#(which sound similar but are different I think)
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hi op feel free to ignore everything under - all you need to know is i love your writing *shakes head vigorously*
there are several things i think were immaculately done, but that'd require me to churn out an entire research paper, which i don't have the brain cells for anymore post-finals. so here are some scattered thoughts yep and yap
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i don't gravitate towards mysterious or reserved characters because my personality simply doesn't mesh well with them. in fact, when i was watching wbk, i was always so wary of suo, and felt lowkey a lil uncomfortable with him LMFAO
but strangely enough, i think this discomfort became a very integral and driving force throughout my reading experience. of course, this was already the case due to the violent and dark nature of yakuzas, underground sex work, etc., but emphasizing suo's yandere-ness and how he doesn't shy away from it really completed the tone of the story. also, i feel like i came to terms with suo's character, which i rarely ever experience in general. really, this is all to say that it makes total logical sense in my brain to imagine a route where suo evolves into a yandere, and part of me strongly believes his real background in the wbk manga/anime won't be too happy-go-lucky either (otherwise the alternative would be like him wearing an eyepatch for the shtick bc he's a chuuni??? idrk????).
anyway, the reoccurring theme of redirection in suo's tactics really sealed the deal for me, and i think it was a good way to tie in references to his relationship to his master, the martial arts that we know he's especially good at, and how all of these things he's kinda exploited and sullied to "become a worse person for you." suo being very knowing and intentional is so snakey and creepy but also, i get a lil fucked up when it comes to men who are obsessed, so also incredibly erotic LMFAO i also just want someone to buy me a luxury penthouse out of concern for my safety *sad fist bump*
one thing i did find unexpected is suo's leadership within the yakuza. yes, necessary for the plot, otherwise he wouldn't be able to pull any strings. but because source material heavily emphasizes leaders as individuals like umemiya or sakura or even hiiragi, it's interesting to place suo in juxtaposition with them. not sure if it's bc i don't find suo particularly reliable in general, but i think this fic made me realize that he's still wise beyond his years and very, very ruthless. it's def very telling that, throughout the story, suo resorts to fear to assert power. anyway, i j think it was a particularly interesting detail to add in his role in the succession conflict.
btw, i do like how suo's change and transition isn't fully told or revealed. it's not a story meant for us, as it's a truth really for suo and reader. but even reader can't really keep up with him at times, and i find that dynamic really charming, as sadistic as that sounds. i like that reader is so vulnerable. i like that reader is not afraid to be vulnerable around him in the ways that matter, even when she's aware that he's fucking insane. and i really like that reader is aware of how much it takes to be vulnerable, so she doesn't push him. i think reader restrains herself (un)knowingly, and that's her way of loving him. obv less romantic in real life lol (don't try to fix anyone, been there, done that, lost myself, and still finding myself), but i do like how reader is suo's salvation :,,, even if she doesn't think she's particularly patient, she really is - like girl, Fuck Him Already!!!!!!
(could go on and on about how juicy the friction and tension is between suo and reader but that's for pt 2 hehehe)
this is kinda my half-assed transition into talking about reader, and honestly, my thoughts from earlier encapsulate the general thesis i have about her: she's really a lot like suo, way more than she thinks. i think she operates in very similar ways, just goes about it differently.
i think reader is way more reckless. she's very self-sacrificing. she's very good at putting up a front, even when she's internally low in confidence and self-respect. i think she just wants to be happy with suo, and hopefully, with their other friends as well.
and truly, i think suo has very similar end goals. i just think, with how things turned out, suo made the very calculated yet risky (also aggressive?) decision to do the things that he did. making their underlying principals and values and reactions so oddly similar, from my perspective, is sooooo neat, and it adds more depth to why they go so well together.
also, reader is so brilliantly the comedic relief in this whole thing. usually, in storytelling, it's someone else and is used as fodder. i really like how reader is a lil awkward and bad with timing and everything else, cause it makes the reading experience flow so much better. really helped with the pacing of the story, gave it the character + breathing space needed to process everything. i also just like my readers a little fucking hilarious.
anyway, op, so beautifully written - see you in pt 2 gg
TOKYO VICE | part 1
You knew that if you agreed to move in with Suo, you'd be setting yourself up for a life without autonomy. You also knew that these alarming behaviours were all signs that he desperately needed therapy to process his master’s untimely death. Living with a man in constant grief, who refused to talk about his trauma unless he was making up a lie related to the nation of China, was probably not a good decision. Doubly so when this man was clearly paranoid about losing you, and triply so when he was a high-ranking member of a violent syndicate. Unfortunately for you, you rarely made good decisions. (Or: After joining the yakuza, Suo develops the concerning habit of controlling every facet of your life. This is somehow less worrying to you than your uncontrollable lust around him.)
8.7k words. suo x fem reader. deeply unserious yakuza au. yandere suo (not abusive and reader is into it), dark comedy, a little angst, smut. warnings: borderline sex work, off-screen criminal violence. nsft – no actual smut in this chapter, but there are still graphic discussions of sex. mdni. thank you to @sleepyqinfei for beta reading and to @/cafekitsune for the banner!
sequel to sincerity and this sakura/reader wip
part 2 here
You’re not exactly sure why you and Suo have never fucked.
It’s certainly strange, given that you're pretty sure that Suo has expressed at least passing interest in you over the years, and you have felt a lot of interest in him. (By ‘interest’, you mean that you feel an insatiable lust around him that you fight to ignore on a daily basis.) You can't exactly pinpoint why nothing has ever happened despite this mutual attraction, especially given your profession and indifferent feelings toward casual sex.
You can think of a number of probable reasons, which are separate from those you classify as stupid reasons. The latter class comprises silly concerns like a fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of not being pretty enough, fear of not being good enough, et cetera. All very juvenile feelings—insecurities that you had in your teenage years, the days in which Suo ran around Makochi as a delinquent while you worked an honest job at a bar. (It was a girls’ bar in the red light district, but that's neither here nor there.) Your circumstances have since changed, and those anxieties have since faded. None of them have any material consequence for your current life, so you don't see any point in thinking about them.
The stupid reasons, then, definitely don't have anything to do with why you've never fucked Suo. But you can think of a few, more concrete reasons that may explain it. For one, Suo has been your friend since childhood and it’s generally a bad idea to have sex with your long-time friends. He was also your roommate for a while and it’s an even messier idea to have sex with your roommates. And now, in your adulthood, he’s your landlord in addition to being your boss, which makes him the worst possible person you could have sex with. You could lose both your home and your livelihood if things go south—both severe, material consequences that should theoretically keep your lust at bay.
Also, he's also a member of the yakuza.
Now, strictly speaking—you're not really opposed to having sex with violent criminals. It’s definitely not a good idea, but you don't usually have good ideas anyway. But for the past several years, you’ve been pissed at Suo for joining the yakuza in the first place, which actually does keep your blatant attraction to him in check. You simply dry up when you think too hard about all the feelings of betrayal.
When Suo was on the cusp of graduating from Furin and thinking about his future, you’d grabbed him by the collar and made him promise not to join the yakuza. They constantly tried to recruit from Bofurin, and they especially wanted Sakura, Suo, and Sugishita. You were adamant about chasing them off from Suo and Sakura whenever they approached—you had no need to worry about Sugishita, as Umemiya had already said he shouldn't talk to them, so there was no chance he was going to—and you begged Suo over and over not to join. Delinquency was fine, but a crime syndicate was something else altogether.
Suo seemed serious about it when he said he'd listen to you. He even applied to colleges, talked about maybe becoming a teacher and eventually supporting you so you could stop working in the mizu shobai industry. Back then, he often teased you by saying that you should marry him and be his housewife (or he could be your trophy husband, if you so wished). You thought he was joking, but with the way he always talked about his life after his degree, you wondered if he would seriously suggest it.
Of course, it was most likely just teasing, and you were fine with that. You were simply excited that he'd found a career that would make him happy. Nirei had also been accepted to university at that point, and even Sakura had an honest job lined up on Keisei Street. The future had looked bright for everyone.
Then Suo’s master died, and he lost his fucking mind.
The two of you buried Suo’s master in a Chinese funeral. He had never had children of his own, having satisfied his paternal instincts by picking up strays, and he didn't have much in the way of family in Japan either, so you and Suo performed the shou ling yourselves. One person kept a constant vigil over his body while the other searched on Google for what arrangements should be made next. After all, while Suo’s master had immersed his foremost disciple in his culture, he had never taught Suo any funerary customs. He hadn't thought there would be a need.
Suo didn't cry nearly as much as you, but he was probably in more pain. Your master had trained you a little bit when you were a kid, and he'd taken you in for a while after your parents kicked you out, so of course you were gutted. But he had practically raised Suo, so it was naturally worse for him. More shattering.
You often think about the first night you decided you'd sleep with him in the same futon because he was crying so much. He insisted he was fine, but he didn't complain when you got under the sheets with him and started thumbing away his tears. When you took off his eyepatch, you found, to your astonishment, that he was crying from his missing eye as well. Both of you thought the tear ducts had been destroyed in either the accident or the enucleation, but it appeared that not even that prior trauma could mask his grief over this one.
Nevertheless, by the time of the funeral procession, Suo had stopped crying.
“Master supported us and taught us to stand on our own two feet,” he said as the joss paper burned. He took your hand in his and smiled. “So it'll be fine. We’ll be okay on our own. I'll make sure of it.”
