A Little Vice (chapters 1-4)

This review was comissioned by @Walker of the Yellow Path.


"A Little Vice" is an original magical girl inspired novel by @Shadell, posted on Sufficient Velocity throughout 2023 and early 2024 and just completed this April. I don't know anything about this story except that it seems to have been pretty well received by the community and that its cover blurb reads as follows:

“The Angelic Saints are the only force protecting the hearts of innocents from the evil Abyssal Forest and its monstrous Beasts. Juggling their responsibilities as magical girls with high school and their other friendships, the Saints will never give up their struggle against the forces of Sin and darkness!

But Charlie isn’t one of them. He has no magic, no powers and no hidden wells of inner strength he can use to always triumph over the villains. He is not beautiful or strong or brave, no matter how much he wishes he could be. Instead, he finds himself held hostage by nearly every other monster of the week.

Charlie would give almost anything to stand with the Saints. And yet, when he finally gets an offer to step onto that stage and claim everything he’s ever wanted, Charlie finds that the price may be too high.”

If I'm reading this right, the pitch is basically "what if you could be a superhero, but only if you transitioned?" With the implication being that our protagonist isn't a transwoman in the identity sense, but is forced to change his gender to gain power and escape victimhood.

Or, alternatively, that our protagonist is a transman who needs to de-transition in order to gain power and escape victimhood.

Either way, definitely seems like it sucks to be them. And also like this story might be approaching gender from a much less fluffy and wish-fulfilment-y angle than you'd expect from the descriptor "trans magical girl fic."

I don't think I've read anything by @Shadell before, so I have no expectations for better or worse in terms of quality.

...

Well, first of all, it turned out that I had been reading the description wrong. This is a story about a closeted transwoman who needs to come out of the closet in order to be meguka after all. That said, I'm glad to report that "fluffy and wish-fulfilment-y" are NOT the right descriptors. I don't know what happens in the rest of the novel, but the four chapters that I read aren't about the protagonist solving her problems or escaping her unhappy life by becoming meguka. Rather, they are about the protagonist confronting the challenge of becoming meguka in the first place.

In other words, these chapters are less about coming out of the closet, and more about the closet itself.

High school senior Charleton (though she prefers Charlie), or "C" to her closest friends, has been having the world's worst schoolyear, and it's not like things were great before then what with being an egg with all the characteristic depression and self-loathing issues that tend to come with that. At the start of the year, her mother abruptly left without explanation, prompting her already-not-all-that-emotionally-healthy father to fall into depression and become virtually unavailable to her. Her best and arguably only friend, Inessa, has a growing social group of her own that Charlie feels unable to connect with and fears being an unwanted burden on. Also, her high school has suddenly become a battleground between a squad of Catholic virtue themed magical girls and their deadly sin themed enemies, and for some goddamned reason every damned monster ends up attacking Charlie personally. They don't always *only* attack Charlie. There are often other students or staff members imperilled as well. But, however many victims the latest monster corners, one of them is always Charlie.

Perhaps worse than all that is the bizarre lack of support Charlie the serial victim is getting from the school and broader society. She's on the brink of failing out of school because of all the classes and study time lost to injury or post-traumatic stress, and no one is doing a thing for her. This may be related to the fact that no one besides Charlie seems able to realize that her friend Inessa and Inessa's own friends Temperance and Ida are *very obviously* the three "Angelic Saint" megukas who have been playing whack-a-mole all year to keep the school monster-free. All the way down to them having anime hair colors even in their civilian guises, and the one whose Angelic Saint persona is themed after the virtue of Temperance and uses water powers in battle being literally named Temperance Atwater.

Inessa and the other two members of her new clique don't seem to know that Charlie does know their incredibly badly kept secret. And Charlie is just kind of afraid to inform them of it; she has a sense that she isn't supposed to know, just like no one else at the school does. So, she gets lonelier and lonelier, angrier and angrier, getting estranged from her only friend who also rescues her in costume once or twice a week. Wishing she could have been like Inessa, and believing the reason she never could be is because she was born a man. Jealousy becoming resentment becoming contempt.

