#play any more than one character for them.

[cheapshrimpysheep]

What if They were Dads?

SUMMARY: Headcanons of what I think they would be like as fathers to your child. And what if his dormmates were like honorary uncles to the child?

CHARACTERS: OB Students (Riddle Rosehearts / Leona Kingscholar / Azul Ashengrotto / Jamil Viper / Vil Schoenheit / Idia Shroud / Malleus Draconia)

TAGS: Headcanon; Fem!Reader (AFAB) (I never really know what tags to use but I hope you know what I mean)

WORD COUNT: An average of 690 words per character.

COMMENTS: I would have liked to have made a headcanon about the relationship with the boys' parents and siblings, but since we don't know them that well or at all on the Eng Server like Vil's father, I think I'll leave that for a possible post that complements this one. If you want.

Since I didn't want each character to have a big chunk of text, I put them as paragraphs instead of bullet points.

I hope you enjoy 🩵

CONTEXT: This was written with a cisgender female reader in mind. Reader is Yuu. But if you want (and can) read it in any other way, feel free to.

By the way, this is one of those moments when I wish English had a second person plural, instead of the singular and plural being the same. Whenever I write “your child” I mean it in the plural (you, the reader, and his)

Riddle’s child(ren) call him: Father

Riddle has the same demands and standards for his child that he has for himself. But he doesn't want to make the same mistakes as his mother, so in comparison he can be more permissive. Because of this he will ALWAYS listen to you if you tell him he is being too harsh.

In terms of studies, etiquette and behaviour he is quite strict as you would expect. But when it comes to play he lets his child do almost anything they want.

He doesn't know how to play with his child, but he will always make an effort to learn how to and do it with them. He almost seems to regress to the childhood he never had and wants to give to his child. Whenever the child learns a new game, they will show it and teach it to Riddle and he will be delighted with it.

Although he is strict, he is also relatively protective, especially if your child is a girl. He tries not to be overly protective, but he can't help but worry about your child. If there was a right way to raise a child, is he doing his job well enough? You will have several conversations at first to reassure him that he is doing a good job.

He will study any and all parenting books that experts in child behaviour and education recommend. This kind of knowledge is never too much. Which often leads you to try to convince him to relax and just trust his instincts and what he feels is right. The child is his, not all those authors and experts. Sometimes there are things that a parent simply knows.

Lawful and calm Uncle Trey. They love uncle Trey's sweets! Sometimes Riddle asks him if he's not giving them too much sweets and Trey always assures him that it's okay because he knows how to make healthier sweets and the limit for a child to eat. If they weren't already Riddle's child, the whole thing about always brushing their teeth could be scary.

Chaotic Uncle Che'nya. The crazy and fun Uncle! Your child and Che'nya join forces (maybe even with you) to play pranks on Riddle. Never anything that could get the child into trouble with their father, just enough for everyone, Riddle included, to have fun.

Uncle Ace and Uncle Deuce are more from your side than Riddle's honestly. Ace is a bit like Che'nya in the case of being one of the chaotic pranksters uncles. But he is also the uncle of magic tricks who is always deceiving, but also entertaining your child with them.

Deuce is the rad uncle with a cool moto and/or even cooler blastcycle, who offers to take your child for a ride in it with him. Your child also finds it funny to see the two of them arguing amicably. But it’s even funnier to see them imitating their father trying to order them to stop arguing.

Uncle Cater doesn't show up very often, but they like him. He's not chaotic like Ace and Che'nya, but he's also fun. Your child enjoys receiving compliments from him and taking pictures with him.

Your child imitates their father scolding Grim too. Just like Riddle (and probably because they're still little) they have a very bad temper. Riddle gets embarrassed whenever you say that someone takes after their father.

Leona’s child(ren) call him: Dad

Leona still doesn't like kids... your child(ren) is/are just an exception.

Yes, Leona would treat a daughter slightly differently than he would treat a son. In the same way that he treats men and women a little differently. But the only difference is that he would be tougher on a son than a daughter, but will still be affectionate regardless.

No matter what gender his child is, he wants the same for them: be strong both physically and mentally. To outsiders like some servants or citizens who don't know him, they may get to the point of thinking Leona is a harsh father who doesn't deserve all that love from his child, and he will tell both you and your child not to mind that. But the truth is that he is just like he was with you at school: a tough guy who hides a caring heart.

Leona continues to show himself to be a person who doesn't want anyone to upset him and who would growl at anyone who bothers him. The only people who can get close to him even when he's angry and remain safe and sound are you and your child. He'll still growl at you and your child quietly, but there will be a volume that is the line, like if his growl is louder than that limit it's because he's getting really angry, until then it's just him being him.

Your child will already have the best private teachers and tutors (one of them being Kifaji/Neji if he’s still alive), but even so, Leona will want to make them study and learn more. But in that discreet way that he knows. He will not force them to study more, he will find a way to convince them to want to learn more on their own.

You end up being the most affectionate parent and the one they trust for emotional comfort. Leona is the tough love, you are the soft love (at least in comparison). Leona will always tease you, insinuating that you are too soft and only spoil your child. Although he enjoys when you spoil him too.

He is 100% the ‘Go ask your mom’ kind of dad.

He lets his child take naps with him. And you too.

If he has more than one child, he will police himself not to favor any of them. He may have a tendency to favor the younger ones because of what he went through as the youngest himself, but none of his children will be treated in any special/different way based on their birth order. Neither the youngest nor the oldest.

He will try to convince his child not to be too close (emotionally) to their uncle or cousin, but won't stop them from playing with Cheka. When your child is old enough not to tell others what is said in your home, Leona and them will talk badly about Falena and Cheka behind their backs.

Leona will prefer your child to play with Ruggie and/or his children. On the one hand, he wants to keep them away from his family, but on the other hand, he also wants his child to know what the real world is like, to see both wealth and poverty, to know royalty as they knows their people and only then create their own judgement.

They don't call anyone uncle or aunt other than Falena and his wife. In the same way, Leona also doesn't give cute titles to anyone without being sarcastically. Even when he calls you “love”, “darling”, “honey” or something like that, it's to tease you.

Whenever you go to Shaftlands, whether for democratic reasons or on holiday, you always try to find a way to meet with Jack. Leona pretends that he only helps you with this because you want to see your friend and he wants to get rid of his family. Both you and Jack know that he just doesn't want to admit that he wants to see him too. Jack is the cool parent's friend who taught your child how to snowboard. While they are little they like to hug his tail because it’s fluffy.

Despite everything, he doesn't want his child to have the same lack of hope that he has, and despite trying to hide it, he always feels extremely guilty and bad whenever your child says something like that. At these times he relies on you to be the ray hope in that house, they will both need you for that.

Both Leona and your child are afraid of you when you get really serious or angry.

Do you know that scene from The Lion King where Mufasa uses Zazu to give Simba an pouncing lesson? Leona often does something similar, but instead of the target being a blue bird, it's a magical creature called Grim.

Azul’s child(ren) call him: Daddy (when little) Dad (when older)

Azul is an extremely emotional father, despite trying to hide it. There's going to be a lot of moments like: “HE/SHE IS THE CUTEST LITTLE THING IN THE WHOLE- *clears throat* I mean, he/she is such a charming little child.” He will most likely cry at your baby's first words, steps, anything.

Azul is overprotective! If any living creature even thinks about harming your child, he will tortu- that is, find a completely legal way to ensure that it never happens again. Now, if you'll excuse him, he suddenly felt like talking to Jade and Floyd. (The same protectiveness applies to you.)

Although he is very (secretly) emotional and loves to spoil his child, he is also relatively strict about their studies. He likes to spoil them (and you) when it's deserved, but he will not raise a spoiled child! This ends up balancing things out a bit.

He will hide the whole mafia-like part of his life from his child. Dad is just doing business, boring adult stuff. Maybe when your child is older he will start to reveal a little of that side of his life, if they later want to join their father it will be their choice. But until then, let them be innocent children, they are cuter and happier that way, there is time for everything.

He will always hold back his emotional side so as not to be overly affectionate. Unless his child starts crying. At that point his mask falls completely and he becomes the most affectionate and comforting father there can be, that is his weakness.

And if one day the child realizes this and starts using crying to get what they want from him, he won't know whether to be angry that he is being emotionally manipulated by his own child, or proud that they learned so quickly.

You will be the only one immune to the fake crying.

From the beginning, Azul has been wary and suspicious of letting Jade and Floyd be like uncles to your child. However, you two ended up letting this happen, but Azul will always keep an eye open.

Both Jade and Floyd will definitely use the child to play pranks on Azul. Mostly Floyd, Jade prefers to watch and assist. Azul will always be upset with the twins, never with his child. And depending on the severity of the prank, he will turn on his overprotective side and threaten Jade and Floyd that if that happens again they will never see your child again. They never go beyond that limit.

Every now and then when Floyd plays with your child, he will do that joke where he playfully tells them he's going to catch them and bite them. Actually in his playful voice, he doesn't want to scare them. And they will run to Azul and hide behind his legs asking for help while laughing. Or tentacles if they are in their merfolk form.

If you ask them Jade is the scary uncle (only sometimes) but they themselves don't even know why. It's just his vibe or something. However, they are not afraid to ask any of them for something, it being to play or for help.

Azul loves cooking for you and your child, and they love their father's cooking.

You know those little plastic cashiers where kids pretend to have a little shop and try to sell things to people at home? Usually parents or sibling. Azul loves to play this with his child because it is a great and fun way to pass on his knowledge. Both about sales and about taking care of your money. Usually using the Grim as a guinea pig. Grim also likes to play because he always ends up with food in exchange for toy money.

Jamil’s child(ren) call him: Dad (in informal moments) and Father (at formal events)

Jamil needed to learn to express himself more and better emotionally so as not to end up being a cold father without meaning to. He needs your help to teach your child when to hold back and when to know when they are in a safe space to let go.

The only thing that will follow Jamil forever is an inevitable feeling of guilt for your child having the same fate as him, simply for being his child: serving the Al-Asim family with no other choice. But you can be assured that if there is a way to stop this and give his child freedom of choice, whatever that method may be, he will not give up until he finds it and do it! Normally parents want to give their children what they always wanted and could never have, in Jamil's case it’s freedom.

There was something Jamil wanted to do, but he didn't have the courage to ask the Al-Asim for some kind of vacation. But you had! Using your great friendship with Kalim, you managed to get him to allow you to take a vacation long enough for you to travel as a family, as Jmail wanted. Jamil has always wanted to travel alone, but now with you and your child he would like to travel as a family and give his child the experiences he would have liked to have had himself.

He is quite demanding with his child's education and training. However, his attitude towards this is always calm and collected, and he is attentive to his child's limitations and needs. He is a great and responsible tutor, who knows how to distinguish between being a teacher and being a father.

He is usually quite serious, so you and your child are the ones who start messing with him to have fun and make him laugh. It's always nice when he reminds you two that he can also be a tease. Normal or biggest target of your joint teasing ends up being Grim at some point.

During his work as Kalim's servant, Jamil always had to cook a lot and he's not that big a fan of cooking, so so he can rest at home you're the one who cooks most of the time. He will teach you everything you want to learn and at first you will cook together a lot until you feel comfortable cooking alone. But even then he will continue to offer to help you. Your child will continue to say that Jamil's food is tastier, but yours is prettier. And the food you make together is the best because it’s tasty and pretty. Jamil will also encourage his child to cook with you two so that they can learn from a young age.

His child knows that there is only one thing in this world that can make their father scream in fear: Bugs! If your child is also afraid of insects, you're screwed, because you will be the insect killer in that house. However, if it is just the two of them, Jamil's protective instinct will be stronger and despite his fear he will protect his child. If your child is not afraid of insects, then Jamil will have two protectors. “Can you do dad a favor?”; “Where is it?”; “Living room, south wall last time I saw.”; “Does it fly?”; “...Yes.”

Kalim will treat your child almost like one of his own children, for loving you both so much. He got emotional when he found out you were pregnant, he wanted to help pay for your doctor's appointments if necessary (never was), and he got emotional again when your child was born. He loves buying toys for your child too and give them gifts. He would love for Jamil to let them call him Uncle Kalim. And he loves it when your kids play together.

Vil’s child(ren) call him: Father 

Vil wants to have a family that is at its best as he likes to be at his best himself. He wants you and your child to be as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside, just as he strives to be as well. However, he would treat a daughter slightly differently than a son because of the different pressures of societal beauty standards.

With a son he would be as strict with him as he is with himself. But with a daughter, he knows she's more likely to suffer from these kinds of things. So although he continues to be relatively strict and wants her to be the best she can be, he ends up being softer with criticism and stronger with praise and soft love than he would be with a son.

He would hire a specialist, like as a child psychologist or something like that, to always know the best ways to rise and protect your child. Children of famous people like him, especially in the digital and social media age, may need more protection from their parents in this regard, in addition to the toxic pressure of comparison that exists. However, because Vil cares so much about your child's personal development as their happiness, he may end up putting enormous pressure on himself to be a perfect parent too.

Both Vil and your child will need you to be the person who brings them both back to the real world and the life of a loving family with flaws like any human being. Vil will always listen to you if you feel he may be being too harsh and demanding with your child, or with himself in terms of parenting.

If you are the type of person who likes to tease Vil by letting yourself be sloppy from time to time, (always at home) then your child will also like to tease their father like that. “You have your mother’s cheekiness, I see.” Vil sighs but laughs. The teasing includes eating sweets and food that Vil would not approve of. You are the parent they ask for things from and who best comforts and pampers them. You two probably team up to make Vil relax and have fun with you.

His child will have the best teachers and tutors, go to the best schools and best establishments for any extracurricular activity they want to have. Vil will probably force them to have an extracurricular activity but they will be free to choose which one.

Rook is OBSESSED with your child! In a respectful way of course, he is just already a huge fan. The result of combining your DNA with Vil's? MERVEILLEUX! He won't hold back the tears when he sees the baby for the first time. He will LOVE playing with your child. He will babysit for free and will be happy to do so if you ever need. It will be a long time before he stops getting so emotional whenever your child calls him "Uncle Rook."

Uncle Epel is the rad uncle, when Vil is not around. He is that person who will help your child do cool activities that Vil may not allow. Like taking a blastcycle ride with him, eat grilled meats, playing with things that make the child very dirty or other things that Vil didn't like Epel to do when they were at NRC. But if at least one parent allows it (you), then there is no problem. Right? All this, of course, when Vil is not around.

When he is there, both Epel and your child behave like little angels. You and Epel have to be very careful that the child doesn't get careless and say something in Epel's dialect in front of Vil. They love Uncle Epel because it is fun to do cool things without their father knowing and with your help.

Your child likes to use Grim as a doll to dress up in cute clothes. The funny thing is that Grim likes it too because your child eventually realizes that if they tell him he looks cool instead of cute, he'll let them keep dressing him up.

Idia’s child(ren) call him: Daddy (when little) Dad (when older)

Idia doesn't believe he can be a good father. A shut-it and antisocial otaku like him? Are you crazy? That's a disaster! He can't take care of himself, how is he going to help you raise a child? However, and especially with you, he also has that overly cocky side that believes that even being an antisocial nerd he would be 1000 times better than a lot of parents out there. So basically he has a tendency to oscillate between these two moods.

In comparison, you are the strict parent, he is the parent who spoils the child. They are both afraid of you when you get upset. He's a ‘Don't tell your mother’ type of dad. He can't say no to his child, but, oddly enough, he can't be emotionally manipulated either. He may even let his child do a lot of things, but even he has limits to what he knows is good or bad for them.

Because he's the permissive father, he's also the scariest when he gets serious. He can never get really mad at his child, but he can say a firm and assertive “No” if necessary. However, if they are still very young and start crying, he will panic and call you immediately. You will then have to comfort Idia and tell him that no, he did not make a decision that put him on the path to the traumatic and apocalyptic ending. What he probably did was the opposite.

If it depends on him, his child will be a nerd/otaku just like his father. However, he doesn't want them to be socially anxious like him and will always encourage them to go for walks with you outside even if it's without him. That doesn't mean there aren't times you drag him outside with you.

Besides occasionally questioning whether he is being a good father, there is something else that haunts him... He still carries and will probably always carry the feeling of guilt for what happened to Ortho, so he is absolutely TERRIFIED that something like that may happen again.

