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A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)

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superhyped for further interactions between chiro and the magical girls about "C" inevitably leading to her identity getting revealed and them putting two and two together. even better if they keep having these kinds of talks and by the end they just have her completely figured out. i just love it when she's flustered, it's adorable
 
Shadell said:
"Maybe she doesn't need saving. Maybe she needs to find a way to stand up on her own and talking about saving her just makes her remember how terrible and worthless she is. Maybe what she needs is someone who will actually respect her enough to let her make her bed and lie in it. If she wants to be your enemy, just accept that she's your enemy and stop ignoring everything she does or giving it a pass when she hurts you like she's not even responsible for her own actions."
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Maybe that just means she needs to be tricked into accepting help rather than having it forced on her but my respect for free will and intent does not extend to letting people destroy themselves because they think they deserve it.

Evil rarely thinks of itself as evil, and those who think of themselves as evil are rarely truly so.
 
Spectral Waltz said:
Maybe that just means she needs to be tricked into accepting help rather than having it forced on her but my respect for free will and intent does not extend to letting people destroy themselves because they think they deserve it.

Evil rarely thinks of itself as evil, and those who think of themselves as evil are rarely truly so.
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I think Inessa has hopefully taken the correct interpretation of this spiel, which is that "saving" C needs to be a dialog and compromise between equals. There's no one not worth saving, as Inessa says, but at the same time, you cannot save someone who does not want to be saved.

This is supposition, but I'd be willing to bet that, thanks to how the Seeds work, it's literally not possible to get rid of them or turn them to whatever Temperance has going on in her torso right now without the consent of the Beast. Even if it was, that would hardly address the root problem of C's deeply internalized sense of inferiority. Some things simply cannot be resolved externally, and every time Inessa has tried the "normal" ways of addressing someone else's emotional problems on C, it's backfired thanks to C's twisted self-image. Only C can fix that, and she's only going to with Inessa acknowledging her, not metaphorically whacking it with a positivity wrench.

EDIT: Nothing is more satisfying than an Insightful from the author.
 
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Darth Locutus said:
I think that this is the first time this story where the internal dialogue acknowledged that Chiro is rhe true identity and that C was the mask.

And of course poor Chiro doesn't even realize or follow up on it, but the egg is cracking.
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Did not miss how Chiro defaulted to referring to the mystery person who definitely wasn't her with female pronouns when she got worked up near the end there.

(And Inessa followed suit but ofc she didn't notice)
 
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Theaxofwar said:
You know, this may be a crazy theory but I think Chiro… is actually C?

It's pretty subtle, but if you really analyze her pep-talk at the end of the episode, I think there are some hints to that conclusion. Maybe I'm just crazy though.
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This actually makes me genuinely curious how the show would be depicting Chiro "in disguise". While it would make sense with the "you can't recognize them without having already made the connection" magic being officially acknowledged, I'm not sure I see the show itself just straight up making Chiro and Invidia identical in appearance, if simply because of how this could potentially frustrate the audience, who would be stuck screaming "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON?!" at their screens every time one of the Saints interacts with her (not that said audience wouldn't obviously know what's going on anyways, but still). Not to mention an episode title like "The Fourth Saint?! A Mysterious Transfer Student Arrives" becomes almost parodic if you don't retain at least a veneer of plausible deniability regarding who this transfer student is.

I suppose the most logical assumption would be giving Chiro a different haircut/dye job outside of her transformation, but the visual similarity to Inessa is extremely important to Chiro's entire character motivation, as emphasized in this very chapter, so that's not actually as much of an option as one might think. Maybe they put a permanent sort of fog over her eyes as a visual reminder/representation of the other girls being unable to make the link? Or they just never show Chiro's face at all by always having something conveniently block it/always keeping her upper face out of frame? Or do they just leave it obvious and out in the open, letting moments where Ida points out Chiro and Inessa look like "sisters" become potential facepalm moments for those watching? I can't think of any real examples to compare it against at the moment; disguise magic like what's used here isn't usually officially canon in the first place, so it's hard to say what the most likely decision by the animators/adaptors would be.

(Basically, how would the anime either visually represent the disguise magic, or walk the fine line of depicting this from the Saints' perspective without it getting frustrating to watch?)
 
