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This was my initial idea when plotting, but it proved a bit too complicated to bother with drawing it out in the actual writing when it didn't really matter enough to justify that much explanation.
A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)
- Thread starter Shadell
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
This was my initial idea when plotting, but it proved a bit too complicated to bother with drawing it out in the actual writing when it didn't really matter enough to justify that much explanation.
Michael Plushie
New
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Well, made a Michael design. Based it on a Cirno fumo and took the wing design from Cardcaptor Sakura. I'm torn about giving a small smile or a neutral mouth.
View: https://imgur.com/a/YkOGeIN
View: https://imgur.com/a/YkOGeIN
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I found this story randomly and man It like you somehow went inside my head and wrote the kind of story I wanted to see in the magical girl genre. I really liked how well you depicted the messiness of even admitting your trans. I liked how we had a limited perpectives on these events going on because we were following someone on the outside. I know Chiro's story concluded but I am left wanting more...but that probably how a good story should make you feel.
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So called free thinkers when exposed to cute enbies.
So, I'll be outputting some disorgnized thoughts here. I wanted to check this passage to think a bit about how Temerance said Chiro sees the beauty in everyone. And Chiro's own wonderings are interesting here. At first, of course she's pissed about the monster attacks the Beasts do, but she can see Avaritia is a good person. However, she very much joined the Beasts because she wanted agency, even in spite of how dangerous the monster attacks were. The story points out Inessa's idealization of Chiro, but Temperance also did the same. The idea of Chiro as this endlessly kind being, when actually that same kindness had become thorny vines around her, stabbing her and soon everyone else instead of feeding everyone (jeez my metaphor gor clumsy).
Another thing I've thought is comparing Superbia and Michael as foils, which I've talked about before. Considering the broad themes about how the characters relate to their own selves, Superbia on one end is an incarnation of insecurity and shame, his actions against others being all in service of his bitterness and protecting his ego. On the other, Michael is easygoing about being embarrassed, and easily admits faults, and admits if something bothers her when pressed. To "accept" yourself in a way so filled with shame your view of others and yourself distorts, or accept yourself, the bad and the good, in a way you don't drown in negativity.
Basically it's the two wolves inside of you meme, but it's Michael vs a dragon
Coming back to this passage. So the poisoned sap forms an amber on the heart, which a later scene shows Inessa removing and tossing to Michael. For a moment thought humans just had a part of the soul called Heart Amber
Cute. Funny, I was just wondering today which character would do the quizzical head tilt, thinking first of Michael then Temperance.
The hilarious part is Michael probably doesn't even realize the humans would like to know more about the conflict.
I like how Michael herself decided putting the egg in a pressure cooker was in order.
Adorable to think of a worried plushie fussing over them.
I can't believe I never noticed this part about another new character at school, or Michael having an old friend.
I like that Chiro is making amends for all she did. Is she, like, helping the people she hurt without them knowing it was her?
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I find it weirdly relatable that even when Chiro is living as a trans person at the end, she not sure she can be called a "real trans person" like it some special title. I certainly relate to wanting to be a girl all my life but not really calling myself trans until late 20's due to various factors.
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I give high odds that the "old friend" is Michael explaining the deal with Uriel.
And it's possible that the other new character is someone Chiro noticed, right at the end of the story.
I'd put low odds on this, maybe 10-30%. Much higher odds on the old friend being Uriel, though.
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Oh took a while to reply
Generally angels in fiction call eac other siblings, and I'd imagine Uriel is no longer Michael's friend, so they'd be "former friend" rather than "old friend".
That character seems to just be someone similar to Chiro, whom she will help now that things are turining around for her and she became a Saint. Rather than someone related to the conflict.
Oh, by the way, took a look at Michael's associations in religion, and there are a lot if you don't just focus on the main ones. Michael is a big deal, so it makes sense different traditions associate different important concepts
Military, healing, life and death, judgement of souls, mercy, nourishment of life and souls, rain.
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First off, I'm going to suggest that an Archangel Michael who uses she/her pronouns, empowers magical girls, and takes the form of a marketable plushy is probably not the traditional Archangel Michael. Insofar as there is a Deep Lore beyond what's presented in this story, real-world religious beliefs are probably a poor guide to the Deep Lore.
(Same goes to any argument about angels calling each other siblings, even if it was as common as you suggest.)
Second, I've seen plenty of fictional characters use affectionate terms like "old friend" to refer to someone who used to be a friend but is now hostile, especially when the speaker has more positive feelings for their "friend" than the friend does for the speaker. Also especially when the author is trying to keep the "friend" and their relation to the speaker mysterious.
So that one line in a next-episode summary is probably a poor guide to Uriel and Michael's current relationship.
Finally...we have one character associated with Michael who the Saints know little about, who has been causing trouble for the Saints even in their brief appearancess. And then later, we have "shocking news about an old friend of Michael's" which helps bring an end to the peace. Occam's Razor, those seem related.
(Same goes to any argument about angels calling each other siblings, even if it was as common as you suggest.)
