Literature / A Little Vice

A Little Vice is a magical girl story first published on Sufficient Velocity.com in which we follow the perspective of the best friend in a non-existent magical girl show.

C is the best friend of Inessa, Saint Castitas and leader of the magical girl team.

The Angelic Saints fight against the Abyssal Forest and its Beasts, thwarting their attempts to influence the hearts of humanity.

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This work contains examples of

• Angst: Like some other magical girl web original stories, this is a tale about the inner journey of a deeply troubled adolescent, deliberately contrasted against the high drama and good-versus-evil plot of a children's cartoon, rather than being focused on the latter.
• Armor-Piercing Question: The climactic duel between Invidia and Castitas is, effectively, a series of these aimed at Invidia's reasons for hating herself and excuses for why she can't be redeemed. That, and a lot of fire arrows.
• Battle in the Rain: The cathartic, climactic fight between Invidia and Castitas.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: According to the synopsis, C may find the price of the chance they get for fulfilling their dreams too high.
• Berserk Button: Chiro's button is Inessa's insistence she can be saved.
• Big Bad: Superbia Dragon, the viceroy of sin. He rules the Abyssal Forest and the Beasts.
• Brought Down to Normal: Inessa loses the ability to transform into Saint Castitas after Invidia Bat seems to consider killing her.
  • Predictably, the protagonist also loses the powers granted by the Seed of Envy once she lets her friendship with Inessa back into her heart.
• Defector from Decadence: Saint Temperantia/Temperance was formerly Gula Shark, the Abyssal Beast of Gluttony. Avaritia Wolf believes that the Abyssal Beasts themselves are defectors from the overly oppressive and regimented society they and Michael originate from.
• Framing Device: The story is of C, who is a secondary character in a fictional magical girl anime centered around the titular Saints.
• The Hero: Inessa, Saint Castitas. She is the protagonist of the fictional show and leader of the Angelic Saints.
• Heroic BSoD: Saint Castitas suffers one after seemingly almost dying by the hands of Invidia Bat, leading to her no longer being able to transform.
• In the Name of the Moon:
  • We only see it on the first chapter, but presumably the Angelic Saints say it every time they appear.
    Cleansing evil with the flames of purity, Angelic Saint Castitas has arrived!
    Steadfast as the earth! Persevering forward one step at a time, Angelic Saint Diligentia is here!
    Calm as still water. Biding until I strike like a tsunami, Angelic Saint Temperantia...
  • Also, after C becomes Invidia Bat for the first time, she also has one:
    With a jealous scream to shatter the night, Invidia Bat has arrived!
• Meaningful Name: All of the cast, most glaringly Temperance Atwater, who becomes Saint Temperantia and has water powers.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Invidia is terrifying in combat in some ways, but she is terrible at bringing herself to do anything so much as mildly inconsiderate of someone else.
  • Avaritia Wolf to a lesser extent. Ey are more willing to hurt people on purpose, but ey're driven by ideals which sound virtuous to most everyone else (which she tries to describe as greedy after the fact).
• Noodle Incident: An odd example which technically happens during the story. In chapter 3, Inessa mentions never wanting to see a fidget spinner again after fighting a Resinner. Twice after that, she says other Resinners were unpleasant, but not "as bad as Fidget Spinner".

  C: "What was the deal with that one anyway."

  Inessa: "C, we don't talk about that thing; we don't think about it; we do not acknowledge that it ever existed."

  C (narration): Naturally, that just meant I 'had' to get the story one way or another someday.

• Parasitic Horror: The seeds that grant Beasts their power. They grow inside the host and start pushing them toward their desired behaviour.
• Personality Powers: Both the Angelic Saints and the Abyssal Beasts, in their own way
• Poor Communication Kills: One of the many contributing factors to C snapping and giving in to the Seed of Envy was the realization that the Saints never bothered to tell her that Temperance, their friend and teammate, was originally Gula Shark, a monster who'd kidnapped and threatened C several times.
• Psycho Psychologist: Big Bad Superbia Dragon starts the story masquerading as the school guidance counselor, Mr. Noir. This isn't a spoiler, because Mr. Noir is the worst therapist since Souji Mikage, and has much the same MO.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The Beasts each have the Latin name for the sin they represent in their name.
  • Superbia Dragon represents Pride.
  • Avaritia Wolf represents Greed.
  • Gula Shark represented Gluttony.
  • Invidia Bat represented Envy.
  • Shadell mentioned Luxuria Fox (Lust) and [[Acedia Bear]] (Sloth) as alternate-universe Abyssal Beast versions of Inessa and Ida.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues: The Angelic Saints each represent one, like Saint Temperantia representing Temperance.
• Suicide by Cop: Invidia tries to force Castitas to kill her in chapter 16. It doesn't work.
• Team Pet: Archangel Michael is the team mascot, a plush angel that gets uncomfortably shoved into Inessa's backpack and chewed by children at one point. (Michael refers to the plushie as her "vessel," so she presumably has another form that is never seen.)
• Transparent Closet: Literally everybody (except Superbia, C's dad, and maybe Ida) figures out C is transgender without C so much as acknowledging the possibility. Gets egregious to the point of breaking Avaritia's brain a little when the Seed of Envy physically transforms her into a woman and she insists it's still an envy thing and she can't "really" be trans.
• Trans Tribulations: Multiple characters in the story are transgender. C struggles with self loathing and not thinking they're truly trans, Lupin and Temperance ran away from a repressive society and went on to live under the transphobic Superbia. C, upon becoming Invidia Bat, also lives in his castle..
• Took a Level in Badass: Chiro upon becoming Invidia Bat. She defeats Saint Castitas and one of her resinners, the age regression one, almost beat the Saints.
• Unfazed Every"man" / Distressed "Dude": The story opens with C playing the role of the hapless, helpless male sidekick in a female-focused story, something that she is deeply uncomfortable with on both conscious and unconscious levels.
• Villain Protagonist: On a PURELY technical level, C becoming Invidia Bat makes her this. In practice, she's an extremely confused self-loathing teenager who's an accessory to Well-Intentioned Extremism at worst.
• Weirdness Censor: The magical beings of this story employ a particularly powerful one, as it seems psychologically impossible for anyone to make the connection between a Saint or an Abyssal Beast and their civilian identity without being directly told they are the same person by someone who already knows, or otherwise seeing irrefutable evidence, like Saint Castitas using Inessa's exclusive nickname for the protagonist in the backstory.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: At the end of the day, Avaritia Wolf. The other Abyssal Beasts besides Superbia are ultimately just kids trying to escape toxic situations as well.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Chiro's belief about the Saints being invincible due to being heroes is shown to be incorrect.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: All Beasts but Superbia Dragon have shown a desire to minimize damage to regular humans. Avaritia Wolf picks Invidia Bat to help with it, as Gula Shark, her previous advisor, defected and became Saint Temperantia.
• You Have Failed Me: Superbia Dragon is not shy with threats and emotional abuse against his extremely limited number of direct minions, and outright attacks Avaritia after she takes the blame for Invidia warning the Saints about the Sprout of Sloth.

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