Opinion pieces have been written about how many of the photophobic 4chan nazi crowd might actually be repressed transwomen. The first bit of "A Little Vice" is basically about the struggle to avoid ending up like that.

...

I'll have to be a little critical here, and perhaps unfairly so. I get the strong impression that at least *some* of these issues will resolve themselves later in the story, but all I have to review are these early chapters, so I have to judge them on their own merits.

First of all, "A Little Vice" leans hard into this gimmick of framing itself as an arc within an anime/manga series that doesn't actually exist. For instance, this is the teaser that comes at the end of the prologue chapter:

“NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

After an argument with Michael, Inessa and her friends go to visit the local gardens to take a break from all the fighting. Michael follows in secret, however she ends up separated from the group just as a new resinner transforms the gardens into a deadly hedge maze. Can our heroines find their trusty advisor in time to stop Avaritia Wolf’s newest monster!?

Tune in for Episode 13: Michael Lost? The Labyrinth in the Botanical Gardens!”

The first proper chapter of the novel is "episode 13." As in, the first episode of the second season of a typical 12-episode-cour anime series. It's also implied that Charlie is a minor side-character from the first cour who is now just starting to become important; notably, the chapter of the story advertised in the quoted teaser barely involves the Botanical Gardens at all, as Charlie is just a bystander in the battle and thus blows through it in a couple of sentences at the chapter's start.

I'll grant that this is a fun gimmick (and one that sort of points toward the feeling of invisibility and left-out-ness of eggdom, in a weird meta way), but it's one that comes with a bit of genre baggage. Things like "bizarre cultural fusion society in a geographically vague town with American and Japanese elements weirdly mashed together," "matching exotic hair and eye colors are just a thing people have," and "people are simultaneously very knowledgeable and very ignorant about the real-world mythologies and religions that the magical stuff draws on" barely register in anime, at least if you're used to anime. You kind of get conditioned to take them in stride. Maybe this is just me, but for some reason when you make the jump from anime/manga to prose, these genre defaults all start sticking out like sore thumbs. I keep getting a sense that the author is doing a send-up of the genre, or interrupting the story to wink at the audience, even though I don't *think* that that's really what's happening. It just feels like it is, because the anime-isms just feel that intrusive in this medium.

Again, this could just be a me problem.

The other issue is probably more limited to the early chapters, but also much less likely to be a me problem. Basically, this setting is *packed* with mind control and perception warping powers, and our protagonist spends the first chunk of story under a near-constant crossfire of mind effects. The reader becomes aware of this very quickly, but Charlie only starts catching on toward the end of the part I read. It makes for a frustrating reading experience with a protagonist who (effectively) lacks agency much of the time. Like I said, Charlie is starting to free her mind from all this psi-bullshit toward the end of where I read, and I assume it stops being an issue at all eventually. I also think I understand the artistic decision behind starting the protagonist out in this state. But, for now, it still makes me wish we were following an actual player in the events.

Explaining the nature of these mind control effects and how they interact with Charlie's protagonism is...I guess this would be an appropriate time to describe the general setup, since it's hard to explain the mindfuckery without that context.

...

Team Angelic Saint consists of female students at the high school, with magical girl personas named after the seven virtues and armed with low-key elemental powers. Their answer to the archetypal shoulder-perching-anime-mammal-of-indeterminate-species is a little toy angel that comes to life and speaks to them when no one else is around. The entity animating this toy claims to be the Archangel Michael, and is implied to be telling the truth.