Idia has always tried to keep your child as far away as possible from all areas that are dangerous or even remotely similar to the hallway where that happened. But if your child ever happens to even enter an area that their father did not allow, they will get to know a side of Idia that sometimes you yourself don’t even remember exists: The overprotective, traumatized side that isn't afraid to scare his child if it means keeping them away from the danger. And probably the only way they'll see his red hair. But it will probably be after that, that the two of you will have an open heart conversation and Idia will apologize.

Now, about Uncle Ortho, they LOVE uncle Ortho! He's the one who goes for a walk with you and your child when you and he can't convince Idia to go too. He is a cheerful uncle who loves to play with your child. You three made up stories to explain why uncle Ortho was a humanoid. You always make up different and crazy stories to jest with them and make them change the subject. The day will come when they will be old enough to know the truth.

Idia may even talk badly about himself a lot of the times, but no matter what his child do, they are talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular and everything good. “Of course that's because they inherited it from you, not me.” He will say with a smile.

Both Idia and your child treat Grim like a pet cat and find it funny to see him getting grumpy.

Idia spoke to his child in that baby voice when they themselves were also babies. And maybe also when they are children to the point where they tell him to stop treating them like babies.

Malleus’s child(ren) call him: Daddy (when little) Dad (when older) Father (at formal events)

The day Malleus found out you were pregnant was already a happy day, but the day your child was born was the happiest day of his life! And every moment with them is the happiest moment of his day. And of course with you too. He totally and completely loves his family!

Anyone who dares to speak ill of the child of Malleus Draconia, especially about the fact that they are half-human, will suffer the consequences! Anyone who spoke openly about the child being something of a disgrace, shame or an abomination was either killed or imprisoned. (Depending on how opposed you really are to Malleus killing or ordering someone to be killed.) and of course, the same applies to talking bad about you.

The problem is that this is doing the same thing to your child that was done to him. He's scaring everyone and making them afraid to come near your child for fear of saying or doing something that might upset them or Malleus. He listens to you and agrees with you, showing concern and thoughtfulness about what should be done. He hates people being disrespectful to the ones he loves, but he also doesn't want his child to go through what he went through.

What ends up happening is that, on Malleus's part, he realizes that he has to start learning ways for people to respect his child without using fear, but to do that he also has to start letting certain insults slide. He doesn't like it, but if it's what's best for his child, he'll do the best he can. Although the same applies if they disrespect you. He hates it so much!

In the case of your child, you are helped by Lilia (if he’s still alive), Silver, Sebek and their families. Perhaps trying to spend more time among their people and with other fae, humans, and half-fae might be beneficial to a child's social development.

Lilia would treat the child as if they were his own grandchild. Even if Silver also has children, they are ALL Lilia's grandchildren! “There's no denying it any longer... I am... officially... an old man... For the best possible reasons!” Everyone will rescue your child from Lilia's food. “Never eat anything that Grandpa Lilia cooks, you hear?”

Silver is the calm uncle who, despite not being the most fun to play with, is the one they turn to when they want to rest and simply have a good chill time. Or take a nap. Probably who they turn to to run away and hide from Sebek when he's being annoying. He ends up being the adult (than is not their parents) that they trust most and feel most comfortable with. Silver is very happy when they ask him for help to get closer to an animal to see it better, and even more so if they and the animals end up interacting and playing with each other.

Now about Uncle Sebek... If there is anyone more protective and flattering of that child than Malleus, it is Sebek. He cried when the child was born, for sure. And cried even more when the child said his name, or whenever they at least tried to. The day they called him "Uncle Sebek" he was about to have a heart attack. The problem is that he ends up being one of those type of person who adores children (although in his case the only ones he likes would be Malleus's and his own children) to the point that the child finds them annoying and clingy. “But don't tell Uncle Sebek that, he'll be sad.”

Whenever the child throws a tantrum that ends up causing their powers to manifest in storms or uncontrolled magic, Malleus will take care of it while you stay away and safe. To him, any attack would be mere tickling, but he always made sure that your child knows that the same does not apply to you. They may end up thinking that you are very fragile while they are little, but it is better this way to ensure that they do not hurt you unintentionally.

This also means that whenever you need to say ‘No’ to your child, Malleus will do it if there is a possibility that they would start throwing tantrums. At least while they are young and cannot control their powers well.

Malleus also runs the risk of being a father who spoils his children.

Your child and Grim probably burn a lot of things around the castle because they play together and they both have fire powers.

If you would like to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX

And if you would like to read this but with other characters you can write in the comments. If this post has a lot of notes (likes and reblogs) I might consider making a second part with other characters.

[squiddyfics]

squid game characters in a relationship with you

saebyeok, thanos, namgyu, daeho, hyunju, semi, the recruiter

description: how squid game characters would be as partners (au; no mention of the games)

18+ minors dni

warnings: nsfw in parts!!

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

saebyeok:

♡ you were the one to ask her out and she quite literally didn't believe it

♡ like she didn't even answer you at first because she didn't think you were being serious

♡ she has a hard time expressing her emotions. you definitely said "i love you" first and it took her a while to feel comfortable saying it back

♡ despite this, she was the one who fell in love first. she just kept that shit to herself lmao

♡ rather than being outwardly affectionate with her words, she expresses her love through quality time. she loves planning dates for you or just cooking for you at home

♡ she's not big on pda, but she'll wrap a protective arm around you while you're out together

♡ if someone hits on you, she'll get even more protective. partly out of jealousy, but mostly because she hates the thought of someone making you uncomfortable

♡ she's a generous lover. def more of a giver if you know what i mean

ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ

thanos:

♡ he was the one to approach you, and he was bold about it too

♡ you aren't his first partner by any means, but you're his first real love

♡ he looooves to show you off. "look at my baby. look how lucky i got."

♡ naturally, this means he's into pda. the more eyes on the two of you, the better. he wants the whole world to know you're his

♡ especially if someone shows interest in you... then he gets even more touchy, so he can rub it in their face that you're his, all his

♡ if anyone wrongs you, he'll vow to make their life a living hell. you can't even gossip about your work drama to him without him getting angry on your behalf and threatening to kill them

♡ even though he talks a big game he knows he's lowk a loser and he doesn't take it for granted that you choose to stay by his side

♡ that being said he makes you his bitch in bed. he's for sure heavily on the dominant side

♡ he also has an exhibitionism kink i just feel that in my bones

ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ

namgyu:

♡ he was the one to make a move on you, but he said it in a joking manner so that if you said no, he could play it off as not being serious

♡ this man's love language is physical touch there's no doubt about it

♡ his words don't match his actions.. like he'll make fun of you for crying during a movie while simultaneously cuddling you and rubbing your back

♡ he doesn't have any cute pet names for you, just insults said in a loving manner ("stinky" etc). he just can't take himself seriously enough to be sappy

♡ you've unlocked his secret second love language, which is sending you memes

♡ he wants to be seen as tough so he pretends to hate it when you call him cute (he does not, in fact, hate it) (it actually melts him)

♡ he gives the evil eye to anyone who dares to look at you for a second too long

♡ you are for his eyes only

♡ he's dominant in bed but he likes you bratty. he wants to work for it

ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ

daeho:

♡ you had known him for a while, and you had to be the one to ask him out because he was oblivious to all the hints you were dropping

♡ he was too much of a gentleman to risk overstepping your boundaries by asking you on a date

♡ however, once he had the confirmation that you actually liked him, he was all in

♡ he was absolutely the first one to say "i love you". that man fell head over heels

♡ he is patient as fuck and will put up with whatever bullshit you throw at him. like when you tested the orange peel theory on him and he passed with flying colors

♡ you literally have a pet boyfriend. he'll go anywhere with you and do anything to make you happy. your fav himbo <3

♡ he's prone to jealousy but tries not to show it so as not to make a scene in front of you. if someone hurts you, though, all etiquette goes out the window and he's ready to start SWINGING

♡ your pleasure is his priority in bed and he's up for whatever you're into, but when it comes to his preferences, he'd much rather be dominated by you

♡ call him a good boy and his brain will go haywire

ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ

hyunju:

♡ you definitely had to make the first move. this mf was way too stoic to express her feelings for you

♡ she got anxious and cancelled on you before your first date, so you had to be persistent and reschedule

♡ she was surprised by your strong interest in her, and she still doesn't know how she got so lucky

♡ it took her a bit to open up, but she ended up saying "i love you" first

♡ she's extremely protective of you. her introversion is forgotten as soon as someone upsets you, and she's giving them a piece of her mind within seconds

♡ she doesn't really get jealous, she just gets sad :(

♡ she's an acts of service girly. she'll vacuum your floor, change a flat tire for you, anything to feel useful to you

♡ she gives stone top energy (this one is more for an f!reader as it's a wlw term)

ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ

semi:

♡ she was the one to ask you out, and she said it so casually that you almost missed it

♡ her first "i love you" was also casual, said as she was leaving your house one morning. "bye, love you."

♡ you honestly don't know if she's prone to jealousy because no one has fucked around and found out. everyone around you two respects her quiet confidence and doesn't even bother trying anything with you

♡ she has strong opinions, but she expresses them calmly. because of this, the two of you never fight, though you do occasionally have respectful debates. you tend to walk away feeling like she was in the right after all

♡ she's not huge on pda unless it's something cute and lowkey like holding hands, or some stupid shit like licking you

♡ you def have a secret handshake

♡ she's a soft dom and she's not shy about wanting to receive. she wants you on your knees in front of her

♡ with that said, she also gives great head. that lip piercing..... iykyk

ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ

the recruiter:

♡ he asked you out at a bar, making a bet that if you lost at pool, you'd go on a date with him

♡ you lost on purpose so his fine ass would take you on a date, and the rest was history

♡ he said he loved you first, and he said it fast. it's not often that he feels love for someone, so he had to act on it

♡ he would do anything for you. anything. if you asked him for help burying a body, he'd tell you not to get your pretty hands dirty; he'd do it himself

♡ not that that would happen... but he's thought about it. he knows that's how dedicated he is to you

♡ this freaky little fuck doesn't feel an iota of jealousy when others flirt with you. he just smiles, knowing know matter how much they fight for your attention, it'll be his name you're screaming at the end of the night

♡ he likes to be in control in life, and that translates to the bedroom too

♡ he has big sadist energy, but if he ever actually crosses a line he'll drop everything to comfort you (and beat himself up about it)

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Antihero

An antihero - a central character who lacks the characteristics an audience associates with a conventional hero.

They are ambiguous protagonists—complex characters who have a dark side.

Despite a flawed exterior, a history of bad decisions, and even a questionable moral code, an antihero is ultimately guided by good intentions.

Tips for Writing an Antihero

Despite their flaws, antiheroes are realistic characters that readers can relate to. Here are four tips for creating a great antihero for your story:

Create a main character who is complex. Think of how you would write a traditional hero. Create your antihero by giving them the opposite attributes. If a hero is an idealist, your antihero is a cynic. Make them mysterious so their character is revealed bit by bit. A great antihero has flaws just like a real person. But despite an antihero’s weaknesses, their good side is illuminated as the story progresses. These contrasting qualities make an antihero more complex and interesting.

Give your antihero internal conflict. Every great antihero has an internal struggle driving their actions. Before you begin writing, sit down and flesh out the character. What event is the source of their internal struggle that informs their behavior in the story? As you write, slowly reveal your antihero’s backstory to let readers know what makes them tick.

Don’t confuse your antihero with the antagonist. For the antiheroes with misguided morals, the ends justify the means. They can explain away the bad things they do if the result is ultimately good and they emerge a hero. When writing an antihero, you can bring them to the edge of evil, but they’re never as evil as the true villain of your story. Unlike an antagonist, an antihero ultimately believes they are acting for a noble cause. Some characters, like the DC Comics character Harley Quinn, alternate between being an antihero and an antagonist, depending on the context.

Use supporting characters. In the TV show The Sopranos, antihero Tony Soprano had his therapist, who showed Tony’s vulnerability and made the audience have a soft spot for a guy who ordered a hit as easily as he ate a bowl of pasta. Create a side character who can illuminate your antihero’s redeeming qualities. The best antiheroes are the ones readers can’t believe they’re rooting for.

Types of Antiheroes

Think about the rough-around-the-edges antihero Han Solo compared to the traditionally heroic Luke Skywalker. Antiheroes go against the grain and are often social outcasts who operate by their own rules. Here are different antihero archetypes found in fiction:

The pragmatic rebel: The pragmatic antihero is a realist. They might associate with both good guys and bad guys and take whatever action they deem necessary to accomplish their mission. Their morals are, for the most part, good, but they won’t hesitate to do what’s needed to be heroic—even if that means taking out a few bad guys. They won’t intentionally cross a line unless it’s for the greater good, and they may still follow the steps of the hero’s journey.

The unscrupulous antihero: This is the antihero whose morals fall into a grey zone. They have good intentions but are driven more out of self-interest rather than the greater good. They can be cynical and have a jaded view of the world. Their actions are often dictated by past traumas and inner conflict, revealed through their backstory. They don’t think twice about how they achieve their goal and who they need to push out of their way, and they sometimes even enjoy the dark side. Annaliese Keating, the antihero played by Viola Davis at the heart of the show How to Get Away With Murder, is cutthroat and morally compromised, but her motives begin to make sense as the audience gets a deeper look into her inner life.

A hero by any means necessary: The titular antihero protagonist of the television series Dexter (as well as the novel it’s based on, Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay), borders on being a villain. Antiheroes like Dexter Morgan justify their behavior because it results in something that benefits society, even though their actions are questionable—and sometimes even psychotic. For example, Dexter might have good intentions as a vigilante serial killer of other killers, but his deeds are those normally associated with an antagonist.

Example: Walter White

Walter White is the main character of the TV series Breaking Bad.

As a man dying of cancer, White begins to make and sell methamphetamine to save money to support his family after his death.

As the series progresses, Walter White’s character arc is dramatic as he moves through the ranks of antihero archetypes, crossing every moral line and almost assuming the role of villain.

Told from any other point of view, Walter White would be the antagonist of this series but instead he is an antihero.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[witchywithwhiskey]

say yes + andy barber

(for your fantastic sweethearts game!)

🩷♥️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

the demon of your dreams

pairing: soft!dark incubus!andy barber x female reader

summary: you catch the attention of an incubus on the day before valentine's day—and it turns out your fates are more intertwined than either of you expected.

warnings: 18+ content (minors dni!!!), true mates, dubcon/noncon (in this fic an incubus requires consent for certain things but it technically starts off as noncon), somnophilia, teratophilia/monsterfucking, smut, masturbation (m), fingering (f receiving), finger sucking, piv sex, unprotected sex, creampie, come play, cock warming, choking, breath play, biting/marking, thigh fucking, some overstimulation, dirty talk, praise kink, very brief degradation, pet names (sweet thing/sweet girl), aftercare, referenced marathon sex, happy ending

word count: 5.5k

a/n: thank you, Aspen, for letting me flail at you because i had SO many ideas for this particular character + prompt combination. what i love about Andy is that he can fit into a super fluffy or soft dark or super dark story very easily. (i mean, that's true of a lot of characters, but i feel like i usually lean one way or the other with most characters and with Andy, i'm never quite sure where i want to go.) anyway, this one might require a bit more suspension of disbelief than normal and sorry if the ending is a bit rushed, work was BRUTAL today 🫠 thank you for playing my sweethearts game, i hope you enjoy this filthy little fic!! ♡♡

For an incubus like Andy Barber, Valentine’s Day was his favorite day of the year.

There was something particularly decadent about the yearning he sensed among lonely, single women on Valentine’s Day, and he always fed well in the days leading up to the actual holiday. Though the demon had to be careful not to feed too much on any one woman, he never failed to gorge himself on the offerings in the city.

But then he came across you in a coffee shop on the morning before Valentine’s Day, and he hadn’t sensed yearning quite so exquisite as yours in all his many years walking the earth. Watching you from across the shop, he knew you would make an especially delectable meal, his eyes following you closely as he sipped on his Americano. 

You hid your emotions well, Andy noticed, keeping them masked beneath a friendly exterior, a welcoming smile on your pretty face while you chatted with the barista making your drink. To all the world, you looked like anyone else with a charming—if tired—disposition, but to the incubus, you were churning with all the emotions that made you a meal. 

