I’ve written a few posts about things that have influenced my story Catgirl System. Everything in them is true. Characters and themes really were inspired by those.
But they were also inspired by…something else. Something deemed too accursed to talk about.
…Okay, but before I talk about that, I’ll mention a couple of other things that are deemed slightly less accursed!
Soft Cozy Stuff
It should be totally unsurprising to you that the story may have been influenced by Steven Universe. Colorful positive fantasy-sci-fi action-adventure with some dollops of horror. Women kiss in it. It just makes sense. But that story is a vaguer, subconscious influence.
A slightly more conscious influence would be The Tea Dragon Society. I really didn’t like that comic, but I knew its ambience and themes of slow, simple living closer to your roots resonated a lot with people. (Also, the art and concept are adorable. I can admit that.)
The comic is only partly about raising dragons the size of cats (with prideful personalities that aren’t too far off from cats). It’s also about reflecting on the pasts of fantasy-world adventurers. The selling point, though, is probably the fact that a dragon-girl hybrid gets into a relationship with a goblin gal. Also, it takes place in the woods. I noticed a lot of cozy things take place in the woods. That’s why I made the very deliberate choice to put Catgirl System in the woods too.
Horsies and Golems
Let’s descend one level into the Shame Zone. I’m not a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but it was a bit of an influence. That’s pretty cozy, right? And it’s got magic in it, and it’s colorful and playful? But really, I was influenced by a comment I found somewhere on the internet (can’t remember where). Someone speculated that because the show was about making friends, it filled a niche that other stories didn’t. For the same reason, they speculated, it also became particularly popular with people with autism, who tend to struggle with making friends.
“Hm…a story about making friends,” I thought, stroking my metaphorical chin.
Around the time I was planning Catgirl System, my friend and writing ally Bea was writing a piece of GameLit titled Her Golemancer Girlfriend. That was certainly not about making friends, but its “hub location” was a cheapo hotel or hostel where a motley crew floated in and out. I really liked that idea, and began to brainstorm a “softer version.”
So these things combined are why Catgirl System’s hub location is a log-cabin lodge where three young women come in and out, all occasionally camping or running errands a mile or so off. Making friends is a huge part of the main character Taipha’s character arc and development.
She doesn’t have autism, though; I guess you can call it “magical fantasy-world autism,” with huge air-quotes, because she is a cat transformed into a young woman, which leads to her struggling in social interactions. But I also figured that if I were reading this story and I suspected Taipha’s behavior was “code for autism,” I would appreciate having it namedropped somehow. I’d be tired of the idea of having to guess whether characters “count” as representation or not. That’s why another character explicitly has autism. For similar reasons, another character is explicitly trans.
Enough beating around the bush! I didn’t write this post to say all that! I wrote this to talk about…
The Grim, Spicy Truth
Catgirl System takes heartbreakingly obvious inspiration from High Guardian Spice.
Sometimes the best points of inspiration are stories that seemingly nobody likes. Have I mentioned this before? I must have said it in my Ultimo manga review. There are some stories out there that compel me for reasons unknown, not because I think they’re great but because there are some compelling ideas in them or there’s some quality in them with what I see as unfulfilled potential. Or there’s a direction I’d rather take it.
There are stories WAY worse than High Guardian Spice that fill me with this kind of storyteller-excitement. From what I’ve seen, this show is merely…okay. Well, fine, Episode 3 might genuinely be bad. There’s something contrived about every one of its plotlines, and with THREE plotlines in a single episode, it feels a bit like filler. (That episode is as far as I’ve gotten.)
But the show had horrendous publicity. Its first trailer was as clueless about its target audience as the Mighty No. 9 trailer mocking anime fans on prom night, or the cancelled New Warriors comic’s preview with Snowflake, Safespace, and the hero whose powers came from internet gas. (I wish that comic came out. The people have to know.)
After that, it was delayed, and when it came out, there was no buzz. Various internet reviewers feasted, pulling apart every episode. I watched reviews instead of the show!
I also watched the show. Or, rather, one episode, at the time. I didn’t find it very interesting or funny. But it had similar “cozy forest vibes” to other stories I’d been looking to for inspiration. Moreover, it had four main characters who look like THIS (in order from least to most incriminating resemblance to the Catgirl System cast):
Hm…hmmm…
There was another major takeaway. Around this time, I was reading several LGBTQ+ young adult novels and comics, curious about how people and concepts were being represented circa 2020. These merged with my thoughts about High Guardian Spice and reviewers’ complaints. I learned from reviews that there’s a character in the show who eventually comes out as trans. This moment takes people out of the story because…isn’t this a cozy fantasy story? Why wouldn’t the fantasy-world surgeries and HRT this character might want be both more convenient and more well-known than they apparently are?
One of the YA books I was reading was Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. It takes place in, arguably, a utopia founded on revolutionary equality and equity. The trans protagonist’s parents are sensitive to her needs and provided top-quality care for her as soon as they knew. She uses magical utopian HRT in her transition. Yet her transness still matters, her background is different from a cis character’s, and the implant that makes her HRT possible still marks her and has a physical presence; she can feel it growing cold in some moments.
“Hm…magical utopian HRT that nonetheless has some effect on how the character experiences her body and approaches the world,” I said to myself, scratching my metaphorical chin.
This led me to create a type of magic for Catgirl System that relies on enchanted objects kept on, or in, the body. In the world of the story, cantrips are a common, normalized form of magic used as magical aids, utopian HRT, and tools for people with disabilities. This in turn influenced the character Heidschi, a blind shepherd wandering in the cozy comfy woods. Heidschi wears glasses that give them sight, but sometimes finds it more comfortable to take them off.
Meanwhile, in High Guardian Spice episode 1, the pink hero girl wears a frilly dress with a poofy, froufrou hairstyle. In flashbacks, she wears a more restrained ponytail and shorts. Did she transition? No, she was just wearing “boyish clothes.” But this also made me scratch my metaphorical chin. Hmmm…
Anyway, this was a long-winded explanation of why the pink hero girl (sidekick to the cat hero girl) is trans and has a magical implant in her body. Not that I wrote that part yet. As of this post, I still haven’t finished Book 4, though as usual I’m grimly (spicily) determined to do so. By writing this post, I have once again delayed the inevitable.
Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
For more rockin’ fun, read about me reading some other YA: Elatsoe. Or read about me playing an RPG that kind of, vaguely, a little bit, stars Catgirl System characters. Alternatively, what about Blondie? You like that, don’t you? Don’t pretend. I know what you crave.