"Well, I'm just grounded and he took my phone. It's really not that bad!"
"And honestly," I cut in before Inessa could leap to the wrong conclusion, "it's not like he's wrong. Like, he warned me I'd be in trouble if I skipped again any time soon and, well,"
Woooohf. This is really well-written, but cuts a little too close to home. Ironically, the more explicitly abusive stuff later on didn't hit quite so hard for me specifically, (not anything to do with writing quality, just lack of such baggage I'm bringing to the table) but this part, this made me need to put my phone down for a while.
"Yes the controlling behavior and arbitrary restrictions of communication as a punishment hurts, but I'm not even allowed to be mad about it because I've been talked circles into everything being my fault and my fault only in the first place."
Idk if that's TMI to share, but just, gah.
Inessa's face shifted to a look of personal horror.
"C! It's… it's awful," she said quietly.
I forced down the bile that rose to my throat.
Inessa blinked, then shook her head furiously, "N-no, I mean, it's awful I… I've been misgendering em this whole time! Ey probably hate me now and even if ey turns good ey'll never want to date me and…"
She paused, clamping one hand over her mouth, "I-I'm a lesbian, is it transphobic that I have a crush on em?!"
Hahaha! I'm sure there's some level of putting on a brave face happening here, but all the same it's nice to see she's not as crushed as C (and I) feared. She already wanted to help Avaritia; that Avaritia is also Lupin just gives even more motivation to that. She may be Castitas, but her inner Luxuria isn't going anywhere soon.¹ Go get your wolfenby, girl! The ship is battered, but still ready to set sail!
¹(Though now that I think about it, given Avaritia's reaction to C back when ey thought 'he' was Luxuria, this could be a problem for Inessa in the long run. : / Ship's more battered than I thought, but I'll still believe in it!)
"She knew?"
"That Avaritia was Lupin!" Inessa groaned, "And she just let me crush on em without saying anything and now she won't even say why she won't talk or when she figured it out or anything that might help us…"
"I know Temperance knows more about Avaritia and, sure she wants to save em more than anyone probably, but, she can trust us, right?
Times like this, I simultaneously love that Temperance's inner workings are such a mystery from C's POV, and also would do
anything to get more of a peek inside her head. From context and everything, it seems that she's genuinely stuck in a suboptimal situation here, (and by all accounts, not exactly a master of tact and social grace-under-pressure) where even if she's turned her back on Superbia's miniature cult, she still very much cares about Avaritia and wants to avoid doing anything that might drive em even further into his claws, and outing eir secret identity could very easily risk doing exactly that.
On the other hand, it does feel sometimes like she's biding her time a little too much, to the point I had even wondered a bit here, if she was doing some sort of long-game playing both sides bit. I don't think that's really likely now, but still not
entirely out of the realm of possibility. Temperance is a good virtue, but taken to an extreme, it can be indecisiveness or a refusal to commit... (Kind of the basis behind one of my own Magical Girl villains.)
What does feel more accurate, though, is that her trust in her new friends
is still kinda shaky at the moment, and honestly? I like that. Lots of redemption plotlines have a pretty quick allegiance flip, the ex-villain going all-in on Team Good even if their morals are still shaky, or probably pretty apologetic or awkward about their past misdeeds. ("Zuko here!") So it's interesting to see a case where all that stuff isn't so much of an issue, but the reformed antagonist is still as wary of the heroes as they might have initially been of her. In this case it's easy to say that that caution is excessive, because Inessa and Ida clearly have her back 110%, but it's still pretty understandable keeping in mind that she has now escaped from
two abusive environments with people she presumably once trusted. Twice bitten thrice shy.
At the same time as all that, I also really feel for Inessa here, and I still feel like she's right to be angry too, especially if Temperance is
still stonewalling them. People have commented after this chapter about the embarassment Inessa must feel over all this, but my takeaway was it could easily have been much worse than that. Sure, she's bounced back from the reveal pretty well, all things considered, but before now, it seemed to me like she was cruising hard for complete heartbreak, and Temperance didn't say a thing. Like, I love our blahaj lady, and I think I get her reasons for holding back, but that's still not a great look, yanno?