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Shadell said:
Her eyes practically seemed alight with an inner fire. No, on closer examination, those were, in fact, actual sparks. Her bracelet, likewise, had begun to glow red and I could see what seemed like the outline of a halo behind her head.

Even without transforming, I could see the image of wings stretching out behind her.

Abstractly, I felt that my words would somehow come back to haunt me. And yet, even my sin was pleased. Here was an Inessa Brandt worth copying.
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So this is absolutely Inessa not just getting her confidence and power back but also the Next Arc Power Up at the same time, right? And yeah, if that is indeed the (very likely) case then Invidia is in for a whole bunch of pain which she probably hopes is just physical with how much the other types terrify her.
 
Script Mak3r said:
But C turned into Invidia Bat, a cute, if very Inessa-like, bat girl. Still, though, the idea that she and Chiro are one and the same seems rather far-fetched.
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Besides, "Chiro" means "hand". Bats don't have hands, they have wings. If Chiro was gonna be an Abyssal Beast, she'd need to be something with hands. Or maybe tentacles.


Spectral Waltz said:
Maybe that just means she needs to be tricked into accepting help rather than having it forced on her but my respect for free will and intent does not extend to letting people destroy themselves because they think they deserve it.
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On a philosophical level, and in the specific context of C's self-destructive spiral, I agree. But between them...

Let's say C realized she was trans and told her father. C's dad sends her to conversion therapy, because he doesn't want to see his son destroy himself. On a philosophical level, the only difference between that and saving Chiro against her will is the value system used to evaluate destruction.

Helping someone avoid their willful self-destruction is morally good. But when you remove the sake-of-argument certainty that their behavior is self-destructive, it's just setting a threshold when you're willing to decide you know what's good for them better than they do.


Flairina said:
This actually makes me genuinely curious how the show would be depicting Chiro "in disguise".
[...]
I suppose the most logical assumption would be giving Chiro a different haircut/dye job outside of her transformation, but the visual similarity to Inessa is extremely important to Chiro's entire character motivation, as emphasized in this very chapter, so that's not actually as much of an option as one might think. [...]

(Basically, how would the anime either visually represent the disguise magic, or walk the fine line of depicting this from the Saints' perspective without it getting frustrating to watch?)
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I don't think that this story as written would 100% work as an anime with Inessa as the primary POV character. It was designed to have characters complement C's story, not Inessa's. So the question is really "What's the smallest change you'd have to make to make this work in a visual medium"?

I think that change would be Avaritia's makeovers. Make them a bit more extreme, at least to the point of giving Chiro a different hairstyle. (Like, Inessa has a hime cut and Chiro has pigtails, or Inessa has messy shonen hero hair and Chiro has a braid, or something.) Many anime have a chronic case of same-face syndrome, so changing Chiro's hair color and style would make them look almost as different from each other as they do from the other characters. Depending on how bad the same-face syndrome of their artstyle is, Chiro might just look like a green-haired girl the same height as Inessa.

Of course, in that case you have to worry that the green-haired villain looks too much like the green-haired transfer student. They both have green hair and eyes! Invidia's design would probably need to emphasize the bat features more. Or Avaritia's makeover would need to involve colored contact lenses.
 
Smh already unmistakably a woman and yet continues to insist she's a boy, Chiro's really got 4chan boymoder energy.
(This is a joke, please not murder)

Also wow, Prideman continues to be dense as usual! good job, Superbia.

This entire chapter just...ow, especially the way Chiro talks to Inessa about herself is...fuckin hell, I've done that- I've lost friendships to that, had to be talked out of that sort of thing several times. Brainworms about your value as a human being and a friend are one hell of a drug.
 
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GreatWyrmGold said:
I don't think that this story as written would 100% work as an anime with Inessa as the primary POV character. It was designed to have characters complement C's story, not Inessa's. So the question is really "What's the smallest change you'd have to make to make this work in a visual medium"?
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Hm. I don't think we get the story as written as the anime though; this is basically akin to a companion novel that tells the story rfrom a different perspective, so some of the details are likely different because we're seeing things from somebody else's POV, and there is more emphasis on how the events compliment C's character, while in the actual anime C is much more tertiary, given how outside what is clearly her mini-arc, she rarely features in the main plots of the episodes at all. As a result, there's huge chunks of the story that simply... wouldn't appear in the narrative because you're following Inessa or the Saints in general (I suspect that, for instance, the Ida-centric chapters had Ida's POV, because otherwise there is very little content for the episodes at all.)

