#Early Childhood Development Classes

[starry-bi-sky]

Danyal Al Ghul's missed potential - this kid is not gonna behave like his canon self if he's with the league of assassins until his late formative years, and my reasoning why

(feel free to take this all with a grain of salt this is just my thoughts on it, this is all mostly amusing to me and isn't trying to be negative towards anyone else)

similar to how i was talking about how danny growing up in crime alley would affect him, demon twin aus with danyal al ghul make me laugh a lot (affectionate) because... whose teaching danny to unlearn all the ecofascism he picked up from the league of assassins? whose teaching him to be kind? to be gentle? Not the LoA thats for certain.

(you could plausibly say Jazz but she's only 2 years older than Danny and do you really expect a fellow child to properly explain why X is wrong to another child and have it be 100% effective? i don't doubt it'd help to an extent, but not in the same way an adult explaining it would)

plus a ton of other things, like whose teaching him to value human life? not the LoA. Whose teaching him how to adjust to living with American society after he ends up with the Fentons when he's 8-9-10? Who teaches him that killing is wrong, whose enforcing that?

(not the Fentons if you're going the neglectful parent route, and Jazz can try but i really don't think Danny is going to listen to her, a stranger who isn't even part of his grandfather's league)

How do you teach a child to value human life when the greatest development window for that opportunity has closed and he's already formed his own opinions?

You're not gonna get a Danny whose exactly like his canon attitude if he's staying with the league during his formative years (0-8 years old). you're not. You could get someone LIKE it, potentially, or someone who has traces of it or is similar -- like danny's wit and jokes and sarcasm, and on some level his kindness. but you're not gonna have a carbon copy. Development doesn't work that way. "nature" can only do so much in the face of nurture.

If anything, it doesn't even have to be a major change -- in the league he cans till be kind, but it's probably going to manifest in a different way than what is considered normal. Tough love, for one. But there's gonna be something that affects him negatively. Why make him 'always good/kind' when you can make him a brat who develops into a kinder (if spikier than in canon) person?

TLDR: Danyal Al Ghul would not be like how he is in canon if he's with the league until his late formative years -- not without any lasting pr permanent impacts from the league at least. Missed potential to make him an absolute nightmare like damian was -- especially in his early years when he first arrived to the Fenton house.

(this doesn't apply to danyal al ghul aus where he's either given to the fentons as a baby/is reincarnated/etc. this is mostly aimed for danyal al ghul aus where he fakes his death at like, 7-10 and somehow ends up, personality-wise like his completely canon self by 14 without any differences.)

(and even then if he's five or four, or even three, he would still be traumatized and influenced by the league. he'll just have more time to adjust. the sooner he leaves the league the more likely he is to be like his canon self, but not like an exact copy)

(more under the cut)

Anyways what I'm saying is that there is prime missed Danyal al Ghul potential to make him an absolute NIGHTMARE to the Fentons however way he ends up with them, just like Damian was with the Waynes! Cuz why does Damian get all the fun? Danny got the same training and endoctrine as him! He is also an ex-assassin! Why is Danny the only one who is 'well adjusted and non-violent' hm? Hmm?

Why can't he also be mean, and stabby, and a total stuck-up in some way or another? Have fun with his characterization, its prime opportunity to play play-doh and clay with him! If he starts out as X how does he get the personality traits of Y, and thus become XY?

Like take this with a grain of salt if you will, but make him arrogant. Make him an asshole! Make him a bad person at first! Because he will be! He's the blood son of the batman and you mean to tell me that damian is the only one arrogant about it at first? Make him stabby and mean even at 14 when he's begun to chill out! Have fun with it! If he's with the Fentons at any point past the age of four or five then he's gonna be a nightmare to handle because he still remembers the league and his time there.

(and while it gives him more time to chill the hell out, his time at the league is still gonna leave an impact on him.)

also what im saying as well is have him and sam potentially get along like a house on FIRE. Again, Danny grew up under the views of an ecofascist cult and nobody to challenge those views to him until he got to amity park at whatever age in late formative years he was at. He could be about as intense or even MORE intense about environmental awareness/rights than Sam is!

(also him being supremely unimpressed with Sam's wealth. he gave up a palace in the mountains for this town. because that's funny to me - like let his past have more influence on him! it'll be fun!)

you could have a danny who doesn't kill but doesn't fully understand the value of human life because jazz is like two years older than him and isn't that good at explaining why people's lives are important. he won't kill but he's not morally opposed to it. there's very little chance he actually gets bullied at school because he nearly killed Dash the first time he tried anything.

Danny could have scars, physical ones, because its implied in multiple canon that training starts at toddling (my best bet is 3 at minimum and ~maybe~ 2 but only on the later side of 2. Good fucking luck getting any infant under 2 to do anything you ask, ESPECIALLY assassin training. They're gonna stick the weapon in their mouth sooner than they're gonna do katas. This is coming from a daycare teacher.)

there's more examples of how danny being at the league during his formative years would affect him, but those are just some of them. he could have a sword! An appreciation for weaponry and nature. Maybe he still speaks all shakespearan and formal, does he still make bodily threats to people? If Damian is still threatening people at 14 why can't danny?

[genuflectx]

Maaan I love the optimistic advice "keep practicing and you'll get better at art" as much as the next artist, but it always rubs me the wrong way when that evolves into "just keep practicing and you WILL 100% succeed and CAN get into the industry."

It changes from good general advice to implying you're just doing something wrong if still haven't "made it" yet. Not in the industry? Well, you just haven't worked hard enough, obviously, as if there aren't plenty of other factors that play into "succeeding” in a highly competitive industry like art.

Don’t let advice that’s supposed to be encouraging turn into something discouraging 😭

[godsperfectprincess]

it's always grown women with snapchat filter profile pictures posting the most insane child development takes on the canvas discussion board post

[jayne-edu]

Why Parents Love Early Childhood Music Classes Melbourne

Why Parents Love Early Childhood Music Classes in Melbourne

Parents in Melbourne love early childhood music classes. These classes are fun. They help children grow. They help parents too. This article explains why.

It also shows why parents choose:

early childhood music and movement

early childhood music therapy

music with preschoolers

early childhood music development

early childhood music program

music and early childhood development

Early Childhood Music Classes

Early childhood music classes are for young children. They are for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. The classes have singing, rhythm instruments, and dancing. They mix play and learning.

In Melbourne, parents love how classes include parents or caregivers. A program like Music Together or Kindermusik has singing and play with parents in class. This makes learning stronger. Children learn best when parents are active in class.

Early Childhood Music and Movement

Music and movement go together. These help children learn their bodies. They help with balance and coordination.

One method is Dalcroze eurhythmics. It uses movement to teach rhythm and music. Studies show that kids who move in music do better at rhythm skills than just those who play freely .

Movement also helps the brain. When children move and listen, they use many brain areas. These areas help with thinking and learning.

Early Childhood Music Therapy

Some children need extra help. They may find talking hard. They may have delays or special needs. These children benefit from early childhood music therapy.

Music therapy uses singing. It uses rhythm. It uses instruments. It is guided by a trained therapist. The therapist helps children reach goals in social, emotional, or speech areas .

Parents say these classes help children express feelings. They help children learn new words. They help families bond. All through song and play.

Music with Preschoolers

At preschool age, children learn to do more on their own. Music classes help with this. They give a group space to share, wait for turns, and speak up.

Parents in Melbourne like watching their child lead a song. Or play a small instrument. Or dance with friends.

These lessons help with memory too. Preschool children learn song words. They learn rhythm patterns. This helps later with reading and math concepts .

Early Childhood Music Development

From birth to age five, music helps the brain grow fast. It helps with memory. It helps with listening. It helps with language and thinking.

Children learn patterns and memory. This helps with reading and counting .

Children get better at hearing tones and differences. This helps with language skills .

Movement with music builds motor skills. Both big and small muscles get stronger .

When children play music or dance, many brain parts talk to each other. This helps thinking overall .

Early Childhood Music Program

A good early childhood music program has a clear plan. It uses singing, movement, instruments, and play. It may come with music books or home audio. This allows parents to share learning at home .

Programs like Music Together and Kindermusik are based on research. They follow strong teaching methods. They are easy for kids to follow and parents to enjoy.

Music and Early Childhood Development

When you add all benefits, music helps kids in many ways:

Cognitive – Better memory, language, thinking, and school success .

Emotional – Music helps children express feelings and learn to calm down .

Social – Music class teaches sharing, taking turns, and working with others.

Physical – Children build fine and gross motor skills from movement and instrument play.

Bonding – Parent and child make music together. This help with trust and closeness .

Studies show music makes children better at reading. It also helps with math skills and focus. One study said playing piano helped kids hear small differences in speech sounds .

Other research found children who make music have more brain connections. They get better at planning and paying attention .

Parent Stories

Here are real quotes from parents:

“Our toddler smiles when music starts. He learns new words each week.”

“He leads the group drum time. He is proud.”

“Therapy songs helped my child calm. He uses music when he is sad.”

These stories match research. Music builds bond, speech, and focus .

Choosing a Class in Melbourne

Want to sign up? Try these steps:

Choose the type of class

Parent-child (0–3 years): helps bonding. Ideal for babies and toddlers.

Preschooler class (3–5 years): helps independence and peers.

Music therapy: helps with speech, emotions, or special needs.

Check the teaching style Look for programs based on Orff, Kodály, Suzuki, or Dalcroze. These are proven methods

Join a sample lesson See if your child and you both enjoy the class.

Ask about home support Some programs give reusable audio or sheets to practice at home.

Talk to other parents They often give tips on good classes.

Conclusion

Melbourne parents love early childhood music classes. They help kids grow in many ways. They help with speech, learning, movement, emotions, and focus. They bring families closer.

These classes include early childhood music and movement, early childhood music therapy, music with preschoolers, early childhood music development, early childhood music program, and the broad benefit of music and early childhood development.

Try it today. Find a local class. Join a trial. Watch your child grow with music.

[borngeniusworld]

ग्राम खजुरहट की बेटियों के लिए सुनहरा मौका – निःशुल्क स्पोकन इंग्लिश प्रशिक्षण!

सभी बेटियों के लिए 100% छात्रवृत्ति – सारथी गुरुकुल की एक विशेष पहलबसंत पंचमी के पावन अवसर प��, हमें यह घोषणा करते हुए गर्व हो रहा है कि ग्राम खजुरहट की सभी छात्राओं के लिए 100% छात्रवृत्ति आधारित स्पोकन इंग्लिश कोचिंग कार्यक्रम का आयोजन किया जा रहा है। यह प्रशिक्षण सारथी गुरुकुल के भीमापार मुख्य कार्यालय में उपलब्ध होगा।शिक्षा सशक्तिकरण की नींव है, और हर बेटी को सीखने, बढ़ने और आगे बढ़ने का अवसर…

[onefouronesixnine]

Why is a new father offering his non-lactating teat to an infant

[bipspreschool]

Discover the ideal age for your child to start preschool with our comprehensive guide. Explore developmental milestones, typical age ranges, and individual considerations to make the best choice for your child's early education.

[heydeehoau]

The Role of play-based childhood development program in Social and Emotional Growth

In today's fast-paced world, childcare centres play a crucial role in children's early development. Among the many activities and programs designed to foster growth, play-based childhood development program are an innovative and effective way to enhance social and emotional skills.

But what exactly are play-based childhood development program, and how do they contribute to a child's development? Let's dive in and explore the benefits of these engaging experiences.

What Are play-based childhood development program?

play-based childhood development program are structured activities or programs brought into childcare centres by external providers.

These incursions can include various activities such as science shows, music sessions, animal interactions, cultural performances, and more.

Unlike excursions, which take children out of the centre, incursions bring the experience to them, providing a safe and familiar environment for learning and exploration.

Enhancing Social Skills

One key benefit of play-based childhood development program is the opportunity they provide for children to develop and enhance their social skills.

Through group activities and interactive sessions, children learn to communicate, share, and cooperate with their peers.