The demon could sense the sadness lurking beneath your smile from the moment you’d stepped into the establishment, and he could practically taste the desperate longing clinging to your soul like a drop of hot chocolate caught on the corner of your lip. 

You wanted, more than anything, to be the object of someone’s lust, to find someone you felt safe enough with that you could be turned into the lustful creature you yearned to be. You wanted someone to lick the chocolate from your lips and sate your desire.

And Andy Barber knew he was the demon for the job. 

In generations past, Andy might’ve used his magic to slip into your dreams, seducing you with images of lust until he received the acquiescence he required to join with you and feed on your soul. But, as the incubus’s years had worn on, he’d found he enjoyed a more physical approach.

There was something so much more satisfying about touching a woman with his fingers, feeling the warmth of her body and breathing in the scent of her skin. He enjoyed the feeling of a woman’s soft curves beneath his palms, groping her and learning what made her gasp gently in her sleep. 

Then, the demon would use her slumberous, disoriented mind and her aching, needy body against her to get what he needed—that permission that allowed him to sink into her body and feed on her soul. 

It was so much more satisfying, and so much more fun, too. 

Of course, that didn’t mean Andy didn’t use his magic to get into your apartment. He unlocked your door with a wave of his fingers, closing and locking it behind him before he masked the footfalls of his shoes as he made his way to your bedroom. 

There, he paused in the doorway and took a moment to look at you, appreciate you while you slept, completely unaware that there was a demon in your room.

A smile curled Andy’s mouth when he discovered that you were far from an elegant sleeper, your body sprawled across your bed beneath the blankets, one leg hiked up while the other curled around a pillow clutched close to your chest. Your face was buried in another pillow, your indelicate snores muffled by its softness. 

And yet…you were cute. Precious even.

Andy felt something fluttery deep in his chest, somewhere in the vicinity of his black heart. Instead of looking too closely at the feeling, he ignored the sensation, chalking it up to the excitement he felt knowing you were going to make for a particularly delicious meal.  

The demon slunk into your room, clinging to the shadows as he moved around to the side of the bed where you lay and tried to gauge whether you were a light sleeper. You didn’t stir when he deliberately stepped on a squeaky floorboard, so he decided to ease closer, his fingertips trailing up your body over the blankets piled on top of you. 

When he pulled them carefully from your slumbering body, a little whimper slipped from your lips, a shiver wracking your shoulders as the cold licked against your skin. Andy quickly used his magic to warm up your room, making it a much more comfortable temperature for your nearly naked form. 

He watched you settle, his eyes roving over the curves of your body. Hungrily, he took in the dip of your waist and the flare of your hips, the way your thin nightshirt had ridden up to tease a glimpse of your perfectly rounded ass. Your thighs were parted, and Andy could just glimpse a hint of your panties, hiding your pretty pussy from sight.

His cock hardened behind his zipper and he nearly groaned at the sinful way your body called to his. Even if the yearning in your soul hadn’t been so enticing, Andy knew he would’ve been drawn to you by the desire you inspired just by existing. 

Once he was sure you were comfortable and had fallen back into a deep slumber, Andy finally allowed himself to touch you. 

His fingers trailed gently over your arms, skimming along your skin before smoothing down your side to your hips and thighs. There, he resisted the urge to dip between your legs just yet, instead learning the curves of your calves and the delicate contours of your ankles. 

All the while, Andy watched your face, monitoring your breathing to make sure you didn’t stir again. 

As he observed you, he noticed you relaxing even further, as if his touch soothed you. He felt another flutter in the proximity of his black heart, and, that time, he couldn’t ignore the way it started beating slightly faster. 

The organ often felt cold and dull in his chest, especially when he was in need of feeding, but it felt like it was coming to life in a way he’d never experienced before, not even after a satisfying meal. And it was all because of the way your body was instinctively relaxing into his touch. 

The demon could almost pretend it was him specifically you were melting for, that even though you hadn’t woken and hadn’t seen his face, he was the only one whose touch could have that effect on your body. 

Andy deliberately ignored the fact that, in all likelihood, you would’ve been soothed by a gentle touch from any man who might share your bed, because that thought inspired a concerning level of rage in him. No, he refused to think of anyone else in your bed but him. You were his.

For the night, at least, he reminded himself, pushing his possessive thoughts to the back of his mind to analyze later. He had much more important things to attend to with your warm body, which would soon be willing, splayed out in front of him like the most tempting meal. 

Finally, Andy allowed his fingers to slip beneath your nightshirt, tugging off your panties and nearly groaning when your hips raised instinctively to allow him to ease them down your thighs. He pulled them off and slipped them into his pocket, thinking nothing of the fact that he’d never taken a souvenir before. 

He was too busy focusing on the feel of your body beneath his fingertips. His hand slipped eagerly between your thighs, and he was surprised to find your soft pussy was already drenched. It felt fated that your body would have such a reaction to him since Andy’s cock was straining painfully against his zipper, aching to sink inside your perfect cunt.

The demon cupped your pussy in his palm, a ferocious possessiveness tearing through his chest as he felt you drip into his hand. You were his. His. His. 

His heart beat harder in his chest, the feeling of yearning in his own black soul so all-consuming, he didn’t have the wherewithal to notice it was completely out of character. 

After all, an incubus like Andy Barber didn’t get attached to his meals. He didn’t feel possessive or territorial over the women he fed on, like a wolf who might tear into anything that threatened to take his most precious lifeline away. 

But the demon could feel himself falling willingly into an obsession with you that wouldn’t be sated from just one night. He just didn’t know it yet.

Acting on instinct more than his typical intention of easing a woman into what he had planned, Andy freed his cock from the confines of his pants, taking himself in his palm while the fingers of his other hand explored your wet, warm pussy.

You were so soft, so hot, and so responsive when Andy sank a finger into your tight hole, a breathy moan slipping from your mouth. The demon felt the newly-familiar beating of his heart in his chest, and he suddenly craved even more of your sounds of pleasure, he wanted them to fill his ears for all eternity. 

Andy stroked his cock dispassionately, needing to take some of the edge off his arousal, but he made sure to squeeze the base tightly to ensure he didn’t cum too soon. All the while, he teased your body open with his deft fingers, preparing you to take his thick length.

When he slipped a second finger into your pussy and saw how easily you took him, he had to bite back a groan. His cock was leaking precum all over his fingers, as if it knew there was a warm hole to push inside and was begging Andy to finally put himself out of his misery by sinking into your sweet, pliant body.

The demon had to force himself to make sure you were ready, Andy carefully pushing a third finger into your pussy, and letting out a restrained growl at the sight of you taking three of his fingers. 

His mouth filled with drool as he watched you take him, the sudden desire to feast on your pussy nearly overwhelming him. He wanted to make you cum on his tongue and mouth for being such a good girl and taking everything he gave you. 

But he told himself that could come later—after he got the answer he needed to give you everything you deserved.

To tide himself over, Andy eased his fingers from your pussy and licked your juices from where they dripped down his hand, savoring the sweet taste of your arousal. You tasted so fucking good, better than anything Andy had ever tasted in his long, long life. 

His groan was so loud in the quiet room that he nearly missed the little whimper of need you let out, your hips shifting like your body was seeking the intrusion that had been filling your tight hole. The sound reached Andy’s ears and his cock jumped in his hand, the amount of blood rushing to his dick nearly making him light-headed.

Finally—finally—Andy joined you in your bed, gently shifting your body into the center of the mattress so he could fit behind you. Your nightshirt was rucked up around our waist, and his cock slipped between your thighs like it was sliding home. The stiff length rubbed against your dripping slit while he pressed flush to your back, his arms gently curling around your body and pulling you into his chest.

A soft, sleepy moan spilled from your mouth and Andy wanted so badly to kiss the sound from your lips, to drink it down and feel it fill his lungs. 

Soon, he told himself. Soon he could kiss the moans from your lips and devour your mouth and ravage every inch of your body until you were well and truly his. But first he needed to get your acquiescence, and he needed to be careful with you until he got it. 

You’d already been laying mostly on your belly, and Andy shifted, covering your body with his own, rocking his hips gently to fuck your soft thighs. His cock dragged against your leaking slit with every smooth thrust, coating himself in your desire and making his heart beat furiously in his chest with the need to push inside your cunt, to claim you, to feed on you until he was more sated than he’d ever felt in his life.

Andy could sense the yearning in your soul deepening as your desire ratcheted up, even while you slept. Your swirling emotions thickened in the air around the bed until the demon felt nearly drunk on you. 

Your yearning, your soul—you yourself—were headier than anything Andy had ever experienced and it took all his self-control not to lose himself and rut you like the beast he was. 

First, he needed your permission. An incubus could only fuck and feed on a willing woman, and Andy needed you to be willing more than he’d needed anything else in his entire life. 

“Give yourself to me, sweet thing,” Andy murmured in your ear, the words coming easily after so many eons as an incubus—though the pet name was new. “Let me sink inside your divine cunt and let me drink on the longing in your heart. Let me feed on the lust in your soul and I’ll reward you with pleasure beyond your imagination.”

The demon could feel you stir beneath him, and his heart thudded painfully in his chest with a desperation he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. But it only pushed him to rock his hips faster, to grip your hip possessively while he fucked between your thighs, dragging the fat length of his cock against every inch of your dripping pussy.

Because of the rules of his kind, Andy needed your permission before he could push inside your body, but he could use every trick at his disposal to tempt you into giving him your acquiescence. An incubus wasn’t above using magic or trickery and though Andy preferred to seduce you with just his touch and his words, he would resort to magic if he needed to. 

But something told him he wouldn’t need to with you. Something told Andy that you were his, and he just needed to ask you sweet enough and you’d grant him the privilege of owning your body and soul for the rest of your natural life.

“Please, my sweet girl,” he rumbled in your ear, letting you hear how badly he wanted you, needed you. “Say yes.”

Thankfully for the demon, you hadn’t roused enough for your mind to wonder why there was a strange man in your bed begging to fuck you. It was clear from your soft, sleepy whimpers that you were still asleep enough to think it was simply a very real-feeling dream. 

Your hand reached back clumsily, your fingers curling around the back of Andy’s neck, using your hold to arch your spine and push your ass deeper into the demon’s lap. A keening sound spilled from your lips, your pussy gushing around the thick cock wedged between your thighs, and you finally gave your answer on a drowsy moan.

“Yes.” 

The word falling from your lips tipped you over the line from sleeping to waking, and you finally realized that what you were feeling wasn’t a dream. It was really happening. There was a man in your bed and, for some reason, you’d given him permission to be there. 

Andy could feel the change in your body, the way your body tensed in fear and confusion. It was natural, of course, and the demon had expected it. But what surprised him were the intricacies of your reaction—the way you still instinctively pulled him closer, your nails digging into the back of his neck, your legs squeezing together and trapping his cock against your pussy with your plush thighs. 

You wanted him, Andy was sure of it, even if your mind was struggling to come to the same conclusion your body had already reached. Oddly, Andy found himself wanting to soothe you, his hand skimming down your side like he was attempting to calm a wild animal.

“Shh, sweet thing, it’s alright, you’re alright,” Andy purred, feeling your muscles slowly relax beneath his hands. 

Every caress of his palm and sweet stroke of his fingers had you softening further, your body surrendering to his soothing touch. Soon, you were even letting your thighs fall open again and Andy rewarded you with a pleased rumbling sound and a kiss brushed to your cheek. 

He shifted his hips back, moving until the tip of his cock was pressed against your tight little hole. That made the muscles of your thighs go taut again, but the demon also heard the way your breath hitched in your throat, like you’d sucked in a gasp of anticipation, not fear. 

Andy gently kneaded your hip, his mouth grazing against the shell of your ear and tickling your skin with his beard. “Let me in, my sweet girl,” he cooed, prodding at your dripping cunt with his leaking tip. “I’ll make you feel so good, pretty thing.”

The soft, whispered pleas and praise from Andy’s lips had you relaxing again, your thighs spreading and your hips lifting in wordless offering. It was too perfect—you were too perfect. The demon couldn’t wait any longer. 

Andy pushed inside your wet heat, letting out a grunt of pleasure when he felt your tightness wrapping around his stiff length. You felt so good, your pussy clinging to his cock and sucking him deeper into the warm depths of your body. He slid home until he was buried to the hilt.

As soon as he was inside you, the world tipped violently on its axis, spinning around the demon in a vicious dizzying swirl that he knew was all in his head. 

It lasted only a second and by the time your bedroom came back into focus, Andy instinctively recognized that his entire universe had realigned, with you—your delicate human body and your fragile beating heart and your precious glowing soul—at the center of it.  

“You’re mine—mine,” Andy growled, his voice preternaturally deep and dark, his arms closing so tightly around your body that he heard the breathe exhale from your lungs and felt your heart beating against your ribcage.

A startled squeak fell from your lips and Andy suddenly realized he was holding you much too tightly, and that he was no doubt scaring you. His grip loosened, his hands moving to comfort you, kneading your soft flesh and groping your curves until you let out a soft, happy sigh. 

“I’ll take such good care of you, sweet thing,” the demon vowed in a husky voice filled with warmth. He nuzzled his face into your cheek, pressing sweet kisses to your jaw and neck, listening to your breathy little giggles at the rasp of his beard. “I only want to make you feel good, I won’t ever hurt you.”

“You…” Your voice was raspy with sleep, giving out on you before you could say what you wanted to say. Andy waited patiently while you swallowed and tried again. “You promise?” 

Andy could feel your pulse fluttering wildly beneath his lips and he smiled into your skin. You were human, so you hadn’t felt what Andy had when your bodies had joined, the fusing of your spirits, and if you needed reassurance with words that he would cherish you and protect you for the rest of your days, then he would happily give it to you.

“Of course, my sweet girl, I swear it.”

The last of the tension that had been lingering in your muscles finally drained out of you, and Andy’s cock pushed another inch deeper, the tip brushing against a spot inside you that had your walls clenching down hard on his length. 

The demon groaned in pleasure, pulling his hips back and sliding into you again, muffling a groan into the crook of your neck when you squeezed him so exquisitely. 

“You feel so good, sweet girl, so perfect,” he murmured into your skin, fucking you in short, rocking thrusts that had you gasping and whimpering softly. “You’re taking me so fucking well, such a good fucking girl.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Andy caught the pleased smile that curled the edges of your mouth at his praise. But then you were turning your face into your pillow and muffling your moans into its softness. 

Andy didn’t like that one bit. He wanted to hear all of your sounds of pleasure—they were his, just like the rest of you—so he wrapped his hand around the front of your throat. Gently enough so he he didn’t hurt you, he lifted your head from the pillow, rumbling a pleased sound in his chest when he could hear every whimper and moan that fell from your lips.

“Good girl, let me hear you—let me hear how good I’m making you feel,” Andy urged, rocking his hips harder into you, his cock spearing deep into your tight cunt with every thrust. 

The tips of his fingers dug a little deeper into the sides of your neck and you moaned even louder, your cunt clutching at the demon’s cock like a vise while the rest of your body melted further into his hold. It was like you’d been waiting for him to come along and take control of you, of your very breathing, and it sent Andy reeling once again.

You were perfect. Perfect. So perfect that even that word didn’t feel like enough. It felt like you’d been made for Andy, and he’d been made for you. A perfect match. A true mate.

“Oh god, wh-who are you?” you asked, your breathy, pleasure-soaked voice pulling Andy back into the moment. 

The demon nearly chuckled at the question. It was a little late for you to be asking such a thing when his cock was buried to the hilt in your cunt and every thrust of his hips pushed you closer and closer to the edge of your release. But he didn’t want you to take offense, so he wracked his lust-drunk brain for an answer, finally settling on something close enough to the truth.

“I’m the demon of your dreams, sweet thing,” he rumbled in your ear, picking up the pace of his thrusts. “The one you conjured with the desperate longing in your soul—the yearning to be fucked, to be taken, to be owned, thoroughly and fully.”

“I didn’t, I didn’t conjure anything—I swear,” you babbled, but Andy’s fingers tightened around the sides of your throat, cutting off your protests. The way he choked you only made your cunt gush and flutter between your thighs, and Andy reveled in the feeling of your slick channel gripping his hard cock.

“You don’t have to pretend with me, sweetheart, I know exactly what your soul yearns for, and I’m more than happy to oblige,” Andy purred, raking his teeth down your cheek before nipping at your jaw. 