At the time, you had found this very comforting. You didn’t think too much of it, as you had a bad habit of relying on Suo for your emotional stability. His master had raised him to be an emotionally intelligent person, so it had been fine, even though you had a track record of reckless decisions. He’d still exercised endless patience with you. He never once got angry with you, nor did he ever force you to do what he felt was the right thing. Instead, he gently redirected your self-damaging behaviours—not so different from the martial art that he practised.
He disapproved of the run-down and lonely conditions of your apartment, so he spent a great deal of time there and helped make it into a proper home. He didn't like how dangerous your job at the girls’ bar was, so he walked you to and from work every night until you never left without him. He worried when you started having sex with your customers, especially when you began having nervous breakdowns over it (you were, after all, still a teenager and really only interested in having romantic vanilla sex with Suo), so he staged an intervention with Nirei and Sakura. In this way, Suo convinced you that you were loved and protected and didn't need to do something you hated so much. They would get you out if you felt trapped. And you didn't feel trapped, per se, so you left on your own—but it was still only because of them. You promised them afterwards that you'd never do it again.
This was Suo’s brand of kindness as a teenager. He always taught people, guided them away from harm rather than steering them—a behaviour he’d mimicked from your master. Your master, in general, had defined all of Suo’s values and his way of living, which was honest and gentle and conscientious. It was one where he used his abilities to protect the weak and care for his friends. He even kept his spiteful and alarmingly violent tendencies under control, though sometimes he slipped when fighting genuine assholes. But he still tried. He tried because he strived to be as kind as his master—who represented everything that Suo wanted to be in his adult life.
Thus, the death of Suo’s master meant the death of his principles. It changed the kind of man that Suo wanted to be. You don't want to say that he became a worse person, but he absolutely became a worse person.
He especially became a worse person with you.
As it turned out, Suo’s idea of making sure that the two of you would be fine on your own was, well, not really fine. It wasn’t that he became cruel to you, per se. It was more that whenever he saw a problem with your behaviour, his approaches to redirecting it became—put as nicely as possible—heavy-handed.
After your master’s death, you got a job at a high end, yakuza-owned club. Two weeks later, Suo broke his promise to you and joined the yakuza. So I can stay close to you, he explained gently, wiping away your tears as you cried hysterically, but you're convinced to this day that he did it partly out of spite. So a few years later, when you started having sex with your customers again and he tried to stop you, you decided to spite him back. I need to stay on top of the rankings, you'd explained dispassionately. The mamasan said it's fine, and the manager doesn't care. He even thinks it's good for business.
Suo’s response was to simply become the owner of your club.
This move was very extreme, but also very effective. Any customer who so much as brushed against you on the premises was instantly thrown out, and the mamasan started watching you like a hawk to make sure you weren’t going to any love hotels after work. Douhan were off-limits. For the first time since your teens, you became completely celibate—not only because of your new workplace circumstances, but because you simply didn't want to find out what Suo would do if you got together with a man he despised (and he despised every man you dated).
His most absurd play was when he became concerned about your living conditions again. Your latest apartment was too plain, too small, and the area was too dangerous. It didn't even have a shower, and the other tenants behaved concerningly toward you when you went to the bathhouse at night. But the rent was cheap, and it was still an upgrade from your last place, so you shrugged it off when Suo suggested that you move. Even when someone tried to accost you at night, you were nonchalant about it. You kicked the shit out of them in a fight and continued your routine unbothered.
The next month, Suo bought a luxury penthouse and suggested you move in with him.
His offer (command) came with conditions. One of the bigger ones was that you'd let him accompany you out at night if you ever needed to run errands in dangerous places. Or—nevermind, actually. He should really just accompany you everywhere at night. Maybe during the day too. And—ah, there was no way you'd be going to work alone, nor coming back by yourself—you were now always to be driven by someone in his organisation, if he wasn't available himself. Rent was a point of contention, when you asked about it: you wanted to pay at market rate, and he insisted that there was no need to pay at all. He ended up proposing a highly discounted price, which would give you ample financial freedom, but questionable financial independence.
These were insane terms. You knew that if you agreed, you'd be setting yourself up for a life without autonomy. You also knew that these behaviours were all signs that Suo desperately needed therapy to process his master’s untimely death. Living with a man in constant grief, who refused to talk about his trauma unless he was making up a lie related to the nation of China, was probably not a good idea. Doubly so when this man was clearly paranoid about losing you, and triply so when he was a high-ranking member of a violent syndicate. Case in point—he was likely connected to the brutal accident that later befell the man who tried to assault you.
“I'm not sure what you're implying, but at least he didn't die,” Suo said cheerfully when you confronted him about it. Which really meant: At least I decided not to kill him. This was a flag bigger and redder than any other you've ever known, and you consider yourself an expert in red flags. You knew you should run in the other direction.
So naturally, you put your arms around him, tenderly said, I'm sorry I've been worrying you, and then you moved in the next day.
While Suo treats you with endless patience, you have personal limits to the patience that you exercise with him. Specifically, your patience with how he treats you.
You don't mind the lack of social freedom, nor the lack of personal freedom, nor the lack of freedom of movement. You also don't mind living with a man full of intractable trauma surrounding the death of every parental figure in his life; in fact, you'd rather be by his side than not, if he needs to cope with something so painful. And anyway, your friendship is otherwise unchanged if you ignore the heavy restrictions he's imposed on every facet of your life. So that's all fine.
But the celibate lifestyle that he's cornered you into? You simply aren't built for it. Holy shit, do you need to get laid.
Nearly two years without sex has brought you close to another nervous breakdown (there have been few better sources of entertainment or validation in your life), and worst of all, it has made your profound lust for Suo incredibly hard to ignore. Waking up every morning to him in a towel, his hair still wet from the shower and his broad silhouette exposed, tests the absolute limits of your self-control. The contours of his lean and muscled form are distracting enough; coupled with the vivid colours and lines of his irezumi, the sight of him becomes maddening. It is a horrible thing to be exposed to when you haven't gotten any dick nor strap in over a year. It gives you thoughts about him that are overtly sexual, which is bad, as you have materially consequential reasons for not wanting to fuck Suo.
Things with him must absolutely stay platonic. But with sexual frustration like yours, being platonic with him means that you need to get erotic with someone else. A boyfriend or girlfriend is out of the question; you don't want to be responsible for yet another brutal accident. So you instead decide to quit your job at his club and start working on Keisei Street. At least this way, you can start fucking your customers again.
It’s a perfect plan. Suo’s oyabun is very indulgent toward him, and everyone else in the family respects him too. He consequently has a tight grip on his organisation and the territory they control, despite his relatively young age. Not a single person is ever to touch Keisei Street—largely because Sakura is part of Roppo-Ichiza, and Suo is nearly as weird about Sakura as he is about you. Plus, many of his other fellow Furin alumni are in the gang as well. If Suo’s men ever started fucking with people on Keisei Street, it would not only have grave implications for gang relations—it would be personally upsetting for Suo. This means you can fuck all the Keisei Street customers you want, and not get a single one of them threatened or killed.
A pretty brilliant idea, if you do say so yourself.
Suo’s expression doesn't change when you break the news to him. He delicately places his teacup—custom-made from Yixing, just like the matching clay teapot—down on the mahogany tabletop, and he looks at you with a calm smile.
“Come again?”
“I'm quitting my job at Red Dragon,” you repeat. “I already gave the mamasan my resignation.”
“And she accepted it?” Suo asks, in a tone that is so carefully nonchalant that you know it means he is actually furious with her. “How interesting,” he muses. “What brought this on?”
“I've found a better paying opportunity on Keisei Street.”
“I'll give you a raise,” he says easily.
“A raise?” You cock a brow. “The pay is mostly commission-based at Red Dragon. You know that.”
“Then it would be unwise to leave. You have a loyal customer base at Red Dragon. All very rich, and”—his smile grows sharp—“very polite.”
Polite. An interesting word. It actually means: None of them will ever proposition or harass you because they know they'll be maimed if they do. An easy thought to use to your advantage.
“It's loyal but it's small. Everyone who's anyone in this part of town thinks that we’re married. Do you know how hard it is to pull new customers in when they're scared shitless of my yakuza husband? And anyway”—you frown, trying to look as pathetic as possible—“I'm lonely.”
Suo stares. He looks surprised, possibly because you absorb every minute of his free time with silly conversation, new restaurants, and skiing trips. (He likes snow, so you ask for these trips more for him to relax than anything else.) You also text him frequently on days he's working, and he very diligently replies, even if he's in the middle of something like a raid or a hit or brokering a massive deal. Suo still very strictly keeps to his rule of never touching his phone when in conversation with other people—unless he needs to text you.
So his suspicion is fair. Suo is very attentive and doesn't allow you much opportunity for loneliness. In turn, you’ve always been very happy spending time with him, even when it's only him.
“Lonely?” he repeats. “Are you, now?”
“Yes. You work so much,” you complain, which is not a lie, “and I don't have any friends to spend time with when you're gone.”
“You have friends from work.”
“No, I have competition at work. The hostesses are so cutthroat about rankings, they hate me. And each other.”
“You like Shuuhei and Hanzo,” he points out, referring to his men who most frequently chauffeur you.
“Yeah, they're friendly, and they're very funny. I like them, but I can't be their friend.” Suo stares at you, nonplussed, so you spell it out: “They're too scared of you to get close to me. What if it looks like they're trying to fuck the boss’ wife?”
“Hm…” Suo studies you, looking thoughtful. Perhaps for the first time, he's contemplating the consequences of restricting your freedoms and marking you as his. That is to say—maybe he's finally realising that you have no friends and no life.
The beads of his earrings glimmer as he tilts his head at you and frowns. Suo almost looks innocent with that confused face of his. “And how would working on Keisei Street help?” he asks.
