The Many Lives of Tanya Degurechaff
Good Luck Little Duck
Today, my dear readers I bring you an essay from the world of fanfiction – not the sordid pages of teen girl horniness of AO31, but from the more male oriented part, for me chiefly found in the Creative Writing forums of spacebattles.com and other such similar sites besides2. For those unfamiliar, best to think of it as mostly trashy pulp fiction.3
With the introduction out of the way, let us begin.
There are several pieces of media that, despite being relatively niche in their base popularity, have found outsized popularity as bases for fanfiction, especially crossovers. Of course, there is no surprise at a large amount of works musing upon Harry Potter, Star Wars or My Little Pony. However, here I am thinking of far less well known works, that for some reason, usually a setting conceit that alights the imaginations of amateur writers to the delight of an equally amateur audience. Some examples from my memory would be Fate/Stay Night, Familiar of Zero, perhaps at some point Warhammer 40k, though that seems to have graduated to a more broadly known franchise, and the subject of this piece, Youjo Senki.
Youjo Senki (Directly translated from Japanese “The Military Chronicles of a Little Girl”, but localized in the west as the Saga of Tanya the Evil), is a Japanese light novel series written by Carlo Zen, the rewrite of a preceding web novel, which has both an anime4 and a manga adaption. It follows the tale of a Japanese salaryman5, who is pushed in front of a moving train by a man he fired, though not undeservedly as part of his job as an HR manager. As he falls, time stops, and a Divine being (though, this being Japanese media, this is not the Christian God but rather a deistic deity who maintains the cycle of reincarnation) speaks upon him, with a question - “Why do people not believe in God anymore.” The salaryman, being a consummate atheist, gives him the standard materialist answer – because people do not suffer, as faith is merely a recourse from suffering.
The Divine Being, who in his spite the Salaryman would dub “Being-X”, elects to make him test that hypothesis on his own skin.
Reincarnated with his full memories (this is an isekai story) as a little orphan girl named Tanya Degurechaff in an early 20th century Europe with the names changed, a subject of the Empire – an amalgamation of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, along with Denmark, Poland and the Low Countries6, poised on the brink of war with the rest of Europe, and, most importantly – a powerful mage by birth. In her new world, magic is a known force, made, alongside the rest of the arts into technology, able to be reliably shaped by mathematical formula and magical proto-computers in the form of clockwork that allows an incredible range of abilities – militarily, the more powerful mages can fulfill the role of small attack helicopters, and are an incredible valuable force. Being born one guarantees a military career, irregardless of sex.
Understanding this, Tanya elects to take the first step, volunteering at the physical age of nine. Not out of any patriotism or sense of duty – Tanya’s objective is to as swiftly as possible acquire a comfy backline position to not risk combat and have a peaceful life. An objective, which she, guided by her previous life’s training in the Chicago school and behavioural theory, assumes everyone else shares, even if they do not speak it.
In the Deutches Heer of an expy of the Second Reich.
Thus begins an action filled tragi-commedy as the Great War, a mix of both the first and second World Wars, breaks out. By her own skill, Divine interference and larping as a psycho version of Ernst Junger in the hopes this will get her promoted to a non-combat HQ role, she is thrown into increasingly decisive and extreme fronts.
I feel that perhaps I have described the story not entirely adequately, but consider this a reason to at least watch the anime, it truly is excellent7. But our subject here is the character of Tanya herself.
The Salaryman
There is never a name given to the previous incarnation of the main character. It would be meaningless, for the Salaryman describes his entire being. He was not your regular joe, despite his own apprehensions. A tall even for this country never mind Japan, he would be second place in many national academic contests during his school years. A considerable intellect, he proves in his next life, excelling in her military academy studies, the raw mathematical work of the mages and in synthesing her knowledge of military history and Tanya’s education and experience into a practically prescient understanding of doctrine. And yet, he would consider himself a mediocrity and seek no more than a position as an HR manager in some white-collar wage cage company, a path and mode of being he would follow religiously.
It is no mistake, that of the countless multitude the divine being could ask that question, he chose this man. Because the Salaryman is the epitome of Modern man, as if the Zeitgeist of modernity became flesh. A person of no ambition, besides the very basest of material pleasures. In his first life, his life’s goal was to excel in mediocrity, to mold himself into a valuable cog of the machine of modern society, for the reward promise – which, as Tanya only changed it’s object. But in an army at war, there is no excellence in mediocrity, so she is pushed to don a mantle of heroism – always first in the field. This is a result of her thoroughly mechanistic way of thinking about human relations – the Chicago school is oft cited, it’s theories of behavioral interaction Tanya’s guiding light through the world of military careerism. This renders her alien and incomprehensible to her comrades and colleagues, who, despite her(In her mind) obvious subtext and signals, see her as the ultrapatriotic war maniac she portrays herself as, and thus relent when she seems to ask for combat duty, despite their qualms about sending such a little girl into the fray. And, they are alien to her too. For example, she sees Erich von Lehrgen, in truth her chief hater as a valuable ally and friend, mistaking his fearful hatred of her as finally someone realizing that they are sending a child into war. And, finally and most emblematically, despite being an avowed follower of reason, she is a creature of truly legendary conceit. Tanya Degurechaff does not change her mind, she holds on to her initial judgements and adjust any new information about the subjects to them, a zealot in the worst sense of the word for practically any opinion. Let it never be said she doesn’t live by her principles, but they are absolutely loony.