"Because she was Gula," Inessa spoke slowly, as if explaining a very obvious fact to a particularly forgetful person.
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" It wasn't like I deserved to hold a grudge against Temperance for what she'd done as Gula. She'd saved my life since then; gone out of her way to help me. She'd been nothing but nice to me in the time after she'd apparently stopped kidnapping me. I couldn't even bring myself to hate Avaritia who'd done so much worse to me. And she'd hidden it.
"Oops," Inessa winced.
I looked at Temperance as she ate her lunch in silence. She looked like the same odd girl I'd come to trust and like all winter; apparently, the same girl who kept getting me caught up in her schemes before that. Did I really know her at all? And, Inessa and Ida had known and no one had said a thing. Did I belong here at all?
And yeah, here's the rub. It's not about what was done, she's made up for that. (Even if I still kinda wanna see just what Gula Shark at her peak was like.) It's the lack of transparency. (Even if I can more than understand Temperance's reluctance to admit to everything, and the other two not wanting to speak for her.) Secrets are hard, trust is hard, and I really really love this as a situation where none of the parties are really in the wrong, even as they end up at cross-purposes.
(But goodness, I really
really wish we had a chance to see villainous Gula and C interactions, and just when C went from "useful target, exploitably close to the enemy" to "ooh, egg to crack!
And then make my wife and eat for breakfast every day..." in her eyes, and if that shift showed through in any of her Resinners or other schemes.)
"I hadn't found him yet," she clarified belatedly, dropping the tension at the table by an order of magnitude.
Okay, that does help
significantly, whew.
"We," Inessa's voice shook. "We want to help Avaritia. You can trust us!"
"I do." The words were barely more than a whisper, lifting a silent burden that Temperance did not bother to explain.
I love this moment so damn much, especially on the heels of what I said above about Temperance's wariness. This feels like both a confirmation and a realization. She has come to genuinely trust them, but only now is she getting that memo herself. Beautiful little bit of catharsis even amidst C's spiral, and even if we didn't get to see the arc that led to this, it still carries impact. I also like that as reinforcement that C's perspective is not absolute or the only one that matters; everyone has their own context, their own private journeys.
It hasn't been easy for him, you know?"
"C," her voice was strained. "It hasn't been easy for you and you weren't the one shouting.
"I mean, sneaking out of being grounded probably wouldn't make things better when I went back." I shook my head. She couldn't be offering more than that. I couldn't let her be offering more than that.
Inessa reached an arm out toward me, then froze awkwardly. "That's not what—" slowly the arm fell to her side. "Right. Just, we're here for you, okay?"
Fuuuck. : (
He hadn't thrown the bottle to make me pay attention. He'd meant to hit me and missed.
I stumbled to the door, and took one last look back.
"Fine then," he slurred, "be like your mom."
I ran.
Like I said, this part didn't hit me as hard on a personal level... but it still fucking
hits. The slow escalation of the argument, the part where C refers to needing to 'manage' her dad's responses really spelling things out, then the broken glass and reminder of the hole in their lives.
I don't blame Mom for not looking back, if this is what she was running from; as much as I wish she could have taken C with when she went, sometimes that isn't in the cards; you have to help yourself before you can help your loved ones. Abuse is like airplane cabin depressurization in that way. (Or at least, that's the interpretation I'm choosing to go with. A more heartbreaking possibility is that she saw the stuff C was internalizing and felt 'he' was on 'his' way to becoming another Dad. Would be interesting in a tragic way, but I hope it's not that.)
Also, I see that double meaning. (I wonder how Mom would feel if she did eventually come back for her son, only to find she has a daughter instead.)
(...Or, for that matter, that her daughter is also a bat now!)
So, I wiped a few freezing tears out of my eyes and started walking. A boy shouldn't have been crying to start with of course, but that was his rule, so it didn't matter.
Baby steps. Small, but powerful.