“Because all our old friends are there!” you exclaim. “Sakura’s in Roppo-Ichiza now so he’ll definitely be coming by all the clubs. Tsubaki too. And Nirei and Kiryu visit them quite often—and even Tsugeura does sometimes, even though clubbing isn't one of his virtues.” You grab onto his arm, pull yourself close, and give him your most disarming, pleading expression. “Please, Suo?”
“Hm.” He strokes your cheek and looks at you fondly, in the way that one would do with an adorable and slightly annoying kitten. “I don’t think so. It’s not very safe there.”
He isn't wrong. Not only are you untouchable on his turf because of your association to him, Suo has also just crushed all the han-gure and petty criminals in his territory with brutal efficiency. His part of the red light district is, quite ironically, one of the safest places in the city, and certainly safer than Keisei Street.
But undeterred, you point out, “Shuuhei and Hanzo can still drive me there and back if you want. But I don't think it's necessary. Do you really think Sakura would let anything happen to me?”
This is the true brilliance of your plan: capitalising on the fact that Suo is as nearly as weird about Sakura as he is about you. He pauses as soon as you bring up the point, and you can practically see the gears turning. “Well, if it's him…”
“I even texted him about it. Look—here!” You whip out your phone, receipts ready. The corner of Suo's mouth lifts at your obviously rehearsed pitch. “He says he'd make sure I'm taken care of. And he says it'd be nice because he misses seeing us. Can you believe it—Sakura actually admitted that he misses us! Typed it with his own two hands and pressed send! I bet he was super embarrassed about it.”
“Huh. He even used a sticker. I've never seen him do that.” Suo smiles as he reads through the chat. He looks like his old self. You suddenly feel a little wistful, and also a lot bad. This started as a ploy to get laid, but it’s made you realise that you really do miss your friends—and Suo probably does too.
“If I worked on Keisei Street, then you would have plenty of reason to visit,” you point out, feeling somewhat tender.
“I guess that's true,” Suo says. Your heart aches a little bit at the look he gives you. It's a platonic ache, of course. Or at the very least, it isn't an erotic one. It doesn't really make you want to have sex with him anyway. But if you could lean forward and press your lips to his—platonically—then you definitely would.
Suo's civilian friendships are complicated by his double life. Quite unusually for yakuza, Suo’s syndicate insists on using pseudonyms and false histories to avoid anti-yakuza laws, on the off-chance that the police decide to do their jobs and actually enforce those laws someday. Lying for comedy is one of Suo’s greatest passions, so he was happy to manufacture an absurd backstory: his name is Yanzhao, and he learned kung fu in a Shaolin Temple before moving to Hong Kong and working for the triads. He wears the eyepatch because he lost his eye in an altercation with the cops, which he won. By the way, you're his criminally beautiful wife who he met in Macau. The two of you had to leave for Japan since he killed a police officer and now he's wanted by the governments of both China and Hong Kong. Also, he's a very devoted husband, so if anyone lays a hand on you, he’ll kill them too.
Somehow, everyone has bought into this story. Every criminal organisation in the red light district now fears a high-ranking yakuza known as Yanzhao, who is easily recognizable by his eyepatch and tassel earrings, and who is also homicidally obsessed with his beautiful wife.
In some ways, his infamy is convenient. No one wants to fuck with Suo, or with you by extension. But it also poses some issues: Suo has to keep a low profile in areas controlled by rival organisations, or else he might be ambushed. It also means he cannot easily go out and see his old friends. Even though he always masquerades as a civvie when he does, wearing stud earrings and a glass eye, it's still a little risky—especially since he likes to visit the strongest member of Roppo-Ichiza. While Roppo-Ichiza aren’t yakuza, they're still han-gure, so some of its more criminally entangled members might recognize him anyway.
But Sakura himself, bless him, has not put two and two together and figured out that Suo Hayato and Gui Yanzhao are the same person. This is partly because Suo lies very convincingly about his fictional career in the tea industry, but you think it's also because Sakura is so gullible it's endearing.
I use the glass eye now because it's better for networking, Suo had explained before Sakura could interrogate him too much, his voice too smooth and too quick for the other man to get in a word edgewise. My business partners find the eyepatch too silly. The tassel earrings too. By the way, would you like some Baimudan tea? I thought of you when I smelled it—I know you like fragrant things—so I picked some up for you on my last visit to China. I was there for business a couple of weeks ago.
He, of course, neglected to mention that said business involved meeting with the 14K triad.
Despite the enormity of Suo's omission (lie), Sakura is none the wiser whenever he meets with you. He thinks you're just a regular hostess who has freedom of movement and various other human rights, and that Suo’s just a regular guy who isn’t homicidally obsessed with you (a detail of Suo's fabricated life story that is unfortunately grounded in reality). All this to say, Sakura doesn't think twice about mentioning the fact that you have a routine of going to love hotels after work.
Suo, as always, remains calm in the face of unsettling information. He sets down his tea (just tea, without shochu), and politely says, “Pardon?” He's once again using the nonchalant kind of tone that suggests mortal danger.
“She's always going to love hotels after her shifts.” Sakura is frowning at you, pink but scowling. “I thought you said you were done with that stuff. You promised us you wouldn't do it anymore. Suo—are you really okay with this?”
On the one hand, you find it exceptionally sweet that Sakura, after all this time, remembers your promise and wishes to hold you to it. He was so worried about you when you started having those nervous breakdowns as a teenager, and he probably still is. On the other hand, you're shitting bricks at the fact that Suo is now aware of your activities. Because sure, he likely won't fuck with Keisei Street—but you realise, as he stares at you, that you can't be certain of this. After all, your fake yakuza husband has very real homicidal urges.
“Um,” you say. “It's just business.”
“Business,” Suo repeats.
“You don't have to do that stuff to keep good business,” Sakura grouses, unaware of Suo’s carefully suppressed rage. “You're real popular already.”
“Are you?” Suo asks, looking right at you.
“I mean—I told you the pay would be better, right?” you reply, voice oddly high and nervous, and this is when Sakura notices that something is wrong.
“Oh,” Sakura says, looking between the two of you. “Suo, you didn't know?”
“I didn't,” he says. “Actually, she told me specifically that she wasn't going to do that if she worked here.” He turns to you, still smiling. “That's the only reason why I allowed this at all, remember?”
A chill travels down your spine. You did, in fact, commit to a perpetually sexless lifestyle in order to be granted some semblance of freedom: Of course I won't sleep with any customers, you'd said. You know I don't really like doing that anyway. I promise I'll behave! I’ll be out of the clubs and right back home. Sakura said he’d make sure I’ll get to a cab safely after the bar closes and everything!
“Um,” you say again, but this time you have no follow-up.
“Wait,” Sakura demands, “what do you mean by ‘allowed her’? What, do you need to give her permission to work now or something?”
Suo smiles disarmingly at Sakura. Without missing a beat, he says, “Generally no. But we’re dating now, which complicates what she’s allowed to do with other men at her job.”
Sakura spits out his drink. You choke on your spit.
“I… um?!” Sakura’s staring at you, so you quickly recover. This is a mortifying lie, but it's better than Sakura finding out just how batshit Suo has become since his school days. “I thought we were going to keep that a secret, dear?”
“Ah, you're right. Sorry, I got too excited.” Suo gives you an endeared look before turning to Sakura. “We were going to keep it to ourselves unless we got serious about it. But we've been talking about marriage lately, so I thought it was fine to mention.”
“...”
You’re going to have an aneurysm. Why does every cover that Suo comes up with involve a marital relationship between the two of you?!
“Oh… holy shit.” Sakura’s expression is complicated—somehow, more complicated than yours, even though you’re the one getting cornered into a fake engagement. It's unbelievable how shy he still is about this kind of thing. Maybe it’s just particularly embarrassing since he's known you two for so long, you reason. Regardless, he remembers his social cues enough to say, “Congrats, guys. That's great. That's really great.”
Suo gazes fondly at you across the table. “We were thinking you could be our best man,” he adds, and you consider violently kicking his leg.
“O-oh. Uh, yeah! Sure! But what about Nirei?”
“Rather than having a maid of honour,” you say reflexively, used to lying through your teeth for Suo, “we’d like him to be our best man as well.”
“Oh. That makes sense.” Thrown off guard, Sakura completely forgets about the love hotel business. He whips out his phone. “When were you thinking of having your wedding? I'll put it in my calendar.”
“I’m not sure.” Suo turns to you. “What were we thinking again, dear?”
You're going to die. You're going to die and it's a good thing because if you survive this embarrassment, your future will be bleak. As soon as Nirei finds out about this, he’ll want to start helping you with wedding planning, and then it would just be too awkward to cancel things. You’ll have to enter a fake marriage with Suo, which will be completely sexless, because even with a vow of everlasting love, there are still too many concrete and materially consequential reasons for not sleeping with him.
Condemning yourself to a lifetime of sexual frustration, you reply, “I think we were talking about a summer wedding.”
The drive home is awkward.
Hanzo and Shuuhei pick the two of you up. Suo mentioned that he wanted to talk to you and you alone, so they bring the Rolls Royce with the privacy suite. The two of them are entirely cut off from you thanks to the soundproofing, which traps you with Suo, who’s drinking a bottle of oolong tea as the two of you sit in complete silence. You think he's waiting for you to squirm—which you do.
You stay like that for five, agonising minutes before Suo finally says, “So you're sleeping with your customers.”
You swallow. “Yes.”
“For business?”
“Yes.”
“How much do you make?”
You blink. “Huh?”
