Character concept building, time-traveling magical girl protagonist. (Need help)

[Jemini]

Since Raven's Dagger seems to have truly abandoned his Agathara Loop series after the 2nd loop, I have been kicking around some ideas for a magical girl with time-travel powers of my own in order to continue the story concept.

I really fell in love with the concept Raven's Dagger put forward in Agathara loop. It was like Homura Akemi from Madoka Magica, except she's the protagonist and we get to see her story from day 1.

Anyway, the thing about a good time-loop story is that it requires a LOT of planning. You need a very firm idea of what a normal loop, unbothered by the protagonist's meddling, looks like. So, I have been trying to come up with a concept and a normal time-line, also trying to figure out some ways to not make it too much like Agathara Loop. In the end, I also arrived at the idea that what I REALLY need to do is also make it a little less like Mother of Learning, as all time-loop series have tended to start looking like ever since that series made a big splash back in 2010. (Agathara Loop included.)

So, to remedy this rut the time-loop genre seems to have gotten itself into, I looked to the most distant past of the time-loop genre and watched "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time."

I've decided this is the direction to go with this character. She needs to, at the start, be a vein and awkward klutzy teen who is going to, over the course of the series and her experiences, change into a more stoic and world-weary character.

Here's the problem. I'm not good at writing that kind of character. So, I've gotta ask for some idea pitches. What are some everyday completely vein and innocuous everyday problems that a young teen girl in the 13-16 age range might want to fix with time-travel powers? (Not including the ones that actually show up in "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," like "my little sister ate my pudding!")

For a wider-scale plot, I was thinking that the protagonist would gain her powers at a time where there was a crisis too big for her, in particular, to possibly ever survive. (Scaled back a bit from the destruction of the whole school scale, but definitely enough to guarantee just her own death,) and the death-reset power winds up being strong enough to take her back to BEFORE she would have gained her powers (bringing it closer to Homura than Amber.) After that, she tries to hide the fact she became a magical girl and just enjoy some frivolous uses of her power for a while, but eventually learns it's better to stop being selfish and start using her powers to help others. Thus begins an arc where she returns to the academy and all that.

So, while it's mostly the frivolous secret time-travel usage parts where I really need ideas, that plot is flexible enough for people to suggest some more serious ideas as well. (I might use the serious ideas if they're good. The frivolous and silly ideas, however, have a much higher chance of being used.)

 

[LilRora]

Do you want to include romance there? That's something a 13-16 years old girl might be interested in (alternatively starting to be interested in) and would give you a number of options to choose from all the way from meeting a crush again to rivalry and/or revenge about some other girl, but it's also something you might not want in your story.

Other than that, you can do attending an event she had missed because of school or some other matters - that one's particularly useful if you want her to be nerdy or close to that, but it can also be something much more detached from her other interests.

Now as for frivolous and silly ideas, you can try get her to visit places where she remembered funny things happened, could be in her vicinity but could also be in the wider world (Hawk tuah, not to search far - can be something really stupid or silly), to see them for herself.

Also, this is a bit jarring to me:

After that, she tries to hide the fact she became a magical girl and just enjoy some frivolous uses of her power for a while, but eventually learns it's better to stop being selfish and start using her powers to help others.

Personally, I think it's either bad phrasing or a questionable development. Not sure what you had in mind writing this, but for me, virtually anyone in a time loop should naturally start thinking that it's actually better to be selfish. However, this does NOT mean helping others is bad, but rather, because of all the time provided by the loop, it's possible to help other people a lot. Whether someone takes that opportunity or not is another matter, but thinking that it's better to stop being selfish is, to me, a flawed way of thinking.

And granted, your main character can have a flawed way of thinking, just, for me, there's a lot of issues with that statement.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

What are some everyday completely vein and innocuous everyday problems that a young teen girl in the 13-16 age range might want to fix with time-travel powers?

Look, honestly? just go on TikTok and watch a bunch of videos and pick the stupidest thing you can find.

Girls are petty, vindictive, and vicious. She's 13 to 16 Y.O.? It wouldn't surprise me if she started chains of events that got people KILLED, then undid the deaths, then killed them again, then undid the kill again, because if you can control time, then what are consequences anyway?

You know how they have shows like The Boys and Movies like The Watchmen? Those aren't the deconstruction. That is how REAL people would act with superpowers. Superman, being a hero who doesn't kill and lives by a strong moral and ethical code? HE is the deconstruction. Before him, every "superhero" was like the watchmen.

Power does NOT corrupt.
Addiction to power corrupts.
If one can avoid addiction to power, power reveals one's true nature.
An evil man with power will be evil, a good man will not.
Alas, dopamine is a hell of a drug.
A good man addicted usually tries to justify his actions by at least lying to himself, an evil man becomes a horror.

13 yo girl doesn't stand a chance. She'll get corrupted by addiction to power and become a monster ESPECIALLY since who is going to tell her no? SHE'S A GOD WHO CONTROLS TIME.

 

[Jemini]

You know how they have shows like The Boys and Movies like The Watchmen? Those aren't the deconstruction. That is how REAL people would act with superpowers. Superman, being a hero who doesn't kill and lives by a strong moral and ethical code? HE is the deconstruction. Before him, every "superhero" was like the watchmen.

Power does NOT corrupt.
Addiction to power corrupts.
If one can avoid addiction to power, power reveals one's true nature.
An evil man with power will be evil, a good man will not.
Alas, dopamine is a hell of a drug.
A good man addicted usually tries to justify his actions by at least lying to himself, an evil man becomes a horror.

13 yo girl doesn't stand a chance. She'll get corrupted by addiction to power and become a monster ESPECIALLY since who is going to tell her no? SHE'S A GOD WHO CONTROLS TIME.

Not seen The Watchmen, but The Boys? That's not how real people would react to superpowers, that's how hollywood actors would react to superpowers.

The way real people would react would be something more along the lines of WORM. That series looks exactly like what the world might turn into if super powers were real.

At any rate, @LilRora I DID say I am trying to draw inspiration from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. If that's the inspiration, I don't think it's possible to exclude romance. That said, it'll probably be at the level of a teen crush and not much further.