I decided to actually go through the chapters and see what I think would be likely to be in the anime proper:

EPISODE 12:
- C gets kidnapped and rescued
- C meets up with the main cast
TIME: Probably around 5-6 minutes of screentime
EPISODE 13:
- Inessa finds an excuse to split up to fight Winter Rose
- They meet up with C affter the fight
- Inessa conversation with C after meeting Mr. Noir
TIME: Probably around 6-7 minutes of screentime
EPISODE 14:
- Temp and Inessa meet up after the game and confronting the monster
- Hears part of C's rant, probably near the tailend, though potentially a bit more.
- Potentially the end, where Lupin turns in Avaritia and kidnaps C
TIME: Roughly 5-6 miuntes of screentime
EPISODE 15:
Given that this is something that is buildup for C's mini-arc later, part of this episodei mo probably does take place from C's perspective
- At least part of the conversation with Avaritia,
- Probably part of the conversation with Superbia
- Part of the conversation while C is jailed, explaining Avaritia's flip-flopping mood toward her, possibly her recruitment speech
- C's incident with the tree
- Inessa's meet up with C after the fact (Likely back to Inessa's perspective)
TIME: Roughly 15-16 minutes, if you count the stuff from Inessa's POV. If not, probably around 10-12 minutes
EPISODE 16:
- The conversation with Inessa's parents at the beginning (this sets up for when C is invited to stay full-time later)
- C and Inessa meet up with Lupin, beginning to show Lupin wanting to be friends with C
- Potentially part of the dream as foreshadowing, per haps not, since from Inessa's POV you could see it fully happen anyway
TIME: Roughly 5 minutes I'd say, if you count a bit of the dream, 6-7
EPISODE 17:
- C meets up with Inessa at the beginning, convo about Michael, a bit of the exposition is probably not in there, since the audience would know that already
- Group investigates Mr. Noir's old headquarters
- The tailend of the meetup and bit with Michael where C isn't qualified is definitely shown, a lot of the rest is exposition the audience already knows, so it probbably wouldn't be
- Potentially the scene with C and Ida afterwards
TIME: Roughly 8 minutes

I could keep going but overall if you cut the C POV stuff I actually tihnk it being a decent capturing of the events of the show from Inessa and CO's perspective is decently workable timeframe wise? You would probably need to rush one or two of them where the plotline is clearly substnatially different from C's perspective, but that could just mean I'm overselling the amount of screentime those sscenes have, or including scenes that wouldn't be in the original. The main exception, I think, is C's episode introducing Invidia where you would have to basically have it entirely/largely from C's perspective for a lot of it to make any sense whatsoever. Not to mention that we don't know what the first 12 episodes were like, which may have material that lead to even more of this being cut if the foreshadowing becomes redundant in some sense.
 
Clown Bean said:
I decided to actually go through the chapters and see what I think would be likely to be in the anime proper:
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This is probably about right, though I do think C gets a few short scenes on her own in there.

Rather, the episodes probably don't actually line up in 24 minute chunks because I get to cheat like that, so there's a lot of non-C content and the proportion is about right, but there's just a bit too much shown.

Flairina said:
This actually makes me genuinely curious how the show would be depicting Chiro "in disguise". While it would make sense with the "you can't recognize them without having already made the connection" magic being officially acknowledged, I'm not sure I see the show itself just straight up making Chiro and Invidia identical in appearance, if simply because of how this could potentially frustrate the audience, who would be stuck screaming "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON?!" at their screens every time one of the Saints interacts with her (not that said audience wouldn't obviously know what's going on anyways, but still). Not to mention an episode title like "The Fourth Saint?! A Mysterious Transfer Student Arrives" becomes almost parodic if you don't retain at least a veneer of plausible deniability regarding who this transfer student is.
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Honestly, it probably leans on dramatic irony. The audience knows where that's going and this isn't a subtle genre. They see her disguise and they see her get conflicted as Ida quietly hones in on trying to recruit her.
 