He was holding onto your neck too tightly for you to make a sound, but he felt your throat work against his palm and your pussy spasm around his cock at his filthy words. He choked you a little harder and sank his teeth into your shoulder through your nightshirt, going crosseyed and nearly cumming when you clenched down hard around him.

“What your soul yearns for is a good hard fucking,” Andy rasped when he pulled his teeth away from your shoulder, moving back to murmur in your ear. “Now, take it like a good slut and I’ll let you thank me later.”

Andy picked up the pace of his hips, pounding harder into you. The demon fucked you into the mattress while he choked the breath from your lungs, giving you only enough air to remain conscious while he savaged your soft, warm cunt with his brutal cock.

It wasn’t long before he felt you reaching the edge of your release, and he dug his other hand beneath your body, pinning you to the bed with his hips while he fucked you ferociously and rubbed your clit. You were helpless when the demon demanded you give him your pleasure.

“Cum for me, my sweet thing, cum for your demon,” Andy urged.

You shattered apart on a silent scream, your mouth wide open and eyes rolling back into your head while your pleasure consumed you. Your body shook beneath Andy’s larger form, your tight pussy strangling his cock and dragging him over the edge right after you.

Andy buried his face in the curve of your neck, groaning his release loudly into your skin while his hips stuttered and finally pressed flush to your ass. He buried his cock in your pussy and spilled his cum into the depths of your womb, flooding your body with his seed while he fed on your soul. 

Out of habit, he was careful not to take too much, but he could sense that there was no such thing when it came to you. That realization made him groan all over again, another spurt of cum spilling into your cunt while he gorged himself on you until he was sated, your pussy still fluttering with the aftershocks of your release.

For a long moment, the two of you caught your breath together, Andy’s hand having loosened around your neck, though he still held you with your back pinned against his chest. He almost tightened his hold again when he felt your head moving, but you only turned your head to nuzzle your face into his beard and he rumbled a pleased sound in his chest, a smile curving his mouth. 

With a gentleness he’d never known himself to possess, Andy eased his softening cock from your pussy, enjoying the way your combined releases spilled across your thighs. 

He paused, scooping up his cum with his fingers and pushing it back into your hole, making you shudder and whine at the overstimulation. The demon shushed you softly, pressing kisses to your cheek and the edge of your jaw until he was done. 

Then, he rolled onto his back and tugged you with him, tucking you under his arm and propping his head up with the other hand. You still wore your nightshirt, and he was still clad in most of his clothes, his pants only opened enough for his cock, but he wanted to hold you a little bit longer before he forced himself to move from the bed.

You lifted your head and looked at the demon, the two of you hanging in a suspended silence while you regarded each other. 

For the first time since he’d slunk into your bedroom, Andy got a good look at your face, and his heart thumped heavily in his chest at the beauty of you. The slope of your nose, the curve of your mouth, and the intelligence in your eyes—it was all gorgeous to the demon.

As he stared at you, you looked at him in return, your eyes darting over his face while you took in his features—his crystal blue eyes and straight nose and the dark beard framing his soft mouth. Your expression was unreadable, but then a small smile curved the edges of your soft mouth, and your eyes warmed. You didn’t seem to hate what you saw, at least. 

“I’ll answer all your questions,” Andy promised, his gaze falling to your lips, the desire to kiss you gripping him and refusing to let go. “But first…” He trailed off, dragging you up his body while his hand cradled your head, moving you so he could slant his mouth to yours. 

The incubus kissed you gently at first, with just a brush of his lips, as if he was asking for your permission all over again. When you sighed happily and melted into him, your fingers curling in the short hair at the nape of his neck, he knew you were giving yourself to him willingly, gladly, wholly. 

Andy kissed you harder then, tracing his tongue along the seam of your lips and seeking entrance that you eagerly gave him. He slid into your mouth, groaning at your sweet taste, and explored you thoroughly while you clung to him and kissed him back.

When your hips began to rock greedily against Andy’s thigh, your slick pussy leaving a wet spot on his pants, he finally pulled away and gave you a wolfish grin.

“Does my sweet girl need her demon’s cock again?” he teased playfully before nipping at your lip and drinking down your moan while he soothed it with his tongue. 

“Yes, please,” you murmured sweetly, making Andy chuckle. 

But the demon wasn’t about to let your plea go unanswered. He rolled you onto your back and took the opportunity to kick his pants off his legs before sliding home with one thrust. The slick of your combined releases made it easy and you both groaned as he filled you up.

“Good,” he growled, clutching you tight beneath his body and encouraging your arms and legs to wrap around his broad, muscular form. “Because I need to be buried in your cunt for the rest of my fucking life.” His voice was a low rumble that sent a shiver down your spine and made you clutch him tighter, meeting every thrust with your hips while he fucked you into the mattress.

It wasn’t until the sky began to lighten from a midnight blue to a softer shade of sapphire, the sun dawning on the morning of Valentine’s Day, that the two of you were finally sated enough for you to ask all the questions that had been rattling around in your head since you woke up to the demon in your bed.

Andy answered you with the truth—every bit of it—not even questioning that he didn’t have it in him to lie to you. He told you about what he was and how he’d been drawn to you from the moment he’d sensed you. 

You were skeptical at first, of course, but when he flashed you a look at his true eyes—dark pools of inky blackness like the pits of hell—and showed you a glimpse of his tail, he could tell that you started to believe him. It surprised him how much he wanted you to believe him, so it was a relief when you finally did.

Then, Andy told you about the stories of an incubus’s true mate. He hadn’t believed them until he’d met you, he explained, but a true mate was the one person in all the world that an incubus could feed on and never harm. They were literally made to be together.

Gently, as if worrying that it would be the part you couldn’t accept, he told you that he believed you were his—his true mate, the one person meant for him.

It took you a long moment to process that information, but once you did, you laughed wildly, happily, and pulled him in for a kiss. You were smiling too much to deepen it, so you settled for brushing butterfly kisses all over Andy’s face, making him smile, then grin, then laugh along with you. 

“Y’know, I would find out my soulmate is a demon on Valentine’s Day,” you said, giggling and falling back down against Andy’s chest. You curled into his side, pressing your face into his sternum and brushing another kiss over where his heart was beating in his chest.

Your comment reminded Andy of what day it was and he squeezed you in his arms. “Be my valentine?” he asked playfully, pressing a smile into the crown of your head. But he couldn’t wait for your answer, urging you, “Say yes, sweet girl, say yes.” 

“Yes, of course, my sweet demon,” you purred, throwing a leg over Andy’s body and sliding on top of him. 

Andy’s cock, which he’d thought for sure needed at least a few more hours of rest after the long night of fucking, valiantly stirred to life between your thighs. You reached between your bodies, slipping his half-hard length into your warm pussy and settling down on his chest, breathing a soft sigh of contentment. 

The two of you fell asleep like that, your soft, perfect body keeping Andy’s cock warm while you held each other close. As he drifted off, the demon felt a sense of peace and satisfaction that he’d never even dreamed he could achieve in his long, long life of walking the earth.

From that day on, Andy’s life was never the same. It was happier and more fulfilling and he never wanted for anything, not while you were in his life—and in his arms and in his bed. Together, you celebrated holidays and birthdays and life achievements as you grew together, but one day was still the most special.

For an incubus like Andy Barber, Valentine’s Day was his favorite day of the year. Not because of all the lonely, single women in the world, but because it was the day he’d found his true mate, the love of his life—it was the day he’d found you.

[hitlikehammers]

tremolo

…what if instead of learning clarinet or percussion, you could learn to read the music of hearts? 💕

rating: t ♥️ cw: love at first sight, car crash (off-screen), SUCH FLUFF ♥️ tags: ✨magical realism au, musician eddie munson, paramedic steve harrington, kinda soulmates (it makes more sense with the magical realism part), character study, softness

for @steddielovemonth day one: "Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." —Plato

It was just like learning any instrument, really.

At least what they tried to convince Eddie to believe at the tender age of nine.

But it was all about finding an aptitude, apparently. Developing a talent. Fourth grade rolls around and he fucks up blowing with a reed, manages to give himself a tongue splinter. Nearly passes out on the brass. Ends up with the choir lady looking over horn-rimmed glasses and narrowing her eyes at him less like a teacher and more like a fortune teller or something, scrying what’s to come of him, like she can see through all that he is and will be, before she goes scribbling something on his little slip of paper already marking all the failed kinds of music he’ll never get to make and telling him: go to Room 011.

But no one ever goes to Room 011.

He meets a petite woman with mousy hair and clothes that look like they belong to someone else, somehow. She introduces herself as Miss L. She looks like a Miss L., so he doesn’t think any further on the point.

You will not play much, really, she tells him, and the way she talks is kinda funny, like she learned words but not from people actually saying them out loud. Eddie kinda likes it, though. The playing is only for emergencies, and if you find your True Note.

Eddie doesn’t know what most of that means, except for the fact that the whole point of trying—and failing—at all the instruments was to join the school band with something to play. So if that’s not what he’s going to learn, then what the heck is Eddie meant to be doing down here—is what he wants to ask.

He manages a little politer version of the same, his nan’d be proud. His dad wouldn’t care even if he was around and not behind bars. His uncle might be happy that Eddie’s kept his nose clean just this one time. So he figures he does okay.

But really, he just wants an answer. He was supposed to get to learn music. It was the one thing that was keeping this whole year feeling like he could maybe, maybe survive it.

It also means he doesn’t have to take the art class that’s mostly kindergarten crafts instead of real art, so.

“You will be learning music,” Miss L. answers, more patient than most grownups; “you are here to learn how to read the songs that hearts sing.”

And that is, by far, in all of his whole nine years of living, the most fucking absurd sentence that Eddie has ever heard.

——

He’d kinda thought it was a joke, when he left that first afternoon to get back before Language Arts.

Turned out: nope. It was not.

He’d maybe thrown something slightly less childish than a tantrum, when what he got was a big set of earphones and a box the size of an Easy-Bake Oven, where apparently he’d be playing some kind of recordings to start his lessons.

“Do you not wish to learn?” Miss L. asked so simply, and Eddie…

Eddie reminded himself that no matter how foolish and stupid this was, it couldn’t possibly be worse than making construction paper collages with Elmer’s glue, so.

He put the headphones on and pressed play.

——

His workbooks didn’t look like anyone else’s in band—in fact, Eddie didn’t think he was actually a part of the class band, like, he wasn’t expecting to play at the spring concert with the flutes and the trombones, anymore. When he had sheets of staves to fill out they didn’t have straight lines. He didn’t draw different circles with little flags and bridges connecting them. He…

“When there are no keys, and there is no time signature,” Miss L. had explained, and it took time to make any sense; “you are the rules, and you feel what is a melody,” she’d tapped something that feltbeautiful, like daffodils blooming, though Eddie couldn’t say why; “and what is a warning.”

And then she’d tapped again, and it clenched in Eddie’s chest like a tornado siren, and…yeah.

That was kind of the best explanation he could have asked for.

——

It’s in middle school, when everyone else gets new band directors while Eddie sticks with Miss L., that it starts to…well.

That’s when the fact that Eddie’s alone in his lessons, and no one seems to know quite what he does—and the other kids who get that kind of treatment are usually the ones who can’t add or spell right, who have some kind of problem to work on extra hard—but it’s around then that Eddie starts being called names for it.

It’s not too bad, at first. Eddie’s worked for his two full years of elementary school lessons to get through recognizing the songs, suffers the point where recognizing becomes unbearable, overwhelming—Miss L. never left his side when he held his head in pain for all the noise, all the songs because they were everywhere, in everyone, and how was he supposed to learn what was right and what was good and what was just okay but then what was also everything the opposite when he couldn’t even think—

But she taught him the tools, the ways to sift through the chatter, as she called it. Because not all of it was a warning; not all of it was bad just because it wasn’t beautiful.

Some of the noise just was.

She showed him how to trust his own ear; his own song in his own chest as a guide, because that’s why he was here: he had a gift, an aptitude, built in and in need of development. Liked they’d said in the beginning.

He’s nearly thirteen when she teaches him how to write his own songs, in the not-notes and the no-tempos. In the nameless flow of sound.

It’s when his classmates overhear one of those works-in-progress, the taunting gets worse, starts to hedge toward unbearable.

Until Eddie asks if he can just stop: quit this. It’s not worth it. He doesn’t want to be a freak.

“It is a rite of passage, to ask this,” Miss L. says slowly, no judgement, and weirdly no pity; “but I should tell you first,” and her eyes narrow more than Eddie thinks he’s ever seen them.

“Your skill is already greater than any I have seen, and is only getting sharper, more keen.”

And hell if a teacher’s ever said something niceabout Eddie Munson, let alone something that sounds like flat-out praise.

“They cannot hear the music, this is why they say those things,” she flicks her wrist less like conducting a chorus and more like shooing a gnat, like that’s the appropriate amount of consideration the comments deserve. “Your task has always been to teach them what they do not know, to show them the wonder they are ignoring as they live and breathe.”

And while it really would have been nice to know that before signing up for this…this what, calling? Vocation?

While that would’ve been nice, Eddie…Eddie can at least mostly understand he wouldn’t have understood any of it in the fourth grade.

He barely understands now.

But he can feel it. He understands how to feel the music that fills all those gaps.

“This is common,” Miss L. turns back to him, steeples her fingers while humming something from the radio: not bad, but not beautiful. That’s what she means, he realizes. The radio plays common.

“This,” and she puts a hand over her own chest and keeps time with her fingers on the tabletop as she hums a wholly novel thing out of thin air, and Eddie has never seen someone else recognize the music, has never watched someone compose in the veins where the songs that hearts sing are played, let alone in real time; maybe she never had because he had to lean for himself, first.

But it is kind of exquisite to witness.

“This,” she stops, and raises a brow pointedly in Eddie’s direction; “is human, built in your cells.”

Eddie couldn’t name why, precisely, but he feels…shamed, but also empowered. So different, but they make an almost compelling melody together as they clash.

“They will call you freak before they call you prodigy,” Miss L. says it like a fact, which…kinda sucks to hear, in all honesty.

“They will label you insane, before they recognize you as genius,” and the way she adds that part makes him feel like that was her personal burden to bear, and he aches for her in it.

“They will cry out garbage and nonsense,” and here, these words: these are the ones Eddie knows immediately he’s meant to be hearing, be weaving into notes the strongest, the ones she wants him to keep closest and never lose:

“They will cry out worthless,” she spits out with a venom he’s never heard her use; “before they will sob in the face of your masterworks, and how they will breathe magic in the soul.”

And…Eddie doesn’t know exactly what to do in the face of the conviction she says that last part with. To doubt it, as he instinctively wants to, feels vile; the most egregious disrespect. He can’t bring himself to even try. So, he asks instead, voice rough:

“When will it change?”

Because despite everything: he doesn’t want to be a freak.

“That I cannot say,” she sighs, and she does sound sorry; “and it may never change at all.”

Eddie doesn’t know if he’s built to handle that, the possibility of never.

“But even if you leave, here and now,” Miss L. cuts into his despairing; “even if you stop your learning, the songs will never leave you.”

Oh.

Oh, so did they…did they teach him to hear a endless goddamn curse, and as a fucking kid—

“You would always have come to hear them,” Miss L. must read his mind, or maybe just his face; “just never with any place to funnel the noise,” and he…guesses he should be grateful. He nearly went mad in those early years, before she taught him how to make new melodies, concertos the likes of which even the great masters hadn’t penned, because they played in a different medium. Their notes and structured time were useful, but limited.

And if they never heard otherwise, how would even the most brilliant talents know what they were passing over, leaving behind?

“Do you still wish to leave?”

Eddie turns, almost having forgotten Miss L. was still sitting there, watching him. Almost having forgotten what he’d come to ask, to give up.

There’s no question left, now.

He gets out his notebook, his pen, and starts as he always does.

With the listening.

——

It’s a genuine distraction—the songs get louder with time, but Miss L. tells him that’s a sign of his skill growing, his notice of the equivalents of key signatures and ligature notes in the heartbeats he passes every day—but it costs him passing senior year once, and then again, and almost a third time until by the skin of his teeth, he manages. While every other teacher shames him for it, derides him as incurably stupid, or at the very least unambitious to the point of embarrassment, the extra years mean more time with Miss L., and Eddie…most days, Eddie is nothing but thankful.

