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A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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We don't know that that's true. Literally none of the named characters would have a good reason to think about JK Rowling—most of them are LGBTQIA+ teens, two are allies, and Superbia is out of touch.
 
Okay it's not the universe, but the perspective of the story. The narrator simply Does Not Perceive those who slither in the twitter DMs.

Then again, I've noticed that there's exactly five categories of people that the protagonist cares about enough to give the audience names and details of:

Angelic Saints
Abyssal Beasts
Her parents
Inessa's parents
Her Resinners, sometimes

That's it for named characters in this story.
 
I feel like every other student at the school is a kind of low budget silhouette or palette swap backgrounder. Chiro didn't even have like, an unhealthy male best friend who was a toxic influence to her, or anything, so C was probably the token non magical girl / designated victim character to get a name?
 
Chehrazad said:
why do the stronger temperantia and avaritia not simply partition the weaker invidia between their respective spheres of influence ? unrealistic story
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the wise and mighty temperantia attempted to seize invidia at the start but avaritia managed to acquire her first, and the rest of the story is temperance trying to set up such a partioning scheme I think
 
NemoMarx said:
the wise and mighty temperantia attempted to seize invidia at the start but avaritia managed to acquire her first, and the rest of the story is temperance trying to set up such a partioning scheme I think
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If you look at it from Temperance's point of view, this whole story is a tale of Spock learning why trans people have a Prime Directive.
 
Grytorm said:
I mean magic HRT is probably unethical but it doesn't really break the prime directive.
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From the perspective of either Star Trek or normal person ethics, what Avaritia did is an awful violation of personal autonomy no matter what the eventual results are. You could probably make a pretty interesting philosophical debate or Next Generation episode out of the nuances of eir justification for it, but it's also way beyond what I was actually talking about, which was just the informal cultural policy of "don't tell people they're trans even if it's really fucking obvious". Because, not only is it kinda rude, but as happened with C and Temperance, you can get psychological pushback that damages a person's own self-discovery.
 
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Nerdorama said:
From the perspective of either Star Trek or normal person ethics, what Avaritia did is an awful violation of personal autonomy no matter what the eventual results are. You could probably make a pretty interesting philosophical debate or Next Generation episode out of the nuances of eir justification for it, but it's also way beyond what I was actually talking about, which was just the informal cultural policy of "don't tell people they're trans even if it's really fucking obvious". Because, not only is it kinda rude, but as happened with C and Temperance, you can get psychological pushback that damages a person's own self-discovery.
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Sorry. I should have thought about what I was saying more. Hmm. Honestly I wish Temperance, Inessa, and Avaricia could have worked together on helping C. Avaricia's approach was unethical and deeply flawed. But Inessa was sort of too passive? Inessa offers a hand (metaphorically) to Chiro several times but C is too depressed to take it.
 
Grytorm said:
Sorry. I should have thought about what I was saying more. Hmm. Honestly I wish Temperance, Inessa, and Avaricia could have worked together on helping C. Avaricia's approach was unethical and deeply flawed. But Inessa was sort of too passive? Inessa offers a hand (metaphorically) to Chiro several times but C is too depressed to take it.
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And Temperance was a little of both. Appropriate, considering her mixed feelings.
 
Honestly I feel like Inessa was by far the most successful at helping Chiro. For one, she was the person that actually made sure Chiro knew she had somewhere to go when living with her dad became untenable, and I genuinely think her approach would have worked long term as Chiro got settled into a genuinely loving and caring environment.

Temperance was well intentioned but ended up causing more problems than helping and uh.

Avaritia unironically fucked up at like, every single step with Chiro :V

Genuinely all eir ideas were bad and ended up pushing Chiro directly from one abusive living situation to another, all because ei was confident ei knew what was best for her.
 
Avaritia's entire shtick is caring nothing for ethics, common sense, or any consequences that will happen more than five seconds from now. She sees A Problem, she has A Solution ("throw some kind of magical substance at the person and let them sort it out"), she's going to apply it.

I was going to elaborate on the Star Trek metaphor further by comparing her to some Romulan commander-of-the-week but in terms of decision-making processes, she's actually closest to Q.

EDIT: Well, Q with a genuine sense of empathy as main motivation, no matter how misguided. Whether that's the case for the Star Trek guy is debatable depending on the episode and whether you believe any of his justifications, but I think it's certainly the case for Avaritia.
 
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As I've said before, Avaritia reads as a subtle and manipulative 'for your own good really it's fine' kind of toxic. It's less obvious and on the nose than Superbia's more overt spooky brainwashing cartoon villain/threats and cruelty bits, but that just helps it pass unnoticed for longer. The fact that eir actions are helping C self-discover is great, but long term exposure/emotional dependence is still doing damage in is own ways that's becoming more and more obvious the longer things go on.

Ey kinda mean well and some of eir bullshit is just wrong things ey internalized from others, but Ey also just genuinely are not good for C at all in the long run.
 
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Spectral Waltz said:
As I've said before, Avaritia reads as a subtle and manipulative 'for your own good really it's fine' kind of toxic. It's less obvious and on the nose than Superbia's more overt spooky brainwashing cartoon villain/threats and cruelty bits, but that just helps it pass unnoticed for longer. The fact that eir actions are helping C self-discover is great, but long term exposure/emotional dependence is still doing damage in is own ways that's becoming more and more obvious the longer things go on.

Ey kinda mean well and some of eir bullshit is just wrong things ey internalized from others, but Ey also just genuinely are not good for C at all in the long run.
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I do think it's important to emphasize that as toxic as Avaritia is, she is very intentionally trying to help. She's just a dumb alien teenager in her own bad situation who's going about it in a destructive way because she doesn't see any other options and has embraced the sunk cost fallacy so hard she's currently exploring the Titanic.
 
I kind of feel like Avaricia's actions specifically regarding Chiro's gender and self discovery weren't too bad. Excluding the magic HRT. But eir efforts were seriously hindered by all the other toxic junk ey has going on. Just looking at the mall scene I feel like being pushy has a place.

I wonder how Avaricia interacted with Temperance when she was Gula Shark. Just how did she approach Gula and did she take the wrong lesson from it?
 
This talk reminds me of my BFF and her being trans. We had know each other for years, and for a long time I had an inkling that she might be trans. She never talked about it so I never brought it up, just supported her as friend would, my thought process being that if she actually is one, she will tell me about it when she has figured it out and/or is ready. If she is not, then that's that. She eventually did come out and told me about it.
 
Icipall said:
This talk reminds me of my BFF and her being trans. We had know each other for years, and for a long time I had an inkling that she might be trans. She never talked about it so I never brought it up, just supported her as friend would, my thought process being that if she actually is one, she will tell me about it when she has figured it out and/or is ready. If she is not, then that's that. She eventually did come out and told me about it.
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Normally that's considered the appropriate response (and good for your friend, I'm proud of her). It just becomes awkward when there's magical monsters made out of repressed emotions hanging around.
 
Anybody know other fics like this? The only ones I know are this one and Et Justitia Omnibus, no matter what I search I can't get any good results.
 
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