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A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)

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Iris-Iven-Ibis said:
A Persona crossover would be real fun and funny
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Inessa is the Wild Card, the one who gets the Velvet Room treatment, the protagonist. Ida (Strength VIII) is probably her first party member, with a simple and straightforward internal conflict that can be resolved in the tutorial. They end up entering symbolic dungeons for several of their classmates, such as...
  • Temperance, Temperance XIV, which doesn't really fit but I can't help myself. (The Star might fit better, but she's not named Stella.) She's a recent defector from the antagonists, torn between guilt over what she's enabled and guilt over abandoning her friend(s).
  • C, Wheel of Fortune X. Something between whatever was going on with Naoto and (gestures as the thread)
  • Lupin, The Lovers VI. Ey'd probably be the last party member recruited, so we'd need to invent a couple characters between em and C. Or maybe one before C and 1-2 after?
Assigning other Arcana to other characters:
  • Michael: Hermit IX, or she could switch the Star with Temperance. Either way, she's the "mission control" character and might get recruited later on, like what happens with Teddie.
  • Mr. Noir: The Hierophant V. He'd be an interesting twist on SMT morality, being an Order character cloaked in the rhetoric of Chaos.
  • C's dad: Uno Skip Turn card. You don't get a social link.
  • Fidget Spinner: Za Warudo XXI
 
C in Inessa's initial impression is so flagrantly the Yosuke/Ryuji - first friend, inferiority complex, terminal monster bait for the starting antagonists - that the first clue something is weird with her to the player would be the fact that she isn't the first person to get a Persona and join the team alongside the mascot.

Where you'd go with her has potential to be interesting because, well...Invidia is the Shadow here, and she actually wins and dominates over the Ego for quite a while rather than a forced confrontation leading to resolution as in P4 (with the defeat of a Shadow) or P5 (with the theft of a Treasure). This is something that is possible in Jungian psychiatry and which Persona occasionally nods to with its villains but has never really developed with anyone who can go from THAT depth to turning it around to being a hero. I think given the premise of redemption here for Tempe, Chiro, and probably Avaritia eventually that you'd have a different kind of setup that mixes elements from both 4 and 5 or does something else entirely to put emphasis on saving people from their own twisted cognitions but also those people turning around and using that perspective as strength.

Also Superbia is totally some low tier mass cognitive manifestation pretending to be Lucifer when he's actually closer to just being some dipshit Incubus or something.
 
Somewhere between 4/5 is probably right, with dungeons themed after the party members shadows as some strange force (the Beasts really) pushes people to give in. You probably have everyone after Ida (who sorta falls but doesn't) kinda overtaken or replaced by their shadow archetype, with either an evil twin running around or just kinda turning evil.

Alternatively, there's a somewhat broader cognitive world with each new Beast showing up and making your exploration there harder until you track down their real world self, identify their issues and then beat them/their dungeon in a sequence that convinces them to accept themselves and join the party. This'd work with Invidia being the one to break all the way and go full Shadow in the real world too.

The bigger thing is that Superbia kinda screams midboss, but the Persona dungeon/month wouldn't let the year timeline quite work out as neatly as you'd like with that so you'd probably need to start introducing a second round of bigger antagonists before his defeat.

Probably setting up something of a messyish three-way conflict between the more supernatural final boss' side appearing as early as Temperance's dungeon (hinting at her ties to the Forest more broadly), the very human sins of the Beasts and the protagonists slowly eating the second faction?
 
This topic's amusing to me given I'm the first and so far only SVer to complete a Persona Quest.

A Persona Quest that Chiro and Inessa really wouldn't want to be in...
 
Also kinda funny that I'm spinning up ideas for either a Pokémon or a Persona quest and that's like two of the three crossover ideas this thread has had (that aren't already fleshed-out fanfic like the Doctor Who one or got their own thread like the SVMG multicross).
 
Nerdorama said:
C in Inessa's initial impression is so flagrantly the Yosuke/Ryuji - first friend, inferiority complex, terminal monster bait for the starting antagonists - that the first clue something is weird with her to the player would be the fact that she isn't the first person to get a Persona and join the team alongside the mascot.
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I won't argue with that, but:
  • I have a hard time disentangling C's pre-Invidia self from the "normal person watching his friend do secret magical world-saving adventure stuff" part of ALV.
  • C's gender problems don't seem like something that would be resolved in the tutorial.
I guess I'm erring on the side of ALV, at the expense of the Persona-ness.

Where you'd go with her has potential to be interesting because, well...Invidia is the Shadow here, and she actually wins and dominates over the Ego for quite a while rather than a forced confrontation leading to resolution...
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Huh. That is an interesting idea.
 
GreatWyrmGold said:
  • C, Wheel of Fortune X. Something between whatever was going on with Naoto and (gestures as the thread)
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I would actually say C's card is the Hanged Man XII. Reversed, it's basically about refusing to change. Upright, it's about surrendering to that change. Fortune could work, but I think Hanged Man is a better fit.

Though if they were a bit less terminally depressed, I'd slap them with the Fool.
 
GreatWyrmGold said:
I won't argue with that, but:
  • I have a hard time disentangling C's pre-Invidia self from the "normal person watching his friend do secret magical world-saving adventure stuff" part of ALV.
  • C's gender problems don't seem like something that would be resolved in the tutorial.
I guess I'm erring on the side of ALV, at the expense of the Persona-ness.


Huh. That is an interesting idea.
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Nah, that's what I mean though. "C" breaks the formula hard, and definitely doesn't come into her own as a plot element nor awaken a Persona until a much later dungeon/palace/whatever we're calling it, and that in and of itself would be setting off alarm bells for the audience (good, foreshadowy ones) even if it didn't for Inessa, Ida, and Michael in-universe.

(Temperance, meanwhile, continues futilely gesturing at her overheating Egg-dar every time they share a scene, as per canon).
 
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Firehawk242 said:
She is?
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Shadell said:
Then ey grinned. "Besides, Temperantia here's just jealous that I've got a new better partner."

Temperantia glanced at me, then at Avaritia; she shrugged. "I have two hands," she said following a moment's thought.
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This (chapter 12) was the most blatant example, but she's kept up the bit since. And contrary to Chiro's narration, I don't think Temperance does bits, I think she's completely serious at almost all times.
 
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Nerdorama said:
The angle brackets are directional signs of attraction, not greater than/less than.
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Chiro: "No, Lain had it right the first time."


Nerdorama said:
And contrary to Chiro's narration, I don't think Temperance does bits, I think she's completely serious at almost all times.
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I think Temperance is honest at almost all times; her bits reflect her opinions, but that doesn't make them not bits. "I have two hands" is not the clearest or least ambiguous way to express herself; it's just the way that Temperance finds most amusing.
 
Bluespark9 said:
Is persona any good? I've heard about it but the only anime I've ever watched is the Pokémon one, 1 episode of Naruto, and some of the Yugo stuff.
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Persona's a game, not an anime (well, they have some adaptations as well, but the game's better). Persona 4 would be the most relevant to this story, in case you want to try one (each are stand-alone entries).
 
Just be aware that, even more than most JRPGs, you need to make a pretty serious time commitment to see the end of a Persona game. I could probably 100% Chrono Trigger twice in the time it takes to finish Persona 4 once.
 
To be fair like 90% of chrono trigger is doing your second run and just fighting the final boss at regular intervals to hit endings - you'd have hit the credits way earlier than that.
 
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