More time means Eddie also learns that the songs he hears are as much a public service as they are an art form, as much a defense mechanism as a craft. He knows when bullies are on the prowl, and to make himself scarce for their screeching cacophonies. He knows when he has to be less of a coward and step in when a wild rhythm makes him sick with its fear.

The more he pays attention to the not-quite-beautiful songs—especially when he thinks on them later and stumbles upon nuggets of the exquisite inside every way they weren’t—the more he remembers years ago, out of almost nowhere, but maybe…maybe everywhere, like it’d been written in his heart’s song the day she spoke it:

“My first day,” he enters the same room—not the same-same room but the one in the high school that’s as abandoned as all of them have been, always Room 011—but he enters the room close to the end of the year, the last year, with the question thick on his tongue, and woven the same in his song as he closes the door and feels his heartbeat quicken for no reason and every reason, like he’s long learned these songs always do.

Miss L., for her part, just nods; waits.

“You said,” Eddie rolls his lips together; “emergencies.”

It’s a delay tactic. They both know it.

She’s kind to play along.

“Mmm,” she hums; “the slightest bits, yes, you can shift the rules to change the song, because you made the rules to begin with,” she eyes him carefully, then. “But only by bits, and in only the most dire moments.”

Yeah, yeah, sure. He never thought he could like…write lines to coax a heart to sing itself back from the dead or some shit. He gets the point.

Again, they both know: that’s not the point he’s here for, heart pounding high in his throat.

“But then you also said something else.”

This time, she doesn’t nod at all; just stares. Eddie has to clear his throat twice to make a sound so as to ask:

“What’s a True Note?”

Because Eddie’s had a couple flings here and there. And the idea of anything real with someone else, alongside the weight of this…talent of his, this training that’s defined half his life by now: it’s really nothing more than a stray idea. But Eddie can’t really hide from the fact that, somewhere along the way, he’s suffused that idea with so much promise and potential, but with no legs for it to fucking stand on.

And he’s about to graduate. About to go out into the world and…who the fuck knows what.

He needs to either hold onto this insane, silly notion of some cosmic meant-to-be match waiting for him somewhere, that it’s at least possible, and then hold on to it like burning—or let it go, and get on with the rest of his fucking life.

“Do you know how I said you could sway the rhythm just the littlest bit, in the greatest of need?”

Of course he did. She literally just said it.

“Your True Note will sing like you have never heard before,” she tells him like it’s not something…immense; “and that song will sway your rhythm so much more than the littlest of anything.”

She just fucking says it, like it isn’t already swaying the rhythm his heart sings in. Here and now.

“That heartsong will change your world.”

And all Eddie can even think to ask, to make more plain in it, is just one thing:

“Will I change theirs, too?”

Miss L’s eyes lock to his and hold for enough seconds where it should be uncomfortable, where his chest starts to grow unbearably tight.

“Hmm,” she considers finally; “if it is meant to be that way.”

Eddie wants to scream. It’s not enough.

And still somehow, it will have to be.

——

In the months that follow his freedom, he misses Miss L. Kinda desperately.

But the lack of structure, the openness of knowing he has to find a way to piece together all the snippets of song he’s bombarded with: it is the reason he ever picks up a guitar. It’s the whole learning heartsongs thing that he has to thank for it, a roundabout journey toward the destination he’d wanted from the beginning.

Or else, that he thought he did.

It’s not just guitar, though. He eventually learns the woodwinds without ending up with a splinter in his mouth. Figures out the different harmonies at hand in making sure he tempers the way he breathes for the brass. He loves the piano, and the cello especially, alongside guitar and double bass: he makes a trip back home specifically to see her and ask—Miss L. tells him it’s probably because of their strings, like hearts have, too.

It feels right in a way things haven’t felt in a very long time.

Which is really how he comes to not only understand, but to accept in his bones: no matter if they ever call him prodigy or genius, if he ever plays a concert hall or anywhere but on a street corner with an open case for change, he was made for this; built for this. The woman with the horn-rimmed glasses who sent him to the basement music room saw it in him. Miss L. proved it to him by teaching him to prove it to himself. He doesn’t know if he’d have picked it, but he knows it was never something he could have picked or turned down in the first place at all: it’s who he is.

He is the music. He is the songs that hearts use for singing. And maybe someday he’ll meet someone who sees it in him, and hears his song, and sings ecstatic. Maybe.

He hopes.

But either way: this is his life.

This is his melody.

——

It takes years before they do sob for his masterpieces, for them to be ready for a style and cadence they don’t understand because they will never comprehend the language, that speaks deeper than the logic required for any of those rules. It takes a long fucking time before they start listening with the lens of the first song any of them ever learned. But the time does come, and Eddie is grateful, because he’d genuinely feared the maybe-never he’d been warned about. He’s glad that’s not where he is, now.

But now? Things start to happen almost unbearably fast. Shows here and flights there, guest appearances and interviews, record labels and live recordings, a book deal he can’t even begin to think about. The world tips on its axis and Eddie only really considered that happening to him for one reason: because of a song so beautiful, in a Note so True—this isn’t that.

But everything still feels upside down anyway; totally off-kilter.

He’s crossed ten time-zones this time. He’s exhausted, but he has a performance tonight, just like he did in the tonight of the place he just left. The car he’s in on his way to the next venue is sleek, like they all are now; his team is already there preparing, so it’s just him and some local hires he hasn’t even had a chance to learn the names of yet, which he hates. He hates being privy to their songs and not even knowing their names, let alone their stories.

He jots the notes he gleans from how they sing without their words on the drive across town anyway. Waste not, and all that.

Eddie has the pen in hand, cap between his teeth, when the truck plows straight into them.

What follows would be unsurprising, if Eddie could process it from a bystander’s point of view—as it is, the only thing he knows in the melee is the music.

He is devastated, as he reaches out for the slowing songs around him, knowing in the back of his mind what their slacking tempos mean, and marveling with something like horror at how beautiful each one is as it starts to fade: still unique, still something Eddie could braid into a piece, certainly one to draw tears.

His own song is ebbing, he knows, but it’s less important than the sweet melodies around him, especially—

Oh.

Eddie thinks, with what may be the last thought left to him as pressure and heat and pain tingle at the edges of the music, almost too strong now to be drowned out by the notes that are what Eddie is at his core: but he thinks he may be too far gone already, because what he begins to hear is…

Exultant. It’s…

If Eddie believed in a heaven, this would be what the hosts there sang. When the idea of divinity is bandied about, they can only ever be talking about some cheap imitation of what Eddie hears now. Luminous. Effervescent.

Beautiful in a way that exceeds the word itself so deeply that it barely fits, obliterates the notion on sight.

And what a gift, Eddie muses as everything dims to black, to hear such Notes, such perfect music as the last thing he has to hold onto in the end.

To end on something that’s True.

——

The next tones Eddie hears are mechanical. He winces—not bad but certainly not beautiful—and then winces harder because wincing itself fucking hurts.

He holds himself still, seeks the song he knows in his own veins: yes, and he’d been so sure it was gone, because there’d be an accident, a crash, he’d been thrown, crushed, songs all around him were dying and he’d heard the magnificent symphony of otherworldly perfection so—

“I’m technically not supposed to be here,” a voice interjects, or no: drips in leisurely, like comfort, like honey; “because you’re a patient, and I’m,” and Eddie forces his eyes open to see the voice come out of a man, who is pointing at his chest: a uniform. Medical.

“I’m not dead?”

All signs do point that direction but…Eddie had been kinda fairly sure he was done for.

“God,” the man chokes like he’s pained, like the idea hurts him, and why; “no,” and he says that a little fiercely, protective almost; “though not for lack of an effort.”

He looks tired, as Eddie’s vision starts to clear some more. He looks radiant. Exquisite.

Beautiful.

“You saved me?”

Because Eddie clocks the uniform now: paramedic. The ones who come onto the scenes and try like hell to save who they can. Heroes.

“I helped,” the beautiful man says, like a hero would, of course. But…it still doesn’t make sense. If the man does this for his job, then Eddie isn’t special, so then why is he so vehement, and then what of all the fading songs Eddie remembers, because Eddie had heard—

“What about,” he starts, but there’s a hand over his quickly, soothing.

“Everyone’s here, different wards,” the hero-beauty tells him in lows tones; “we don’t know if they’ll all make it through the night, but,” he nods, like…this is enough.

And it is. Except…

“How?”

And where Eddie is baffled, his hero just quirks a brow.

“Don’t tell me you never covered emergencies?” he asks skeptically. “Most dire moments, greatest of need?”

And it’s with those words that Eddie’s world slows very quickly to a halt. The music swells in a way he’s never known: because it’s always present to hear.

Buts it’s never been so tangible to feel, not like this, and with such…magnificence, no lesser word could touch it. Maybe he truly is closer to death than not, maybe that’s the reason for the fervor in this man he doesn’t know—the choirs of the angels Eddie wasn’t banking on swells and is visceral, and this hero sits before him, speaks the words that have haunted Eddie more days of his life than not, and—

“This was where the music took my life,” the man pulls at his collar, indicative again: the heroism. He…he saves people, because he, he also hears…

“But I couldn’t have done it without you.”

His hand on Eddie’s tightens, like gratitude, and Eddie…gapes like a fucking fish, and then—

“There’s something else.”

“Not just here to check up on the fruits of your medical miracle?” Eddie’s tongue feels heavy, thick in his mouth; he feels sluggish all over, weighted down and like he can barely move because…this man hears the music that hearts make.

Can he hear the ineffable beauty, like Eddie can? He must, that’s how it works, so why is he not in the same amount of awe—

“Not just,” the man smiles small, but real, a little hesitant. A little…shy, maybe, before he straightens, leans a little closer.

“Watch that screen,” and he tracks Eddie’s gaze until Eddie’s fixed upon the ECG, the most disappointing distillation of the songs he’s learned to find so much wonder in.

But then the man is pressing Eddie’s hand to his own chest, which…is forward, given they don’t even know each other.

Eddie is maybe still on, or at least just-recently-off, death’s door, and either way he’s fucking thrilledwith this development, warm beneath his palm.

“Now count.”

It only takes a moment, to put the gestures together into a statement.

The beat under his touch matches the line across the screen. Exactly.

But this man’s not the one attached to the monitor.

“Got it?”

Eddie nods, and the man doesn’t hesitate, lifts Eddie’s hand and presses it back to Eddie’s own chest.

“Again.”

And that’s…that’s not the same rhythm as the one on the screen; the songs don’t match at all.

But Eddie can still hear the one that does—the beauty. The exaltation.

“Can you,” Eddie asks, lifts his finger that’s got a clip on it, and the man’s a professional, he’ll understand—looks less than conflicted about disconnecting Eddie from wires and leads before clipping his own finger and letting the screen shift to a new cadence.

The same one under Eddie’s hand, in Eddie’s own chest.

“Holy fuck.”

“Yeah,” the man barely breathes, and Eddie notices now how intense his eyes are, focused solely on Eddie, and…Eddie remembers the words that came after the ones about emergencies. About how little he could help, but that he could still do something.

But with only one person, it could be—

“You didn’t just sway my rhythm,” Eddie half-gasps; “you made it your own.”

And oh: Eddie never tied the song of hearts to the song of laughter, but from this man, the huff of incredulous joy that slips from him now—they’re made wholly of the same stuff.

Symphonic. Staggering. Weeping to feel this much, in the soul, to be privy to such a…

Masterpiece.

“Worked both ways, it seems.”

“I heard you,” Eddie blurts out, because it makes sense now; “before I, when I thought I was,” dying, when he thought it was all over; “like I’ve never heard anything before.”

And now: of course this man hears the heavenly movement Eddie thought was a mercy before the end but was instead the arrival of everything he’d ever hoped to one day find, literally coming to rescue him in more ways than one; but that song is somehow commonplace to this unfathomable angel on the earth.

And what this man hears stronger, louder, dearer seems somehow to be Eddie, the song he sings from the chest, in how it’s causing those caramel eyes to glimmer, and to barely blink lest they miss something in just…Eddie.

“You never stopped,” the man says with urgency, with feeling; “your song never stopped,” and then he’s closing his eyes and laying both his hands over his own chest, where Eddie’s heartsong is ringing full and maybe changing his world, because the song in Eddie’s chest sure as hell has already changed his, and—

“It’s extraordinary.”

And Eddie, in years of ridicule, in months of celebration, in all the ups and downs and doubts and hopes this life of songs and hearts and rhythms and beats has left him with, in all of it—

Those two words rewrite his whole fucking being.

“True Note,” Eddie mouths more than speaks before he scoffs; “shit, but that seems like a really fucking inadequate thing to call it,” and his eyes lift to take in the man who he knows, he knows is going to be his magnum opus, or more: is going to write the magnum opus they will be and breathe and share from here to all ends:

“To call you.”

And there’s the clearest sense of a trip in a beat, but who it belongs to isn’t clear, and maybe that’s the reality for them both now: every subtlety of the song is now shared, now theirs.

“You could start with Steve.”

Eddie looks up, breath a little heavy, but the smile on the man’s face is broad and kind of overjoyed, kind of looks like Eddie’s chest feels:

“My name’s Steve.”

And that?

Best damn title for a symphony Eddie’s ever fucking heard.

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[chilledstrawberrysoda]

I think one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the kings men and possibly all of all for the game is when Neil and Kevin are arguing in the locker room after the win against UT because Neil was talking shit about the Ravens and Riko. I think it's the only time before Jackson and Romero come for him after the Belmont Binghamton game that the weight of what Neil knows is going to happen to him and the heartbreak he is experiencing in slow motion comes to the surface and is outwardly visible and even then the only person that picked up on it was Andrew and it didn't help because there was nothing anyone could do.

Kevin is angry about Neil antagonizing Riko publicly because he knows there will be backlash and he is rightfully afraid but this is the first time since Kevin found out who Neil is that he realizes Neil is afraid too. He appears fearless to Kevin so Kevin assumes it's hubris that makes Neil willing to stand his ground over and over again but it's not.

Neil had accepted his fate at that point, and instead of turning tail and getting himself the hell out of there, his only motivation is that if he can't have this at least Kevin will survive it.

At least Kevin gets to live on and play exy and be the best player.

When they talk about it again after Baltimore in the cabin Kevin asks him outright "how do you do it?" He asks "why aren't you afraid?" But Neil admits he IS afraid but he thinks willfully giving up the best thing that has ever happened to him (i.e. exy, the foxes, Andrew) would be worse than death.

There's a popular quote by choreographer Martha Graham that goes like this

A dancer dies twice — once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful

This sentiment is echoed by Neil in the kings men but also implied throughout the series. Giving up the things and the people he loves would be more painful than his actual death. That's why he drops his duffle and phone when he is taken as a signal to Andrew and Kevin. He needs them to know; he did not run, he did not give up, he did not leave them willingly. He accepted death to protect them but his last act before he let go of Neil Josten was to let them know in the only way he could that he would have held on forever if he were given the chance.

Neil's action throughout the books start to shift Kevin's mindset. Neil tells Kevin he stayed for him. Before Neil and Andrew's not nothing ever began, Neil stayed because he believed in Kevin and he wants so badly for Kevin to try. Because before Neil literally came back from the dead after Baltimore, the only thing he could hope was that after the dust settles Kevin would be on top. The first time Kevin gets any hint at that is in that locker room in Texas. I would love to read this scene from Kevin's perspective. As soon as he realizes how desperate Neil is, he stops fighting him. I think it might be the first time Kevin sees Neil as the scared kid he is and not just the partner that is willing to put himself in the line of fire for others.

I feel like that scene is always read as just Neil being kinda mean and calling Kevin a coward again but it's so complex and I wish it went on for longer. It's one of the few insights we get into Neil's crumbling psyche as his demise approaches and one of the few times he is fully honest with anyone before Baltimore and it's just so important to how his character is viewed for the remainder of the novel.

[cripplecharacters]

I'm not sure how to write this, but alas.

How would you write a character with Schizophrenia(or any other disorder similar) in a fantasy setting. Say like, Skyrim.

There's quite literally a bunch of supernatural things that happen in that universe that are canon, like ghosts legit exist and what not and you can quite literally talk to gods in there as well. And I know could be seen as a Delusion and what not.