“How much do you get paid for a single night of work, including gifts that your customers give you in exchange for sleeping with them?”
You're halfway through citing your earnings when you realise where he's going with this.
“So you make less than you did at Red Dragon,” Suo concludes, “and you're very smart with your money, so I know you know that, and you probably went into this knowing that you'd end up at a net loss.” He turns to you, gives you a look so sharp that it almost scares you. All made worse by his civilian disguise, which makes him feel unfamiliar. His glass eye shines strangely in the light, and his scar tissue is hidden by the makeup you helped apply. You wish he'd taken it all off before having this conversation.
“So,” he says, “what’s the real reason you changed jobs?”
Already knowing that he’ll figure you out sooner or later, you admit, “I just wanted to start having sex again.”
Suo blinks. “You… what?”
“I wanted to have sex with people,” you repeat. “I hadn't been touched for nearly two years, okay? I needed to get laid or else I'd go insane.” You cross your arms and look away, suddenly feeling petulant. “I'm sure you've noticed that our arrangement makes it impossible for me to see people.”
He doesn't answer, because of course he's noticed. He’d designed his house rules with precisely this intent. If he accompanies you everywhere you go, then you can't exactly go on dates, and you definitely can't meet people for sex. Not unless you feel like having Suo watch as some anonymous guy fucks you, and you don't. As hot as the idea is, it’s definitely not platonic behaviour, and it would probably trigger the whole homicidal obsession thing.
“Do you like it?” Suo asks, startling you. You look at him, confused.
“What?”
“Do you enjoy having sex with your customers?” he asks. His voice and gaze are even. Unrelenting. “Does it make you happy?”
You stare at him, a deer caught in headlights. You didn't expect Suo to actually care about whether you enjoyed it or not, and you didn't really expect to care yourself either. But truthfully, you hated it. You simply weren't feeling it with most of your customers and avoided intercourse with all but one. Then in that one case you let someone earnestly fuck you, it was a complete letdown. Possibly the worst sex you'd ever had. You spent the whole time watching the clock, wondering how long it would take, and it turned out that your hookup had remarkable stamina but absolutely no technique. To pass the time, and in an attempt to feel something, you tried to imagine it was someone else who was inside you. You cycled through a whole list of people, including all of your exes, a few of your past customers, every single member of BTS, and then—finally, inevitably—your long-time friend, roommate, and landlord.
To your complete horror, when you imagined that it was Suo who had you folded in half, his cock so deep inside you that you could feel it in your throat, you came so hard that you drenched the sheets.
You lay there afterward as your customer showered, alone in the bed. Normally you'd be getting dressed at that point, but you were too distracted. You kept thinking about what it would feel like to be held by Suo after having your guts rearranged by him—embraced tenderly like you know he would do with you, kissing him platonically like you've always wanted to do with him—and you realised that you didn’t actually want to have sex with anyone else. Despite all your life experience, sexual experience, and job experience—in that moment, you felt like a lonely nineteen year old girl who wanted nothing more than to have romantic, vanilla sex with her best friend, but who was instead having impersonal, disappointing sex with various salarymen.
This was a feeling so disgusting that you’ve decided to never tell anyone at any cost.
“Yeah, it's fine. I guess I like it.” You pretend to study your nails. “Sometimes I cum, which is all I really want.”
Suo keeps staring at you. “That’s it?” he asks, voice measured and careful. You raise a brow, playing dumb.
“What do you mean?”
“That's all you want? Just to get off?”
You gaze out the window, trying not to look at his lips.
“Yes, that's all.”
No matter how batshit Suo gets, he always maintains a certain kindness and maturity in how he handles conflict with you. It's a lesson that he learned from his master, which has perhaps been distorted over time, but remains important to him nevertheless.
If you do something upsetting, Suo is never forceful about getting you to act differently. Sure, he has fucked up ways of either getting you to behave or making you understand the consequences of your actions, and perhaps he has his manipulative moments. It was probably not a good thing that he coaxed you into indefinite house arrest, for instance. But he never threatens you, and he never hits you, and he never disrespects you. In fact, more than anything, he makes it a point to never let you feel like you aren't loved.
So when Suo abandons you after that conversation in the Rolls Royce, you lose your fucking mind.
Suo doesn’t come home in the days following that evening, without any note nor explanation. For the first time in years, he stops replying to your texts. Your immediate thought is that he's been gravely injured or perhaps even killed, which sends you into a panicked spiral. But every one of his men who's come by to check on you has implied otherwise—but I'm not allowed to tell you anything else, anesan, I’m sorry, they all say. And when you realise that Suo is actually fine and he's just playing a fucked up mind game with you, one that makes you feel distinctly unloved, you feel simultaneously heartbroken and apoplectic. The man is not allowed to corner you into de facto imprisonment and then just fucking leave. In fact, if he tries, you might imprison him.
You spend a few days sitting at home and crying over this, as well as torturing yourself by thinking about useless things (fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, et cetera). But eventually, you get tired of wallowing in self-inflicted misery, and you decide to just track your fake husband down. His men have been adamant about not letting you out of their sight—presumably so you don’t fuck any more of your customers, because Suo can be spiteful like that—so you have to be strategic about your plan to find him.
You decide to do it during work. You tap out in the middle of a shift, feigning illness, so nobody bats an eye when you put on the most shapeless hoodie you own and throw on a face mask. Your chauffeurs (handlers) don't notice as you sneak off—and for the first time in years, you walk through the red light district all alone.
It feels strange not to be protected, and even stranger not to be surveilled. You marvel at the unfamiliar experience of complete freedom, and at the possibility of being able to run off and disappear if you so wished. But you don't, of course. Not only do you care too deeply for Suo to abandon him, you're also pretty sure he has your driver’s licence and ID card locked up somewhere. At least you haven't been able to find them, and Suo was oddly evasive about it when you asked. (I haven't seen them, he'd said, but I don't think you’d need either of those things immediately, anyway, do you? And you nodded in response, because it was true that you liked being his passenger princess too much to care about your licence.)
So rather than bolting for the subway, you head straight to your old workplace. The gleaming doors of Red Dragon welcome you as you cross its threshold, and you're greeted immediately by the scent of luxury colognes and expensive cigars—both evoking a strange nostalgia in you. Even the click of your heels against the marble floor feels familiar. You realise that you've missed the place despite its cutthroat culture and its owner’s authoritarian control over you, which you suppose isn't surprising. This club was more or less your home for years and, thanks to said owner, was the safest place you've ever worked.
And being that you feel you've returned to your very safe home, you don't expect it when you're abruptly stopped by the bouncer.
“Can I help you?” he asks, his arm in your way. You don't recognize him, but you see the edges of his irezumi peeking out from the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt.
“Yeah, actually,” you say. “I'm looking for Gui Yanzhao. Is he here right now?”
The bouncer—or chinpira, you guess—bristles.
“You're looking for who?”
“Yanzhao?” you say impatiently. “Eyepatch, tassel earrings? Owner of the club? Probably your boss?”
The bouncer steps forward and reaches for something in his pocket, which makes you suddenly nervous, and also makes you realise that in a hoodie and a face mask, you ordinarily wouldn't be allowed in this club, let alone into the room of its yakuza owner. You're so used to VIP treatment here that you simply forgot.
You take a step back. “Um. I think there's been a misunderstanding.” You lower your face mask, which doesn't help as you've never met this man, and he must be new. You’ll need to complain to Suo about his onboarding process later, if you aren't killed before you can find him.
It turns out that this yakuza rookie has a knife in his pocket, which is not the worst thing he could have been carrying, but is also not the best. You're getting ready to run in the other direction when a more senior member of the gang comes by. He gives you a startled look, which then turns alarmed when he sees his younger brother’s knife.
“Anesan!” he yells hurriedly, and he snatches the chinpira’s knife straight from his hand. His lunge for the weapon turns into a hurried bow. He pulls his colleague—whose face has turned very white in a very short amount of time—into an even deeper one. They look on the verge of prostrating.
“Oh, Yamashita. Hi! Is this guy new?”
“Yes! My sincerest apologies for my younger brother’s idiocy, and his insolence in raising a weapon at you.” There's a sheen of sweat on the back of his neck. “If you would like him to atone, then he would be more than happy to—”
“No, that's fine. I'd really like him to keep all his fingers.” If you have to see a rookie cut off his pinkie today, you think you might actually change your mind on running away. Fuck your documents—Suo can keep them. Surely life without proof of identity can't be that hard. “By the way,” you say, trying to change the topic before Yamashita can suggest alternative acts of atonement, “have you seen my husband?”
Yamashita hesitates at your question, looks conflicted. You feel a little bad for him, and for every other gang member who needs to worry about accidentally offending Suo. You watch him sweat for a full ten seconds before he says, “You can follow me. But anesan, you might find it unpleasant upstairs. I can find someone to drive you home instead, if you'd like.”
You give him a funny look. This was your workplace for a very long time—you can’t think of many things that would happen here that might seriously upset you. “What, is he cheating on me?” you guess.
“What? No! Aniki would never!” Yamashita seems genuinely shocked at the suggestion. “He's crazy about you!”
“Then I'm sure he’ll be happy to see me,” you say, although given that he's ignored your texts for four days straight, you aren't so sure. Regardless, this seems to be good enough reasoning for Yamashita, and you’re taken to the top floor of Red Dragon. You ponder the whole time, on the elevator ride up, just what exactly Suo’s been up to that's made Yamashita this nervous about letting you see him.
Then the door opens, and you’re given your answer in the form of several body bags—all cleanly zipped up and conscientiously laid out in front of the elevators in a single, neat row. A sight that is significantly worse than a rookie cutting off his pinkie finger.