These experiences are vital in helping them build strong relationships and understand the importance of teamwork.

Building Friendships

Children often work in groups or pairs during play-based childhood development program, encouraging them to make new friends and strengthen existing relationships.

This social interaction is essential for their emotional well-being, as it helps them feel connected and valued within their peer group.

Learning to Communicate

Communication is a fundamental skill that children develop during early childhood. play-based childhood development program allow children to express themselves, ask questions, and share their thoughts.

These activities help children gain confidence in their ability to communicate verbally and non-verbally effectively.

Fostering Emotional Growth

In addition to social skills, play-based childhood development program play a significant role in fostering emotional growth.

These activities are designed to evoke various emotions, helping children learn to understand and manage their feelings.

Building Self-Esteem

Participating in exciting new activities during play-based childhood development program can boost a child's self-esteem.

When children successfully engage in these activities, they feel a sense of accomplishment and pride, contributing to a positive self-image.

Developing Empathy

Many play-based childhood development program involve interactions with animals, cultural performances, or storytelling, which can evoke empathy in children.

By experiencing different perspectives and emotions, children learn to understand and empathise with others, an essential skill for their emotional development.

Exposure to New Experiences

play-based childhood development program expose children to a wide range of experiences they might not encounter daily.

This exposure is crucial for their overall development, broadening their horizons and stimulating their curiosity.

Sparking Curiosity

Children's natural curiosity is sparked When they participate in diverse activities during play-based childhood development program.

Whether it's a science show that makes them wonder about the world around them or a cultural performance that introduces them to new traditions, these experiences encourage children to ask questions and seek knowledge.

Encouraging Creativity

Many play-based childhood development program involve creative activities such as art, music, or drama. These sessions allow children to express their creativity and imagination, essential for their cognitive and emotional development. Creativity also helps children develop problem-solving skills and think outside the box.

Providing a Safe Learning Environment

One advantage of play-based childhood development program is that they take place within the familiar and safe environment of the childcare center. This setting allows children to feel comfortable and secure, essential for learning and growing.

Familiar Surroundings

When children participate in incursions within their childcare centre, they are surrounded by familiar faces and environments.

This familiarity reduces anxiety and allows children to focus on the activity, enhancing their learning experience.

Consistent Support

Childcare staff are present during incursions to provide support and guidance. This consistency helps children feel confident and reassured, knowing that they have trusted adults around them.

Conclusion

early childhood music classes with family are valuable tools in children's social and emotional growth. Bringing new and engaging experiences into the childcare centre, these activities help children develop essential social skills, foster emotional growth, and provide exposure to new experiences.

The safe and familiar environment of the childcare centre ensures that children can fully benefit from these incursions, making them an integral part of early childhood education.

As parents and educators, embracing and encouraging play-based childhood development program can significantly enhance the development and well-being of our little ones.

[whirlybirbs]

— CAN'T WE BE SEVENTEEN? ; shoto todoroki ; 焦凍

summary: he's loved you since he was seventeen. pairing: f!reader x pro hero!shoto ; reader was a 1-A student tags: mutual pining, heavy make-out, thinly veiled sugar daddy shoto, reader does not go pro, touya might be a dick but he's a hero now, shoto is bad at feelings wordcount: 5.6k a/n: i do not fucking know what came over me, enjoy your food my little todorokinas. yes the title is what you think it is. no i will not elaborate.

You never did go pro.

Truthfully, you thought there would be more pushback when, in your senior year, you announced your plan to pursue a degree in early childhood education with a focus on non-conforming quirk development. 

The War changed a lot. It changed you, your classmates, and the world. But, through it all one thing stuck with you:

What if someone helped Tenko Shimura?

How different would his life have been? How different would history have spun? 

You graduated at the top of your class and joined the faculty at Chiba Prefectural Preparatory School for Quirk Specialties two years ago. 

Chiba Prep was opened eight years ago in response to a societal cry for more infrastructure around what was dubbed "non-conforming quirks": a nice way to say quirks that can injure, maim, or kill. Maybe even all three on a bad day. Some parents still see their child being labeled as a non-conforming quirk user in the national database as akin to social suicide. 

You see it differently.

Your quirk allows you to manipulate emotions — anger, sadness, betrayal, love, hatred. If you can feel it, you can sink it into another's psyche deep enough to drive them to act. You can even imbue things with feelings. For example, a cup of warm milk can transform into more than just a simple comfort, now it can hold the feeling of home and safety, or even exhaustion strong enough to put even the biggest foe to rest. 

You could easily use your quirk with nefarious intent. 

You could steep hatred in someone's bone so deep it drives them to harm themselves. You could sew fury so solid into someone's mind it drives them to violence. 

Just a touch and you can control others with something so intrinsically personal it only exists within themselves: their feelings.

What makes you any different from little Asuke, a shy little girl with a quirk that allows her to see people's greatest fears, and then manifest and control them? You're convinced she can use this for good, if only with practice. In your mind, her future is bright and glimmering. Perhaps she will become a therapist, focusing on exposure therapy? Or, maybe the most prolific horror novelist in their time? 

Or, bright and sunny Tao — a transplant whose parents sought out Chiba Prep's specialized education — whose heteromorphic quirk makes his bodily fluids, namely saliva, eat through nearly anything but his own biologics. A sneeze is quickly the most dangerous thing in the world for the cheery, lizard-bodied class clown. 

He's just a boy given a quirk that needs more care. 

He isn't a villain-in-training. 

None of them are.

It's important to teach them that young — and as their teacher for Year 3 of their elementary schooling, you aim to hammer that in as much as possible. They deserve to feel normal. To feel loved and supported. They aren't scary, they're children. 

So, you take it upon yourself to insist on pushing for privileges like field trips. There aren't many public spaces that welcome the classes of Chiba Prep with open arms. Over the years, there have been plenty of incidents. But, a day trip into the city to visit Tokyo's Hall of Heroes is green-lit with bubbling excitement from both faculty, the children, and their parents. 

You usually keep your history as a graduated member of Class 1-A quiet. 

After all, you never did go pro.

And even still, Shoto Todoroki never stopped thinking about you.

He remembers that weekend everyone moved back in for their last year before graduation. He remembers you smiling at him, and helping him drag up a duffel of luggage from the common room to his dorm. You made a joke about how you're sure he got taller over the summer, and how his hair is longer now. You said you liked it. 

It was the beginning of the end, then.

His crush was a silent, smothering thing. It made it hard to think. Shoto had enough on his plate thanks to Touya's acceptance into the Villain Rehabilitation Program and his father's insistence on staving off retirement. Not to mention his parent's divorce — no matter how amicable, it was still a separation. Add on training, tests, studying, finals, and j-term classes... And a desperate, writhing, burning crush on the nicest girl in class? 

Touya's elbow digs into Shoto's side.

It drags him back to reality — to the stifled quiet of the historical Hall of Heroes. 

Suddenly, the doors to the wing squeak open, and a tour guide ushers in the elementary school class. The buzzing excitement and wonder are visible on each of their faces as the attendant — one of the HoH's lead tour guides — excitedly explains the newest, in-progress addition to the Hall:

Endeavor's wing. 

There's a whisper of awe that ripples through the children as their teacher and co-teacher follow, and as the class moves through the large, open space. They're staring up eagerly at the gilded statue in the center of the room. It's larger than life and intimidating. Years ago, Shoto might have had to fight the odd tremble in his knees at the reminder it brings: to be small in his father's shadow again. But, things are different now. 

Very different.

Touya scoffs. "I thought this wing wasn't open to the public yet."

"They're just children," Shoto hums, turning his back on the gaggle across the way to inspect the large mural winding along the back end of the installation, "I'm sure it's—"

"Oh, ho, no way!"

Shoto quirks his brow at his brother's outburst. His elbow digs into Shoto's ribs again. 

"Ain't that the pretty girl you never got the balls to ask out your senior year?" comes the rasped drawl of his older brother's voice. Touya is clearly amused, his white hair hanging in his eyes as he leans forward to squint, "She is cute, Sho'—"

"Shut up," Shoto grits, turning his head over his shoulder; he tries to bite back the flurry of nerves that ignite in his gut, "Stop talking."

It is you.

You look... good. 

Happy. 

You're crouched by a small, timid girl in the back of the crowd. Your hand is in hers, and you're pointing upwards at the large paneled screens replaying Endeavor's most historic fights. You're explaining something to her, your knees bent as you squat. You look... the same. As if in the six years since they graduated, you sat still in time. 

For a second, it's like he's seventeen again.

It's his senior year, and he's stuck at the corner of the gym's edge with a half-empty glass of punch in his hand. The lights are low, and there's slow music playing. His tie feels too tight. Bakugo keeps telling him to 'ask her to dance already', and Kirishima is considering bashing his head through the wall. Even Midorya is trying to persuade Shoto. 

"It's prom, man! C'mon, this could be your last chance—"

Touya is about to be a real pain in the ass — his favorite pastime — and make some comment about your ass, but when he turns to lob the one-liner at his baby brother, Shoto's gone.

Shoto is on the move.

The crescendo of gasps draws your attention first.

Then, the cry of "WOAH, IT'S SHOTO!" leaves you dumbfounded. The rippling murmur of excitement bleeds into the children as their eyes — and the eyes of the tour guide — widen at the sight of the approaching Pro Hero. 

Shoto Todoroki.

He looks... good. 

Really good.

He's a bit older, and a bit more filled out than when you were both teenagers. You can see the strength in his arms and shoulders — it's a distant echo of his father's physique, though Shoto is so much more elegant and much... prettier. He's always been.

For a second, you're seventeen again.

It's your senior year, and you're sprawled across Momo Yaoyorozu's bed.

They had finally wrangled out of you who your crush was: something they hadn't been able to do in all their years as classmates.

There's a sticky, Miss Midnight-themed face mask clinging to your expression as you try to flip through the large magazine in your hands as nonchalantly as possible. Mina's voice, as she paints Ochaco's nails a bright pink on the floor, is sweet and saccharine as she looks up at you.

"I think you and Shoto would be, like, the cutest couple ever." 

You're still crouched when the tour guide nervously — like she was caught doing something naughty — introduces The Pro Hero Shoto to the already-aware crowd of elementary school students and their teachers. It's like igniting a match; the uproar of excitement leaves you laughing as three of your boys push forward to bombard him with questions about his quirk. 

Asuke is smiling shyly, now. That's a small win. She's intrigued by the appearance of a real hero, not the "scary statues" — and her big, fat tears stopped rolling the moment you laid a gentle hand on her to quell her anxiety over the new environment with a push of comfort through your quirk. She unhooks her pinkie finger from yours as you guide her towards your co-teacher. 

"Boys," you call with a crisp air of authority as you stand and lead Asuke toward the bulk of the field trip group, "What have we learned about personal space?"

"It's fine, really, Insight," comes Shoto's voice; as warm and placid as you remember. 

"Insight?" mutters your co-teacher at the presumed hero-name; a look of confusion plasters itself on her face, and her big, feline ears perk up. She leans in to whisper in a way that borders on conspiratory, "Do you two know one another?"

"Old classmates," you confirm, not daring to get into the finer details.

Shoto's attention is entirely rooted in the way you manage the kids. There's something beautiful about the ease with which you handle the bouquet of students; you quell the excitement into a manageable decibel like it's as easy as breathing. 

"Shoto," you start as you gesture to him, "Has a very special quirk — Toyamai, he has ice like you. And, fire like Tojiro. He can regulate his temperature. Can anyone tell me what that means?"

There's a wave of hands shooting up, a few me, me, me's rise from the gaggle. 

You're using him as a teaching moment.

Shoto's smile is soft.

You nod at Ogomi, excitedly nodding as the reserved child speaks up. Normally, he hates public speaking. But, recently, he's started working with the speech pathologist during lunch. The boy bounces a little as he answers. "He doesn't g-get too hot, or too c-cold."

"Exactly! Isn't that cool?" you grin at the lazy attempt at a pun, "This is why it's important to learn about our quirks as much as we can!"

