try to use gender neutral pronouns when talking about fairies and witches in general terms.

Also because I headcanon a percentage of trans men and women as well as non-binary individuals exist within the various Fairy|Witch|Wizard|Hero classes, in addition to the 'statistically unlikely' cis-gendered individuals mentioned above, because Winx Club in the early days had a feel of gender non-conformity. I will never be convinced Palladium wasn't a gay trans man.

I'm never sure if that aspect of the ratio is something I should bring up, because it's not something I had plans to bring to the foreground, or even really look out outside of that one blink and miss it mention in the Alt Con that Palladium is trans, so it always feels like if I did bring it up, it would come across as cheap lip-service done for 'wokeness' brownie points.

I think the inheritance thing might be a little but about 'following in my parent's footsteps'...

[Warning, major tangent below, I’m not even sure what I’m saying anymore:]

But let's talk canon and get a bit meta for a few minutes:

Within canon there is a 'lens of focus', if you will. Writers may know this as 'third person limited POV', where we the audience are focused on a certain character, or several characters as is the case of Winx Club, and though we get to see more of the goings on of the universe than they do, we're limited to the parts which are relevant to the main characters and their story.

With Winx Club, it's a story about girls who are fairies. In their story, fairies are the top of the food chain of awesomeness, and the narrative is set up to support a “girl power” theme.

Boys are love interests, male love interests in fantasy series are typically knights in shining armour, in the Winx Universe, that translates to Heroes.

The primary villains are often a warped reflection of the main characters, thus, the Trix are young ladies who happen to be powerful witches.

This is the foundation of the Winx Club Universe as we know it, as we are shown it.

Further, because the show is half about the show and half about selling toys, it tends to ingrain certain idea into itself. (This is where (I feel) the 'degradation of quality' in the later seasons comes from, the doubling down of the focus on the 'target audience' and pushing characters further and neater into their divisions and labels.)

The idea that this (gender bias) is normal and perpetuates the whole of their Universe is enforced, but I don't believe it's 100% the case.

It can't be.

Our own world has shown that diversity and exceptions to the rules happen, only a very controlled artificial system would experience otherwise, and only if it doesn't grow.

Our view of the Winx Universe is limited by what the characters see and do and know, so we're forced to make assumptions on what is and isn't a regular occurrence, but we're also limited by censorship.

The Show itself has a “target audience”, regardless of who's actually enjoying it, and there are guidelines in various countries on what is and is not appropriate for various audiences.

The assumed target audience is very young girls, you can see the way the studio really doubled down on that in later seasons, the Winx became more feminine and uniform, the villains became more cartoonish (as in dumber and foolish as often seen in children's Saturday morning cartoons), even the art style of season 8 gives the Winx a younger and more girlish appearance.

All of this goes back into the reinforcement of gender based divisions, this gender means this label.

Boys are heroes, or maybe once in a blue moon a wizard, good girls are fairies and bad girls are witches.

There are exceptions, Diaspro is a 'bad girl' and she's a fairy, they tried to give Icy (a witch and known bad girl) a tragic backstory redemption in season 8, which is concerning for entirely different reasons. (Also I believe Selena, unlike Mirta, remained a witch despite 'being good now'?)

The point is: The show sets up certain alignments, If you are A+B then you must be C.

But That's just what we see at around the edges of the story the Winx Club are experiencing, and we see a lot to enforce that idea, but lack evidence of is not proof of a negative.

If that last part made no sense: “I don't believe in ghosts because there's no real evidence they exist,” despite the lack of evidence other people do believe in ghosts, no matter how much 'null' evidence someone gathers, they can never prove that ghosts absolutely 100% Do Not exist because they are a non-observable phenomenon, there lack of appearance does not prove their lack of existence. Conversely: “I think that hay bale is on fire” can be proven or disproven by the lack of fire, because 'on fire' and 'not on fire' are both observable state which chance the existence of whether or not there is fire.

“There are only female fairies and witches, and only male heroes and wizards”.

No, we've only seen the divisions and ratios in this manner, but what we've observed is a very limited view of the Universe in which the Winx live, and Does Not take into account how limited their view makes even the background of their story that we do see, or the fact that gender or more than whether or not you have certain body parts.

A Very Large portion of that Universe is Unobserved therefore we cannot offer Observed Evidence of any kind.

And Further:

FanFiction

We control the multiverse now.

[itsbenedict]

No Driver’s License: Omake 33.1

No Driver’s License is a Madoka Magica game I’m running for five players, using a homebrew of Yaruki Zero’s Magical Burst system. It follows five magical girls as they deal with an upheaval in the world’s magic system caused by some strange new three-eyed Incubators. They have to figure out what’s going on, who to trust, and how to put a stop to the cycle of despair.

I post session logs and omakes weekly sporadically, both as a reference for the players and for anyone who wants to follow along with the party’s misadventures.

[adventure log- read from the beginning]

[session 33]

Last time on No Driver’s License, the team got the big boss cannibal to witch out, which may or may not be a good thing. Plus, they defeated Sakura’s witch and revived her. Now with a tenuous alliance with Emiko, they’re ready to take on the witch Kagutsuchi. First, though, they’ve got to get their bearings, do some prep work, and confront the hazards of its barrier. And before they can do that, they need to deal with some Emotions.

So 33.1 (Sakura, Yukari, Ibara) is really just some of the players playing past the end of the last session and talking to each other about what just happened. Gonna be honest: this is my first time closely reading said omake, while I recap it, because I was busy at the time- apparently during the subsequent session, some stuff happened that contradicted the omake? We’ll see how that goes.