“Oh,” you say faintly. You try not to throw up. “So this is why he hasn't been home.”
“Exactly!” Yamashita replies, beaming. “See, anesan, I told you. He'd never cheat on you!”
Suo is in the lounge of the top floor, which has been cleared of both civilians and corpses for the night. He's sitting on one of the couches, leaning back with his one eye closed, as if asleep. The golden tassels of his earrings are draped over the expensive leather of his seat, intertwined with his dark hair. A cup of tea sits in front of him, steaming. Even this far away, you recognize it by the scent alone: jasmine, probably from Longjing. One of the most expensive blends he has, and that which he saves for days he’s stressed, though he never admits it when he is.
The sight of him would almost look tranquil, except for all the blood on his knuckles and his cuffs.
Off to the side, two of his younger brothers are chatting away. One is pouring cups of some doubtlessly expensive liquor, and the other is smoking a cigar. There's karaage on the table too. You recognize all of this as part of a ritual that some of the guys like to do after a hit or a shootout, not dissimilar to getting ramen or McDonald’s after going to a club.
You catch a bit of their conversation as you approach. One of them holds up the liquor bottle (Isojiman sake, you now recognise from your girls’ bar days, one of the rarer bottles costing around nine million yen) and asks Suo if he wants to join. “No thanks,” he says predictably, “I'm on a diet.” Then he turns and looks right at you—startling you, because you had thought you were being fairly quiet—and gives you a smile so genuine that it reminds you of his Furin days. “Would my beautiful wife like to drink for me, though?”
“No thanks,” you reply, “but your beautiful wife would like to talk to you.”
The two guys clear out to give you some privacy. You’re left alone with Suo, feeling awkward after several days of resenting him for no reason. (You’d rather die than go to therapy, but the whole fear of abandonment thing is probably something you should start addressing.) You don't even know where you want to sit. Eventually, you settle for placing yourself next to him, which is a decision that Suo quickly overturns by pulling you into his lap.
A flutter erupts in your stomach as he settles you on top of him. This physiological reaction is absurd, as not even ten minutes ago, you were trying not to throw up at the line of corpses in front of the elevator. It should also scare you somewhat that Suo’s hands—delicately adjusting your body—are still covered in blood. But truthfully, you can't help but be happy when he makes you feel so loved.
You take one of the napkins on the table and start wiping at his knuckles. Tenderly, in case they're bruised or skinned.
“You didn't call or come home,” you start.
“I thought it would be too dangerous.”
You frown, thinking of all the bodies outside. “Was this a rival organisation?”
“No. They were ours.” He sighs. “A succession conflict. There are a few people who don't like how I'll run things if I take over.”
You nod. Suo is very old-fashioned in his ideals about the yakuza, which you think is an imprint of his master’s influence, and something that appeals to his current ‘father’. He values chivalry. He likes protecting the weak. His filial devotion to his deceased master has now extended to every member of his yakuza family, especially his oyassan. He’s almost certainly the top candidate for taking over after the oyabun dies, but being that part of his old-fashioned principles excludes lucrative projects such as sex trafficking, you suppose it’s natural that some people in his organisation would prefer him dead rather than in charge.
“You’ve never ghosted me during violent conflicts before though,” you say. “I was worried that something happened to you. Or that you were upset with me.”
Suo’s hand drops to your waist, pulling you a little closer.
“They knew where we live. They tried to get to you, you know.” Your eyes widen in alarm, so he cups your face with a palm. His thumb glides along your cheek, and your response is almost Pavlovian: your heart rate immediately slows at the comfort of his touch. “It’s fine. They won't bother you ever again.” The cheerful smile returns. “And if anyone else ever does, I'll handle them too.”
Your heart swells. Enthusiastic pledges of murder are not a healthy sign of affection, but after so much loneliness—whether from the past several days, or the years before that, you aren't sure—you can't find it in yourself to be disturbed. You feel and sound painfully fond when you reply, “I know.”
Suo’s expression dims a little then. “I thought you'd like the space anyway.”
“What?” You give him a confused look. You have never once given him any indication that you want even an inch of space from him. You'd crawl into his ribcage if you could. “Why would you think that?”
“I thought you felt suffocated. You left my club just so you could have sex with other people.” You blink, lingering on his wording. Other people. He continues before you can ask about it, sighing, “You didn't even ask me who I'd give permission to touch you. You just went ahead and decided on your own.”
“...”
You try not to look disturbed. Suo’s apparent wish to control your sexual decisions is news to you, and somehow more alarming than the murder pledge. And even worse—you immediately clench in response to his words. The thought of Suo dictating who does and doesn't get to touch your cunt is… well, your mind is heading in a distinctly non-platonic direction.
Trying to ignore the heat in between your thighs (but at the same time encouraging it), you ask: “Who would you have been, um, okay with touching me?”
“Sakura or Nirei,” he says immediately. “Though only Sakura would be interested.”
“What.” You gape at him, all arousal forgotten. “Bullshit. He would never.”
“Yes, he would.” Suo tilts his head. “Haven't you noticed?”
“I don't think there's anything to notice? And also—he’s so shy, I don't think he'd ever agree even if he were interested!” You give him a bewildered look. “He couldn't even look at us when we said we were getting married, he was so embarrassed!”
“Embarrassed?” Suo stares at you, an amused glint in his eye. “Is that what you thought was going on?”
“Was there anything else?”
He studies you for a moment, clearly entertained but not explaining why. “Well—it’s fine,” he says. “It doesn't matter for now. Especially since he's helping us plan a wedding and all.”
You make a face. “I still can't believe that's the cover you went for.”
“Are you upset with it?” he asks smoothly, and you huff and say yes, but from his sly look, you think he knows it's a lie.
Naturally, you deflect before he can further interrogate you. “So, given that you are now my fiancé, am I no longer allowed to work on Keisei Street and see customers after my shifts?”
You don’t expect it when Suo says, “No, you can.”
You stare. “What?”
“You can keep seeing customers if you'd like. You said it makes you happy, so why would I stop you?” Suo’s brow furrows, his usual calm replaced with concern. “Do you really think I do the things I do to make you miserable?”
Guilt gnaws at your heart. He looks so disappointed. “No,” you tell him. “I just thought it'd make you miserable that I was sleeping with people without your permission.” It is partly why you hid it from him in the first place, after all. You don't like to see him sad—you’re still haunted by the deep grief he was in, after your master died—and also, his misery tends to bring bodily harm to other people these days.
Cognizant of both concerns, you ask, “You’re really okay with me sleeping with my customers? I can stop, if you want.”
“No, it’s fine. I still don't like it, but you can continue for now if you want.”
Suo’s mouth curls—not in a gentle way, as has been his expression since seeing you walk in, but in a way that sets off your flight or fight response.
“I'm sure we’ll reach a mutual understanding soon enough.”
END PART 1
thank you genuinely if you read all that because this is a deranged au and I still can't believe I wrote it sldfkjsldfkj. please do let me know if you enjoyed my yandere suo delusions. sorry there was no smut in this chapter. I promise there is a ton in the next one (probably too much... lol. it's a 10k chapter and literally half of those words are about orgasm denial sldfkjalskdjdf). it's completely written and I hope to edit and have it up by next week!
also here is glossary of terms and world building notes if you are interested!
tagging @kweenkatsuki-fics !! <3
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DPxDC Hogwarts AU [pt. 3]
The third time is... rather different.
Tim is standing still and prim in his new dress robes between both his parents, the shining and glittering ballroom full of soft chatter, music, and clanking glasses right behind him.
Daniel is standing in front of him, his back straight and his hair styled and gelled to the point where it looks like a beret on his head. He is wearing all white, pristine and perfect, and Mr. Masters, who is standing on his right, is dressed in a similar fashion. The man looks like a marble statue, if Tim is being honest, what with his pale skin, silvery hair and light blue, almost colorless eyes.
Tim hadn't paid attention to it before - to be fair, it's not like he had a chance to see Daniel up close until today - but the boy is also very pale. Not a hint of blush on his cheeks, no freckles or birthmarks that he can see. If Tim hadn't seen him move, he would have been certain he was looking at a porcelain doll, not a human being.
The other person accompanying them is a woman with short, cut just below her ears, ginger hair. And, unlike both Daniel and Mr. Masters, she is not as colorless, wearing a dress in light, shimmering blue, with a high laced collar and tight sleeves. She is smiling pleasantly at Mother as she greets her, keeping her hand on Daniel's shoulder, and, overall, looks a lot more alive than anyone Tim has so far met or seen tonight.
Which is nice. Tim didn't think that when people heard the name 'Winter Ball', they were meant to take it literally and show up acting like frozen sculptures.
The ginger-haired lady curtsies with a smile, and both Mr. Masters and Daniel nod before going past them and entering the ballroom of Drake manor. Tim glances over his shoulder - Daniel kept looking at him as if they've never met before, and Tim is not sure what to think of it - but the boy keeps walking after his chaperones without as much as acknowledging him.
It's only when Tim starts turning his head back that he sees the other boy shoot him a tiny grin over his shoulder.
Tim might not be an expert in body language or socializing, but even he knows that grin means nothing good for the guests at the Ball. Especially given Daniel's previous records. Tim bites back a smile of his own.
Good. This party can definitely use some elephant trunks, in his opinion.
~~~
Roughly an hour later, when Tim had long lost sight of the whole Masters family in the glittering crowd, and, to be honest, kind of forgot to anticipate whatever Daniel was going to do, the boy shows up in front of him again.