Tanya Degurechaff is no hero, by word of god. A villain protagonist, no doubt, she is utterly unscrupulous in her pursuit of a peaceful life. To the extent, that one of the main plots of the first season has her use a treatise on evading war crime treaties she herself wrote to bomb a city full of civilians because of partisans. And yet it goes far deeper, as von Lehrgen is right to fear. She has no fear of slipping into HR manager lingo when it comes to her duties, and frightening her command with notions of “human resources”. Perhaps instinctively, but presciently, this last officer of the aristocratic army fears the reduction of men to cogs in a machine of war, into cogs in a machine period, even as the Headquarters embrace Tanya for her effectiveness. A tale of modernity itself, how a part of the human soul died in the trenches of the Great War.
And yet, despite this, in fanfiction, Tanya is made a hero.
Argent Silver
Though I began here speaking of crossovers, this trend begins with a general fiction (that is, of just that single medium).
A war hero, with naught to do after their nation’s defeat in a world war, taking up a career in politics, finding a great charisma in themselves and creating an irredentist political force that catapults them to the very top of total power in the country. A familiar tale, yes? This is broadly the premise of Jacobk’s A Young Woman's Political Record, a fanfic currently sitting at 5496 watchers that began it’s relase about half a year after the airing of the 1st season of the anime (in winter 2017). Indeed, this is the tale of her taking the role of the Austrian painter, except rather than an actual political effort, through luck, skill, sheer misunderstandings courtesy of both her opponents and allies, and Jupiterian moves to sabotage her own party that propel her initial attempt to leech off of taxpayer money by being a micro party in the parliament to Reichskanzlership and total dominance of the Germanian political sphere (and in some fan continuations, the Kaiser’s throne). It is an enjoyable fic, well written and funny, though of course, considering it is still fanfic, containing yuri, though for other reasons as well, by the time it gets to that point it is worth dropping.
This fic begins a trend that demonstrates Tanya Degurechaff to be one of the most misunderstood characters in fiction.
Obviously, the full career of the painter is far too edgy (and I can respect that, the fic was always comedic in tone), so Jacobk makes her basically a wholesome, if authoritarian and unintentionally militarist, social democrat when she does succeed in taking power. This really begins the wave of Tanya fics that is ongoing to this day, to some extent. And I will grant, there are some really good ones. In crossovers, the pattern is usually the same – Tanya is reincarnated again into some universe and then goes about trying to achieve her goal – a prosperous, peaceful life, against which endlessly arrange circumstances. To name some examples off memory, Myrcella from ASOIAF, the Countess of Serenno from Star Wars, a Dragon in a fantasy story, a daughter of the Emperor in GATE, a Krieg guardswoman, a rebel in the Japan of Code Geass, an aspiring alchemist in FMA and many others, seldom finished. Of course this is not the only way of Youjo Senki fan fiction, but it’s the majority I see.
They fail in that they valorize Tanya.
If not in the contents of the work, then in the comments on the post, what usually appears a little bit is in essence an earnest wish for Tanya’s success by her methods. It is in this capacity that of the Devil of the Rhine is made a hero. People wish, and so see in Tanya that her mechanistic view, that her technological, modernistic approach works – in spite of her misunderstandings, in spite of her wretched morals. Perhaps Carlo Zen was too subtle in pointing out the flaws in Salaryman’s worldview, but in hindsight, he could only be less so if he had a character point a finger at Tanya and say “Es ist scheisse”. Reason and logic are seen to win the day, to lead inexorably to wholesome social democracy, and yet, I can’t help but feel that Tanya’s world would be a wage cage panopticon.
Devil to Fear
This, what I vulgarly call Tanya-wank, made clear to me anecdotally what I have seen elsewhere. The man of the west yet loves modernity – or it’s image. The idol of it. Much like the Imperial Creed of 40k, the modern modernist is fundamentally a betrayer of the original principles of modernity in their own name. The French executed Robespierre in part for his Cult of Reason, and extinguished it, because, though it aspired to the same principle as the secular ideal, at the time it had to be done, because the people then truly believed in the essence of true non-religiosity, much like Monarchia had to burn because of the Imperial Truth which it was built in adoration of. But now the understanding of irreligiosity, because of the fundamental phoniness of the attempt is dead, leaving a dead religion, that is also phony, for it is hated by it’s god (the image of Enlightened Reason) for it’s mode of existence against the Dark Gods, the primal forces of universal barbarism which have seized the hearts of man as they have sought to fill the void left by modernity.
To waken from a dream is far from pleasant. Perhaps it is poetic, that the audience adjusted the show to fit their own conceits. But as for us, let us not be made into but gears of a machinistic society, oh God. Though we may work as Salarymen, let us remain men.
In the past (the mid 2010’s) when I got into fanfiction for the first time, the two parts were fairly united. As tetstament to this, one can look in the old site of Fanfiction.net, where ship fics and silly romance SoL stories share space with half a million word AU Space Operas. Now, with the decline of ffnet and the advent of AO3, the communities have drifted apart.
Really, I suspect that is where much of the audience for pulp has gone. It’s not so much that the people read less, they just read more fanfiction. From experience, it seemed easier, somehow.
Remembering this is an anime, I would encourage you to read first this excellent essay on the subject by
.Japanese version of a wagie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaryman
Carlo Zen is a known map game enjoyer, and I remain convinced that the map of Europe he presents is just one of his Großgermanium Victoria 2 games.
Considering this is an isekai, it is the genuine proof of Sturgeon’s Law.