Touya thinks this whole thing is just too cute. 

You're different than he remembers — but, granted, things were sorta different last time he saw you. He was a little too busy tryna kill his old man and lil' Shoto. He's different now, too. A changed man! A real licensed hero. Support items and all. 

He hangs back. 

He... I mean, he is a jack-ass but he isn't gonna ruin this for Shoto. 

...It's kinda cute.

Just about as cute as Fuyumi said it was. 

Apparently, Shoto had opened up to her and Natsuo about his feelings after graduation — about how he regretted not doing anything about it. Fuyumi then told their mum, who then off-handedly mentioned it to Touya... and well Touya dug in because, duh, he is a whore for good gossip. He might be the family's black sheep, but Shoto is the glue that binds. 

And he deserves to be happy.

Your co-teacher is ushering the kids to the next installation — a viewing of All Might's Legacy, a new documentary following the retired pro's teaching career. It will be a good wind down for them, in comfy seats and the dark. It's hardly the sort of content an elementary school student would find riveting, but it is All Might. And they love him.

You hang back. 

Shoto's heart is hammering in his chest.

"Hey."

"Hi," you greet back, closing the door to the theater and stepping forward as you weave your arms around you, "Long time no see."

"Yea," Shoto breathes, his hands in his pockets as he meets you halfway across the museum's marble floors, "I... I see you're teaching."

His eyes are as pretty as they were back then. Slate grey and piercing turquoise. "I'm in my second year," you confirm softly, fiddling with the material of your sweater, "Congrats to your old man."

You gesture up at the statue, then wave around to the rest of the installation.

Shoto inhales, then nods; he's staring at your face, blissfully realizing you're just the way you were all those years ago. Kind. "I'll pass it along."

"How's he handling it?" you ask, your eyes raking across his expression and trying not to stick to the sharp slope of his jaw, or the bob of his Adam's apple, "Retirement, I mean."

"He's happy, I think. Touya and I are working together and... things are...  good."

Last month, Endeavor finally retired. He cited his age, and his dedication to passing his legacy to his two sons: Shoto and Touya. Shoto has planted himself firmly within the Top Ten in the last year or so, and shockingly, Touya isn't far behind. People love an underdog's redemption story, you suppose. 

And the underdog in question can read a room. 

This is getting a little too sexually tense for even him.

"Heeeeey, girl," he rasps out, staggering backward with a thumb over his shoulder, "Nice t' see ya. I'll let you two catch up, yea? I'm gonna go pop my head into the theater, see how the kids are handling the snooze fest on screen—"

You jump.

How long has he even been there?

"Hi, D— Touya," you strain, wincing a little; the rehab'd villain doesn't seem to mind.

"Hi, teach'. That cool with you?" he asks, wobbling his thumb and quirking a pierced eyebrow; it's comical, like he's trying to disarm you with humor, "Don't want you thinkin' I'm corrupting your youths—"

"It's fine," you breathe, ignoring the sting of age-old mistrust. You know better. Shoto wouldn't be here, with him, if Touya Todoroki hadn't changed. Endeavor wouldn't be entrusting his legacy to the ex-League of Villain member if he didn't believe in his capacity for good, "Just don't be disruptive."

Casting judgment on someone whose life was nearly destroyed by his own non-conforming quirk would go against everything you taught the kids anyway.

"Touya's whole thing is being disruptive," Shoto grits as his oldest brother slips silently through the doors, "I apologize for him—"

"No," you wave him off, laughing a little, "Don't. It's... nice to see you two together."

Shoto's expression is soft as he wanders a little closer. "It took time — and a lot of therapy — but we've all managed to come out the other side."

"That's great to hear, Shoto," you breathe, your eyes flitting across his face, "I'm really happy for you."

There's a long silence, then — and you can't help but ignore the roil of butterflies in your stomach. The eye contact is heavy with some unspoken thing, and both of your tongues are weighted by secrets-never-turned-confessions. 

It's like finally this dance you've been doing around one another for years breaks — and the two of you throw caution to the wind at the exact same moment. 

"Would you like to—"

"Are you free—"

Hesitant, slow grins bloom on both your faces.

"Dinner?" is all he manages after a sweet moment of soaking up your soft smile, "If you're available...?"

You make yourself available.

Yaoyorozu almost dies when you call her that night — winded from tearing through your entire wardrobe. You explained you had nothing to wear a-and you needed something nice, and you only have an hour to get ready, because Todoroki — yes, stop screaming, Todoroki — is picking you up at 8pm.

Little bro is nervous. Touya can tell. 

From his spot on the sofa, the white-haired ex-degenerate scoffs. Natsuo is digging around for some cufflinks in Shoto's dresser.

"Seriously, Sho'? A suit?" 

"It's a nice restaurant," his brother says tightly, adjusting the collar of the black button-down, "I booked the upstairs dining room for privacy." 

"Who the hell told you t' do that?" Touya quirks a skeptical brow.

"Father was the one who suggested it."

"...That old dog." 

Natsuo rolls his eyes at the exchange before throwing his hands as he emerges from the closet. "Do you have any links that aren't emblazoned with U.A. High School's crest?"

The ones in Natsuo's hands have his graduation year on them.

Shoto winces.

"Want me to ask dear ol' dog of a dad?" Touya snarks from the corner, his posture becoming less and less upright as he scrolls on his phone.

"Already did," comes the soft voice of Fuyumi; she's smiling, padding into Shoto's room with a velvet box, "He offered up his nicest pair. He also says not to screw it up with Insight. He likes her."

Of course, he likes her. You worked under Endeavor for a brief work-study period during your third year. Shoto remembers hearing grumbled praise over dinner one night about your talent for de-escalation.

"You told him who I was seeing?" Shoto asks incredulously, taking the box and working the cufflinks on. He's starting to feel exasperated.

Fuyumi nods, popping down beside Touya. 

"He asked. I'm not gonna lie to him."

"Did y' tell ma?" Touya rasps, peeking up over his phone to inspect Shoto's outfit. Not half bad, honestly. He looks good in all black. A man after his own heart, "M'sure she's gonna be real excited—"

"Yes," Shoto grumbles, "I called her earlier—"

"Chiba Prep is a really good school, y'know," Natsuo buts in as he tries to find a tie that matches Shoto's outfit. Ultimately, though, the middle brother decides against it and tosses the options over his shoulder, "They're, like, on the leading edge for quirk therapies."

"Hey, nerd? Quiet down. The big kids are gossiping," Touya shirks, turning back to Shoto, "What did mum say?" 

"She wants me to call her after—"

"One, you're gonna call mum the morning after," Touya raises a finger, "Because if you don't get laid, I'll be so fuckin' disap—"

Fuyumi slaps Touya's chest. He lets out a pained yelp at the solid smack.

"Uh, ow," he rubs his sternum. "An' two, take a deep breath. You look like you're gonna shit yourself. Those are my pants and they're expensive."

Shoto lets out a long breath. 

Fuyumi's smile is sweet like honey. "Aw, Sho'! It's gonna go great. You two have known each other for such a long time, and catching up is going to be amazing. Just be yourself! Confident and kind—"

"—Hold the door open for her, and pull her chair out," Natsuo adds as he adjusts Shoto's collar for him, "Car door, too—"

It's Touya's turn. He's dead serious. "—And do not chicken out on kissing her at the end of the night. I swear to god."

Easier said than done.

You never did go pro.

Those years of hardened battle instincts have lost their edge. You try to remind yourself this is just Shoto, not The Shoto — but you're a little lost in the whole celebrity of it all when he picks you up in a very nice, sporty little car with ENDVRplates. 

You answer the door and he forgets how to breathe.

He has flowers for you. They're blue and blooming and beautiful. 

Fuyumi's contribution. 

You settled then you were going to kiss him at the end of the night.

The restaurant is... nice. Really nice. The sort of nice you could never aspire to experience on your teacher's salary. Even the valet is a concept that has your head spinning. But, Shoto handles it all with cool ease. The entire time, his hand is settled on your lower back. 

It feels like you've been lit on fire.

You're glad Momo was able to create a dress fitting for the occasion. It's sleek and black. Comfortable, too. Not much can be said for your heels on that front, but it's fine. 

Somehow, Shoto managed to book the entire upper floor of this place in all its glimmering glory — it's just the two of you alone in a sea of tables. 

The waiter is pouring you a glass of the chef's suggested pairing of sake.

You thank him, smile, and take a sip as Shoto unbuttons his suit jacket and watches you. 

For a second, you're seventeen again.

Sero and Kirishima were always in cahoots when it came to parties back then — somehow, between the two of them, they always managed to smuggle enough booze onto campus to obliterate any semblance of promised sobriety from even the most stoic members of 1-A. 

You remember one night, after a lot of hounding, you finally gave in and joined a few of your classmates on the back lawn for a few drinks. 

A few beers turned into a cup or two of wine, and then another big gulp of whatever deranged jungle juice concoction Kaminiari managed to cook up. It tasted terrible, but you were too drunk to really care. Shoto was no better. He was nursing his fourth drink of the night — a rarity he was even drinking at all — and seemed completely fine with the way your arms brushed as the two of you sat close in the grass. 

He was always so nervous around you. Now, he just seemed... happy. 

"I can't believe there is only one week left until graduation."

Graduation day was the last time you saw him. 

Until this morning, that is. 

You smile into your drink. 

"What?" you ask when his eyes never leave your face.

His fingers twitch towards his own glass. Shoto blinks, then rolls his jaw. He was caught staring. He clears his throat, looking a bit shy. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" you press playfully, cocking your head to the side.

"You..." he starts, then bawks. You're stunning, and it's making it hard to even think straight. He thought these feelings might have mellowed out over the years but seeing you again has just reignited everything. He feels like a hormonal teenager again, "You look beautiful."

Your expression falters into something lovesick. You chew your lip. "You're not so bad yourself, Todoroki."

He manages a half-smile. "Touya had me worried the suit was a bit much."

The idea of Touya offering him advice on his outfit strikes a chord in your heart. It makes you smile even bigger than before. "Well, you can tell Touya that I like it. A lot."

You rake your eyes up and down him. On purpose.

He notices.

Shoto's face feels hot. 

He tries to shake the bone-deep want that has swept his entire body up in its grip, but it's difficult when every single word out of your mouth reminds him just how in love he was with you back in school. You explain, excitedly, why you chose to teach at Chiba Prefectural Prep and catch him up on where you've been living since graduating. He's pleased to learn you're still in the area, living in the city, and decidedly in love with the commute to the school. 

Shoto's always been a good listener — but you can see how much he's changed when he begins to speak about his career. He seems so much more sure of himself than he was all those years ago. It wasn't that he was... unsure... but, no. He was shy. Quiet.

Now, less so. 

It's adorable. 

Dinner comes and goes with conversation over sushi that is far too good for you to even process. It's easy talking to him. It was easy talking to Shoto back, then, too but... Things are different. You're both different. Not in a bad way, but in a way that feels like coming home. 

While you both wait outside for the valet, Shoto shrugs his jacket off and puts it over your shoulders without a single word. Suddenly, you're cradled in a warmth that's very Shoto — his cologne clings to the collar and you bury yourself a little deeper into it. 

Shyly, you step closer and steal his hand. It's calloused and warm. He laced his fingers with yours as if practiced. You bite back a grin. You give his hand a little squeeze when you spot the car coming around the corner.

His silence is calming — and he squeezes your hand back. When you look up at him, you realize he's already looking at you. 

His face is close. It's so... intimate. Very. Nearly better than a kiss. 

But, you've wanted to kiss Shoto Todoroki since you were seventeen. 

The valet driver interrupts the moment with a respectful call of Shoto's name and offers the keys with a shake of the hand. With a little bit of hesitancy, Shoto remembers the thing Natsuo said — the car door, too — and moves around the passenger side to open the door for you. 

It's sweet.

Really sweet. 

