History: Between The Lines
Why are our history files written through the lens of the modern mage?
The perspective of generic wizardry and witchcraft is undeniably full of male historical figures from sources like Cardcaptor Sakura and Mahou Sensei Negima. Ours is often the story of non-magical-girls' response to magical girls (and the evil they fight), instead of the story of the magical girls themselves, because magical girls tend to sacrifice themselves to make history, rather than to write it.
The magical girls were around, of course -- although there was a huge gap between the fall of the Silver Millennium and the shattering of the Silver Queen's seals a hundred and fiftyish years ago, thousands of years in which the relative level of threat to the world was so low that, in turn, relatively few magical girls existed to combat it. Clow Reed's hubris in experimenting with the Gateports caused Earth to be befallen by such evil that dozens of entirely new (or extremely, Silver Millennium-era ancient) magical girl traditions sprung up in response to it. Queen Serenity's First Wish, that sealed evil from Earth, is the one most often spoken of in our previous history files, but her Third Wish is also relevant here: that darkness itself cannot manifest without light answering and opposing it. Conversely, with little darkness, there was little /need/ for the light, and so it lay dormant, waiting for its time to come. That time, of course, is now.
During the long in between, the most prominent magical girl was the Puella Magi, and their marks on history are undeniable. Glorious, brief lives the likes of Queen Cleopatra, Queen Himiko, Joan of Arc and Anne Frank (plus uncountable others) have altered the course of the world far more than the winners and losers of any wizard family feuds.
Other magical girl traditions -- the Devil Hunters of Devil Hunter Yohko are an excellent typical example, monster-hunting tied to an artifact that tends to run in the family or else through a mentor/mentee relationship -- have existed in unbroken lines for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Some have been with the Magic Association since its inception; others were instrumental in founding the Tuners; still more did neither, too busy fighting the good fight to worry overmuch about politics. Their wars are so secret as to go mostly unremarked upon, but without them the world would have been overrun by evil long ago, Clow Reed or no.
Finally, there is a great deal of Significant But OOCly Secret Magical Girl History that diverges from individual canons through the integration of multiple canons into one setting. Some of this has already been designed and will someday be dramatically revealed when it becomes salient in plot. More of it has not; we're very open to ideas, and that openness is expressed by deliberate vagueness that allows storytellers to help us fill in the gaps, while simultaneously promoting a modern setting filled with mystery and wonder. Do you want to, through plot set in the present, explore the story of how the last HiME Festival, three hundred years gone, was nearly destroyed by a sudden, unexpected Walpurgisnacht -- and why District 1 has been in rivalry, rather than revelry, with Ends of the World ever since? Talk to the staff! Such stories are best left untold until just the right moment, but we're eager to integrate as many complex, nuanced and awesome ideas as we can into the tapestry of our imaginary history. In so doing, we're not just re-enacting a bunch of separate anime and manga stories note for note; we're making something more than the sum of its parts.
For more information, please see: History