I wondered about that. I couldn't imagine what better would be like, not really. Maybe, in time, things would scar over with dad. It felt wrong to hope for that, but a part of me did anyway. But what then? Did I have a goal? A passion? Was there anything better than silly little dreams and the selfish fear of hurting others to justify existing in the end?
I hate (and by that I mean love) how well you convey the grey fog of hopelessness here. Some of that is obviously depression speaking, especially given C is pretty lucky in a way to have the unconditional support of the Brandts, but some of it is the deeper, very real issues of building a self and a future after spending so long suppressing the former and staving off the latter. Unfortunately, immediately after escaping is probably the
worst time to be thinking about such massive, long-term problems, but again, that's the depression at play.
Mostly, I tried to crush her for managing to be the kind of person who was able to keep loving me when I didn't deserve it.
Of course they fought back; they pushed, and refused to bow to the dark. No matter how high above them silent wings bore me through the night, they still sent me tumbling back to earth. The pain too was good.
Tonight Avaritia didn't fight. Ey knew, for all we couldn't talk, that I needed to fight alone, even if it broke me.
Three paragraphs in a row to stab me repeatedly in the stomach, ow. Beautiful work, but OW.
(I saw some people saying Avaritia holding back here was kinda hypocritical at best, if not outright suspiciously convenient, but honestly, IMO it would have been more of a dick move on eir part to intervene here. Sometimes you just need to let this stuff out on your own. (Preferably not on your friends via their own elemental powers, but that's a whole other issue from Avaritia's thing.) Maybe I'm just taking things at face value too much, but for all that ey get caught up in all these big philisophical justifications for ultimately still being on the wrong side, ey don't strike me as being as manipulative as some people seem to be ascribing to em.)
I would do evil,
evil things without remorse if it could get this fight scene animated properly. It feels like the kind where the usual tone of the series' fight music is instead replaced with something much darker and more emotional, Invidia Bat's lietmotif coming into clearer focus to set up it's proper debut at the episode's ending. Even if the Saints and audience don't just yet know why she is fighting so intensely this time, the sorrow behind the sonic-screaming rage is still clearly evident; and even if they do pull through in the end, it's one of the first times (in recent episodes anyway) where it feels like they could legitimately lose before they manage to rally together.
If I could somehow convince some anime studio to consider adapting Sufficient Velocity works into a series, there are really just two I know that I'd pick, but ALV would absolutely be one of those two. And unlike the other, this one doesn't even have "I proofread for this" bias behind my choice.
The phone was dead of course, and it seemed like he had forgotten to send a charger.
"Forgotten", uh huh. Sure.
sitting in a park wearing what I somehow knew was a pair of green apple studs.
"They're almost as bright as your eyes," Inessa noted, feigning comprehension.
Aww shiiit, here we gooo
If they were real, I had hurt my friends again and again because deep down I….
I envied them.
I envied them. And not in the passing way, I'd often admitted. Deeper than admiration or love or friendship, I envied them so much it hurt to be in their presence.
AW SHIIIIIT, HERE WE GOOOOO
And yet.. It wasn't real, not yet. It was enough to let me act in dreams, to twist my perception enough that I could lie to myself, to let me put up all the walls I needed to draw on its power, but, my sin didn't own me. I could feel it inside me and it was clear. There was no real point to sin if it wasn't something you chose.
AAAAAAA THIS IS SO FUCKED AND I LOVE IT : D
(The seed can be planted without consent, but it can't bloom without it, this is so perfect, just, aaaaaaaaaa)
I thought of the last time I'd been in this very park, how much I'd fantasized about the other choice. This was a fair compromise wasn't it? It was wrong, but, they couldn't blame themselves for this.
I SUPPOSE SO BUT AAAAAAA
"I think I'm, umm, that mystery beast," I scratched the back of my head.
Temperance was the fastest to react, slipping back into a wary position, toying with a bracelet on her wrist, no doubt ready to transform.
Ida was only slightly slower, positioning herself in front of the blue haired girl, poised to buy time, to take the hits if I decided to, once again, attack the only people who cared about me in the world.
Inessa leaned toward me instead, "Are you sure?" She knew I was hanging by a thread. And yet, she alone didn't even think I might hurt her.