The car ride back to your apartment is punctuated with easy conversation — you ask him about Bakugo and Midorya, and you're pleased to hear they're both doing well. He asks about Momo, and if you still keep in touch with Mina and Ochaco. He smiles to himself when you admit you did call Momo for help with an outfit. 

"She did a beautiful job," Shoto breathes, a palm moving from the gear shift to brush over the dress' fabric on your thigh.

His hand settles there. 

Your stomach does a flip. 

You chew your lip, swallow down a sudden burst of nerves, and let your hand rest over his. You squeeze it. Shoto tries to focus on the road. His gaze drifts for a moment at a red light, his heterochromatic eyes dancing across your figure. 

Keep it together. 

He isn't seventeen.

He's twenty-five. He's a Professional Hero. One of the Top Ten in all of Japan. He's more than capable of keeping it together in the face of physical touch from the woman he's dreamed about for years. 

...Right?

Green light.

His hand is still on your thigh when he pulls up to your apartment. 

The touch is relinquished in favor of putting the sports car in park. 

It makes your chest ache.

Shoto swallows thickly.

Do not chicken out on kissing her at the end of the night.

He'll never forgive himself. But, admittedly, he's bad at this. He's not good at reading body language, or even knowing himself enough to realize he looks mildly terrified as you blink up at him in the passenger's seat. His heart is hammering a mile a minute.

What if you don't want to kiss him?

When would he even kiss you? Now? Or at the door?

Why does he feel like he's going to die?

"This was really... Shoto, are you okay?" you ask as you unbuckle your seatbelt; you pause, your brows knitting tightly. 

"What?" he asks, blinking back to the present moment. The look of fear disappears, "Sorry. Yes. I'm fine."

You're working his jacket off your shoulders, gently leaning to fold it neatly in your lap. Your voice dips low, into something playful. "You didn't look fine..."

"I—" Shoto clamps his mouth shut as he leans an elbow on the center console, "Sorry. I suppose I'm just nervous."

"Nervous?" you grin, a little giggle punctuating your words as you wriggle in the red, leather seat, "Why?"

Your expression makes his expression crack. He ducks his head as he huffs out a laugh. You continue to egg him on via expression alone. "I... Stop it."

"Stop what?" you push some more, your back pressed to the door as you face him in the car, "You're the one being weird—"

"I'm not being weird—"

"Then what's wrong, Shoto?" you tease in a sing-song voice.

"I'm nervous because I want to kiss you."

His words are punctuated by a slow look that takes in every inch of your face. Butterfly wings kiss your stomach walls. And your knees. You feel a little tremble in your chest. 

It feels like someone has sucker punched you square in the sternum. Shoto's no better. He isn't entirely sure what the expression on your face means. Is that... good? Are you happy?

Your voice is a little quieter now. You duck your head and fiddle with his suit jacket as you lean back against the seat, a little closer now. 

"You don't need to be."

Shoto's breath catches at that.

So, he makes his move.

His hand comes first — his calloused palm settles nicely against your face, his thumb brushing your cheekbone as his pointer finger brushes the underside of your jaw. Shoto is slow. Methodical. It's like he's trying to ground himself in the moment. 

Truth be told, he thinks he might be blacking out.

Your eyes flit up his wrist — a dark leather band around his wrist with an expensive watch face, a dark dress shirt with glimmering cufflinks, strong arms and a broad chest, and you can see the dip of his collarbone where the top two buttons of his shirt remain undone. 

He looks so damn handsome with his sharp jaw, pretty eyes, and his trademark white and crimson hair. Even his scar is beautiful. 

The touch pulls you in like he's got his own personal orbit.  

Your elbows are braced along the center console, your eyes flicking across his face as his fingers continue to brush along the soft expanse of your cheek. You wring your fingers together. 

Then, his eyes stick to your lips.

"Can I kiss you?" he whispers, his breath fanning across your face. 

You never did go pro.

But, Shoto did. 

It shows. 

Because, at this moment, all you can do is nod feebly before you're swept into the sort of kiss people go to war for. It's the sort of kiss that sticks to your ribs, that feels like warm, fresh food. It's the sort of kiss that would drive you to the brink, that would make you nod and agree sure, let's get married and have three kids, let's name one after your father, and paint the house blue like your mother's favorite flower—

His mouth is eager, but not in an overbearing way. It's gentle. Slow. As if he needs to remind himself this is real and not some midnight fiction that leaves him aching and alone. Shoto reminds himself to be tepid, pliable, and easy, which is easier said than done when somewhere deep inside of him there's a seventeen-year-old screaming in victory. 

It's better than anything he could have ever imagined. 

And then you whimper. 

It's a sound tied between bliss and relief and it's muttered against his mouth as you lean in and let your fingers brush the fabric of his dress shirt. The tips of your fingers brush his abdomen and he flexes, the feeling foreign and warm. It warrants his other hand to drift to your face and you break for a breath; he doesn't care that there's lipstick smeared across his mouth. He's kissing you again — this time a little bit more feverish, a little bit more aching. 

You melt against him, this time your hands trembling to grip his wrists.

He needs to slow down.

He is not having sex with you in his father's car.

That's shameless.

He needs to slow down.

He has to, or he'll lose himself in this and he refuses to fuck this up. 

Shoto's breath is ragged when he finally peels himself away, his lip parted and eyes half-lidded. His grip on your face is still so soft, so gentle. It's very him. 

You're glad you didn't do this when you were seventeen.

It would have permanently altered your brain chemistry, you're sure of it. How could you ever kiss someone else again after that? 

He's rubbing your cheek with his thumb. You swallow, and try to level out your breathing. It's hard when he's still so close, when he's so... perfect. 

"I've wanted to do that," he murmurs against your cheek, "Since our last year at Yuei."

A well-kissed smile breaks across your face. You reel back, your nose wrinkling as you shake your head in disbelief. Shoto is smiling. A real smile. The sort that's so rare you can count on one hand the amount of times you've ever seen it in person. 

"Are you serious?"

"Very," he says, chastely pressing another to your other cheek as he leans back.

"Me too," you admit shyly, "Can we... do it again sometime?"

Shoto's eyes widen incrementally. Then, his smile eases back onto his face. 

"Are you free this weekend?"

"I can be," you reply easily with a honeyed look, "And I will be. For you."

"I get off patrol on Saturday around seven," he explains before asking timidly, "We could... do dinner again?"

"Works for me," you breathe as you move for the handle of the car door, "After all, I never went Pro. Weekends are free."

Shoto scoffs. 

Then, as you open the door and swing a leg out:

"Oh, and tell Touya I thought the suit sexy."

Shoto's laugh is dry. You leave his jacket on the seat and scurry into your apartment with a lovesick wave. He swears he sees the silhouette of a familiar ponytail greet you at the door, but he doesn't dwell on it. He waits until you're inside and the lights to the front door are shut off.

Then it hits him. He has another date with you this weekend. 

Not so seventeen anymore, Shoto Todoroki. 

[toddlerblog123456789]

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[webshooterrr9]

dbf!miguel staying over

i mean....... i had to eventually...

w.c: 2.6k

content warning: alcohol usage, age gap (reader is 21, Miguel is 35), smut, unprotected PiV sex (wrap it before you tap it!), slight dom/sub dynamic but not really because mig is such a sweetie and reader is sassy af, teasing because mig is secretly a meanie :(, not really tho he wants it just as much as her, big scary men whimpering!!!

sorry for y'all who don't speak spanish cuz i didn't feel like adding translations because it messed up the look but dw most of it is in english

Miguel and your father have been friends since college.

When your dad needed help with homework, Miguel was there. When your dad needed someone to pass to during the game, Miguel was there. When your dad mourned the loss of your mom, taken from the world too soon, Miguel was there. There were countless nights where Miguel would tutor your dad on subjects he struggled with after missing classes to take care of you: the angel he was gifted with in high school. Although he admits you came into his life a bit too early for comfort, he has always loved and prioritized you. And Miguel quickly became your dad’s best friend because, although he never met you, he could tell just how much your father cared about you.

And so he was always there for your dad. All through college and beyond.

It wasn’t until you started college that Miguel had the pleasure of meeting you. Your dad had planned a hangout with the three of you, telling you about how important it is to have a good friend on your side, how it helped him when times got tough.

And now you’re 21 - sitting on your childhood bed after coming home from college for the summer. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t been thinking about Miguel since you’ve been home. When you met him three years ago, you were somewhat intimidated by him. How could you not? Look at the sheer size of that man. But you came to know through your school breaks that he was a lot more laid-back than you previously thought. You hate to admit it, but you’ve developed a slight crush on him. It’s stupid, you know, but how could you possibly resist those deep brown eyes and that smooth baritone voice that pulls you in every time?

Knock knock “Chiquita?”

You recognized that silky tone. It was Miguel.

“Yeah?” you say, putting your phone to the side. “Come in.” The doorknob twists and your door slowly creeps open. Behind it was that beautiful man: soft brown curls, slightly hidden by a backwards cap, a strong nose, dusty jeans that hug his legs just right, and a plain white tee with a gold cross dangling from a chain around his neck. Your dad’s best friend. Miguel.

He steps into your room and lingers by the door, a lazy smile across his face.  Dios… he was something else.

“¿Qué estás haciendo, mami? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

You sit up straighter, trying not to look as lousy as you feel. He came in here looking like a goddamn Roman god and you’re just sitting in your pjs. “Just scrolling,” you reply. “Trying to enjoy my time without homework.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Your papi invited me over,” he says, stepping further into the room. “Just to catch up and share a few Modelos.”

You watch his arms cross over his chest, the sleeves of his tee tightening around his huge arms. “Doesn’t explain why you’re in here,” you say. “Shouldn’t you be out back with him, then?”

“What, ¿no puedo saludar a la hija de mi amigo?" he laughs. “That’s not fair.” he adds with a fake pout that makes you giggle.

“I didn’t say that,” you smile. He walks over and sits on the edge of your bed. You notice his watch gleam in the sunlight filtering through your windows. “Did you come here from work? Your shirt is dirty as hell.”

“You know how it is, beba. Being a blue collar worker is a tough job.”

You snort. “Please, being a mechanic is hardly blue collar work. You stay inside a garage all day.”

“My customers would beg to differ,” Miguel says. “You should see how many señoras come into my garage looking for a replacement for their shitty husbands.”

“Makes me feel like they’re tryna put a ring on it.” he wiggles his calloused fingers in front of you for added effect.

“Well, it makes sense,” you say. “You’re about their age anyway.”

“Oye!” he laughs. “I’m thirty-five, thank you very much. Not even close to their age.”

You roll your eyes. “Whatever you say, viejo.”

The sun had set an hour ago and he hadn’t gone home yet.

Despite the amount of times Miguel offered to leave, not wanting to overstay his welcome, your father insisted he stay for “ten more minutes” and handed him another beer each time. The sound of the two men laughing from the living room kept you awake. It normally wouldn’t bother you, since you’re a night owl anyway, but you have plans with your friend tomorrow that you have to wake up early for.

You exit the comfort of your bedroom and head into the living room where you find Miguel and your dad chatting loudly on the couch. Miguel’s arm is draped over the back of the sofa, which accentuates his already defined chest - not to mention the dim lamp light casting beautiful shadows on his face.

“Ah, mija, there you are!” your father exclaims, very drunkenly. “I was wondering where you were. No te he visto en todo el día!”

“Lo siento, papi.” You reply, leaning against the wall. Miguel’s stare feels hot on your skin. You can see him through your peripheral vision, looking as handsome as ever.

“Es tarde en la noche, chiquita.” Miguel says, his words coming out slower due to all the Modelo in his system. “Why are you still up?”

“That’s exactly why I came in here; to tell you two to shut up.”

“¡Oye! Watch your mouth, mija.” your dad says sternly, while Miguel just chuckles.

“Sorry, pequeña,” Miguel says, setting his beer down on the coffee table. “We’ll keep it down. But don’t swear at your padre, yeah? Respect your elders.”

“Uh huh.” you shrug, waving the two men goodbye as you retire to your bedroom. You were sure that Miguel would still be there when you woke up in the morning, but hopefully he’ll be passed out by then and not still chatting with your dad.