Sakura gets up to speed on the recent events re:witching, but has a pressing question about the girl who is presently crying in a corner.

(I think I failed to get it across in narration, but Nobody wasn’t so much A-OK as not saying anything out of general frozen panic re:how out of hand that got.)

Yukari’s answer to Ibara’s objection is, maybe, not exactly what Ibara wanted to hear.

Sakura comes down on Ibara’s side re: psychologically attacking people until they witch, ever again.

The argument proceeds until Yukari is forced to make herself sound like the most anime villain who ever anime villained:

Yukari continues to defend her decision to force-witch Honoka, which leads to a diversion in which it comes to light that Ibara is convinced that tsuchinoko real. Uh, I mean, sorry, it comes to light that Yukari has been hallucinating Oriori. Also the other thing, but that is just slightly less important.

Sakura’s skepticism here is warranted, because no, that’s not what Honoka did. Honoka took Yukari’s own memories of herself being kind and good at leadership and having a conscience and stuff, and shuffled things around so they were memories of Oriori- someone who didn’t exist- doing all that stuff. And then Kimiko told her that, which Yukari creatively misinterpreted for maximum feeling-sorry-for-herself.

Fun fact: magical auto-healing will heal actual damage, but unless you go out of your way to magically clean them, tar in your lungs will stay right where it is until it actually causes cancer for the magic to heal off. Gross!

She really, really is. She points out that they all really need therapists, which- y’know, fair point.

Yukari claims that Hekima confirmed all this- which, again, is Yukari’s creative misinterpretation of the facts- while Ibara tries to distract her by offering her a cigarette. No, Yukari! Resist the peer pressure!

Thankfully- though a bit late, as Sakura gives up on talking to these two delinquents- Yukari concludes that smoking is disgusting and throws the cigarette out the window, where Kagutsuchi’s rays flash-fry it in an instant.

And then... they get onto the subject of dating, and how it’s weird and confusing and bears further investigation. Ibara sort of casually-noncommittally offers to take her out to dinner.

With that Heart roll, Ibara manages to actually stick the landing, and... now it’s a date! Wow.

Sakura gets back just too late to squee over the romantic developments, and Ibara, failing to pick up on certain cues, offers Sakura a cigarette. It’s her last one!

Gomu Sakura: Protector of Sobriety and Decency, Somehow.

Anyway, to fulfill her duty of killing the mood deader than all of her family and friends, Yukari voices an idea:

Yes, definitely say that in expectation of your friends thinking that’s a good and clever idea.

After backing off on that plan- and talking about how many of their friends and allies need therapists (which is to say, all of them), particularly Tama-chan and Reiko, the tension is broken, and...

Well, there’s still some more catching up and planning and stuff to do next time, before they venture out into the sun. 

[gabbyp09]

[gabbyp09]

[gabbyp09]

[gabbyp09]

[theyurihunter]

Dreaming of a Witch from Mercury Remake, "Shin G-Witch" or "Re: Witch From Mercury" ___ I'm imagining starting off with an extended version of Cardo Nabo's GUND promo video that we see in ep. 8. The original prologue set up a lot involving GUND tech and it's medical use, towards the end, the screen distorts and cuts out, transitioning into a found-footage style sequence of Cathedra's pilots and boarding units beginning their mission. Radio chatter gives us insight on the MS development council and Delling's decision to execute the operation. Throughout the sequence, intercepted communications gives us glimpses of Folkvangr's personnel's real-time responses with a focus on Eri, Elnora, and Nadim as the tension escalates. Cathedra picks up an unregistered permet signature and they begin to lose mobile suits to a quick and shadowy foe. Nadim sacrifices himself to give a window for Elnora and Eri to escape, but his last plea falls on deaf ears. Elnora, in her grief, charges forward and successfully dispatches the Beguir Beu, the last image recorded by it in freeze-frame. After a beat, Rajan's clear voiceover reveals this is a debrief. He concludes Cathedra must find and destroy this new model and kill or apprehend it's pilot, which had escaped. The last scene is of the Unknown Gundam making a rough landing at an old facility, Ericht's conscious is visibly fading and Elnora frantically promising she'll be OK. The last shot is similar to the one at 20:27 in ep. 18, cutting to black with Elnora's voiceover shakily promising to save her, and wishing her a happy birthday.

[theyurihunter]

Re: Witch From Mercury/Shin G-Witch Episode 1 - "Something New" ___

The major change with this episode and Suletta's entire character going forward is how she's been influenced by her life as a tested search-and-rescue pilot. When it comes to saving lives, she's completely locked in, a person of pure focus. So the first we see of Suletta is this cool and levelheaded person, like the impression most got when they saw the very first teaser for Witch from Mercury. This then makes it so her first encounter with Miorine is even more coarse as Suletta's all business.

…Which then makes the cut to Suletta barely being able ask for directions to first period without folding like a wet napkin have much more of an impact on the audience.

The rest of the first episode plays out much the same as the original, save for a detail that we're subtly introduced to Earth House's members who've all gathered around their building's cruddy TV to watch the duel, their comments are more about concern and surprise at Aerial's use of drone-type weapons, which have had a negative stigma around them since the end of the Drone War (a piece of lore noted in the Beguir Beu's manual).

There's a weird comment from Secilia and Rouji about Aerial's colors looking like that of "Old France", I assume this was to establish that nations no longer exist but that's basically a given and the time will be used instead for the scene with Earth House.