He appears from what seems to be thin air, out of breath but with his robes still perfectly white - Tim suspects some sort of spell - and cuts right in between Stephanie and Tim, grabbing the latter's wrist.
"Dance with me," he breathes out urgently, and Tim blinks. Daniel's fingers are cold as ice on his skin.
"What?" He asks, baffled, and Stephanie makes a loud, undignified snort, not bothering to cover her mouth. Daniel shoots her a quick surprised look, like he didn't even see her until she made a sound, but she just shakes her head and makes a tiny step away.
"I don't dance," she says, an innocent smile on her lips, and that's a lie, Tim knows she can dance, she did that not ten minutes ago. She just wants Tim to suffer, the blond traitor in an embroidered dress.
"Good, because I didn't invite you," Daniel smirks, tilting his head to the side, and it should sound like an insult, but somehow doesn't. Stephanie grins back. Tim has an awfully damning feeling like the two of them would get along like a house on fire, given half a chance. And he doesn't like that idea.
Merlin, when he wished for the ball to be a little bit more fun than it is, he didn't mean this. Not that he intends on stopping either of them, but he is pretty sure they are not allowed to join efforts because that will end with the ballroom in ruins. And Tim likes his house in one piece, thanks.
It's also quite irritating how the two of them can just exchange ten words with each other and become friends.
Tim twists his hand in Daniel's grip and grabs him, all but dragging the boy away from Stephanie and to the brightly lit dancefloor. He wanted to dance? Tim can dance, no problem. He bets he can dance ten times better than Daniel, he's had so many lessons.
The boy makes a short, surprised sound at the sudden movement, but then follows suit without a word. His hand is still cold. Maybe one of them should wear gloves.
"Why did you want to dance?" Tim asks, as they get to the edge of the crowd, where the glitter of jewels and the flurry of robes are making a complicated picture of waltz. Why did you ask me, Tim wants to ask, actually, but he is not sure he wants an answer.
Daniel pulls him back by their still joined hands, making Tim turn around, and puts his other hand on Tim's waist, like it's the most natural thing ever. Dancing, right. Tim puts his own hand on Daniel's shoulder and steps closer.
"Sam would actually murder me if I asked her, and I don't know anyone else," the boy explains with a careless shrug, tilting his head to the side and listening to the music. Tim sees his lips move but hears no words - counting the steps, no doubt.
"You don't even know my name," Tim rolls his eyes, and maybe he is a little petty, but he doesn't need to count steps. He just pulls Daniel into the dance, careful enough not to bump into anyone else. The boy follows his lead easily enough, even though he seems a lot more concentrated on where he puts his feet than Tim is. So, he is better at dancing. Nice to know.
"I do, you're Tim," Daniel tells him a few minutes later, when both of them are fairly confident they are not going to trip over each other's feet. Although Tim almost does anyway - he didn't expect that.
On the other hand, it's probably Samantha who told him. Mrs. Manson brought her over to Drake estate a few times but made sure not to invite Tim to Manson's. Probably in order to avoid the same daring escape to happen twice.
"And you're Daniel, but we were never introduced," he counters, "You're not supposed to know."
"That's a stupid rule," Daniel huffs and loses his footing slightly, stepping on Tim's toe, "Oh, sorry. And it's Danny, not Daniel. I hate 'Daniel'."
Tim rolls his eyes and is a little proud that it doesn't cause a single pause in his steps.
But then, there's a crackle up in the air above them, like a firework that went off too close to the ground, and that causes Tim to startle and almost trip over Danie- Danny. The boy's grip on his waist tightens as he keeps Tim from falling, and when Tim looks back up at him, Danny is grinning, wide and excited, and happy.
Just like he did back when they first met. Well, when Tim first saw him.
Which is kind of making Tim's stomach feel weird, but also can only mean one thing.
Tim looks up.
The chandeliers in the ballroom are all giant and lit with a thousand candles, and the patterns of countless mirrors on the ceiling and walls only make the lights seem endless. Not a starry sky, but a myriad of tiny suns thrown all over the high ceilings.
Another crackle follows the first one, and Tim sees a dozen of tiny explosions go off from the chandelier, shooting in all directions and turning into bursts of white, sparkling stardust that slowly fades in the air.
"Pretty, right?" Danny asks quietly as more and more little stars are born high above the crowd, filling the air with shimmering lights. Tim suddenly realizes that they've stopped dancing - and everyone else did, too - and his mouth is hanging open, because this is the prettiest thing he's ever seen, and he didn't expect Danny to do something beautiful. He expected a prank, a joke, something ridiculous like the elephant trunks or the escape on a broom, but this-
This is magic.
Tim can't look away, he doesn't want to look away, but he still tears his gaze from the ceiling and looks at Danny.
"How did you do it?" He asks, quiet enough so no one would hear them over all the fireworks. The boy shrugs nonchalantly, but his eyes hold the reflection of all the sparkling stars above them.
"If I tell you, it won't be that fun," he says, smiling.
Tim doesn't ask again, instead looking back up to the ceiling full of exploding sparks.
It's the best party he's ever seen.
—☆—☆—☆—
Visuals that I might have spent too much time looking for:
And Tim's obligatory post-party drawings:
[Picrew]
Also, for the ambiance reasons, listen to the 'Once Upon a December' cover by Céline Lavigne.
—☆—☆—☆—
More random info on the characters:
Stephanie Brown is related to Lavender Brown, they are distant cousins, with Steph being a few years older. Her father is currently in Azkaban, and due to this fact, Steph and her mother are not often welcome in most social circles. They have a somewhat tense relationship with the rest of Brown family, but they are not ostracized, just generally frowned upon. Steph doesn't care much, though, you can break walls with her self-esteem. Her mother was a Hufflepuff, and she wants to be one as well.
Jack stayed home with Dani because she is too young to go through a whole ball without getting bored and stirring up some trouble. Danny was allowed to go under the condition that he won't ruin the evening, and he didn't! He made it better for all he knows! Malicious compliance, his favorite tool to use.
Later that evening the guests kept giving Jack and Janet Drake their compliments for the fireworks, and they both gladly accepted them, all while wondering who the fuck did that.
Neither Tim nor Vlad or Maddie, who knew who's at fault, said anything, although Maddie did ask Danny to never do that again without giving prior warning.
[<- part 2 | part 4 ->]
#danny phantom#dpxdc#dc x dp#tim drake#tim x danny#its not romantic yet#they are kids#hp#hogwarts au#listen i have a t h i n g for tim x danny ballroom dancing#how many times have i written it#two? three? a lot#anyway#fireworks#magic#vlad masters#maddie fenton#stephanie brown#ficlet#cork writes#cork prompts
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tell me about your headcanons about the cultural differences between layers plss
- your favourite sister ever
takes a deep deep deep breath. hello niki. my beloved sister. my favoritest sister ever.
the noob layer (before the evil champion)
very very community oriented
block parties (get it) are really popular!!
a lot of sharing and stuff going on
music!! music is a really big thing!!
accent sounds a bit like theyre singing, almost like theyre dancing with words!! they dont pronounce their vowels fully!!
the noob layer (after the evil champion)
community??? no chance, everyone dies before you get to even know their name (which is why evbo never bothers asking anyone)
really the only sharing they do is when someone is sick or theres a child and occasionally family units share food
cannibalism. yeah. its normal for people to go insane, the noobs probably refer to it as some kind of curse or something bc thats fun
the pro layer (before the evil champion)
everyones neighbors!! less community oriented than the noob layer
more focused on helping each other get better!! regularly helping each other learn fun new parkour things
their accent is kinda like. how do i explain this. their voices tend to be softer and tbh i wanna say they sound like a weird mix of southern and british. dont ask questions.
i dont have much for the pro layer if yall have fun things hand 'em over
the pro layer (after the evil champion)
music is HUGE here between moral boosting events and also playing songs for parkour !!
community oriented but more in the way where family units stick together and everyone else is like. a coworker. like you might be friends and occasionally you might get close with someone but like. ehhhhh
mostly just like. yeah i work in the same general area as this guy
the fighter later (before they were banished)
this layer has the most people because its so hard to rank up so its the one with the most stuff going on!!
libraries!! this is the layer of scholars and shit!!
theres so many people here that the masters come down and hang out here a lot too!!
this is where everyone learns things, theres no schools on the other layers because everyone has the chance to rank up !!
this ones just fun, its got a mix of everything because its the most populated \o/
they have a fun accent i think, tbh i wanna say its similar to new york? idk
the fighter layer (after the banishment)
devoid of basically everything that made it what it was
the most sparsely populated now
everyone is hostile as fuck, by the point we see it in canon everything's been combed over tens of hundreds of times so if someone sees someone else its safe to assume one of them is getting mugged
unless its a seawatt situation but whatever
some bonds still remain and theyre as strong as ever now
everyone either has fashioned masks out of their clothes or just has the most fucked up throat from the frequent sandstorms.
the master layer (before the evil champion)
not much going on up here!! they normally hang out on the fighter layer
huuuuuge showoffs but like in a fun way!! performances!!! wow!!!
theyve got a bit of twang in their voice i think bc yes.
the master layer (after the evil champion)
showoffs but in a bad way
big on spreading rumors
really reclusive, never visit lower levels or each other
battling is common for any reason, the more people youve defeated in a battle the higher up you are on the social ladder
ok heres some!! i hope u like it it took me like 45 minutes to write all this bc i kept getting distracted
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How fast does the moon primal stone travel? Let's assume that the world of Xadia is similar to our own in terms of size, length of day etc.