The Ira thing leaves me speculating - if that was a more natural or viable sin, did her seed have to really work to encourage Gluttony? That could have been part of what helped her leave, if she was less tempted by it somehow. (And implicitly Wrath would have been harder to resist or more natural, so maybe Ira Shark would still be working for team sin.)
 
Shadell said:
Of course even that stopped mattering as I crossed the school grounds well before the first bell. Temperance was by the doors.
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Yeah, she might not be happy about what you did.
Shadell said:
"Let's talk," she said finally and began to walk away from school.

I wanted to complain. School is important after all! And Chiro was new! I didn't want to get a reputation for playing hooky on my second day!!!
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C, you're in no position to complain.
Shadell said:
"I was going to be Ira," Temperance non-sequitured instead.

"What?" I asked. I didn't know why Temperance had decided to share, but the information that the eternally calm Temperance had planned to consume a seed so at odds with her everything. It was simply too distracting a revelation to bypass, whatever the rhetorical ploy.
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No, really? :V
Shadell said:
"Avaritia was right to trick me into taking Gluttony," Temperance conceded. I wondered how long that realization had taken her. "Wrath suited me too well. Indulging was different. Even then, it didn't help in the end. It was something new and exciting until it got bitter. And then, I couldn't say no to Inessa when she told me to change. I thought Avaritia would follow."
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Like taking drugs, there's the high and good feels at first, but then there is only misery.
Shadell said:
"No," she admitted at last. "But, Chiro," the emotion seemed to drain from her faceas she spoke, until her voice was a freezing monotone, "We all want to help you. But, if you take advantage of letting you stay at school to hurt Inessa again, I will end you."
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Temperance is becoming my favorite character.
Shadell said:
"Inessa's fine, physically," Temperance added a few minutes later.
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Yes. Physically.
Shadell said:
"Hi," I replied, somehow ignoring the contradictory urges to scream, attack her, run and break down begging for forgiveness. I didn't manage to say anything else. At least, I could take solace in knowing that she would finally see me for the monster I was from now on. Really, it was a kindness to crush the illusions she had held onto over a boy who'd never been real.

It also helped that Ida seemed as pained by Inessa's pretenses as I was. That didn't help make second period any easier. Inessa's malaise even lingered past her physical presence, haunting us all through third period chemistry. Ida and I barely managed to exchange any words.
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Are you proud of yourself yet?
Shadell said:
He eyed me silently for a few moments, "I must say, I did not expect this degree of aberration, boy."

For once he wasn't twisting things around. My sin had transformed me in strange ways. And yet, it still inspired a spike of icy rage that threatened to overcome my instinctive fear at his presence.

He surveyed me for a few moments, those horrible eyes meeting my own until I could no longer meet his gaze. Then he shrugged, "perhaps you are not quite of the caliber I initially thought, but it is clear you embody Invidia well. I am glad to see that you have not entirely failed to reach the potential I saw in you."
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And Superbia reminds us why he is the King of Colossal Assholes.
Shadell said:
Ida was clearly counting on us to help cheer Inessa up and turning her down would have made Chiro seem like a monster and obviously that would break my cover. So I had no choice but to agree to attend. It was simply completely outside my control.
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I does think that the lady doth protest too much.
Shadell said:
She looked desperately toward Inessa and me, "I-is it too much to want a boy that doesn't mind that I'm as tall as he is, or stronger than him, who won't tell me to act girlier, and who actually cares about improving himself like I do? Is it so bad to want someone who can keep up with you?"
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Not at all, but I don't think it is possible to keep up with you. You need to take a breather, Ida.
Shadell said:
"I'm not sure," I said, hesitating. I could imbue her right now, allowing her to sprout in the next few hours and taking care of my obligations to Superbia. But, this was Ida's cousin's shop. It could get destroyed. Would this be breaking my deal with Temperance? And… could I really just do that again? Mr. Brown had been one thing. His anger demanded release; but Kelly's sin was smaller for now. I ached to set it free, as I always craved sin's release, but it was harder to justify forcing it.
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Chiro, no!
Shadell said:
"Actually," I said, wincing at a sudden burst of tightness in my chest, "let's change things up a lot. Something shorter? More stylish? Like a…." My sin writhed in irritation under my skin. Its roots gently tightened around my heart and it tore at the underside of my skin, peeling away at me as if to say this mask was a gift and a reminder, and if I refused to play my part it could be torn off of me at any moment. And yet, Avaritia had said pushing it could be good, to learn more about myself and… I just wanted to sit down and change my look like I was a real girl who could just do that and not look in the mirror and see even her hair tell her how fake she was. It was just my hair. It wasn't like I wouldn't still know.