Lmao, love that last bit of awkwardness, C is still C even when she's trying so hard not to be. And the reactions are all so good too.
Something inside me writhed in joy and I found I somehow knew exactly what came next. I raised one hand and dragged it across my face. "Verdant winds of Invidia, change me!"
MUAHAHAHAHAHA YESSS LETS FUCJING GOOOOOOOOO
I smiled at them, tongue flicking across one of my fangs.
"With a jealous scream to shatter the night, Invidia Bat has arrived!" I let my hand fall to my side, dipping low into a curtsy and wrapping myself in my wings.
"Nice to meet you."
Goddamn, what an ending. Part of me feels weird about being so insanely hyped and elated about this development, what with it being pretty much the peak (so far, anyway, I feel like there's still room for it to get even worse before it can get better) of C's worst impulses and self-destructiveness, but I am always down for a good Maximum Drama reveal like this. That transformation sequence was beautiful as well.
But really, there's a certain catharsis to this, after C has spent so long slowly circling the drain, to finally take the plunge. In a way it had to happen, even if it's obviously not good for them, for better things to come later. Sure, good things were already an option now, but she would never have been in the mindset to accept them, (objects at rest stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force²) so functionally speaking, this was the only real outcome. Has to get worse before it gets better, and I am at once terrified and morbidly excited to see just how deep this hole can go before C is finally willing to take the ropes Inessa throws down.
²
Idk, maybe just projecting personal Stuff a little too much again, my own stagnance and executive dysfunction could really use a Dark Magical Girl transformation or something to be a shock to the system. Except I'd probably just be Acedia Serpent, and double down on the problem... I digress.
Fucking
excellent chapter, painful in the best ways. Again, I would love to see this animated, whether as Shining Virture Angelic Heart, a more direct adaptation of A Little Vice, or somehow both.
Temperance: Oh my god, it makes so much sense now, why you look like Inessa!
Invidia: (Yes, I am a horrible creature deserving of scorn, only able to fake the virtues of others, hate me now that you see the depth of my depravity... etc. etc.)
Temperance: You're sisters!
Invidia: *dies instantly probably*
I am always mad when clone plotlines don't end in "surprise I have a twin now!" adoption, and always a happy mess when they do. This may not be exactly the same thing, but it's still close enough in principle that my stance should be clear.
INESSA.
THE GAY'S TOO STRONG FOR ANY OF THIS SHIT.
Goddamn if the Saint of Chastity's libido can't survive anything.
"is it transphobic if I have a crush on em" GIRL YOU GOT VILLAIN MONOLOGUED AT AND THIS IS THE ONLY THING YOU'RE GIVING ANY GRAVITY???
I can't believe Avaritia is sleeping on this maniac.
Hopefully someday Avaritia will instead be sleeping with this maniac.
(As in, in the same bed, as a couple. Verdict's still out on whether Lupin is ace or not, so cracking jokes about the more euphemistic interpretation feels weird to me. ^.^; )
This sure is uh. Conveying how tentative this side switch is.
And Inessa isn't even actually that upset, she's just "Ugh, this is frustrating, she let me embarrass myself for this long!"
There's so many layers to how C is blatantly the only one who takes any of this as like. Major Issues.
I mean, I kinda got the vibe that it does run deeper than this, but that level of stuff is something Inessa is keeping to herself until she can work through it, and has every right to.
C is the worst case example, but doesn't have a monopoly on downplaying her issues to not unduly burden her friends.
But yeah, at the same time, the fact that despite how terrible yesterday was, Inessa can still find it in herself to stay hopeful not just for her chances of reaching Avaritia, but her chances
with em, is definitely a good sign. So hopefully that will in turn reflect on her and Temperance figuring things out after this strain on her trust.
There's something so sad about this. That Avaritia used to be Temperance's whole world and C doesn't get that because. C wasn't there.