Team Abyssal Beast is a little more eclectic. Most of their members are also teen girls, but not all of them. They're each named after both a deadly sin and an animal (the latter supporting their "abyssal forest" schtick), and in their dark meguka forms they gain some animal features in addition to the obligatory wardrobe change. They don't appear to have a nonhuman patron like Michael, at least so far. Instead, they are led by their senior member, Superbia Dragon, who is a middle aged man. I appreciate that the bad guys are the ones who have to put up with Sensei this time. In addition to their actual membership, the Abyssal Beasts can turn hapless civilians into disposable monster-mooks by using their sins to corrupt them.

The story commits to Catholic philosophy better than an actual manga/anime series probably would. In particular, it operates under the Augistinian premise that while good is an independent object, evil is merely a corruption or deformation of good. For instance, Inessa's firebending Angelic Saint persona is called Castitas, even though she is a very passionate, impulsive, and sexual person. She has constructive, healthy outlets for all these traits that make them positive, but one could very easily imagine another version of her being corrupted into Luxuria. Her waterbending friend Temperentia (aka Temperance Atwater, lol) is very strongly implied to have been the villain known as Gula Shark, with her redemption presumably being the climax of the nonexistent first cour of this nonexistent anime. Evil henchperson Avaritia Wolf, meanwhile, is shown to be much like a certain other fictional embodiment of greed in their desire for friendship and appreciation from everyone around them, so you can easily imagine how they could get their shit together and become a paragon of Caritas (also, part of their stated reason for being nonbinary is wanting to hoard all of the pronouns for themself, which is hilarious). Embodying a vice is just an antisocial, maladjusted version of embodying its opposing virtue, and it's easy to go from the former to the latter with the right kind of personal growth. This also means that the same small pool of individuals are being sought out for recruitment by both sides.

Now, with that laid out, the mind-fuckery.

First of all, this entire supernatural battle has a layer of glamour over it that induces a Sunnydale Syndrome effect in everyone who isn't meguka. People acknowledge the weird stuff, but their reactions to it are understated, and afterward they're eager to forget and move on as best they can. This is why Charlie isn't getting the support, attention, or even academic leniency that she should be. Charlie herself is immune to this effect, ostensibly due to her latent potential that makes her a candidate for recruitment.

Second, there's an additional, more extreme, faction-based glamour that prevents Angelic Saints and Abyssal Beasts from connecting each other with their civilian identities. Charlie seems to ping as a teammate to the Angelic Saint IFF glamour (which is why their secret identities are obvious to her and she can't understand why they aren't obvious to everyone else), but not to the Abyssal Beast IFF glamour. Even when the Beasts are trying to recruit her, and are under the impression that she should be able to recognize them in both guises by now.

Interestingly, after Gula Shark switched sides and became Temperantia, the other bad guys seem to have forgotten her civilian identity retroactively. Although, also curiously, if a meguka verbally, intentionally tells you who they are in both guises, THEN you seem to be able to see through it for good or at least until something changes. It's complicated, which is part of what makes Charlie's POV as she's being recruited by the baddies but unable to KNOW the people who are trying to recruit her a little exhausting for me to follow.

Third, Superbia Dragon - the leader of Sin Inc: Meguka Edition - has a whole different kind of active, targeted mind control power. Like, an actual "I cast suggestion, make a Wisdom save" type thing. And, throughout these early chapters, he is almost constantly using this power on Charlie.

So, between having her mind blocked from making connections that are obvious to the reader by her incongruous position within the faction-glamour, and having her actual agency taken away whenever Superbia Dragon interacts with her, Charlie is a frustrating character to be stuck with.

Like I said though, I'm pretty sure this is just an early chapters issue. The status quo obviously can't stay like this for long. But for now, it is a frustration.

...

Granted, while his agency-stealing powers make Charlie's protagonism a bit lacking, I really do enjoy Superbia Dragon. Basically, imagine that Lucifer is trying to corrupt you, but he's forced to do so in the guise of the lamest, most un-charismatic high school guidance counsellor ever, and also he's an Andrew Tate fan.

““Your problem Charleton,” Mr. Noir cleared his throat, “is that society demands we domesticate ourselves. People used to be able to live with their emotions, to let their inner beasts run free. Boys could be boys before civilization caged them up.”