----

You fall asleep almost immediately. The newly-installed fan in your room helped rid the summer heat and cool your bedroom to a comfortable temperature, while still allowing you to snuggle up under the blankets. A band tee and plain panties is all you wore, which was normal for you unless you were staying at a friend's house - at which point you’d obviously throw on some shorts. The moon shining through your windows acts as a sort of night-light, and you’re soothed to sleep by the crickets outside and the less-deafening sound of chatter from your living room.

Your alarm wakes you up around 8am, which is earlier than you normally start your day. As you go to turn off the noise, you hear a tired groan come from behind you. “Mmph… turn that off.”

You flinch and turn around, covering yourself with your blankets at the stranger in your bed. But it wasn’t a stranger. It was Miguel.

“Miguel!” you whisper-shout, nudging his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

He huffs and pushes his face into your pillow, and this is your first chance to get a good look at him. He’s shirtless, of course, but his muscular frame isn’t what draws you to him. His hair is tousled from sleep in a way you haven’t seen before, a grumpy pout peeking out from the pillow he’s buried his face in. He still has his gold chain around his neck, but he seems to have discarded his hat and jeans - which you see laying on your floor. You knew this man was gorgeous… but this was the most stunning you’ve ever seen him. The morning light only makes it better.

“Tu papá durmió en el sofá,” he mumbled, the sleepiness of his voice making him sound more attractive than ever. “And his room was too hot to sleep in.”

“That doesn’t explain why you decided to crawl into my bed unannounced.” you say.

He turns his head to look at you, and one of his arms slides under his pillow to prop himself up. “Cálmate, princesa. You had tons of room and it was cool in here.”

“God, you’re annoying.”

You sit up and brush the hair out of your face, trying to wake yourself up so that you can get ready. Miguel sleepily snakes an arm around your waist and pulls you back down. Your head flops on the pillow and messes up your hair once again.

“Quédate, mami. Sleep with me.” he mumbles, closing his eyes once more.

“E-Excuse me!?” Oh you were definitely blushing now. No way he just said that! You knew that he didn’t actually mean it like that… but you also knew that he wasn’t dumb. Whether his intentions were pure or not, you knew that he worded it that way on purpose. Was your silly little crush reciprocated?

He hugs you closer to him, pulling you flush against his bare chest. The cold metal of his necklace makes you shiver, especially in contrast with how hot his body is. Temperature, you mean.

“You heard me.” he doubles down.

“Do you even-”

“I know what I said, chiquita.” Miguel opens his eyes now - the lazy drawl of his voice becoming more awake and purposeful. His gaze on you is unbearable. You could feel the intensity of his stare. “And I know what I meant.”

You stare at him in silence. How could you speak? The man who you’ve had a crush on since you started college was in your bed, half naked, making a move on you. Part of you thinks that he’s waited long enough to finally do this, but another part of you feels some sort of guilt. He’s over a decade older than you, and a family friend no less. You can see through his eyes that he feels similarly, but his passion is overpowering any sense of guilt. Besides, you’re both adults. How bad could it be?

He leans over you, pinning you down onto your own mattress. A position that’s typically domineering, and yet, you can see his gaze soften uncharacteristically for him. He brushes a strand of loose hair away from your face.

“Que linda…” he mumbles, eyes trailing all over your face. “Eres tan hermosa.”

Miguel leans his face closer to yours, his gold cross dangling from his neck and touching yours. You can feel his warm breath ghosting over your lips. You’re stunned but also… excited?

“Miguel.”

“Yes?”

“Quiero sentirte.” you whisper, your eyes meeting his. You hear his breath catch in his throat. “Tócame. Hazme el amor.”

He chuckles, a flirty pout crossing his face. “Oh, pobrecita…” he grins, tracing your jawline with his dexterous fingers. Your face tilts up closer to his, your lips brushing as he speaks. “You know I can’t do that.”

...

What?

“Why not?” he can visibly hear the disappointment in your voice. It almost makes him feel bad, especially with how beautiful you look in the morning light.

“Don’t wanna wake your papi, nena.” he caresses your face once more, leaning back a little so he can look at your face properly. “I can’t make you scream while everyone else is asleep. We have to keep this a secret. But where’s the fun in sex if I can’t hear your pretty whines, hm?”

You smack his chest. “Oh fuck off, Mig. Come here.”

Before he can respond, you grab him by his necklace and drag him down to your lips. The moment your mouths connect, it’s like fireworks going off in his head. He swears you taste better than any bizcocho he’s ever had. Miguel holds your waist as you tangle your hands through his hair, and he lets out a soft groan. His hips involuntarily rut against your thigh, and he decides he can’t take it anymore.

His hand dips between the two of you to tug your panties down, freeing your skin to his touch. His thumb lazily circles your clit, while the other calloused hand is still resting on your hips. He feels like he’s in heaven, feeling you squirm underneath him, but he knows this is only the start of the fun you’ll have together. He swallows every sound you make with his lips on yours, his tongue fighting with yours for control. He pulls his hands back once he’s sure that you’re wet and ready. You two are gasping for air by the time your lips part, and his deep eyes look into yours with a silent plea. You nod your head desperately.

Miguel makes quick work of removing what little clothes he had left on his lower body before sinking into your warmth, slowly but surely. You gasp.

He leans his forehead against yours, savoring the moment of stillness. It’s like you two are in your own little bubble - no one else can interfere. He kisses you lovingly as he starts to move, silencing any moans or sighs you might have that others could hear. You’re just for him, no one else can experience you. His thrusts are slow, but agonizingly deep. You feel it deep in your core, kissing your cervix with every push of his hips forward.

“God…” he whines. “You feel so fucking good. So good for me, baby.” You arch against him, your hands dragging along his back for support. He glances down at where your two bodies connect, and the sight almost makes him pass out. “Que cosita más linda, mami.” he whispers.

“Damelo… please..” you whine, scrunching your eyes shut with all the pleasure you feel.

“I am, nena, I am. It’s all for you, princesa. I promise.”

His pace speeds up a little more, but he’s still pushing into you just as deep, “Show me you love it, baby. Mírame.”

You meet his gaze with glassy eyes, breathing heavily and nails digging into his back. You wrap your legs around his slim waist and he throws his head back at the tighter feel. “That’s it, baby. Así así…”

He’s rutting into you wildly, chasing his high. You look down to watch as his dick disappears into your cunt. The wet sounds of his hips smacking yours clouds your mind. Each roll of his hips brings you closer to the edge. “You’re so pretty, muñeca. So so pretty f’me.”

His large hands sneak under your t-shirt and grope your tits, squeezing and caressing in a way that makes you hazy. “Want you to look at me while I fill you up. Can you do that for me, baby?”

You nod your head frantically, scratching the skin of his shoulders. You’ve never wanted anything more. The two of you are getting dangerously close to climax, and you swear you can hear him whimper.

“God, baby, feels so fucking good. No puedo más, no puedo más…!”

A squeal escapes you as he spills into your heat, with your own crescendo arriving shortly after. There’s a creamy white ring around his base as he starts to slow the roll of his hips. Miguel eventually stills and collapses, hugging you close in the same sort of cuddle as before, but still resting inside you.

After the exhaustion wears off, you pull back to stare into his eyes. A hand comes up to cup his face, rubbing his flushed cheek gently. “That was fucking amazing, Mig. I haven’t felt that good in so long.”

He laughs softly, returning your affectionate gaze. “Do you think your papi heard us?”

“Definitely not.” you giggle. “He’s a heavy sleeper.”

“That’s good.” Miguel holds you for a few more minutes, just silently staring at you. You can’t even imagine how blissed out you must look right now, but it’s all so gorgeous to him. “Eres increíble, mi vida.”

You hum in delight, stroking his cheeks once more. “You too, mi cielo.”

... you're gonna have to cancel your plans for today.

sort of switched to Miguel's pov in the last section cuz i wanted to experiment :))))

i hope you guys liked it!! dbf!miguel inspiration from @mybvalentine

and yes... he's a mechanic. it just suits him ok??

----

webshooterrr9

[seat-safety-switch]

When you spend a lot of time on the internet, it's easy to get lured into the dumbest arguments known to humankind. It's just part of our species. Rather than actually solve major problems, it's more fun to isolate a trivial difference and get really angry about it.

As a kid, I remember two things clearly about kindergarten: one, the kid who peed her pants on the first day, and two, the class chicks. They were raised from eggs in an incubator and we got to see them for a couple of weeks until they were big enough to go back to the petting zoo where they came from. I figured this was a shared experience amongst all five-year-olds.

Recently, I spoke to someone who went to a different school. The next one over. Their kindergarten class raised ducklings. Quack-quack, not cheep-cheep. I began to wonder if my memory was faulty. Several sleepless nights later, I realized that I did not truly know if they were chickens and ducks. Did it matter? For my subconscious to be so irritated, it must be important.

I went back to the person who told me about the ducklings. They shrugged, and said they don't really remember, themselves. That's when the real horror began.

"Ducks and chickens are basically the same thing."

How do you argue with such a statement? For me, it consisted of several minutes of yelling, followed by doing a spiteful burnout in their driveway. We'll never speak again. On the internet, we would have argued for several hours before reaching the same conclusion, and I still wouldn't know if I had a cheep-cheep or a quack-quack in my early childhood development. At least I have the pee-pants kid to fall back on as my only remaining rock of truth.

[artsy-hobbitses]

In truth there is no better place to be Than falling out of darkness still to see Without a premonition Could you tell me where we stand? I'd hate to lose this light Before we land And when I feel like I can feel once again Let me stay a while Soak it in a while If we can hold on we can fix what is wrong Buy a little time For this head of mine Haven for us

One of the things that I adore about Ties That Bind was the journey that Preston 'Prowl' Wan took to become a fully-fledged character, where he initially began as simply a mirror of IDW Prowl. And to honour that development, the man whose compassion is no less real for being learned rather than innate, who sees numbers and the faces behind them with the same crackshot clarity, and who believes not in gods or fate or a higher calling but in people, and in you Jazz, has earned a brand new character sheet! His old sheet can be found here And below, you'll finally find his full story!

Preston Wan Peirong remembers little of his childhood, which is perhaps for the best in some aspects; Hard to tell the truth from a lie in a memory when one doesn’t know how many times they have been ‘rewritten’.

However, what he can tell you with unnerving clarity was the coldness of it all. The sterility. The unquestionable sense of order and obedience to the system he was told kept the world from devolving into chaos after it narrowly avoided total annihilation. 

As a cold construct, Preston was a part of a batch commissioned specifically for the law enforcement division and grew up in the youth wing of China’s Public Security Academy in Beijing. Here, he was trained to become a police officer from the day he was old enough to respond when the numbers under the barcode stamped on his neck were called out: P7031 Names weren’t given; Names had to be earned. 

Every aspect of his life and that of those in his batch was strictly regimented down to the last minute; Food calculated down to the last calorie for maximum performance with minimum waste to funding. Lesson room, shooting range and dorm temperatures kept frigid to ‘sharpen the mind’. The text which met his gaze, the lessons which rang in his ears, the words that came out of his mouth when he was permitted to speak.

He learned early on what his purpose was in the world, and had it drilled into him how integral purpose was to keeping the system running; Everyone had a purpose, everything had its place, and as long as the people understood both, order would be maintained, and order had to be maintained to keep the peace for the good of the many. Sometimes, yes, that meant oiling the gears. Other times, it was hammering down stray nails.

That purpose drove him, and by seven, indoctrinated him so thoroughly that he didn’t question the stinging in his knees when he was ordered to kneel on rice grains during his lesson drills, or his own hunger when ordered to go without meals until he’d learned to disassemble and reassemble his weapon at a speed which put officer cadets to shame. 

At eight however, the sterile and orderly world he knew within the academy walls began to crack; Sitting on the top of his batch, it was decided by the academy trainers that he needed more one-on-one tutelage after class hours. It was decided that he needed a handler. 