The flickers of agony were one thing. Just as fundamental a problem is that I wasn't a real girl. I had not been schooled in the arcane language of describing hair styles. I fumbled for a word, anything to avoid looking like an imposter, "Maybe a bob?"

Kelly ran a hand through my hair, gently undoing my ponytail and handing me the scrunchy, "Yeah, I think that could work well for you. Let's get you washed up and get to it."

I let out a relieved squeak, satisfied to have passed this test as Kelly escorted me from her chair to one of the sinks and began gently shampooing my hair. It felt relaxing enough that I could almost ignore Invidia's discontent.

Instead, I dipped a metaphorical fang into Kelly's sin. I had to know what made her feel so similar to me to decide whether I would release her. Hers was no great mystery. She saw Nia, who wasn't much older than her, running the entire salon and she wanted that for herself. Alone, that wouldn't have been enough to stimulate my seed. But, she buried it down deeper and deeper, acting ever the kind friend and loyal subordinate as she denied her own desires and resentment, pushing it under worlds of pressure.

I managed to hold it back until she was wrapping up my hair and talking about all the other ways I would get pampered today. But my sin was unhappy with me, and this restraint was one imposition too many. A flicker of weakness was all it took to let Envy's thorns pierce my skin, to let myself push a single drop of sap into her chest. We were close enough that it wasn't hard to hide.
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Well, it seems that the power has more control than you'd like and is willing to show you the worst way possible if you're not being right type of evil enough.
Shadell said:
Bad Cut mashed its blade-arms together in an effort to separate Nia's head from her body. Fortunately, Nia slipped and fell to the ground in shock, leaving the blades to close over empty air.

Diligentia's familiar "Steadfast as the Earth" followed a few moments later as the Saint of Diligence rammed into Bad Cut with her shield, shoving the Resinner through the salon's doors and into the street.

I winced at the sound of shattering glass. How expensive would the repairs be? Would Nia have to give up on the store because I couldn't control my sin?
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Are you proud of yourself yet?!
Shadell said:
"No, there's no one who doesn't deserve saving! But… if trying to help just made things worse, how am I supposed to fix things?"

That I couldn't stand. Still, after all my betrayals, after showing her I could still stand on my own as a magical girl every bit her equal, Inessa Brandt refused to see that any of it was my choice. To her I remained an object in her story. Even now, she refused to abandon me, refused to just let me sink into the Abyss. Her doubts weren't over her misjudgement, but the fact that she'd failed to pull me out of the mud on her own.

I bit my lip, "Have you even asked?" I snapped.

"What?" she asked, taken off guard by my bitterness.

"Have you actually ever looked her properly in the eye and asked her if she wants you to save her? Does she want to go back to that status quo where she's always waiting on you to save her and can't take a single step forward for herself?" that wasn't fair, Inessa asked how I was doing all the time, "And if you didn't see she was jealous, have you ever really seen her at all?"
Inessa hesitated. In the silence, I could hear Ida's shouts, followed by the sound of something breaking.

"What do you mean?" Inessa asked finally.

"Maybe she doesn't need saving. Maybe she needs to find a way to stand up on her own and talking about saving her just makes her remember how terrible and worthless she is. Maybe what she needs is someone who will actually respect her enough to let her make her bed and lie in it. If she wants to be your enemy, just accept that she's your enemy and stop ignoring everything she does or giving it a pass when she hurts you like she's not even responsible for her own actions."

I was hyperventilating.