He stared at me seriously, “No beast survives a zoo Charleton. Take the mightiest alpha wolf, the deadliest tiger, and confine it to a cage for lesser beings to come and gawk and it will die as surely as if you tore out its heart.”

”What do you mean?” I vaguely recalled that alpha wolves were a myth, but Mr. Noir seemed sure of himself and I had to trust him.

”I mean, your problem is that society is strangling you with its expectations. Be polite, respectable, meek and virtuous. These are the means by which lesser men trap their betters and strangle the life out of them, Charleton.”

I wasn’t sure. There was something appealing about seeing society as a cage. It would be nice to declare evil all the pressure to think about my future, to know where I wanted to go and to make sure it fit inside that nice little mold everyone seemed to think a good man should fit told me a man should fit and declare those things the enemy. It would be freeing to abandon them as the enemy. But, would anything be left of me if I did?

”And then what?” I asked despite myself.

”Indulge yourself. Howl at the moon and run rampant. Reject this safe little zoo we call civilization and return to the forest where the wild things are. Face yourself as a true beast and satisfy all of your desires!”

I giggled despite myself at the, no doubt, accidental reference to a children’s book. Stormclouds drove the impassioned smile from Mr. Noir’s face.

”S-sorry,” I managed, worried I’d offended the odd man. “It just sounded like Where the Wild Things Are and my mom used to…”

”It seems you will still need more work,” Mr. Noir’s voice was arctic. “Now, Charleton, look into my eyes.””

He needs to constantly resort to mind control to make up for his lack of basic social aptitude, and he's so bad at actually understanding people's hidden vices and temptations that he keeps fucking it up even with mind control on his side. He's powerful and malevolent enough that you have to take him seriously as a threat when he's right in front of you, but he's so bad at being a subtle tempter villain that even his own minions chuckle behind his back about it. He'd almost certainly be more dangerous if he just hulked out and started smashing things.

The Pride Dragon thinks that Charlie is an emasculated, sexually-frustrated loser who can be red pilled into becoming an avatar of Lust. In fact, Charlie is a self-loathing, unhatched egg loser whose strained relationship with her Angelic Saint repeat-rescuers has far more to do with Envy (and, one might reason, Charlie therefore has the potential to embody Kindness as its complementary virtue).

One aspect of his attempted corruption of Charlie that is working, despite his own failure to understand why, is the immiseration. The red pill alpha male bullshit has nearly zero effect on Charlie, but the monster attacks without proper social support and the sudden disappearance of her mother (both implied to be masterminded by the literal high school guidance counsellor from hell) do as much to prime her for Invidia as they would for Luxuria.

Power might corrupt, but - getting back to an earlier topic - if there's anything that watching the crab-bucket of depressed, hopeless people that populate the internet has taught us it's that powerlessness corrupts at least as much. Watching Charlie struggle with both the dominant social paradigm and various countercultural reactions to it, without finding her place or salving her self-loathing in any of them until she finds it in herself to be the change she wants to see in the world (aka biting the identity bullet and making a serious effort to actually try and become meguka), is probably the strongest and most relatable aspect of A Little Vice.

That said, the way that this inner conflict is written is kind of uneven. Like, take this passage for instance:

“Instead, I found myself bored out of my mind in the nurse’s office. It had been nice, the first few times, to have a quiet place to gather myself. But this was no longer a simple matter of getting attacked once or twice and nothing really bad had actually happened to me. I didn’t need to be coddled like this. Inessa and company had been the ones actually fighting for their lives and they didn’t need to skip class afterwards.

No, they’d been able to fight instead of freezing up like a little…. person who is not particularly manly. Which, like, sure, that was toxic masculinity or whatever; internalized despite my best efforts at avoiding dad’s bullshit. But like, what was the point of even being a guy if I couldn’t even stand up when a man was ‘supposed’ to?”