Tan Yumei was a former soldier; a renown crackshot with steel in her eyes and in her bones from years in service to the state; The kind that made her sit up straighter when the offer was made for her to become a glorified babysitter—in her words—to what had to be the world’s best behaved boy. 

Asset, the interviewer would correct her. Not a boy; an asset. Our asset. 

The promise of a job in the academy which would come with pay and medical benefits which far eclipsed her government pension was too tantalizing to pass up, and she took on the child known as P7031 under her wing. 

She was to train him in field work and help with his assimilation into society; the silo of the academy gave him the skills necessary, but could only do so much to help him function as part of the system. 

As often as she was told to treat him as an asset, a tool rather than a child, that proved easier said than done as Yumei found herself warming up to all four-foot-six of stoic, stony-faced, serious-as-a-heart attack P7031. 

It started small and innocuous; ice cream as a treat for a job well done, something completely novel to the child. No sense using the stick exclusively when the carrot was there as long as results were achieved, she would assure the staff.

This hid her growing disturbance with the way P7031 was raised, more so as he began to light up when when she greeted him every morning, began to smile as she praised him for things that weren’t tied to the purpose given to him by the academy, began to question the world around him in ways he had never been given the chance to do before with the kind of childish wonderment that dissipated into thin air when it came time to return to the academy. 

And P7031 began to feel his worldview shift as well, as she was the first person to treat him like the child that he was, whether it be reading with him young adult novels not approved by the academy board or snapping the very first pictures of himself he was allowed to keep (a gift to remind him that he existed beyond the academy walls). Attachments were an alien concept to him; he understood that his purpose meant connections beyond duty—whether it be family or friends, neither of which he had prior to Yumei— were wasteful, unnecessary, dangerous. But for the first time in his nine years of living, he wanted for something more than purpose. He wanted a life with his handler, his mother, as the card he presented to her on a second Sunday in May proclaimed with words easier written than spoken.

And as the time grew near for her handler contract with the academy to end, it was a sentiment Yumei echoed. 

When he was ten years old, she came for him after hours; silent, stealthy and wreathed in shadow, promising him a life away from the academy, from a purpose he never asked for. 

And at ten years old, time froze for him. 

P7031 didn’t remember anything of that night; The escape to the docks. The lullaby hummed to keep him calm. The struggle and the thunderclap that spattered his coat in blood that wasn’t his, and the wretched, barely human sound that tore from his throat. 

He didn’t remember being dragged back to the academy beaten within an inch of his life screaming blue murder. 

Didn’t remember the golden eyes crinkled at the edges with amusement as he begged for them to stop, because he knew Uncle Gold-Eyes, the one they called Trepan, to be a doctor who dealt with ‘defective’ assets; something he had once prided himself in never being. He didn’t care that he was defective; they had already taken the only person worth anything in his life away from him physically, and they were prepared to take what remained of her in his mind to ‘fix’ him. 

His pleas fell on deaf ears, and what he did remember, after all this, is simply his dorm room, Spartan as ever. 

Life went on, with only whispers of the unexplained cancellation of the handler initiative, which he’d never heard of, as a ripple in the monotony of his classes, shooting range practice and on-field assignments.

At eighteen, he graduated from the academy and finally earned the right to a name, and P7031 became Officer Wan Peirong, assigned to the Chengdu Security Bureau where he became one of its rising stars. 

His professionalism, loyalty and sense of duty were unmatched, even among his batch, and he unquestioningly served the system that kept the nation running. Criminals had no place in the system, but as he was told by his superiors, neither did dissidents who threatened order and had to be re-educated, taught the error of their ways to become productive citizens the same way he had been molded into a model worker in the academy. 

In this period, blips in his memories became more frequent, though his attending physician dismissed his concerns as it didn’t impact his work. Work which he began to question one day when his task entailed breaking up a miners’ protest downtown. As he led one activist away, an elderly woman kowtowed at his feet, begging for him to show mercy to her son, and something in her voice made him loosen his grip with the beginnings of doubt.

Miners were not an outlying group; they were a sizable section of the populace, and they weren’t the only group voicing their grievances. He was tasked with helping keep the peace; something he was told repeatedly that the many desired over the few who bucked against the order. But who was he serving when those who bucked against the order he was told should not be challenged became the many? 

It was a question Peirong struggled with as the days went by and dissent grew louder among the working class, which authorities were ordered to respond to with mounting force even for the pettiest infractions.

He began to seek out banned texts, including translated copies of ‘Towards Peace’, supposedly penned by a Cold Construct just like him from the west, to gain clarity on the situation; He reasoned that ne had to study all angles before making a move after all, and the more he read, the more shaky his faith grew in an institution which was far from the paragon he had been promised in the academy. 

He wasn’t a fool however; he knew how the system worked inside and out, and began searching for loopholes to secretly help out people he believed were being failed by the system, as well as utilising malicious compliance to cover his tracks in a real-time game of chess with his superiors.

It all came to a boiling point one day, as he was assigned to a squad escorting a group of political prisoners to a new facility. 

Among them was someone Peirong recognised as one Brandon Shen Bailin; a charismatic and  defiant radio deejay-reporter from Hong Kong who recently came out as a Cold Construct and was nicknamed the ‘Blaster’ for the exposes he penned about the government. 

Brandon had gone missing weeks ago on assignment in Xinjiang; no amount of bandages and no large a hoodie could hide the toll that time had taken on the man, who was now emaciated and missing all of his fingers.

Before Peirong could fully process what he was seeing, the reporter was separated from the rest of prisoners and forced to kneel, as a gun was placed in Peirong’s hands by the Second-Level Inspector and he was told to dispose of this enemy of the state.

What was unspoken but clearly understood between both of them, as Peirong could deduce from the officers closing in on him, was that this was a test of loyalty as his wavering faith in the system was becoming clear to the bureau’s cabal. 

The choice was made in a split second; he refused his commanding superior’s orders, shot the man square between the eyes before they could draw their weapon and then kneecaped the rest of the officers before the dust settled.

Hauling Brandon into the shotgun seat of the prisoner transport truck and driving off, he helped the reporter liaise with a contact that directed them to a rendezvous point at the nearby contested China-Arunachal Pradesh border to fight extradition orders. 

With authorities not far behind, Peirong pressed on and covered for them as they raced towards the border, following in Brandon’s lead. He had spoken with them throughout the journey; stilted and monotonous as ever on his end as he struggled to connect with them, but two things were clear, as they made that run for freedom:

The first was that the system was untenable if it would deem parents, poets, artists and blue collar workers–the many, the unarmed—as enemies of the state.  The second, was that while they ran for their lives, he wasn’t sure whether he’d ever truly lived at all. 

This was a sentiment that Peiriong echoed, after he was overpowered by men in the same uniform he wore, to the constable pressing the nozzle of a gun to his forehead; That they were free to take his life, a life where the only moment he’d felt even barely alive was he had defied an order for the first time. 

The argument that occurred next between two commanding officers who debated his fate was a surprise, though not so much as the revelation that this wasn’t the ‘first time’ he had broken protocol, and that he had apparently broken protocol one too many times that they were now weighing his use against the cost needed for his ‘upkeep’. 

In a day of firsts, it was also the first time Peirong had allowed his emotions to overwhelm him, as his increasingly frantic demands to know what they did to him before this—suddenly the blips in his memories made sense—was met with a pistol whip to the temple, and booming sound which made him believe for a fraction of a second that the gunman had kept true to the threat to kill him. 

Except he still breathed, and despite the ringing in his ears, he dazedly managed to push himself up to see the officers scattered and stunned while a new man stood in their midst; armored, backlit against the sun, and smiling.

The words were muffled, but he could read the man’s lips clearly; “Focus on me.” 

It was the singular thread of clarity he needed to finally accept the hand outstretched to him as both of them made a run for the waiting aircraft that would, for better or worse, take him away from his purpose, from the only life he knew. 

The man, who introduced himself as Jace Zayden codenamed Jazz, was a friend of Brandon who had refused to leave without the lone cop who had risked everything to help them.

And where Peirong had feared losing his purpose, his reason for existing with the single step he took beyond China’s borders, he found that he had instead traded it in for another the moment Jace invited him to team leader Omar ‘Orion Pax’ Parvez’s table to discuss strategy; something this new team desperately needed. 

He chose a new name, Preston, to mark his departure from his old life, and focused on his new purpose as framed by the man who saw worth in his life when those he’d once pledged it to did not: Peace through compassion, even if learned, over oppression. 

And between understanding what it meant to live as a man rather than a government asset, and forging connections beyond what duty once dictated for him, maybe, just maybe he could one day piece together the scattered fragments of his past. 

[borngeniusworld]

ग्राम खजुरहट की बेटियों के लिए सुनहरा मौका – निःशुल्क स्पोकन इंग्लिश प्रशिक्षण!

सभी बेटियों के लिए 100% छात्रवृत्ति – सारथी गुरुकुल की एक विशेष पहलबसंत पंचमी के पावन अवसर पर, हमें यह घोषणा करते हुए गर्व हो रहा है कि ग्राम खजुरहट की सभी छात्राओं के लिए 100% छात्रवृत्ति आधारित स्पोकन इंग्लिश कोचिंग कार्यक्रम का आयोजन किया जा रहा है। यह प्रशिक्षण सारथी गुरुकुल के भीमापार मुख्य कार्यालय में उपलब्ध होगा।शिक्षा सशक्तिकरण की नींव है, और हर बेटी को सीखने, बढ़ने और आगे बढ़ने का अवसर…

[kenomacreature]

A META-HISTORY OF ELYSIUM CORONA MUNDI

Chronicling (almost) everything we know about the development of Robert Kurvitz's quasi-sacral object complex

This post represents an attempt to gather (almost) all the reliable public info we have about the broader worldbuilding of Elysium Corona Mundi (the series to which Disco Elysium and Sacred and Terrible Air belong) and how it developed over time into one place, presented more or less chronologically and in a way accessible to fans unacquainted with the, shall we say, more arcane lore of Elysium. In the original incarnation of this post, basically every sentence was scrupulously referenced; however, referencing is a major pain in the ass on tumblr, so instead I just have a broad list of sources at the bottom and if you want to inquire any further into a specific claim you can just message me.

I'll also warn readers that the sections discussing the Torson & McLaine campaign and the (currently cancelled) sequel to Disco Elysium contain potential (albeit relatively minor) spoilers for the planned plot of that game. The creators still hope to make that game one day, so if you want to go in totally blind, you know what to avoid.

Evermier

The first serious worldbuilding project that Robert Kurvitz embarked on dates back to at least the year 1997. It was developed with his childhood friends in Estonia, including later Elysium worldbuilders Martin Luiga, Argo Tuulik and Kaspar Kalvet, and went by the name Evermier. This was a medieval fantasy setting formed around a tabletop roleplaying system that Robert Kurvitz and Martin Luiga have referred to as “bootleg Finnish Dungeons and Dragons,” but which Argo Tuulik suspects was actually a Powered by the Apocalypse framework. The vast majority of the boys’ time with Evermier was not spent actually playing any campaigns, but rather formulating the setting and mechanics (both Argo and Luiga ended up never participating in a roleplaying session of Evermier). Argo splits the time spent conceiving Evermier into two broad periods – one he dubs “Evermier 1.0,” which stuck close to traditional Dungeons and Dragons – and one dubbed “Evermier 2.0,” where no tabletop campaigns were ever actually played and all the time was spent system-building. Argo estimates this latter period lasted some 2-3 years.

Scope creep quickly hit the project, with character sheets evolving into whole character books. Luiga alleges that that “the wizard book” was supposed to have 350 spells altogether, each with at least a half-page story about the spell, in prose, and that “about a healthy third of the book got done in the end.” Argo gives a different number, stating that early estimates for it had more like 900 spells, but agrees that two-thirds of each page would’ve been reserved for “juicy literary stuff” about the spell in question while the rest of the page was dedicated to stats, and says that Luiga and Kaspar wrote a lot of excellent stuff for these spells.