Like I said above about Mom leaving C with Dad, I think Temperance leaving Avaritia with Superbia had to have been an extremely painful call, but probably the best thing she could have done for herself under the circumstances. But given what's been implied about their history, I wouldn't be surprised if it still tears her up inside every single day. There's a clear determination to save em, obviously, but the fact she had to choose, that Avaritia still refuses to let emself be freed the way ey once freed Gula³... It must still feel on some level like running away and abandoning em. Temperance needs hugs.
³(Now
there's a parallel and a half with C and Inessa...)
Frankly, I think I'm just as invested in their story together as in C's.
Just sipping coffee on the depression bench (I mean, honestly it might be the good decision bench, but I feel that streak's gonna get broken.
It sure is the Decisions Of All Time bench now, lol. Good decisions, bad decisions, mixed decisions, such distinctions are unimportant; it is simply the bench of MOST Decision Per Decision.
The C grindset. Be kind, refuse to be helped even as your pain hurts others around you. Resent others for your pain and loneliness.
It is understandable, but really shows how fucked up C's kindness is.
I don't have anything extra to say here, this just really sums a lot up so well.
Also, Where The Wild Things Are, the book C liked reading with her mom, might have some connection? A place of monsters you enter after putting on a costume, and it welcomes you.
Goddamn, I love stealthy symbolism like this.
I had a sad realization a while ago, thinking about the castle, and so I must share it - Avaritia is exactly the type of person who has probably kept Temperance's room exactly how it was when she left. Superbia might be the type to destroy it in a petty fit, but he also doesn't seem like he pays a ton of attention to where people live or what they have there, so I would bet he didn't.
Which means there might be a room Avaritia still keeps clean, in an otherwise empty castle. Probably still full of stolen clothes and blahaj and everything.
I think I remember, back during the original visit to the castle, a description of a bunch of different rooms they were passing on the way to C's cell in the dungeons, and I was wondering if the pool was Gula's old room or something. I guess it would probably be something a bit more normal than that, but I do just kinda love the idea of Temperance still just like, casually living underwater because she still has gills or something, spent so long in transformed form that they just sorta got baked in. Maybe that's why we haven't seen or visited her home; she's made herself a little magically-concealed apartment at the bottom of the city pool or somewhere like that. Comes to school smelling like chlorine and everyone's too used to it to question or even notice it anymore.
Jeez, imagine. The Saints are grievously wounded. Invidia, horrified, defeats the Beasts herself* and lives as a recluse in the Abyssal Forest, never reached again by those who cared for her.
Although the vampire countess living in a gothic castle in a dark forest is nice imagery.
Years later Inessa finds her and there's a whole thing about it.
This is the kind of angsty, dramatic, yet cathartic premise I live for. Inessa won't give up on her friend/sister/side-ho/something even after all of that.
In regards to the "greater bad", Lupin did say that where eir from forced people to be "good" to their own detriment, could be that the greater foe, once superbia has been taken down, is whoever superbia, avaritia, and gula fled from/rebelled against.
Honestly, this is where my money is at right now. I could definitely see something compelling coming of confronting the flipside of Too Much Sin, where Virtue is a cudgel of oppression, and could work well with finally bringing Avaritia around. I know some people have said it seems unlikely given how chill Michael is, but I honestly doubt this other group has any connection to Michael in the first place.
Nah the propper question to ask for AMVs is which of Evanescence or Linking Park is the primary AMV band ?
Maybe this is just bias from Magical Girl Phantom Ascension, (which
@SpoopyGhost has outright said in the past she plans to use Evanescence songs for certain pivotal scenes in) but I feel like the former isn't being given her dues. I like a good Linkin Park AMV here and there too, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't quite fit right with ALV to me.
View: https://youtu.be/QegFwKN9EZg?si=G1AijCb4byJGfy0p
This, however, just
screams Invidia Bat to me.
Mostly made by the the Brandt couple. That's their current plan for getting C into the family.
"Plan Adoption failed, we'll get them next time."
Now I'm just picturing if a full Avaritia/Inessa/C/Temperance/Avaritia(again) polycule somehow happens, the Brandts' confused but not unhappy response to realizing just how much game their daughter has, and having four kids now instead of just one or the intended two.