In this scene, some time has already passed since sunset, so the morning isn't as far away any more as it could be (and it's late summer, so the nights start relatively late). But "morning" doesn't necessarily mean "sunrise", which gives the stone more time.
I think it's thus reasonable to assume that Aaravos is talking about a timespan of about 10 hours, but depending on some assumptions it could also be 6 or 14 hours.
The circumference of our earth is about 40,000 km (I assume the stone doesn't take a shortcut), which gives us the following average speeds for different travel times:
6 hours: 6,666 km/h (4,142 mph)
8 hours: 5,000 km/h (3,107 mph)
10 hours: 4,000 km/h (2,485 mph)
12 hours: 3,333 km/h (2,071 mph)
14 hours: 2,857 km/h (1,1175 mph)
The speed of sound on earth is about 1,234 km/h (767 mph), so even with the more conservative estimates, the moon primal stone should obliterate the sound barrier, comfortably outpacing an F-35 fighter jet (1,296 km/h, 806 mph). Quite impressive for a flying object that travels by flapping its wings.
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Here let me share my perspective as a character analyst + analyst in general!! I don’t mean to sound rude btw 😭 I’m just VERY touchy when it comes to EPIC and even more so when it comes to AUs like this (generally just prefer crossovers that aren’t erasing any of the previous characters like this- I want to see the characters interact and form relationships not just see one character in the place of another but that’s PURELY just me- I’ve been writing crossover AUS for YEARS and it’s a genuine skill to create one successfully so I apologize for being a little touchy)
I honestly don’t think it works trying to equate much WOF characters to EPIC characters
like I mean Qibli and Ody makes SO MUCH sense- in a lot of ways Qibli has a lot of the same flaws as Ody at the start of his journey (namely: overly merciful).
Other than that there really isn’t much other characters to equate without both massively mischaracterizing a WOF character and bastardizing an EPIC character
I’d much rather see the characters simply be put in the same roles IN STORY and NOT narratively to see how DIFFERENT things would’ve gone
So it wouldn’t be
X character = Y character
instead more so
X character is the captain LIKE Y Character
This also allows some flexibility! So instead of ONLY having one character filling the role of another (even if it doesn’t fit to their personality) multiple can! Basically they’re going through the same things! But not DOING the same things! Now it’s a matter of trying to figure out which character would make similar choices! Or maybe not! If you want to see how differently things would’ve gone if Qibli appointed say…Turtle as second in command! Then do so!
Don’t forget about the characters and who they are! Who do you think Qibli would most reasonably appoint as second in command? Stuff like that! This also separates them from the characters originally filling the role! I personally felt like many of these really really didn’t fit
(P.S: I wouldn’t want to equate Calypso to ANY WOF character. Someone like Cal simply couldn’t exist in WOF as it is a kids book series. and it feels incredibly wrong to correlate her with anyone. You COULD just get rid of those bits or maybe just her entirely: to me personally that feels a bit distasteful- but I can imagine WHY you’d do that. I myself wouldn’t want to write that happening to teenagers.)
Okay, so I may have turned epic characters into wof dragons, but what if I put wof dragons into the EPIC universe? 🧐🧐🧐 (I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS AU WAY TOO MUCH)
Odysseus: Qibli
Eurylochus: Winter
Polites: Turtle
Athena: Thorn
Penelope: Moon
Telemachus: Sunny (trust I’m trying to make these fit 😭 Maybe they adopted her idk 😭)
Polyphemus: Burn ig?? Idk this is like one of the only characters I can’t think of a good wof character for 😭)
Aeolus: Fathom..? (Idk I also can’t think of a good character 😭)
Poseidon: Albatross
Circe: Jerboa
Hermes: Chameleon
Tiresias: Clearsight
The sirens: just like animus seawings I guess :p
Scylla: Orca
Zeus: Darkstalker
Antinous: Vulture
Calypso: Peril (maybe…? Idk)
Apollo: Glacier
Hephaestus: Ruby
Aphrodite: Coral
Ares: Moorhen
Hera: Glory
Charybdis: This might be a headcannon that I’m mistaking as canon but I think they talked about a kraken once so yeah :3 (okay it is canon 😇)
Feel free to do with this au whatever you want 😛😛😛
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green haired guy that has haunted my character types for 10+ years
#roronoa zoro#one piece#opfanart#ive spent a good 2/3 of my artist life trying to draw him in a way i like.... i'm inching to it slowly bit by bit as i improve#which is truly One of my greatest joys as an artist - learning to draw better so i can draw my faves better#zoro is genuinely my favorite fictional character everrrrrrr... i think.... i love him so much but i have long since ran out of words to#Describe why. and i dont think any other character has come close tbh -- EXCEPT FOR WOLFWOOD!!!!! god. WW!!!!!!!!#which is crazy. but ww is very special. very dear. zoro and ww are very different... someone more similar to ww would be sanji and robin#but there's also smth about them that are so Similar. i sound like an insane person in these tags and clearly im bias BUT I SWEAR!!!#it might just be the loyalty aspect - incredibly strong traits in both of them.... also nightow drew wolfwood in a haramaki once......#connecting the most minor dots over nothing - but any ww + zoro lovers out there - maybe u understand what i mean.
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i forgot grunt meant like henchman or whatever for a second i thought they were like yeah leonas bitch ass grunts and growls are partial proof to savanaclaw being an athletic leaning dorm lol
#well they also say that in the game not just the manga jkdlfhsdkl like in azuls union bday card#ace was like oh yeah ok you dont wanna be in savanaclaw cause theyre more athletic oriented right#and azul was like NO IM TALKING ABOUT THE SUN SHUT UP!!! jsdklfhsdklfj#anyway i was on the wiki cuz i was trying to remember what their dorm's trait thing is like according to the mirror but i DONT SEE IT.#i rememeber i get it confused with pomesiores . like i think one of theirs is tenacity . but idr which one LOL#the other is maybe endurance...????#that doesnt sound right. i feel like it was broader than that#WAIT I LIED IT DOES SAY IT AT THE TOP i just. missed that part. it IS tenacity lol#what the fuck was pomefiore then....#oh ya theirs according to the wiki is UNRELENTING EFFORTS which i think i did see sometimes written as like endurance or fortitude or smthn#anyway. savanaclaw and pomefiore's ~core value~ always felt similar to me. but also maybe i just dont know what words mean <3#not in a 'theyre too similar' way like i do think theyre different. i just think it's INCH RESTING when things r like#theyre similar. theres overlap. but theres enough distinction to put them apart#actually them being similar in some regards does feel reinforced by the rook hunt situation like he went from one to the other#and seems to be thriving regardless.... we're onto something here...#hmm what were the others.. i think heartslabyul was strictness...#ok the wiki says severity i think ive seen either eng or a translation that called it strictness lol but severity i feel like is maybe#better word choice.. just a lil... nuances nuances whatever anyway idr the others. actually wait no i know octavinelles is like#benevolence bc azul keeps mentioning it- the wiki says compassion. lol. idk if i just keep remembering close enough or like#remembering fan vs official tls. i think the wiki is doing its own direct tl and not engtwst but moving ON#scarabia is deliberation... ignihyde is diligence... diasomnia is elegance???#why is diasomnia the only one that didnt sound familiar At All LOL i dont REMEMBER THAT ONE#i remembered vaguely what scarabia was bc they make a point of mentioning it in like end of 4 or start of 5?#when they were like yeah we value foresight or w/e in scarabia so jamil hasnt been ousted right away. i like scarabia their#way of showing the different ways deliberation works with like jamil vs how it does in kaliim vs the npcs#like theyre all different ppl but still fit that criteria in their own unique ways.... hell yeah...#anyway yay i got ONE right on the nose [as the wiki has it listed anyway lol] thanks savanaclaw
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Sorry guys I was busy watching talespin (I been enjoying it alot, it such a great series but I'm not done with it yet!) But I got more gimmicks!
And another question this time from @dalia1784 !
This a bit a hard one, l not really a expret when it comes to voice actors in general which why I don't usually have strong va opinions, but I think it'll be fun if Jim Cummings voiced both Pete and Portis, I feel like he's talented enough to make Portis sound similar but still different enough.
Bug I'm not completely sure about Sylvester since I always have a very specific voice in my head for him that can't really describe in detail, it a weird mixture of a refined but sly and shrill voice that I can't really findm
I forgot had a starwpage. it's a chaos but it's something
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while aaravi remains firmly within "yeah miranda has a difficult personality and isn't very easy to get along with + has many rough edges which are slowly being worked on but still going to be an issue" after having been very much so within the camp that miranda is a Vexing Bitch upon first contact/getting to know her, she DOES go from "miranda is unpredictable and dangerous as a merfolk and large macropredator and her emotions are inscrutable and random" to "merfolk aren't very hard to understand or predict and it's very easy to stay on the safe side if you keep basic rules in mind and don't freak out the second something unexpected happens"
#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#miravi.txt#just. thinking about it!#thinking about specifically how merfolk (like most other animals) growl/hiss specifically as a deterrent#like if you start really upsetting miri and she wants space and you to Please Stop#she will probably turn her face away from the other person or turn her body away from them#while growling or hissing and pulling her fins back#and will open her mouth to bare her teeth or gape her mouth open to show her teeth (including heavily panting)#where the point is ''i will hurt you if you touch me/get closer/dont stop so please dont do that''#but a lot of people read it as her being either obtuse (if she turns away from them)#or outright aggressive for the showing of teeth and growling#when shes really not. shes being very polite in merfolk terms in giving multiple chances to avoid violence#shes going ''i am worried i might have to hurt you so please reconsider'' in a way thats very readable if youre another merfolk#who will then step away or give her her space and switch the tone of the conversation#to see whats wrong#whereas her being more deliberately aggressive/violent usually comes with minimal vocal cues at all#or (if shes specifically threatening someone such as in the case of getting aggressive over perceived threats to her social bonds)#she will often turn towards them and open her mouth and flare her fins#often deliberately closing the distance and making herself appear Extra Large#she WILL growl here but will never hiss (hissing being a more defensive sound)#and will often smack her tail against the ground or show her claws or otherwise demonstrate how large and how scary she is#as a deliberate point of ''you crossed a line and this is what is going to happen to you if you dont make it up right now''#which! both require VERY different responses but might look similar to a human!#and might end up coming off as unpredictable or random in her actions and cruelty!#when shes not! shes just doing things the way a merfolk does them#which means aaravi realizes VERY quickly after learning about all of this#just how many cues miranda gives that people are starting to make her uncomfortable and feel Not Okay#that are ignored or written off because theyre merfolk cues#merfolk are very tolerant of stress but have basically no concept of escalation of violence for that reason#because if youve ignored every chance to prevent something dangerous up until the point it goes too far
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Okay, so, speaking of Jessica Law: you ever think about the fact that she says the word “law” in both Trial by Song and Gunfight at the Dolorous Guard? Like I’m sure it’s nothing but I think about it every time I hear it.