Argo says there were about twenty different schools of technology (such as “metallurgy” and “optics”), at least twelve classes of mages, and “so many” subclasses of elves. There was also a subclass of dwarf that, instead of being stocky, chubby and bearded like traditional dwarves, were veiny and more like “Russian miners.” When implementing necromancers, Robert “zoned in on this soul aspect,” which later became the basis for Elysium’s pale. Argo describes these necromancers as “hobbits, but with these little lanterns that guide spirits or souls from this massive fog.” Luiga places the invention of this “fog of death with whom some could communicate” as happening late in Evermier’s development and likewise considers it a primitive precursor to what would become the pale.

The worldbuilders spent a lot of time gearing up for an ultimate roleplaying session that never ended up materializing, but their artist friend Jüri Saks drew illustrations in anticipation of it, including character portraits. Luiga’s character was a “sickle-elf” whose class was called “saint.” This saint character was a handsome elf with small pointy ears and a neat little beard, who wielded two “light swords” (possibly katanas), and a crossbow called Crucifix on his back. The character was from a “grim northern land” and was a “religious lunatic type” who believed in a “grim, monotheistic God.” Argo alleges that Luiga related to this character so much that it almost became a part of his persona; he “developed this mode that sometimes when we were drinking he happened to slip in, where he would start judging people. I would like to say that it still remained within the boundaries of normalcy, but uh, unfortunately it didn’t.”

Kaspar Kalvet at some point played an archer character named Minor Mortifer (“Small Death-bringer”), and there was also a dwarf king named Fuirum Thundergate.

According to Luiga, the name “Elysium” was suggested by someone on the dragon.ee forums, but it took half a year for Robert to start seriously considering it. This was back when the setting was still a medieval fantasy world. Luiga and Argo both agree that the historicized Elysium as we know it now was born around the time when Robert decided to get rid of fantasy races, because – as Argo puts it – “they were kind of stupid.” With this decision, Evermier underwent a modernization process of sorts, an attempt to bring the setting closer to real life, where many other fantasy elements were stripped away in favor of more realistic representations of cultures, mostly in the form of nations. Argo says that many of the fantasy races transformed over the course of this process into the nations of Elysium – the dwarves became the nations of Graad, the elves became the great desert isola of Iilmaraa (formerly Armaghast, a nod to Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, still referenced to this day with Iilmaraa’s Erg desert), the night-elves or star-elves eventually became Seol, and the snow-elves became Katla (which apparently has not changed too much since the Evermier days, and whose namesake is the dragon in Astrid Lindgren’s novel The Brothers Lionheart). Among the first innovations of the new modernized setting was the concept of floating magnet trains, later described in Sacred and Terrible Air.

After the Evermier setting had been discarded, many of its ideas ended up being repurposed into historical periods within the new historicized Elysium setting.

The Elysium tabletop campaigns

Between the years 2003 – 2007, three tabletop campaigns were played in the then newly formed Elysium setting. These all took place in Revachol during the Current Century and featured Robert as dungeon master. The first campaign seems to have been called Soul Milton’s World Autumn, the second one Riget and the final one known simply as Torson & McLaine, or alternatively the RCM campaign. The first two were played at Robert’s old apartment in the concrete block project at Mustamäe, while the third one was played in the house of Luiga's dad, which the three later lived together in following his death.

Soul Milton’s World Autumn

Of the three campaigns, Soul Milton’s is arguably the one most shrouded in mystery as it stands. It took place in Revachol and Martin Luiga played the titular character Soul Milton. The character has been described as “one of the cornerstones of the Elysium mythos” and an “aspiring world-historical person.” By the time of the campaign, Milton seems to have become an amnesiac as a result of “suppressing his own mind to protect himself from his enemies,” and in this process apparently also adopted a disguise by “putting another skin on himself” (what precisely that means, we don't know). He was “very rich” and came from a well-off family, had a complicated and possibly romantic relationship with his sister and was a “politician slash businessman” who “wanted to be the innocence of consumerism.” As it turns out, the enemies who were chasing him were the Therriers of Elysium’s final innocence, Ambrosius Saint-Miro (a major figure in both Sacred and Terrible Air and Full-Core State Nihilist, to be discussed later), who Soul Milton met at one point. Saint-Miro apparently told him that “there has never been an innocence who is also not an innocence.” This encounter places the Soul Milton campaign firmly after the events of Disco Elysium, possibly in the late Fifties or Sixties. During this campaign, Argo played Soul Milton’s horse carriage driver, a man by the name of Elroy Quint Duval.

Also associated with Soul Milton are two other characters. Before Sacred and Terrible Air was conceived, Robert had planned to tell the story of Elysium in three books; one starring Soul Milton, another starring a character named Dister, and the third a character named Dallasz.

Dister, or Marius Dijsters, was an extraphysicist and published author hailing from Oranje. He was a son of diplomats, one of them the grand ambassador of Oranje on Iilmaraa. He seems to have been a significant enough figure to have an entire strand of thought – Disterism – named after him (mentioned in the inside covers of Sacred and Terrible Air), and like Soul Milton, he had an antagonistic relationship with Ambrosius (as made apparent by an incident where he was threatened by the innocence’s Therriers at age 25). He is also apparently involved in some way with Theo Van Kok (of Sacred and Terrible Air fame), along with a Paul Messier (presumably the husband of Disco Elysium's Joyce Messier), apparently the beneficiary of such prestigious titles as "Enemy of the Press '67" and "Worst Person of the Year '67."

Information is rather scant on Dallasz, but during the making of Disco Elysium, there were plans to repurpose him into another project, a comic book named Mercurio Dallasz and the Twelve Kojkos which was going to be illustrated by Aleksander Rostov. This project unfortunately fell through, but we know the premise: a band of kojkos under Dallasz’s leadership attempt to assassinate innocence Saint-Miro. This was presumably an Inglourious Basterds type affair. 

Riget

“It’s better to die in the Kingdom than live in a shithole.”

This was the tagline of Elysium’s second tabletop campaign, Riget, whose name is Danish for “kingdom” and was taken from Lars von Trier’s mini-series of the same name. Once more, the setting was Revachol, but this time it was limited to a peculiar part of it: Le Royaume (French for, again, “the Kingdom”) a vast network of dungeons and burial chambers two kilometers beneath the city, housing ancient ruins and remnants (quite possibly of the Seraseolitic civilization mentioned in Disco Elysium), along with treasures such as bioluminescent plants which have adapted to living in total darkness. The stars of this campaign were three impoverished children, all between the ages of 10-12 and members of a gang named “Earthworms,” who decided to venture down into the catacombs in search of valuable artifacts to sell. At some point, these kids somehow found themselves unable to get out of Le Royaume, supposedly trapped underground by demons who sought to use the children as vessels to escape back to the surface. When this campaign was being played, demons were still a part of the setting and haunted the halls of the underground network, along with monsters – such as the armakhaan beast, also known as Lelo Lelo, a terrifying blind and flightless hunter killer bird which was a mix between the xenomorph and cassowary. As for whether demons are still part of the setting in any way; both Argo and Luiga's statements are too ambiguous to reach any firm conclusion. Argo does note that the concept of 'demons' connotes something subtly different in Estonian than the scary red guys in popular Western culture, and are more like a primordial evil.

In the campaign, Argo played a boy named Miron, whose nickname was ‘Sneaker’, while Luiga played Joschka, a crippled boy with a bad leg. During the campaign, individual roleplaying sessions with Robert were held where the players’ stories evolved in parallel without them being kept on the same page. Each of them would get info the others were not privy to: Argo’s was that Joschka is unaware of the fact that he’s not considered a true member of the gang; in reality, he’s an outcast generally considered a weird, creepy weakling, and was only brought on for his lockpicking and mechanical skills.

Eventually, the Riget campaign got quite far into “Lord of the Flies territory.” Near the end, Sneaker and the third boy (played by another friend) conspired to kill Joschka deep underground.

Torson & McLaine

The worldbuilders continued to refine the roleplaying mechanics they were working with for the campaigns. By the time of Riget, the basics of the Metric system had been introduced, with the now familiar INT, PSY, FYS, and MOT. But according to Argo it was the RCM campaign, known principally as the Torson and McLaine campaign, which was “the first mature cycle of Elysium storytelling.” It took place, once more, in Revachol – this time in a ghetto called Jamrock, named after a Damian Marley song, and was focused on the goings on in Station 51 (renamed Precinct 41 by the time of Disco Elysium), the RCM’s lone precinct in Jamrock. The campaign took large amounts of inspiration from the TV series The Shield and its depiction of corrupt police officers and the intermingling of gang warfare and state-sanctioned violence. A central concept was: the cops are a gang, and the gangs are cops.

The RCM campaign began on a sort of prologue session, wherein Argo and Luiga played characters named Antwone Novak and Trinidad Tranquile respectively, two junior officers newly recruited into the RCM. Antwone was a “petit bourgeois type,” whereas Trinidad was a young communist who had recently been given time off work due to excessive violence. Luiga describes him:

He worked at a meat shop that belonged to Carson Torsson, Mack Torson’s dad, and had a system of stealing from work in order to ‘adequately compensate for his labour’. He also liked to practice a crude type of critical theory in the vein of ‘this building has been made that large to humiliate me, to show off with a power greater than me, to scare me into submission’. And he had a system of smoking no more than five cigarettes per day to cut down on smoking costs — Kim’s single cigarette habit might be a distant echo of that. He had, I think, a 7 in PSY (at least 5) and 2 in INT and mediocre physical stats, the core system was pretty much set by then.

At the end of this prologue session, Station 51 became the target of a terrorist attack. We don’t know much about the perpetrators beyond them being “Church of Evil type guys” in Luiga’s words, but the dice was rolled badly and Antwone and Trini both ended up dying in a “horsebombing” attack, falling onto the bridge outside the station.

Map of Station 51, located in a repurposed steel mill.

Going forward, Argo and Luiga had to find new characters to play, and they ended up going with ones they had earlier conceptualized, half-jokingly, on one of their many walks around Tallinn from parties and other events, since public transportation was notoriously unreliable. These characters were Chester McLaine, played by Luiga, and Mack “the Torso” Torson, played by Argo. Torson was derived in half from Vic Mackey, the protagonist of the Shield, and half from Argo’s own personality. Argo says that Luiga put his own personality into Chester as well, but isn’t sure where the other half of that character came from.

The main plot of the campaign centered on a revenge operation against those who perpetrated the attack on Station 51. In the second session of the campaign, Torson and McLaine are involved in a church raid; though Argo takes care to mention that he doesn’t think this is the church raid mentioned in Disco Elysium, and that it’s not a Dolorian Church but rather the “Armed Church of Saint-Michelle.” Among the tasks of Torson and McLaine were gathering “guns and drugs” for the “big revenge operation.”

Mack Torson was an idiotic body builder, an admirer of Lieutenant John “the Archetype” McCoy, the Station’s resident mass murderer, and altogether “way too stupid to concentrate on the main plot and politics of the police station,” focusing his attention instead on matters like “how to get it on with the captain’s secretary and tattooing the word ‘Jamrock’ on his body hundreds of times over.” Chester McLaine was a little more perceptive, wondering about things such as “what the hell is going on with the armour maker or Nix Gottlieb,” but was still an all-around uncritical person who put a lot of stock into “loving the captain” and “being a communist memebot.” McLaine was also “a sword guy,” since at this point in the worldbuilding swords were still viable weapons, with guns being slow to reload. Torson and McLaine lived together, along with two other cops, Sundance Fischer and Elfboy Williams. “Elfboy’s thing was being the dexterity bro, in which he continually lost to McLaine, and Sundance’s thing was having a fat ass and cleaning his guns all the time.” Torson had a wife named Tessa Torson, and later in life both Chester and Mack would apparently raise adopted daughters, Tessa and Triss (whether these Tessas are separate characters or represent the same character at different stages of development is unclear; Argo and Luiga seem to contradict each other, unless there's something very weird going on).