I've felt the pressures of toxic masculinity before. I know some of you have as well. But...I feel like once you're at the point of being self-aware enough about it to actually identify and refer to it as such in realtime, you aren't really able to feel pressured by it anymore. Maybe that's just my personal experience, but...this passage, and some others like it, just feel more like a clinical description of our protagonist written by a dry outside observer than a first person narration.

Or take this one, which begins the entire novel:

“The monster towered over a host of innocent high school students, an eight-foot tall humanoid assemblage of television and radio parts with arcs of blue-white electricity cascading across its ramshackle form. The only complete device in its body was a large radio that sat where a head would have been.

”Listen!” it called with a susurrus of voices drawn from a hundred failed disk jockeys. “Listen to me!”

The radio monster advanced slowly and clumsily through the station lobby, each ponderous step driving the increasingly panicked students further into a corner. Electricity arced out from one hand and crashed into a wall, showering the students with debris. A boy fell to his knees.

There wasn’t much point to running, and everyone knew it. If you took away the furniture, the lobby was just a large box with a single door from which the monster had come in the first place. No one had any route to escape; at most a student might have avoided the monster for a few more moments as it tore through their friends instead. A few students started to cry.

Naturally, that’s when an arrow made of fire crashed into the back of its head.

”HOLD EVILDOER!” a crystal clear voice sounded from the far side of the room. The monster stumbled into the crowd, grabbing an unlucky student and then spun around, holding him—me—up as a shield between it and its attacker.”

On one hand, it's a strong in media res introduction that establishes the setting, genre, etc, with a nice description of a scary-abstract monster of the week to boot. On the other...the way that Charlie is that dissociated from her own place in the scene and what she's feeling in it gets a big "huh?" from me. I guess it serves to set up the gimmick of her being a minor side character in someone else's shojo manga series, and also to metaphorically communicate the notion of alienation from one's own body, but...the amount of sensory and emotional description we're missing out on because of it is pretty dang large. Again, this is the most extreme example, but there are other passages that have similar issues to a lesser degree.

On the other hand, I said that this story's inner conflict was unevenly written, not badly written. There's some really good bits of writing in here that balance out the weaker ones. Like this one, from right after Superbia Dragon has managed to temporarily convince Charlie that she thinks she's lusting after her female friends instead of envying them:

“I avoided Inessa throughout the rest of the day. I couldn’t see her without realizing how cute she was when she smiled, and felt even worse for all the more it made that horrible nameless feeling stronger in me. Was that why I kept dreaming about being a magical girl? Because I knew Inessa would never want to be with a boy and it was the only way my subconscious could envision getting close enough to do whatever unimaginably weird or gross things that I probably wanted to do to her deep down. Imagining what I might really want made me nauseous.

Unfortunately, rule one of dealing with Inessa is absolutely that if someone runs away, she will chase them. At first it was easy to avoid her. She’d try to talk to me in the halls and I’d make a quick greeting then retreat. But by third period, she absolutely knew something was up and I had to shift from pretending things were normal to actively hiding.”

First of all, this depiction of teenaged loneliness and disconnection from even apparent friends rings a lot more true (at least to my own experience) than the struggling with toxic masculity passage from before. Second, there's the "Imagining what I might really want made me nauseous" part. God, it's such a clever way of illustrating that no, Charlie DOESN'T want to molest her best friend, the cringefail Pride Dragon only managed to hypnotize her into being afraid that she might want to do so. Like, this is pretty darned good inner turmoil prose that conveys a lot of nuances and plot intricacies in a short space.

Basically, "A Little Vice" has the same problem that a lot of good web fiction does: it needs an editor. Fortunately, UNLIKE most web fiction, it’s getting one. Apparently, the commercially edited and improved version of “A Little Vice” is going up on multiple web and physical print platforms this very week. So, it’s entirely possible that every single critique I’ve made of the prose has already been addressed before I ever made them.

So, definitely give ALV a read. I think I’ll be buying the e-book myself.