So I'm not sure how to god about respectfully writing one. 😅😅

Hiya! This is one of my absolute favorite topics, and I do this fairly often in my own writing. The best answer is that you blend the two - there is real magic happening and around the character, and they may at times mistake their positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, etc) for parts of their world.

An example for skyrim is that maybe they believe their hallucination is a god they have talked to before and when they message the god again they realize the god doesn't understand a reference to the last time "they" talked. Maybe they have a delusion there are demons terrorizing them but it's actually a very sorry ghost. Have fun with the setting and playing with what's reality there and what isn't!

You could also focus on, in terms of delusions, less of talking to gods and demons and ghosts and more on interpersonal delusions. That someone is plotting to kill them, that the world is fake, that someone they've never met is in love with them, that the radio is giving them messages, etc. The big thing to keep in mind is respect for writing characters with schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders as well as psychosis in general - they are experiencing a reality that is strong and very real and intense for them. Even if it doesn't overlap with what others experience as reality, the biggest thing is not forcing reality or encouraging the other reality but helping them cope with their reality and stay safe in the episode.

I also encourage you to look at negative symptoms and symptoms of disorganized speech and add that to the character as well, as schizophrenia is more than just hallucinations and delusions. This will help ground your character in the disorder as well even when reality is more fantastical than ours.

I hope this helps, and happy writing! Mod Bert

[pyract0]

Random thoughts with hsr men: Parental edition

☪Includes: Jing yuan, Blade, Sunday, Boothill, Dr Ratio ☪No defined pronouns/ anatomy specifics for reader, adoptive children (specified to each character), mention of loss of loved ones. ☪Extra note: Accepting requests! Wanting to get back into writing but I tend to struggle thinking of new ideas- tend to lean towards certain characters that I have a better understanding of their personality but open to anything! ♡

-`♡´-Jing yuan who names your adoptive daughter Mimi after his beloved companion . -`♡´-Jing yuan who juggles being a father and a father figure between your sweet girl and Yanqing. -`♡´-Jing yuan who goes out of his way to include the boy under his guidance into your little family, with you both treating him as you would your own child. -`♡´-Jing yuan who brings your daughter with him anywhere he can, making sure she's treated with more respect than anyone on the Lufou. -`♡´-Jing yuan who shows off his daughter to all his closest friends, with Fu xuan having a soft spot towards the little girl, not that she'd willingly admit to it. -`♡´-Jing yuan who's nickname for your toddler is "snowy" to match her name and it's origins.

♱✮♱ Blade who often forgets about your son, leaving him under the care of silverwolf when you're both busy with missions. ♱✮♱ Blade who spends most of the time just sitting near the child, making sure he causes no trouble with minimal interference. ♱✮♱ Blade who despite how he portrays himself, cares for the toddler beyond belief, willing to draw his blade at any malicious attempt directed towards the young child. ♱✮♱ Blade who would lay with your child for hours at a time, letting him sleep without disturbance while he contemplates life. ♱✮♱ Blade who has part of him that wishes you both would have entered his life earlier, before the mara took root in his body and not being cursed with immortality, inevitably knowing he'd lose you both one day. ♱✮♱ Blade who nicknames your boy "gremlin", often using it more than his actual name

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Sunday who heavily relies on Robin for help with your daughter when he's unavailable as head of the family. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Sunday who spends all his free time that he can with the both of you, walking around the dreamscape or relaxing together in your shared home. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Sunday who has learnt to be careful around the little girl, having had his wings locked in her iron grasp on multiple occasions, needing to wait for you to pry her hands open. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Sunday who holds your daughter in his arms as she dozes off after a long day, taking a moment to let himself rest while you preen his scuffed up feathers. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Sunday who let's your daughter hang off him, adding hair clip after hair clip to his now mangled grey hair. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Sunday who often calls your small toddler "angel", though he begins to question how fitting it is with her mischievous habits.

• ➵ ✩ Boothill who dedicates his whole being to protecting your daughter, unwilling to even consider the possibility of losing another one of his babies. • ➵ ✩ Boothill who talks about his little girl to your toddler, including her in your family even if it's only in spirit, always mentioning his two baby girls when family discussions occur. • ➵ ✩ Boothill who accidently teacher your child his censored version of any and every curse word in his vocabulary, panicking when she runs up to you shouting them. • ➵ ✩ Boothill who never takes his family time for granted, spending as much time playing with your child and showering you with affection before he's sent on a new mission after another target. • ➵ ✩ Boothill who was stuck digging pieces of crayon that melted together after your daughter shoved them in the holes of his metal plating when he was asleep, having little help from you who couldn't contain your laughter. • ➵ ✩ Boothill who often just calls your little girl sweetheart or honey, finding the simplicity more endearing.

・✎・Dr Ratio who despite his blunt personality, manages to be a good father to your son, with you both providing what you can for the young child. ・✎・Dr Ratio who sometimes forgets the mental capacity of a younger being, trying to teach him how to play chess so he has a partner for the game. ・✎・Dr Ratio who occasionally brings your sons to lectures, finding amusement in the child laughing when he insults one of his students. ・✎・Dr Ratio who maintains your child a safe distance from anything he deems could harm him, including his colleagues at work, especially a certain gambler who just adores the boy. ・✎・Dr Ratio who spends any free moment at home with the both of you, helping you around the house and being present whenever your child calls for him. ・✎・Dr Ratio who prides himself in his sons intelligence, calling him his "little genius" even if he's currently a little behind.

[dippindaz]

Aaah you did my request :D it was so good aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa so in character and wonderful and cute <333 i am mentally printing it out and hanging it on my fridge. Also Billy not knowing how to deal with people looking after him?? Please, my heart 😭😭😭

If you're still looking for requests, I'd love to see Billy, Eddie, and Steve (and maybe Robin if that's not too many 👉👈) teaching a reader one of their hobbies (d&d, basketball, etc.) Tbh i don't think Robin HAS any canonical hobbies so I'm excited to see what you hc she does in her free time

Oh my gosh the praise is too much!!! 🥹 Thank you so much and I’m so happy you liked it!! ^_^ I did all four characters :)

I love this idea as well!!!! I’m sorry this took so long to get out, I got stumped on some theseee

Eddie Munson — Teaching You D&D

• Eddie is beyond excited when you show interest in Dungeons & Dragons. He acts nonchalant at first, but the second you actually agree to play, he’s pulling out his DM’s guide and grinning like a madman.

• He insists on making your character with you, talking you through all the races and classes in the most dramatic fashion. “Do you want to be a noble warrior, sworn to protect the innocent? Or a cunning rogue who trusts no one but themselves?”

• When you get overwhelmed by all the stats and dice, he reassures you with a pat on the head. “Don’t worry, my little apprentice, you’ll get the hang of it soon.” (In the voice you’d imagine an old mentor having.)

• During your first session, he gives you just enough guidance to keep you engaged but lets you struggle a little for fun. “Roll for deception. No, you can’t just lie your way out without rolling—welcome to the cruel reality of dice, sweetheart.”

• If you roll a natural 20, he makes a HUGE deal out of it, narrating the most ridiculous and over-the-top outcome possible. “You don’t just convince the guard—you have them questioning their entire career choice.”

• If you roll a natural 1, expect him to cackle and make your failure as hilariously painful as possible. “Oh no, you trip on your own shoelace and insult the king’s mother. Good luck with that.”

• He definitely starts calling you his favorite party member, even if you’re terrible at the game.

Billy Hargrove — Teaching You Basketball

• At first, Billy thinks it’s hilarious that you even want to learn basketball. He teases you constantly. “Think you can keep up with me, sweetheart?”

• He’s surprisingly patient when teaching you the basics, though. He stands behind you, guiding your arms when you shoot, and smirks when you get flustered. “You’ll never get it if you’re too tense. Relax.”

• If you miss a shot, he doesn’t let you live it down. If you make one? He acts like it was pure luck. “Alright, rookie, don’t get cocky now.”

• The first time you manage to get past him and score during a one-on-one game, he pauses. Stares. Then smirks. “Okay, okay, I see you.”

• Absolutely shows off while playing against you—spinning the ball on his finger, dribbling between his legs, pulling no-look shots—just to be extra.

• If he ever catches you getting frustrated, he actually encourages you. “You think I got this good overnight? Hell no. Keep going.”

• When you’re sweaty and out of breath, he rests his hands on his hips and smirks. “Guess I gotta go easy on you next time, huh?”

• If you really impress him, he’ll jokingly challenge you to a real game. “Loser buys dinner. Better start saving up, babe.”

Robin Buckley — Teaching You French

• Robin insists that French is the coolest language and that knowing it makes you at least 20% more attractive. “Trust me, nothing sounds hotter than a perfectly pronounced ‘je ne sais quoi.’”

• The first thing she teaches you? Not useful phrases like greetings or directions. No, she starts with the good stuff—insults and sassy comebacks. “Okay, repeat after me: ‘Va te faire voir.’ It means ‘get lost,’ but it sounds way classier in French.”

• She definitely teaches you how to swear in French and then makes you promise not to use it in front of teachers or authority figures. (“Actually, never mind, totally use it in front of Keith at work.”)

• Whenever you butcher a word or mispronounce something, she laughs but immediately reassures you. “Hey, you’re doing better than me when I first started. I sounded like a drunk tourist for the first month.”

• She randomly quizzes you at the worst times—like mid-conversation or while you’re eating. “Quick! How do you say ‘the cat is on the table’?” If you get it right, she cheers dramatically.

• If you really struggle with pronunciation, she gets unreasonably close and exaggerates how to shape your lips, totally unaware of how flustered it makes you.

• She casually drops French phrases into everyday conversations and refuses to translate them. “If you were paying attention, you’d know what I just said, mon cher.”

• Eventually, she teaches you something actually romantic, like how to say “Tu es magnifique” (you are magnificent), but she says it so casually that you’re not sure if she’s flirting or just being Robin.

• If you start getting too good, she pouts. “Damn, you might actually be better than me soon. I take it back, I’m never teaching you again.” (She’s totally lying.)

Steve Harrington — Teaching You Baseball

• When you agree to let him teach you baseball, he acts like it’s some super serious training session. “Alright, rookie, let’s see what we’re working with.”

• If you miss your first swing, he shakes his head dramatically. “Yikes. We got a lot of work to do.”

• He absolutely uses it as an excuse to stand behind you, adjusting your grip on the bat. “Loosen up a little. Here, let me—” and suddenly, his arms are around yours, and yeah, he knows what he’s doing.

• He definitely teases you if you get flustered. “Oh? Distracted? Can’t imagine why.” (The smirk he gives you is criminal.)

• When you finally hit the ball, he cheers obnoxiously. “Look at that! My little slugger’s getting good!” He even does a little celebratory fist pump.

• If you hit a really bad shot, he laughs but tries to make you feel better. “Okay, okay, that one sucked, but hey—at least you didn’t hit yourself in the face.”

• Eventually, it turns into competition. He steps up to the plate and crushes a ball just to show off. Then he looks at you with the smuggest grin. “Think you can top that, babe?”

• When you do manage to hit a better shot, he stares for a second before pretending to be unimpressed. “Eh. Not bad. Lucky swing.”

• If you lose the competition, Steve is supportive and careful not to make you feel bad. He reassures you that you just need more practice and you’re doing better than he was when he started. If you win… well let’s say Steve is conflicted between his ego and celebrating you. At first he might pout and be in disbelief but then he’d also be saying: “My baby’s a natural! You did so good!”

[thydungeongal]

@vixensdungeon asked me to also roll a dungeon freak for da original game, also known as 0D&D, also known as the Little Brown Books edition, also known as D&D74. Anyway, the dice did not favor me so here's what I ended up with:

Str 11, Int 4, Wis 10, Con 10, Dex 13, Cha 8

The only thing that stands out about my character is that Dexterity. Everything else is either average or below average. I won't be able to get any of their abilities to the point where they'll grant bonus experience points. Sad! Oh well, at least that Dexterity of 13 will grant a +1 bonus on firing any missile! If I recall correctly, the Chainmail combat system actually uses 2d6 for hit determination, so that bonus is actually more generous if using the Chainmail combat system instead of the alternative combat system (which later became the default).

Anyway, there is one option that is still attractive: the humble Halfling. Since we're playing with no supplements the Halfling is limited to the Fighting-ManHalfling class, and they'll be unable to progress beyond 4th level. But that's okay, because in exchange for it my character will save as a Fighting-Man four levels higher than them and will also be better at missile combat, as detailed in Chainmail. Sadly, I don't have Chainmail, so I'm going to have to take it as a matter of faith that Halflings actually have a bonus to missile combat there.

Strangely enough, Halflings cannot be aligned with Neutrality or Chaos: my character must be aligned with Law! And that's actually quite unambiguous: it doesn't say that Halflings are often aligned with Law, it says:

Character types are limited as follows by this alignment:

And then lists Halflings in the Law column. Even Dwarves/Gnomes get a choice between Law and Neutrality!

I should also roll my character's starting funds, also on a 3d6, multiplied by ten: 8 times ten is 80, that's great.

My character spent 53 pieces of their starting gold on getting a shortbow and 30 a quiver with 20 arrows, leather armor, and a dagger. 15 gold goes to purchasing a week's worth of dungeon rations. The remaining twelve gold will go towards buying the following:

6 torches for 1 gold

Leather backpack for 5 gold

Waterskin for 1 gold

Wineskin for 1 gold

A quart of wine for 1 gold

A flask of oil for 2 gold

50' of rope for 1 gold

So my character saves as a level 5 Fighting-Man due to being a Halfling: as a first-level Fighter, or Veteran, they have 1+1 Dice for determining their hit points. Which means 1d6+1 in modern day terms. Roll of 4 means 5 hit points.

Anyway with that out of the way my Fighting-ManHalfling is ready to go. I grant her a gender and a name. Belladonna the Halfling Veteran is ready to party. She may be half the size of a man, but she fights with the strength of 1 + 1 men! (Distinct from 2 men)

EDIT: I had the flask of oil listed as costing 3 gold when it's actually 2 gold, for a moment it looked like she'd spent one more coin than she actually owned, which she would never do as a Law-abiding Halfling.

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

[Taken from under the cut]

"The localization definitely did change some things about the portrayal of Angie’s religion, but I would hesitate to say that they changed the overall feel or messages of Chapter 3. The original was already pretty… well, I don’t know if “atheistic” is the best term for it, but the point of Chapter 3 in the original was definitely to have a kind of clash between western and eastern religion that reached a boiling point. I don’t think any of the general negativity associated with Angie and her cult, or Korekiyo and his séances, was impacted by NISA so much as it was already there in Kodaka’s writing.

As far as I could tell when playing the localization, in fact, Korekiyo’s translator didn’t change or alter much about his dialogue. Other than the “Kiyo” nickname, I agreed with most of the choices they made (translating “Kagoinu Village” and the “Kagonoko Ritual” as the “Caged Dog Village” and “Caged Child Ritual” respectively were really good choices or a localization, in fact, since they made them easier to understand). All of the reveals that happen in the post-trial (as in, those reveals, about his sister) were adapted pretty straightforwardly from the original. Nothing was cut or altered significantly; his motives really were that messed-up.

As for Angie, the term “brainwashing” actually is a direct translation and not something altered or swayed by the localization! The term 洗脳 (“sennou”) comes up as early as Chapter 2 in both the original and the localization. I believe the first instance of it is in an optional dialogue session with Himiko on the night of Saihara’s first training session, where she mentions that she should’ve “had [Angie] undo her brainwashing sooner.” The following morning, when discussing Himiko’s magical show, Angie is pretty quick to change the subject and avoids answering any questions when she’s asked by the rest of the group what she did to Himiko.

What’s more, there seems to be a very intentional correlation between Angie’s talent and Mitarai’s. While not entirely the same, the two bear definite similarities which come to light especially if you do Angie’s FTEs. In her third FTE with Saihara (her 5th overall if you did Kaede’s), she shows Saihara a picture she was painting, only for him to lose consciousness immediately upon looking at it. When he wakes up again and asks her if there’s anything intrinsically special about the painting itself, she says she’s not sure, and that she just “creates her art exactly the way god tells her to.”