Torson and McLaine both regularly abused their powers, as RCM officers in general were prone to do, and in their heads they were justified in doing so. A highlight of the RCM campaign had been sessions dubbed “the Ballad of Chad Tilbrooks and Émile Mollins,” centering on two junior officers who were ritually abused and exploited by the older members of their station, including Torson and McLaine. At one point, Torson and McLaine were also involved in an interrogation of a local religious figurehead which devolved into mutilation torture, which only the “bullet-lobotomized” officer Damien “44” Latrec called out for what it was (enthusiastically). The interrogation ended up being ineffective as the religious leader simply “retreated into a happy place inside his head.”

The Captain of Station 51, Ptolemaios Pryce, was immensely respected and glorified by its officers, whereas the station’s lazareth Nix Gottlieb, while also respected, was generally resented and found hard to tolerate for being “an absolute horrible cunt.” In spite of this, Nix Gottlieb was known to have a curious friendship with Pryce, talking alone with him in the Captain’s office long into the night. This fact regularly perplexed the officers of Station 51.

Eventually, at some point in the campaign, Torson and McLaine would come to the focal point of the story, when they make a shocking discovery: the reason for Pryce and Gottlieb’s strange friendship is that they are both members of the top-secret underground anarchist organization the Ultra, and not only are plans underway for a national liberation movement freeing Revachol from Coalition control, known as THE RETURN, but the two have set their sights on a much larger goal: world revolution. 

The novel cycle

No more campaigns were played in the Elysium world after 2007, when the boys stopped playing the RCM campaign (with the story unfinished). Robert Kurvitz instead shifted his attention to writing a book in the Elysium universe. Eventually the plan became for it to be the opening to a cycle of novels, totaling eight altogether. We have the English titles of each book and their epigraphs, along with the order of the series, from a post by Kurvitz on the dragon.ee forums.

They are as follows:

#0 A SACRED AND TERRIBLE AIR My heart will not rest until it rests in you. - St. Augustine

#1 THE COUNTERMEASURES What am I searching for in your dreams? I am not searching. I am merely cleaning up. - Christian Emmerich

#2 NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES Man-kind, be vigilant! We loved you. - Julius Fučik

#3 MADRUGADA It must be lit as dreams, by lightning flashes only. - Witold Gombrowicz

#4 TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE DAYS REMAINING Evening brings the child back to the arms of the mother. - Sappho

#5 COALITION WARSHIP I don’t want to be in no indie shit. I want to be in the big ones. I want to be in the ones that matter. - Mickey Rourke

#6 WE ARE THE WAITING What remains, is longing for something completely different. - Luis Althusser

#7 INDIFFERENCE A great silence, some low pressure front is forming. - Arvi Siig

Sacred and Terrible Air was eventually released in Estonian back in 2013, and after the success of Disco Elysium plans were made to translate the book into English. Rumor goes that this translation was very far along or even finished, but unfortunately all plans for releasing this translation to the public have been halted with the ongoing legal dispute.

Fortunately, dedicated fans have taken it upon themselves to translate the book into English for those particularly interested. The most successful translation by far is the one by Group Ibex, which still receives updates to this day.

Read it here.

Full-Core State Nihilist

Many don’t know that Sacred and Terrible Air is actually not the only written work predating Disco Elysium. Before even Sacred and Terrible Air was released, Martin Luiga wrote a short story later given the English title Full-Core State Nihilist, which was uploaded to the old ZA/UM blog. While obviously not as meaty a text as Sacred and Terrible Air, it deals with some overlapping themes and gives us our first proper window into the nation of Mesque, so important to the broader narrative of Elysium.  

Full-Core State Nihilist was later heavily edited and uploaded to nihilist.fm, another blog site which many of the ZA/UM members were active on.

Finally, in 2022, Martin Luiga translated the Estonian story, basing his English version on the original ZA/UM blog version, and uploaded it to Medium. This translation itself could be seen as a third edit of the story, featuring new references to Disco Elysium.

(As it happens, I have also arrogantly taken it upon myself to create my own translation of this brilliant story, which combines elements from all three versions, and is an attempt to render the prose in slightly less idiosyncratic English, closer to the “house style” of Disco Elysium, while remaining heavily informed by Luiga’s own translation.)

You can find Luiga’s translation here and my version here.

THE RETURN

In 2014, Robert Kurvitz pitched an idea to his friend and associate, novelist and businessman Kaur Kender, to turn the Torson & McLaine roleplaying campaign into a full-fledged video game for PC. The pitch proposed a 3000 EUR investment to produce a vision document, with design and artwork handled by Aleksander Rostov and Juri Saks, detailing the setting, plot, game mechanics and art style. In 2015, this document was finished, and by this time a provisional name for the project seems to have been settled on: THE RETURN.  

This vision document reveals that the game was once planned to feature turn-based tactical combat. The plan was also for the player to create their own character from certain “archetypes,” each with different personalities, talents and appearances. Over time it became clear that these plans were too ambitious; by 2016 the archetypes had been narrowed down into a single character – the “disgrace to the uniform” Harry du Bois – and the prologue chapter of his story, set in Martinaise, was split off into its own game. This smaller project received the title that originally was given to the third novel in the planned cycle (which was almost certainly anticipated to center around the story of Precinct 41 in the year ’51) – NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES.

No Truce became Disco Elysium and the rest, as they say, is history. But unlike many fans who view Disco as a singular statement that needs no further comment, the developers were far from done with the world they had created. The dominant internal view, especially among the original worldbuilders, was that Disco Elysium was merely a minor project to get ZA/UM’s foot through the proverbial gate. Work on the true game – the one they had wanted to create all along – could finally begin now.

As far as we know, the plot of the game would’ve stuck fairly closely to the events of the Torson & McLaine roleplaying campaign. The game was to open with an attack on Precinct 41, and the rest of the game would’ve been a revenge story of sorts. Players would assume control of Harry again, and this time his primary partner would be Jean Vicquemare, although there would be an assortment of other potential party members. The map would be at least four times bigger and set in Jamrock.

Plot points which would be explored in the sequel had already been set up in Disco Elysium – among these are Pryce and Gottlieb’s revolution, Le Royaume, Edgar Claire, and La Puta Madre. Cuno and Cunoesse would’ve featured as returning characters; not much is known about how Cuno and Kim would’ve been integrated into the game given how variable their endings in Disco Elysium are, but Argo says that he would’ve insisted on Cuno returning. X7 – the now-cancelled DLC project which Argo worked on for the remainder of his time at ZA/UM after Robert, Rostov and Helen were ousted from the company, would’ve featured Cuno as the protagonist. Meanwhile, Cunoesse was planned to reappear in THE RETURN as a leader of a gang of kids in Le Royaume, according to Martin Luiga.

Obviously, the characters of Precinct 41 would've featured heavily, and we'd be introduced to many familiar names which we were already given glimpses of in Esprit de Corps checks in Disco Elysium. One of these would be Lt. Berdyayeva, a superior of Harry’s, whose daughter is Jean Vicquemare’s ex. A character we know nearly nothing about except for the fact that he was conceptualized back in the tabletop days as a sort of joke character, but survived all the way into the planning stage for THE RETURN, is “Marivald the Merry Butcher” – what his role might've been, your guess is as good as mine.

Pryce and Gottlieb’s goals in the game might've involved an attempt to unite several diverse groups with a common interest in an independent Revachol; this would’ve included the besmerties, the West Revacholian crime syndicates mentioned in Disco Elysium. Prominent among them would’ve been La Puta Madre, a Mesque gang leader and drug manufacturer, a man of such immense power that he has RCM officers tending his poppy fields in terror (his influence also seems to survive past the events of the game; he gets a mention in Sacred and Terrible Air). The Madre would’ve apparently been an attractive feminine-presenting man, impeccably dressed and wearing beautiful makeup; his gender-nonconformity a way of projecting power over the traditionally macho culture of Villalobos. The rival gang, Ahura Mazda, led by a gangster known as the Mazda, would’ve presumably also featured prominently – Rostov recently released old concept art depicting one of their gang members.

There were more plans for the sequel that only came along after the development of Disco Elysium itself. Robert has talked about wanting to double down on events like the Mercenary Tribunal, handling big action scenes within the more closed literary format of the FELD dialogue system, hopefully allowing for even more variation than was possible in Disco's big confrontation. Another infamous idea was the inclusion of a second protagonist – a pregnant woman, about 5 months along. Kurvitz has mentioned this idea in interviews, saying that it would be "an incredible writing challenge" within Disco Elysium's internalized skill system: "It would be unbelievable to use our skill system to speak about the bodily sensations of having another organism inside of you, while you're in the setting and talking to another person." That said, the addition of an entire new protagonist is very ambitious indeed – it's not clear whether the idea would involve alternating perspectives of some sort, or a choice in the character creator of which one to go with, but Kurvitz made it clear that these would be entirely different characters, unlike many games which offer only a superficial choice between male and female playable characters. Kurvitz expressed some doubt about being able to include this in the game, but at least expected it to be integrated via an expansion post-release if not.

Miscellaneous info

Argo and Robert have both hinted that there is a metatextual element to the overarching Elysium narrative. Whenever presented with readings or theories that contextualize the game as some sort of story-within-a-story, they act coy and refuse to give any clear answers. Argo outright offered an interpretation of the pale which presents it as what happens as the narrative starts “leaking out” of the head of a reader or audience member no longer actively absorbed in the world and said that “Elysium is a fictional world that is aware that it’s fictional.”

Apparently related to this aspect of the narrative, according to Argo, are the three satellites in orbit above the world of Elysium – Iikon, Zenith and Shakermaker – which have been there since “before the 8,000 years of recorded history” and before “the Polycarpeum event.” The satellites have only been mentioned in niche corners of the currently published materials, and the innocence Polycarp has only been mentioned in secondary materials, such as the artbook and the inside covers of Sacred and Terrible Air, leading to speculation about him being involved with the pale and the memory of his reign being wiped from history.

Also related to the metatext, again according to Argo, is a character known as “the Man Behind the Black Sun” – he gets one mention by the Paledriver in Disco Elysium, but curiously she seems to refer to it as the title of a movie that was released in Mesque during the revolutionary era, potentially a boiadeiro picture starring the actor Gabriel Buenguerro.

The magical elements of the pre-Elysium fantasy world morphed over time into what is called “extraphysics” in Elysium. The innocences, the pale, and “plasm” all testify to this supernatural aspect of the setting.

At some point, Ambrosius Saint-Miro apparently constructs nihilist death camps, which Triss and Tessa (the adopted daughters of Torson and McLaine) end up in and eventually escape.

"Magpies" are not a real thing and were never a part of the original plan for the Elysium narrative. The concept artist who made the image from which the term was popularized has gone on record saying that he invented this idea himself and that it was taken from his own worldbuilding ideas. There is nothing to suggest that this was integrated into the game; Argo and Luiga reacted with confusion at the mention of this concept.

Kurvitz had an insanely ambitious list of projects he wanted to make in the Elysium universe before he was ousted from ZA/UM; "The last one I want to make, when I'm 50 or 60, that I want to absolutely go crazy on and throw out all commercial considerations and get this as conceptual as possible, is the tabletop setting. The working title for the tabletop setting is You Are Vapor. It will be a really, really, crazy pen-and-paper game."

List of sources:

All parts of Argo Tuulik's Human Can Opener Podcast episode.

Martin Luiga's Human Can Opener episode.

Martin Luiga's Medium account and other blog posts: Interview, 8 years ago..., Hello Fellow Worldbuilders, Correction, A Policeman In Revachol, Fuirum Thundergate (Substack)

Tweets by Martin Luiga: 1, 2, 3, 4

Tweets by Argo Tuulik: 1

The dragon.ee post about the novel cycle

"Welcome to Revachol" on the devblog

"Outro" by Robert Kurvitz, featured in the official Disco Elysium artbook.

Disco Elysium, Sacred and Terrible Air, and Full-Core State Nihilist. Obviously.

Possibly more that I'm forgetting. Feel free to ask.