Second, I've seen plenty of fictional characters use affectionate terms like "old friend" to refer to someone who used to be a friend but is now hostile, especially when the speaker has more positive feelings for their "friend" than the friend does for the speaker. Also especially when the author is trying to keep the "friend" and their relation to the speaker mysterious.
So that one line in a next-episode summary is probably a poor guide to Uriel and Michael's current relationship.
Finally...we have one character associated with Michael who the Saints know little about, who has been causing trouble for the Saints even in their brief appearancess. And then later, we have "shocking news about an old friend of Michael's" which helps bring an end to the peace. Occam's Razor, those seem related.
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It a cool thing about this story that we don't really get a lot of context because the charecter we follow is very outside it. Even when she is working the villains, Lupin protects her from having to deal with inner machinations. Some things I wish we did get answers for but I guess it better to want more.
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Chiro is the heroine of her own story, which intersects with, but is very distinct from, the story of Shining Virtue Angelic Heart. One of the coolest things about this story, in fact, is that it's such a tightly focused and internal character drama while using a sweeping melodrama about a clash of human and alien civilizations that may or may not be Literally Angels From Heaven (we don't even know!) as the background setting.
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Part of me wants to know what Temperences's story is, but eh.
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The salient details are mostly there, or implied fairly strongly, in the text. There's not really anything that would be a surprise.
Queer trans girl in extremely conservative, puritanical and extremely insular culture. Unfortunately self-aware from a very young age, which nets her a lot of increasing punishment in attempts to correct her as a child, before she gets old enough that you can't write her being herself off as the mere misbehavior of a child. She learns very quickly that expressing herself ends in pain. All of this fosters increasing resentment and suicidality until Lupin—her only friend—sells her on running away instead of dying from a refusal or inability to conform.
Neither kid is set up to survive the Forest, but they meet Superbia and are able to release him, which gives him what he needs and helps them get the tools to live. Superbia isn't great about Temperance's gender (or anything really) but is initially very reduced after the trauma of captivity. Running to Earth gives him contact with cultural values that push his worst inclinations and he very quickly gets more fixated on rebuilding "his" forces over fixing things or genuine revolution. Gula plays the good soldier, but isn't fully sold on it all and is also reveling in the chance to just be a girl, especially after Avaritia swapped her seed.
Inessa, being Inessa, is able to actually connect, to push her on an emotional level about her disquiet with the everything, and Superbia's increasingly obvious shittiness, which pushes her to defect, and to kinda reject the idea that it was just her society's fixation on "virtue" that produced that outcome.
She feels both exasperated by, guilty about, and a little jealous of Chiro getting to have her gender troubles be so internalized , and the role her kidnapping may have played in that, but is so used to keeping her actual feelings buried that she struggles to find a way to just talk about it instead of the way she handles it early on.
———
The big divergences with Ira instead of Gula are, I think, the seed fueling all of her most revolutionary instincts, as well as the fact that Temperance-Ira is just a lot more suited to her seed.
I've toyed with a few variations of this kind the AU where a more certain, more fervent, more willing to get her hands dirty Temperance manages to find Inessa before Michael and shortly before the episode one moment where Inessa goes from being ashamed of and scared of her sexuality to trying to accept it.
That leads to Luxuria Fox, and leaves Chiro as the one who runs into Michael, absent months of jealousy over everyone else pushing her to her limits. This leads to Humanitas appearing instead, with a lot less character growth, a skill set much suited to support than solo fighting and, frankly, none of Inessa's absurd talent at this.
Humanitas also has a lot of a shame over the girl part, and is just a bit more meticulous on the whole. That means the masquerade holds up better, which stops Ida from finding out, which cuts out the character development she'd need to become Diligentia—while Humanitas is barely holding on against monsters of the week—creates the circumstances where she's a lot likelier to burn out faster than she's setting herself up to do in canon, and gives you Acedia.
At which point, it's an increasingly marginalized Superbia with Acedia, Luxuria, Avaritia and Ira all teaming up against Humanitas. Inessa-Luxuria is absolutely treating these as a chance to flirt—because corruption arcs are hot and she absolutely has a thing for magical girls—albeit a lot more confidently and aggressively than she could ever manage in canon (she's treating her feelings as much more of a game, a source of shame and pleasure and something she struggles to accept with sincerity that leaves her feeling so vulnerable in canon) and both Humanitas and Luxuria are going to regret that on many levels when their identities come out.
This *probably* pushes [REDACTED] to emerge sooner than the start of the third cour, which evens out the balance a bit, and shifts it from Humanitas vs everyone to Humanitas caught in the middle of two bigger, nastier groups. But that also makes things even more stressful for Humanitas—who's seeing her relationship with Inessa deteriorate and stuff with her dad degrading faster than in canon due to all the injuries and time she's spending magical girling, and Inessa's increasingly self-destructive mundane relationships. But Chiro lacks any of the outlets or escapes she might have in canon. What she does have is a strong sense of responsibility that stops her from running away, and a likely faster building awareness of her own gender.
