XinLu

farewell, saps

One of the best gags in a goofy comedy is when a character pulls out a gun and it's just inexplicably hyper-realistic, so obviously i had to do that. i had to look up guns that were popular in the early 1900's, and i ended up with this, which is based off of the Browning Model 1903. i don't know anything about guns, but apparently this one is very reliable, so i figured it suited Abolish pretty well. Plus it's got a pretty slick design.

Also, just the idea of Abolish being able to summon an actual real gun that anybody could carry around with them is so funny to me. Like, yeah he's got magical powers, but it's just Gun. And not even a super fancy magical gun, it's just So Normal. Except for the fact that it's got infinite silver bullets that you never need to reload.

i did heavily reference Sailor Moon for the transformation sequence. i had read the first book when i was younger, but i never really got into the series. i ended up checking out the first three volumes from the library, just so that i could look at the art and see how they did things.

i'm afraid this idea started growing Lore. Like, everything about this world is the same, except that Magical Girls are a thing. Vampires are still real, and Abolish still works for a secret organization, but the secret organization employs human Magical Girls and vampires. Vampires can't become Magical Girls, as the vampirism suppresses the ability to access any other powers. However, vampires that never got higher than teir 1 and have been cured, may be able to regain access to the powers. Any vampires that reached teir 2 or higher and were cured will never be able to access those powers again, due to the high blood consumption.

Abolish would end up at Oakhurst just as usual in his disguise. i think it would be fun if Shelby stays human and after the events of Oakhurst her latent Magical Girl abilities surfaces, so she goes back with Abolish to work for the organization. Tbh she would probably prefer to be a vampire, but maybe some things happened that meant she never got an opportunity to be turned early, and then at the end she didn't want to stay a vampire when the humans and vampires came up with the plan to leave.

Thinking of this AU from either Shelby or Abolish's pov is hilarious, because with Shelby it would be a weird found family comedy type situation where she believes that she and Abolish are BFF's. But for Abolish it's just him being put in charge of mentoring Shelby and it's fine except that she doesn't understand his situation at all.

Which, speaking of Abolish's situation. Magical Girls, am i right? Except that's wrong! People of any gender can be a Magical Girl. Magical Girl is just a title. It just so happens that most people who end up taking up the title of Magical Girl are women. It's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plenty of men have ended up with magical powers, but since no one thinks men can be Magical Girls, there really isn't much space in the various Magical Girl groups for men, so they typically end up living their own lives quietly or help from the shadows, as is Abolish's case. Unfortunately, a side affect of everybody assuming that only women can be Magical Girls, is that everyone assumes Abolish must be a transwoman who just hasn't accepted herself yet. Very frustrating for him, as he's very comfortable in his gender identity, he's had plenty of time to think about it what with everyone trying to shove him into dresses and refer to him with she/her pronouns all the time. Also, most Magical Girl organization buildings only have one changing room, since it's assumed that only women would be needing the changing rooms. So Abolish is forced to use an office room to change if he ever needs to, but he learned a long time ago to just show up wearing whatever it was that he needed to wear beforehand, unless he gets surprised with a mission that requires a highly specific outfit (e.g. the butler outfit).

Abolish is lucky that he had Morcant as his mentor. Morcant has his own office space, and allows Abolish to use it to change if need be. Growing up, Morcant was not so lucky to have a mentor who was also male, so he probably suffered a lot more than Abolish did, struggling to figure out how he fit into this organization that continually ignored his existence.

Anyways, Shelby doesn't really notice that Abolish spends quite a lot of time trying to make himself as invisible as possible, so she's constantly dragging him to group activities where he is Extremely Uncomfortable. The girls there accept him as part of the group, but only in as much as they think he'll "come around eventually" and are pretty patronizing. (it doesn't help that it's actually a very common phenomenon for young boys to join up, and then end up transitioning later on, so it's not like this idea came out of nowhere)