I also think about her accent a lot. I *really* enjoy /g/ on the end of /ŋ/ words.
#that is genuine enjoyment. fyi. i really like accents#its possible that its actually a /k/ rather than a /g/ but i think its /g/#also those are ipa notation. /g/ is the sound g makes in ‘gain’ in english. /ŋ/ (called ‘eng’) is the sound ‘ng’ make in english. like in-#‘thing’ (but also in ‘think’ because /k/ and /g/ are so similar it sneaks in there). /k/ is a typical ‘k’ pronunciation in english#difference between /k/ and /g/ is that /g/ is voiced.#and the slashes (/ /) just denoted that its ipa but just discussing the sounds not showing the pronunciation of a word. basically (i think)#the silly problem that i have is that. when starting listening to the mechs i fell in love with jessicas part first.#and i always imitate the singer… (its fun to me)…#this has resulted in me added those /g/s onto /ŋ/ words no matter whos part im singing#its just part of my attempt at a british accent now (although i think *only* when singing)#(which is funny because i actually noticed those /g/s in her accent when examining some of her lines as *nikola*)#the mechanisms#jessica law#udad#trial by song#hnoc#gunfight at the dolorous guard
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all those lip syncing accusations just prove how good they are btw
#realest band/artist out there fr#and listen. did i also think it was lip sync for a moment there? yes. and then i heard the difference#my musical ear is pretty developed tbh i notice the slightest change in note/note length/breath/etc.#he was NOT lip syncing. nor would he ever?????#he sounded soooooo similar which is why it crossed my mine for a second but like no#PLUS. THAT SCREAM?????? THE SCREAM ALONE IS PROOF OF THE RAW TALENT THIS MAN HAS#i love to see the general public react like 'dang sorry boys we were not familiar with ur game' 😭😭😂#i need to go watch some reactions to the performance actually#twenty one pilots#music#the game awards
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still wondering whos voicing black doom because i havent seen any confirmation on that but now im wondering whos voicing mephiles... surely he's gonna have at least a couple voice lines right . it would be weird if he didnt
#idk what to expect with either because black doom gerald maria and mephiles all last appeared around the same time#and maria has been recast but gerald seemingly has the same va he did last time#(i mean i dont think theres been any confirmation on that either but . come on. thats obviously mike pollock's voice in the trailer)#though gerald is kinda a special case i guess because his voice actor in his most recent appearance before this#is still around just voicing a different character . like he hasnt been voicing gerald because gerald hasnt appeared#not because he was recast. while the voice actors for all those other characters arent involved in sonic at all anymore#also black doom's va only voiced black doom and no one else but iirc maria and mephiles's vas voiced multiple sonic characters#most notably cream in maria's case and knuckles and vector in mephiles's case . and all those characters have been recast#the fact that they havent acutally said who's voicing black doom despite him being in multiple trailers now#makes me think it might be the same guy? who im pretty sure said at one point that he did re audition for the role#but said that he hadnt heard anything back at the time he mentioned it which was before he had any voice lines in trailers at all#also comparing voice lines from 2005 and now it does sound pretty similar but idk for certain#basically what im getting at here is i think black doom is way more likely to have the same va as before than mephiles is#but. still dont know for sure#sonic x shadow generations#sonic x shadow generations spoilers
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I know that Wild Kratts is one of those shows where the main [human] characters don't age despite it still being a quasi-continuity driven show, but it does admittedly make me sad that the WK kids from the earlier seasons are now relegated to (presumably permanent) background cameos because of this.
#wild kratts#pbs kids#pbs kids go#gavin kratt#2d gavin kratt#2d martin kratt#2d chris kratt#wild kratts kids#This was a revelation that I've had since watching Our Blue and Green World#But most of the child actors have grown up within the 10+ years of them being on the show#so they'd probably be too old to reprise their roles#Gavin and Ronan haven't had speaking roles since Seasons 4-5#Not to mention IRL Ronan Kratt to my knowledge has made it pretty big with his soccer career#and probably wouldn't have the time to reprise his role because of this#That one kid from the Fireflies adventure we never saw again#Ellie (that one girl in the red shirt) hasn't had a speaking role since the bat episode#Ronan Kratt actually did come back to voice his character in S7 but it was obviously deeper than how he sounded in S4#And Nina (the girl from Central America) had 3 different VAs#I'm starting to think that part of the reason Seasons 4-7 gave us so many new kid characters#is because they knew that they wouldn't have the ones from S1-3 come back regularly with the actors growing up#Which on some level I do understand#Even if they can't age up the characters (because that would require completely new/upgraded models being made for a 2-year long season)#I think recasting the kids with similar-sounding actors would be nice#maybe it's just bc I miss Gavin and Ronan idk#But until further notice they're basically just ghosts. Again I didn't realize this until seeing their cameos in one of the recent episodes
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i'm so close to being caught up w sending numbers but i'm like TERRIFIED of accidentally setting off the spam thing again
#i have like........six more to go i think#i kind of thought maybe the problem was going too fast but the email was basically like#'avoid sending too many similar messages' which is SOOOO annoying bc like#how many different ways can u say it.......im going to start speaking in codes#this must be a new thing bc in previous years i would just copy and paste the same message and change the number#which i guess makes sense bc this past year it seems like shady asks and DMs have become a lot more common#but still......................................................i cry#if u havent got yours yet you could also like. reply to this post and i'll reply to your reply with it#that sounds like a potential loophole#the numbers arent a secret or anything lmao so#this is going to be a nightmare on the two days when i have to send matches im just trying not to think about it lol#nonsense rambling#srs updates#<- rly scraping the bottom of the barrel w this one
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Incomplete exchange (Patreon)
#Doodles#SCII#Helix#Max Vyer#DAX#*throws idea spaghetti throws idea spaghetti throws idea spaghetti throws#So Max and ZEX changing places - what if that but This lol#It would also be funny to watch Max stumble around in ZEX's body lol but considering ''how'' ZEX got isekai'd...#Not much left probably :| Dark#Really I'm just fascinated by throwing the almost-dynamics into relief hehehe - DAX and Dex so similar! And Max and ZEX similar in some ways#How would DAX react to Max :3c How would Max react to DAX! One of them knows the other - at least at arm's length - but not the other!#Seeing a VUX ''in person'' would probably be a whole other feeling as well haha - there's a familiarity when he's inhabiting ZEX's POV#Still thinks he's dreaming because I mean - would the reality be any easier to swallow? No lol#I guess this would be a scenario before ZEX dies since y'know - DAX is here haha - unless this is some afterlife something???#Both Max and DAX /would/ be dead in that scenario - or would they?? Haha the grey area is the funnest to play in <3#I think it'd be very interesting on DAX's end as well - obviously Max is very different from ZEX but if the language thing works both ways#VUX already have the translators of course but like - Max speaks very differently from ZEX he formulates his sentences very specifically#But if the way he attacks the words the way his accent moves the sounds around - if he speaks like ZEX but not /like/ him - s'interesting!#Would probably confuse the heck out of DAX haha he knows that voice very well!#By the transitive property would that make their accent space New Jersey? No that's too silly haha#I really love Max just dropping years and events out of the blue haha - very important! Written down! Kept track of!#A lot of things he doesn't pay much attention to but he's very careful with his dream data I'm love him <3#I also had So much fun drawing his hands here hehe ♪ His hand expressions have quickly risen to being my favourite :D#ZEX doesn't express with his hands! Which means it's a Max-specific type of thing in his body!#Tells <3
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Me being insane aside, i fucking love paying mind to character's way of speaking because i feel you can say so much about their personalities with the kind of words they most commonly use. Absolutely fascinating stuff, i wished i knew how to explain/ramble on this properly.
#i think that's part of why writing dialogue is so fun to me#and also why a lot of people struggle doing so#oftentimes you see writters who tend to fall in writing character speech that sounds to similar with one another#lack of variatiy within the choice of words that makes them feel somewhat samey#like a certain popular show with a bright distinct artstyle set in hell#where basically every single character swears like a sailor. which the bulk of the cast hardly feel different from one another#it does highlight the few characters who do swear very little. i'll give it that. but at what cost#not saying swearing is prohibited but you could show more varying personalities with the amount of words the characters use#even when it comes to the insults#hyena ramblings#writing
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