Michael is also more desperate and guilty here, which may lead her to some kinda drastic steps or trying to make allies she wouldn't in canon, so it's plausible Humanitas would get pushed to her third/fourth cour power-up a lot earlier and/or a different Temperantia might emerge as another solo magical girl. You also have an increasingly erratic Superbia worried about losing power to Ira as another source of chaos stopping it from becoming a complete Forest W.
It's a bit hard to imagine how things shake out, but it's fun to imagine how bad they could all go. Like, wow, this Humanitas would be so fucking edgy and alone by the middle of the second cour. And, like, the same factors that connected Chiro individually to each Saint are pushing all of the Beasts here to try and save her from herself, with an increasingly messianic Ira Shark (Ira Leviathan?) leading the way.
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Personally, without weighing in on any of the speculation itself, it's definitely really touching to see a story thread that ended in April getting posts from people speculating over the lore and characters
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Ah so I was misunderstanding a bit, I was thinking Temperance and Lupin was raised by some cult specifically trying to make Saints with the virtuous child thing.
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I have a sudden desire for the Yuri bullying of Chiro by Inessa. Gives serious Kampfer vibes t.b.h.
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"Oh shit that was my sister." Both on the flirting and violence
Ah dang, there's another bad guy faction. Well that's a staple of magical girl shows. Though I wonder what other ideology it represents.
Worrying, seems like the power-up is forced (not forced on Humanitas, I mean done in an improper and rushed way out of desperation). Also interesting to see both Humanitas and Michael are emotionally fucked up here.
I'm curious, if you'll share at least a bit please, what's angel psychology like? My headcanon has been "very similar to humans, if with a few different instincts and patterns, effectively neurodivergent".
Cult leader Temperance is a very interesting take on her, and worrying considering her wishes of causing destructive catastrophes
All in all, love this catastrophic timeline. I guess Humanitas wins, but I wonder about her mental health by the end, and the collateral damage
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Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
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- Cold snow fields of Finland
Probably on the level of Sailor Nothing.
This is amazing. I absolutely must write an Omake and song for it.
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It's not something I thought about particularly deeply. I didn't really aim to give them as much internality as any of the magical girls, Michael miscommunicating with Chiro early on was important for the vibes, but I didn't want the plot to hinge on that miscommunication (hence Ida having already had a similar state of affairs, and being pretty direct with Chiro there in ways that make it more firmly Chiro's brainworms.)
The setting of the show was always extremely secondary to Chiro's conflict, mostly fleshed out to match up with the ways that Chiro couldn't see herself as important enough to be a protagonist in her own life (and wasn't even willing to admit she wanted to be, so the lore was thrown together as I wrote the very rough first draft basically no one saw. (That's why one of the chapter titles on SV incorrectly refered to the Abyssal FOrest as the Abyssal Zone for an embarassingly long time. I didn't catch it to correct.)
But, yeah, they're all a little neurodivergent, in a sense that the way they think diverges from the human norm, while not being incomprehensibly eldritch. They're also, as you see with both Michael and Uriel, really perceptive in ways that don't strictly map onto the tools humans have to experience the world. A lot of what separates them from people isn't necessarily different *cognition* as it is simply being so used to seeing so much. Michael can take a long look and mostly *get* Chiro's entire thing, and she hasn't exactly been enough of a social butterfly to really quite grok how limited human perception is in comparison. If you gave them a few years to hang out and act like people among other people, they'd probably all be able to pass better if they chose to do so.
What else they have going on is that all four of them are ancient. They've seen a lot, they've possibly been around longer than humanity depending on how you interpret the setting's backstory. But they've also been very isolated and traumatized by past contact, at least Michael and Uriel. They got close to people in the past, they'd claim on the Tree's behalf, and it ended up with everyone trying to murder each other—Superbia's one of the better cases for how that ended up!—and a status quo that's [REDACTED] and they've been burned by that in different ways.
Uriel plays up its most alien aspects, largely out of a contempt for humanity on the whole. Michael tries to make herself more approachable, to connect better and she isn't that good at that! The others have their different responses, and that's meant that they don't really get along in practice, even as they don't really interact with anyone else. So, yeah, the millenia-old shut ins are going to be pretty awkward on top of everything predisposing themselves to have trouble getting it.
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- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
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So out of the two remaining Archangels, I presume Raphael is cool but rude? ~
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Probably the Beasts' base in the Ira Shark/Leviathan timeline
Interesting. So that's Michael's primary problem.
So from this it also seems to imply angels are always seeing into humans, passively getting surface readings from them, and are used to this. The thing Michael did in that scene was taking a closer look, which allowed Chiro to gaze back into her.
Another headcanon confirmed, been thinking the war must have traumatized the angels. More angst for the characters
Oooh. So Uriel is a misanthrope.
Nice, all angels are dysfunctional in their own way.
Thanks Shadell, everything you put into the setting is very cool.
That's a lot of fuel for my fanfic ideas
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