It’s pretty heavily implied (more like confirmed, in her FTEs at least) that her artwork is how she gets people to listen to her and do what she asks, both on her home island and within the religious student council she sets up. There definitely seems to be a much larger degree of free will involved with her abilities than there was with Mitarai’s, the game is pretty emphatic about the fact that she does brainwash people to go along with her ideas. The effectiveness of her brainwashing is up for debate, though; Saihara remains pretty unaffected in his FTEs with her despite her best attempts to force him to marry her, Tenko was only pretending to join the student council in order to keep an eye on Himiko, and I highly doubt Tsumugi was ever actually brainwashed because of, well, reasons.

Overall, the general feeling with Angie (in the narrative at least) seems to be that she was someone whose intentions weren’t necessarily bad, but that she still did some pretty unsavory stuff nonetheless. It’s pretty clear that she does, in fact, want the killing game to end—she’s one of the most outspoken characters of the opinion that “greed” and “desire” only lead people to commit murder, and that they’d all be better off staying within the school and making it comfortable for themselves, rather than continuing to try and escape the school.

Unlike other characters who have brought up similar plans before, like Celes, I think Angie did genuinely believe what she was saying, too. There’s an optional dialogue moment in Chapter 4 if you click on the door to Angie’s lab while exploring around the school, where Saihara pretty much outright says that he couldn’t agree with her methods, but that he does realize that she was trying to stop the killing game in her own way, then follows up with a really nice comment about how he’ll never forget her. He has similar comments for most of his classmates following their deaths in each subsequent chapter, but I thought it was a really nice touch nonetheless.

As you point out though, if there is a fault in the localization to be found, it’s in changing Angie’s god altogether from a very general, unspecific god to “Atua.” Ever since I heard about that particular localization decisions, I couldn’t agree with it for a number of reasons, not least of all that it’s extremely disrespectful, as Atua is an actual, real deity in Polynesian mythology. Adapting a real-life deity and applying it to a character whose backstory, island, and god are all deliberately undefined (and fictional) is a very bad choice all around.

Angie already suffers from a lot of bad, racist writing tropes on Kodaka’s part in the original. It’s pretty clear that since she’s both dark-skinned and a “foreigner” (and we don’t know anything regarding whether her pre-game self is actually a foreigner or not) she was designed to be the “exotic, quirky island girl” whose religions and culture teeter between baffling and downright creepy.

The portrayal of her island’s religion and customs already isn’t positive in the original game; between “blood sacrifices,” purchasing organs and children off of the internet, and the hypersexualization of both Angie and her people (she tries to take off Saihara’s clothes in the same FTE I mentioned before, and there’s a lot of talk about the people on her island “comforting” each other sexually or “sharing the bride” at weddings), it feels like Kodaka was just one step short of calling them “un-civilized,” which is… eugh.

Taking all of that messy and unsavory writing and directly correlating it with actual Polynesian culture and mythology is such an incredibly disrespectful decision, moreso when I highly doubt that Angie’s translator for the localization is Polynesian themselves or did any actual research into the subject. There was no need to slap a name onto Angie’s god in the first place—her island and culture are still entirely undefined in-game, so why NISA felt that her religion needed to be equated with a real-life one is still beyond me.

Other than the general racism though, I don’t think a lot of the rest of Angie’s dialogue was changed. There was a brief, optional line in the bonus mode when she comes to invite you for a date where her translator decided to have her say “Alola!” (which, you know, a Pokemon region based on Hawaii isn’t even the same as the Polynesian islands, but okay), but otherwise her translation was pretty faithful to the original dialogue. I think her translator didn’t have too much of a problem capturing the feeling of her character; their main problem was simply the decision to make an unnecessary correlation between Angie’s fictional, made-up religion and all its negative aspects and with actual Polynesian religion and culture.

Overall, I think a lot more of the issue stems back to Kodaka’s own racism and flawed writing, though. I don’t think he was trying to leave a message of “religion = bad, always” in Chapter 3 so much as he was just… unaware of how it might come across to others. Religion in Japan is decidedly different from religion in the west, so it’s important to remember that Kodaka was writing from a Japanese perspective, rather than an all-around western atheistic perspective. He definitely wanted a sort of clash of ideas between Angie’s very foreign, western, cult-like religion, and Korekiyo’s research into eastern culture and spirituality, but the writing got… well, very messy along the way.

This is just my take on it all, anyway! The association with Angie’s religion and “brainwashing” was definitely there in the original game, even very early on, but I do think the localization would’ve improved overall if it hadn’t bothered trying to put a real name to any of it. Thank you for asking this question by the way—it’s always good to clear this kind of stuff up, especially since all of the “Atua” changes must make it really difficult for anyone playing the localization to know how much else was or wasn’t changed in Angie’s dialogue. I hope I could clear a few things up!"

here's a question ive had since the localization came out; did the localization do anything to enforce more of an athiestic bent and put angie and shinguji in a more negative light wrt religion and spirituality (particularly angie)? or has that always been there? the whole "brainwashing" angle felt p harsh, not to mention saying angie's god outright is Atua instead of the general "my god" that the translations seemed to have. plus akamatsu seemed very internally harsh about her god in their FTEs

The localization definitely did change some things about theportrayal of Angie’s religion, but I would hesitate to say that they changedthe overall feel or messages of Chapter 3. The original was already pretty…well, I don’t know if “atheistic” is the best term for it, but the point ofChapter 3 in the original was definitely to have a kind of clash betweenwestern and eastern religion that reached a boiling point. I don’t think any ofthe general negativity associated with Angie and her cult, or Korekiyo and his séances,was impacted by NISA so much as it was already there in Kodaka’s writing.

Keep reading

[elysianholly]

A Spuffy Fan's Perspective on the Reboot

So, as most Buffy fandom knows (unless they’ve been living under a rock in a crater on the Hellmouth), it was announced yesterday that SMG is involved in a Buffy reboot sequel series, one in which she will be a recurring but not central character.

As a lifelong Buffy fan, I’m expected to be overjoyed at this news, and I’m, well, not. Nor are a good number of people deeply entrenched in fandom. I’m super happy for the people who are excited. As a Spuffy fan, though, it’s hard to be jazzed for a number of reasons, among these being that SMG is most definitely a Bangel shipper, and despite being overwhelmingly more popular than Bangel in current times, Spuffy is often overlooked in a lot of key areas of the “official” Buffy promotions, the comics being a notable and welcome exception.

One thing I’ve noticed is a lot of people in Spuffy fandom are more than just “not normal” about Spuffy. I’ve struggled for 20+ years to both identify and articulate why the ship resonates with me so much to the point that news like this can make my anxiety spiral. I understand it’s not an ideal reaction media, but I have lived inside a neurodivergent brain my entire life and that ain’t about to change. And I’m not the only one—I’ve met and interacted with many, many people who feel as intensely as I do and also struggle to articulate why news like this distresses them.

So for everyone who is like me, slightly more than just “not normal” about Spuffy (or any aspect of Buffy!) and distressed about the news, here are some things I keep reminding myself.

Buffy is an Established Multi-Universe Property

We know that there are multiple universes in Buffy; it’s explored in The Wish and then confirmed by Anya later in the series. Not just multiple dimensions, but divergent/adjacent worlds to the one we saw in the show. This has been later explored in the comics, such as The Lost Summer, the Boom reboot, and The Last Vampire Slayer, never mind the plethora of authorized novels and the recent audio play. These were all officially sanctioned, licensed productions that exist outside the official canon.

All of these stories matter, regardless of whether or not they’re considered “official.” For my Spuffy people, some are Spuffy friendly and some are not. We acknowledge what we want to acknowledge and leave the rest behind. Me? If I find the sequel reboot upsetting, I’ll mentally shove it into one of those other worlds, the same as I’ve done with the comics for years (yes, even if they got Spuffy friendly).

One of the points that was brought up yesterday when I suggested just giving the sequel reboot the comics treatment was it’s harder to ignore if SMG is involved. And I get that; I felt the same way about the Slayers audioplay, because significant OG cast members were involved so it felt more official. But upon reflection, I do still think it’s the same as the comics, which were spearheaded and overseen by JW and still considered (until this sequel reboot happens) the official post-series canon. If the involvement of original artists is what makes or breaks something’s authority, then the medium shouldn’t really matter.

And on that note…

Star Wars Legends, Halloween, Terminator, & Other Reboots

For years—decades—following Return of the Jedi, the official Star Wars canon was continued in novels, the same as Buffy was. There was a rich tapestry of intergalactic politics, Leia and Han’s Force family, Luke and Mara Jade, and characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn that proved so popular he’s been recanonized.

These books existed and still exist. The new movies, the reset of canon, all things involving Rey Palpatine Skywalker and Kylo Ben Ren exist alongside established, official property. I know plenty of people who were upset that their investment in the extended Star Wars family was essentially nixed with the sequel series 10 years ago, and others who chose not to acknowledge the sequel series but maintain their post-Jedi canon.

In an era of reboots and sequel series, canon can become a bit diluted. You can’t just erase everything that came before you decided to hit the “start over” button. The recent Halloween trilogy flat-out ignored multiple movies to tell the story it wanted to tell. Terminator has done the same thing, multiple times, with the Sarah Connor Chronicles being officially licensed and more or less officially scrapped, and the last Terminator movie retconning like, what, four or five that came out after Judgment Day. That is to say, established canon doesn’t really matter in this era, because the people making these decisions are doing what fan artists have done for decades; keeping what they want, tossing all else aside, and focusing on the story they want to tell.

If what came before and what has been long established doesn’t matter (and I actually do love this; it opens up worlds and essentially gives us licensed what-if fics), then canon itself is kind of nebulous. It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t established, because established canon is a moving target, subject to personal interpretation. Don’t like the Halloween reboot? Ignore it. There are other movies out there. Don’t like the clusterfuck Disney has made of Star Wars? There is a fully developed alternative. Don’t like any of the options? Come up with your own. Comics do it all the time with superhero stories, and Buffy is nothing if not a superhero.

It’s All Fiction

This is what drives my husband crazy when I try to explain my beyond not normal feelings about Spuffy. It’s all fiction. We’re not talking about historical events here. All fiction lives in exactly one place, ultimately, and that’s between your ears. If you don’t like the way a fictional story went, you can do what fanartists have been doing for years and create your own fix-it. Or find a ready-made fix-it; I promise it exists. And the more I think about it, the less stock I put into “official” stories that are told primarily to make money. The people who are here telling these stories because they love the characters and know the characters on levels that frankly outperform most licensed stuff.

In Summary

So I’ve rambled a lot, but here are the key points to take away:

Buffy is canonically a multi-universe property so the world we’re shown by official licensed sources see isn’t the only one that exists. I didn’t say this in the section, but in this way, all fanfic is canon, because each exists in a different universe

If canon is not sacred in the world of reboots, then what they try to sell us as canon is debatable, negligible, and ultimately fine to just not acknowledge

Official canon doesn’t really matter all that much when you can pick your own, which you can and should

I hope this helps my fellow Spuffys and anyone else who is struggling with the news. My siblings in beyond just not normal. Your feelings, even if you have trouble explaining or understanding them, are valid. You’re not silly. It’s never silly to be upset about news that impacts something important to you. And there’s still so much we don’t know, so speculation abounds, but whatever comes of this, I hope you find some comfort in the freedom of being able to do exactly what the for-profit storytellers do all the time and just fucking ignore what doesn’t suit them.

In the meantime, Elysian Fields Archive will remain a Spuffy exclusive safe space, and I imagine will be home to a shitload of fix-its if the pilot gets picked up, so you’re free to join us there.

Until then, be good to yourself, and to somebody else.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

How to make a fic or writing longer how to add stuff without making it boring

Writing Ideas: Adding Details to your Story

Keep engaging the reader every few pages. Do not spend the first act introducing your characters. Let the reader discover your characters as they are catapulted into the concept. Let the reader learn their motivations and arcs as they are bombarded by the conflict that you are hopefully throwing them into from the get-go. Let there be a mystery to it. Why show your whole hand when you can keep a reader invested and engaged by slowly peeling away the layers of the character as they deal with the conflict and overall concept? Continue to build and build and build, whether it’s with the laughs, the drama, the screams, the mystery, the thrills, the action, etc. Offer as many twists and turns as you can. Lead that reader towards something, only to pull the rug out from underneath them just when they feel that they know where you’re going with it.

The HCM Plotting Method

List the Heart-Clutching Moments you’ve already thought of—you know, those pivotal points in your story that will evoke all the intensity of that “look behind you!” response in your readers.

Think of more.

Construct your story around them. Don’t focus on your loosely formed storyline. Focus on the key points in your story.

What Is an HCM? Some examples:

Love at first sight (Marius Pontmercy meets Cosette)

A huge moral lapse (Judas takes the money)

Murder (Miles Archer’s sets Sam Spade in motion)

Death by other means (Injun Joe starves to death in the cave)

A refusal of grace (Mayella Ewell sticks to her story in spite of taking the courtroom oath)

Nature gone wild (shark dines on first recreational swimmer)

Someone standing up to corruption (Shane picks up his gun again)

A change of heart, for good or ill (Michael Corleone offers to kill Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey)

An act of depraved violence (Bill Sykes cudgels Nancy)

Betrayal (Sandy puts a stop to her mentor Jean Brodie)

Forgiveness (Melanie insists Scarlett join her in the receiving line)

A revelation (Pip’s secret benefactor is none other than … !)

HCMs can be active, whole scenes. Some examples:

A lifesaving attempt

A chase

A battle

A seduction

A caper

Make a list of Heart-Clutching Moments and put them on index cards in rough order. Then you can build an outline based on any form you desire, be it classical drama, farce, or anything in between. If you get stuck, do any of the following:

Start writing one of your HCM scenes. Immediately the scene itself should prompt ideas, perhaps for new courses of action or even new characters.

Write deeper into an HCM scene you’ve written already. You’ll likely find yourself coming up with bridges between scenes—and thinking of more elements to enhance your story.

Look for places to add conflict, suffering, or frustration.

Example: Shakespeare wanted to take Macbeth from conquering hero to murderous traitor whose decapitation at the hands of one of his countrymen is the only possible, imaginable end.

How does he do it? Reread the play and you’ll realize that one HCM leads to the next, fast and furious: The witches’ stunning prophecies, Macbeth’s realization that he could be king, his wife’s corrupt ambition, one murder, two more murders, and more upon that, and prophesy again, and insanity, and suicide … all in the space of 98 pages!

Introduce a ticking clock. A ticking clock is an important element that ramps up pressure on your characters and piques your readers’ curiosity as to how your protagonist can possibly succeed. Set up big promises and obstacles early in a narrative and layer in a time crunch to make a character’s predicament seem dire.

Weave subplots into your narrative. Use subplots effectively to add variety and texture to your narrative and explore characters and backstory. When used well, subplots can artfully pose and answer key questions and flesh out characters.

Add dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is one of the many literary devices that can keep your reader engaged and increase the suspense. If a reader is aware of impending plot points that your characters are not, you can foreshadow plot twists and raise questions in your reader’s mind as to how your characters will deal with the trouble that lies ahead.

Invest in the details. Good writing generally contains sensory details and specific observations that remind readers of real life. A longer story can be much more powerful and less boring with detailed descriptions of the environment in which it takes place.

Open loops. This expands a bit on the idea of hooks and page-turning chapter endings, but the concept here is much broader. Basically the idea is to open boxes … and then take your sweet time in getting around to closing them. If you’re interested in a situation and the story cuts that situation off without resolving it, you’ll do that OH COME ON thing and then keep reading. You can’t rest until you close the loop. So if the story is well-told, you’ll just keep looking for that dropped loop … even if it takes chapters to pay off. It takes many chapters to find out what did happen, and your readers just keep blasting through them, cursing us all the while.

Relentless pacing. Take your time and meander when writing your book. What happens, happens, and try not to rush it. Characters talk and the reader learns plot points. On the contrary, let your readers keep asking, “What happens next?” The answer to that question needs to be exciting. Threatening. Maybe violent. Don't let your characters have much time to catch their breath, because the goal is to keep your readers breathless.