"N-not that I know anything about the situation, sorry. That's just… I think it would really feel pretty rough to have your friends act like they can fix you." Yes, that was very smooth. Inessa was absolutely about to call my bluff.

Instead, she sat pensively in silence for a few moments.

"Then," she asked, with more than a hint of desperation, "What do I do?"

"I don't know! I'm not that person!" I said like someone remembering that they definitely weren't supposed to know what was going on, "Maybe you just need to accept that you can't go back to whatever status quo they clearly don't want! Maybe you sit down and just face her on her own terms for once instead of deciding how things should be like that's your job!"
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You know, it is happening in a rather weird way, but this is the first time C is actually talking about her issues with Inessa, instead of just plastering a smile and saying that everything is fine, or flip-flopping between "I'm not really doing anything bad, I'm not actually bad." internal monologues and "I'm bad and evil, why won't you just hate me?!" rants.

For the first time C is actually airing out, though still in a rather roundabout way, what does she want and how she has been feeling, instead of just bottling it all up or expecting people to read her mind.
Shadell said:
Her eyes practically seemed alight with an inner fire. No, on closer examination, those were, in fact, actual sparks. Her bracelet, likewise, had begun to glow red and I could see what seemed like the outline of a halo behind her head.

Even without transforming, I could see the image of wings stretching out behind her.
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Yeah, Castitas is back.
 
Clown Bean said:
Hm. I don't think we get the story as written as the anime though; this is basically akin to a companion novel that tells the story rfrom a different perspective, so some of the details are likely different because we're seeing things from somebody else's POV, and there is more emphasis on how the events compliment C's character, while in the actual anime C is much more tertiary, given how outside what is clearly her mini-arc, she rarely features in the main plots of the episodes at all.
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I'd thought of it as a fanfic based on a queer reading of the original anime. A surprising number of anime/manga have male characters who transform into girls but are explicitly called out as not being trans, don't worry. (Citation: trans women bitching about it on Tumblr.) And more importantly, the "disguise magic" thing feels like a headcanon someone would invent to explain why Charleton is the only person who ever figured out that Inessa is Castitas or how Temperance is the only person who recognized Avaritia or Invidia at school.


Icipall said:
Temperance is becoming my favorite character.
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Took you long enough. :p

Are you proud of yourself yet?
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No, she's envious. Keep up.
Are you proud of yourself yet?!
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Nope, still envious.

You know, it is happening in a rather weird way, but this is the first time C is actually talking about her issues with Inessa, instead of just plastering a smile and saying that everything is fine, or flip-flopping between "I'm not really doing anything bad, I'm not actually bad." internal monologues and "I'm bad and evil, why won't you just hate me?!" rants.

For the first time C is actually airing out, though still in a rather roundabout way, what does she want and how she has been feeling, instead of just bottling it all up or expecting people to read her mind.
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Maybe putting on a mask was good for her, actually.
 
Random thought popped up to me. I wonder if, from the show perspective, it looked like Chiro specifically planned the Resinner to get Inessa motivated again and talk with her privately, if it being an accident was off screen :thonk:
 
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Okay so people have been doing "good feedback" and "sensible analysis"

i will not be doing that. because im a dumb baby. instead i will be acting in the manner befitting how i interact with actual magical girl media. i will be pointing at the straight girl and saying "lesbian"

Shadell said:
Worse, while Temperance had decided to ignore my existence completely for the moment and Inessa remained In A Mood, Ida was worse than either. For whatever reason, she seemed to have fixated on Chiro: dragging me around, forcing me to eat lunch with the group despite my presence worsening the tensions already tearing things apart, and otherwise trying to befriend me at every opportunity.

Fortunately Ida's schedule remained an exercise in self-flagellation. She had relatively little time to breathe, sleep, or stalk new friends and it was only during classes and lunch that she proved inescapable.

Or it should have been like that. Except, during lunch on Thursday, she'd openly defied the mood to gloat about a rare free Saturday and invited everyone to join her on an outing to a new salon a family member was running.
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ida seen here becoming fixated on The New Girl, who she is spending all her time on. also noting that her schedule is explicitly proclaimed to stop her doing this, however she is then cunningly able to clear space in her schedule to go to a salon with her New Friend(tm)

i am declaring this lesbianism.

Shadell said:
"And who are you dating now?" Inessa asked rhetorically.

Ida deflated, "no one," she admitted.

"And why is that?" Inessa ruthlessly slammed shut the jaws of her trap.

"I don't know! They kept complaining that we never had any time to do things together, but we always did lots of stuff together!"

Inessa tutted, "Ida, Ida Ida…" then she turned to me and explained for my benefit, "she had Javed agree to manage the girls basketball team and then kept having 'study sessions' with him where she actually just studied the whole time."

Ida had the grace to blush, "How was I supposed to know that Javed didn't mean studying when he said I should come over to study! Studying is important and working side by side with your boyfriend just seems like it would be really nice…"

She looked desperately toward Inessa and me, "I-is it too much to want a boy that doesn't mind that I'm as tall as he is, or stronger than him, who won't tell me to act girlier, and who actually cares about improving himself like I do? Is it so bad to want someone who can keep up with you?"
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MEANWHILE we are hearing that with her boyfriends she is like "yes i could never clear space for them in my schedule and they never wanted to just hang out with her in situations it was impossible or improbable to render non-platonic bc my idea of what is good about boyfriend having is the bit where i have a boyfriend not the bit where we interact"

and we are also hearing that she wants a boyfriend who doesnt mind being smaller and cuter than her. i am POINTING at the straight girl and saying "lesbian".

also "is it so bad to want someone who can keep up with you" like another magical girl. like a magical girl with a powerset explicitly themed around seeing someone else succeed and replicating their success to consistently try to keep up with them.

i have connected the dots. my brainworms are terminal. I am Ida/Chiro's strongest soldier. (also they would both be SO normal about this ship, i think,)
 
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To join the brainrot corner, I'm not totally convinced that these "boyfriends" are real, frankly. It's worth noting that I may be forgetting something, but "Ida boyfriend" and just "boyfriend" searching turns up literally just this chapter. It is canon that Ida is already pulling herself incredibly thin, yet basically never has mentioned them before or seemed to have any time when her messy schedule directly contradicts with the boyfriend dates. I even searched Javed specifically, and he is somebody that has never been mentioned before either. Despite all the talk about Ida's obligations, he has not been mentioned once.

So we must ask ourselves, what is more likely? That despite Chiro's knowledge of Ida's massive schedule, she knew nothing about these boyfriends that Ida apparently never mentioned- since she explicitly says that this is from stuff she heard from Inessa- and as far as we can tell Inessa also knows nothing about any of these boyfriends except what Ida told her despite being even more familiar with Ida's personal life, that she just happens to not have had any opportunity to bring and meet with her best friends and basically always keeps at a massive distance?

OR that Ina either is generating them out of pure comphet because she believes girls Are SUPPOSED to be interested in boys, that that is how things WORK, so she pretends like she totally has boyfriends honest they just are at another school in another class so you can't meet them, and they always fall apart before Ida has to present them to her friends in any capacity. Or potentially to double-down into straightness as a coping mechanism for feelings for Inessa, who was so clearly crushing on Lupin, and somebody who cares as much about her friends as Ida would obviously not want to put a wrench into that.

Or as pointed out to me, the fact that she seems to see a male romantic relationship as something that simply involves doing schoolwork together and not, you know, anything romantic whatsoever feels like it could be suggestive in its own right.
 
Playing ace's advocate here, since "Inviting your 'girlfriend' over for a study session and then spend the entire time studying" is an actual thing I did back in High School. One girl in my theatre class I 'dated' for like 3 months until she broke up with me, which was the first time I was made aware of the relationship. (Baby Ace me litteraly had no idea why she thought we were dating just because we hung out constantly, held hands, hugged and cuddled all the time etc...)
 
Skip Sandwich said:
Playing ace's advocate here, since "Inviting your 'girlfriend' over for a study session and then spend the entire time studying" is an actual thing I did back in High School. One girl in my theatre class I 'dated' for like 3 months until she broke up with me, which was the first time I was made aware of the relationship. (Baby Ace me litteraly had no idea why she thought we were dating just because we hung out constantly, held hands, hugged and cuddled all the time etc...)
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Normalize queerplatonic relationships, everyone
 
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