Learning from the Classics. Some Examples:

Armadale by Wilkie Collins, 1864 - Armadale was regarded by author T.S. Eliot as "the best of [his] romances" and includes Lydia Gwilt, a character considered as one of the most astonishing wicked female villains in literature. Drawing on scandalous newspaper headlines, Collins creates a story of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, and murder – making for an action-packed 752 pages.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, translated by Norman Denny, 1862 - Adapted into one of the most successful musicals of all time, Les Misérables’ running time in London’s West End is an impressive 2 hours 50 minutes. But for a more immersive experience, try the original novel – a full 1,232 pages of injustice, heroism, and love in 19th-century France.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, 1846 - (1,240 pages) On the day of his wedding, Edmond Dantes, master mariner, is arrested in Marseille on trumped-up charges and spirited away to the cellars of the Chateau d'If, an impregnable sea fortress in which he is imprisoned indefinitely. Escaping from the chateau by a series of daring manoeuvres, he unearths a great treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, buried there by a former fellow prisoner who bequeaths to him the secret of its whereabouts. Thus armed with unimaginable wealth and embittered by his long imprisonment, he resolves to devote his life to tracking down and punishing those responsible.

Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922 - It is one thing to write a novel of 1,040 pages, but quite another to dedicate the entire page count to one single day. Ulysses follows characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly across a day in their lives in 1904 Dublin. Dedalus and Bloom, who are are unaware of each other, are trying to find a missing loved one: the former, his long-lost father, and Bloom, despite being childless, for a son.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1869 - (1,225 pages) At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ More: Notes ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs ⚜ On Pacing

Here are some tips and ideas I found from different sources. Choose which ones you would like to incorporate in your story. Hope this helps with your writing!

[shakethediseeas]

ALIEN STAGE CHARACTERS WITH AN ALIEN READER

alien stage x reader

maybe ill make more (ivan, hyuna and sua)

CHAFACTERS: TILL, LUKA, MIZI

On your 15th birthday your parents decided to give you a planet as a gift, they took over and made a stage to keep you entertained! its so fun! its humans trying to survive by performing music you've never heard of before.

One day, you decide to visit the garden to take one for yourself and when you saw that figure running by, you knew you want that one.

heads turned at the sound of children going 'woah' as you twirl and walk past them, looking at them as if they were animals in a zoo. two aliens behind you as you keep searching and start getting frustrated-- no one was appealing for you.

just when you were about to turn and head home to complain you finally spot one. they were running after someone with flowers in their hand, and more kids chasing after them.

they stopped when the kid bumped into you, and it went silent. They fell to the floor as you brushed your outfit clean of their filth before pointing down at them.

"i want this one."

to take them of the joy and friends they had in here didnt really matter to you. to you its like picking an animal from a shelter, bringing them to a better home where the only one they would rely on would be you.

that smile you saw before you picked them no longer existed. They were quiet and nervous of getting any negative reaction out of you which only made you mad but you had to be patient with them in order for them to be happy!

'first few months'

how come these humans dont come with a manual because this human was shattering things in rage when they thought you werent home and they hide in a corner so they dont get caught.

You heard of their behavior problems before picking them up, but you didn't care as long as you got to see that smile they had—but since they weren't smiling, you'd have to fix that.

you took Till to visit the garden for a bit, even though your guards were against the idea but who were they to tell you what to do?

He was so happy—the happiest he's ever been since you took him away. When you came to pick him up, he shyly asked if he could ever visit again, to which you nodded.

'you werent THAT bad' is what he thought after you gifted him a custom guitar. you noticed he played with an imaginary one so you decided to build trust and gift him a fancy new electric guitar!

and you still took him constantly to see his friends even though he heard you being scolded for it, that fake argument made him feel more appreciated.

'a few years later'

he jumps to sit down on your bed before demanding to visit a friend who was with their owner, you half listen, too busy painting your nails and kicking your feet in concentration.

mid rant you push the nail polish to his face and say "paint my nails first then ill think about it"

and he does so with a red face.

'first few monthd'

you were pretty sure you were speaking their language so why the hell was this human just staring off into space while drool escaping its mouth. you recoil in disgust and start regretting your decision a bit.

it took you a lot of patience and time to figure out what he likes, you ended up spending a lot of coin on the human for him to at least look at you with stupid big eyes.

you had to spoon feed luka unless you wanted him to starve to death, he couldnt sleep or change properly without you there glaring at him before reluctantly helping him.

you suppose it was okay, if he relied on you too much that would mean he couldn't really leave you, you were in charge.

'.....' though you wished he was a bit more vocal, you thought about it for a long time, if he didnt have the brain capacity to say a nice thank you maybe he could sing for you.

so he did. you bought him whatever you deemed necessary, and he sometimes mentioned another small thing and u gave it to him.

'a few years later'

you dont know why he wanted to sing for anyone else other than you but you allowed it. ever since you took him to see the stage in the VIP section he finally voiced out 'i want to do this' well not really but his face said it.

you get back home, a bit tired and hes tailing behind you as always. you land on the bed exhausted before flicking your hand in the air to signal him 'sing me a song'

after hes done he asks if you requested anything else, noting how tired you looked. but you just shook your head and tell him do whatever you want.

what you didnt expect him to hug you from behind. you couldnt see his face but youd assume its that blank face as always. only he knew that you were wrong.

it was face of pure adoration, a face that said 'you will never leave me' and he held tighter before saying to himself 'im in charge'

oh how you jumped around excitedly at this well behaved human! so sweet, like a cherry, they tried to have a conversation with you by asking "do you like making flower crowns?"

of course you havent who those this human think you are? but instead of saying something like that you shake your head and deny, before asking if they would teach you.

you make flower crowns with Mizi. you demanded to your guards any flowers she would ask for and bring batches of them to her before saying 'where do we start?'

shes happy at first but then you notice that she starts looking a bit sad, you ask her whats wrong and she looks at you with big eyes and says "when will i see my friends again?"

oh well with that sweet face how could you not take her to see her friends every day. and with a big smile she cheers and every day she makes new flower crowns or crafts for them.

'a few years later'

you start thinking 'maybe i spoiled her too much. maybe listening to her every request was a bad idea' as you cross your arms, on your custom designed chair in the center of the audience, the VIP section.

you stare as shes almost shot down by soldiers. you stare as shes taken away from you. you stare at the 'MISSING' message with her face plastered on it.

of course, you knew where she was. you had a tracker on all your pets. but for some reason, you let her run around. it wont be long until she realizes she wont have anyone left anymore.

it wont be long till she realizes she has no one else but you.

[iscdisc]

Little bit of a 2012 rant / tangent with this one- LMAO

I genuinely loathe the writers of this show painting Za-Naron (The Aeon that was housed inside of the crystal that April was given during Season 4-) as this "evil entity" or "evil being" when I genuinely disagree-??

It makes me sad because I feel like Za-Naron was more of a victim than the show acknowledges? My biggest reason for thinking this is because of the fact that things seemed fine / copesthetic with Za-Naron while April was still in Space. I also think it helped that they didn't stay in one place / planet for too long during the Space Arc, which could have also prevented any corruption with Za-Naron during that timeframe. But then when April returns to Earth, of course she's going to stay there permanently / for a WAY longer amount of time because that's her home. The show even states that Earth (More specifically humanity-) was the sole cause of Za-Naron's deterioration (From basically, "City At War" to "The Power Inside Her"-). Za-Naron couldn't just leave, you know-?? She was essentially powerless and helpless during this time, and was ultimately forced to be corrupted,,

I'm not saying that this was entirely April's fault, because it's not like April can control the fact that Aeons are kind of fragile to environments that don't necessarily benefit them- But I do think her attachment to the Aeon crystal and the fact that she enjoyed the power boost that she got from Za-Naron's power did play a significant part in Za-Naron's downward spiral,,

I also wish April wasn't painted as such a victim in this entire situation, personally-?? I know a lot of people like to point out that Za-Naron's corruption was the biggest reason as to why April was acting "out of character", but personally I disagree for two reasons. One, we've seen April have shitty moments before the Aeon crystal was given to her in Season 4 (Not that the show necessarily likes to acknowledge them as bad moments from her- 🙄). So it's not like she's entirely innocent or incapable of having these types of reactions / bad attitudes, not to mention the fact that it rarely gets addressed by her friends at all (And if we're being speculative I personally think she knows that they don't call her out on anything-?? That's why I personally think it was so easy for her to keep the crystal despite everyone pretty much acknowledging that it was bad for her, because when she tells them to leave her alone, they actually listen. But let this be any other character than April and they would've forcefully taken that crystal away post haste, dude. 💀). And two, April's still human at the end of the day- I feel like she should've been allowed to be an asshole and it not be because of some outside influence-? I think this would have been a great way to stray away from this "perfect / flawless" persona that they like to associate with her character so badly. April should be allowed to have moments where she acts out and does things that are messed up simply because she's having an immature moment / she's clearly still is growing as a person. Just like everyone else.

That's what's super upsetting about this entire Aeon crystal Arc with April for me, because I feel like instead of these writers painting April as a victim (yet again) of an alien possessing her / it being a, "There was nothing she could have done- Oh no ! Poor April ! 😢" type of scenario, this Arc should have been about her having a really terrible moment as a character and growing from it / truly taking accountability and solving the issue herself. I think this should have been about her feeling weak and growing attached to the power and competence she gained from Za-Naron / Za-Naron's power. This would have made sense?? Not only could this have been a good callback to April during Season 2 when she was expressing frustration with the Turtles always helping her during combat (i.e. "The Kraang Conspiracy"-), but we also had this issue be revisited in the same Season with "City At War" and her feeling incompetent / not where she wants to be yet again (Which "City At War" this is a whole other can of worms, because I hate this episode too. They could have done so many things differently, and I don't know why they chose to do this episode the way that they did- 💀).

I guess to summarize, I think April should've properly owned up to the fact that she did mess up as well in this situation (Because I know Za-Naron was not entirely innocent and her way of thinking wasn't okay, but I'm not surprised by that given that she's an ancient alien species and probably has a very straightforward / tunnel vision kind of logic-) and Za-Naron maybe should have been sent back to Space / her home planet to recover from such a traumatic incident. Or something. 👍 Lmao

[poppitron360]

@cometmoons so for some reason tumblr has glitched and isn’t letting me respond to the ask you sent me so I’m just gonna do it like this.

OK OK OK OK OK OK SO-

There is SO MUCH to talk about with Wouldn’t You Like. I feel like it’s hard to describe on a written post so I took the liberty of downloading a music notation app and transcribing the bits I wanted to talk about (This took me aaaages. But it was a really fun process and taught me a lot.)

Be warned this is a LONG post.

Firstly, here’s my overall take on the narrative of this song:

Odysseus is one of the smartest heroes of Greek Myth. He’s a mentee of Athena. He’s tactical. Yes, he is a fighter, but he’s for the most part a strategist and he uses diplomacy and cunning and his words to defeat his foes. Big Slytherin energy. Up until this point, that’s all he’s ever used. Eurylochus has doubted and challenged this approach, and has now come to him, saying that Circe is too powerful to defeat and that they should just run away. Odysseus “Pride is my fatal flaw” of Ithaca is insisting on fighting Circe, but is realising that he might not be able to talk his way out of it.

Hermes has now shown up like “hey ✨dAhLiNg✨how about you try something different? DRUGS!”, offering him a taste of something he’s never had before… power.

This, in my opinion, is a big step in Odysseus’ fall from man into monster, and Jay uses music in so many different ways to convey that, so let’s start with a break down of the song one section at a time:

Intro:

For most of the song, you’ve got the Lyre/Harp playing- Hemes’ signature instrument, which is significant to him because according to myth he invented the Lyre. This is the first thing we hear in the song, immediately setting up the things you need to identify his character.

Harps and Lyres are typically used in film and videogame music to give a mystical, magical atmosphere. I love how Jay blends modern (1980s) Synthpop with more classical, eclectic instruments that don’t normally fit the style. I’m assuming for budgeting reasons he’s using a VST or some kind of sample pack and not a real harp (session musicians are EXPENSIVE), but still- you hardly ever hear a harp in this kind of music but it WORKS.

The introduction played by the harp also lays out something that is shown throughout the whole song:

AEOLIAN MODE!!!!

Modes are hard to explain bc I barely understand them myself (I said music theory was my special interest, not that I was any good at it) but according to the Wikepedia article I’m reading about them right now, they were used a lot in ANCIENT GREECE. The Aeolian mode specifically was used a lot back then. The word “Aeolian” comes from… you guessed it- the Islands of Aeolus!!!

Aeolus, being the God of the wind- Aeolian mode is this mystical, free-flowing mode that simulates the feeling of wind.

You know when you hear a high wind through a telegraph pole you get this whistling sound? That’s basically a rudimentary, naturally occurring Aeolian Harp. There’s a whole Physics lecture about sound frequencies and microtones and shit in here that I am not yet qualified to give but this kind of stuff FASCINATES me about music.

I found this 60sec short that explains Aeolian mode really well from a channel I really like: https://youtu.be/bJ6TRQ3k45Q?si=sksSz4xyf_96uMrp It’ll give a much more concise explanation than I could, but basically all you need to know is that the melodies are in this special scale.

Aeolian mode is the natural minor scale. It’s often used to feel spooky and mystical- perfect for a song like Wouldn’t You Like where this magical character is singing about a magical plant. It’s not the standard G minor scale, but something a little more twisted and not really something we’re used to hearing, giving it a mysterious quality.

This is established immediately by the harpline, and sets the entire tone of the song. We then hear his trademark giggle, and so in the first 3 seconds we know everything we need to know about who Hermes is and what he’s like.

Speaking of the giggle- I briefly mentioned Panning in my post about Scylla, and while I can’t discern any use of it just by listening, but I imagine Jay’s probably used a subtle amount of it to give the sense of Hermes flying overhead.

Panning is a thing done in audio production where you can choose how much of the sound is heard on the left or the right.

Verse 1 (“I must say”… etc.):

It’s very gentle at this point, the orchestration and vocalisation is calm and lilted. It’s very beautiful, although the minor tonality gives it a slightly uneasy feel. (Often the minor key is described as sounding “sad”, but that’s not always the case. This is a great example).

The harp melody is repetitive, giving a sense of persistence, this adds to the sense of unease. It also has elements of hip-hop, as a gentle beat comes in as the chorus starts.

Chorus 1:

Now the harp cuts out and you’ve got that synth bass-line coming in- the repetitive, insistent beats and this “four-on-the-floor” drum pattern where the bass drum (which sits on the floor) kicks on every beat (in a four-beat bar). This feeling of it almost pounding in your head on every thump.

The instrumentation is very stark, you’ve just got the vocalist, the bass, and the bass drum. This technique is used by Taylor Swift in both the songs “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Vigilante Shit”- this really makes you listen to the lyrics as there’s nothing distracting you. As this is the first time we’re hearing these words, it draws you into what he’s saying.

On the line “Wouldn’t you like to have some of the magic?”, the Lyre comes in, playing this repetitive line that goes up and down and up and down. It’s a repetitive, almost hypnotic sound.

Verse 2 (“She can turn you to an animal”… etc.):

This is when this bluesy piano comes in.

The piano is used a lot in different points of Epic- it’s an essential part of any musical orchestra pit or just a song in general, and crucial in every composers instrumentation arsenal (and was also the first instrument I ever learned to play and my first real taste of music, so it’s not like I’m biased or anything)- but it’s mostly associated with Athena as it’s her signature instrument. It’s a stretch, but my interpretation is that Hermes is trying to appeal to something familiar to Odysseus. So far the only God he’s interacted with at length is Athena, who taught him this idea of being strategic and tactical. Hermes is acknowledging that this is Odysseus’ main way of fighting, while also showing him that there could be something more to it.

The piano plays these low-octave chords in this syncopated rhythm, which adds a layer of intensity that you didn’t have in verse one. This continues into the second chorus.

Chorus 2:

The orchestration is much more intense, pulling the audience (and Odysseus) in.

I’m gonna talk a lot about the musical “language” that Jorge has established for the universe- bits of music theory he’s tied in with themes that don’t necessarily have the same connotations anywhere else, because I think it’s genius.

Jay has said that the mythical beings (Gods, monsters, Odysseus when he kills the suitors) are all able to summon non-diagetic backing vocalists to back them up. Interestingly, Hermes doesn’t use this the first time round, speaking to Ody on his level, and is now rising up and displaying the power he’s tempting him with.

This is when we first hear the backing vocalists. There’s now a group of voices, so there’s more people urging you to taste the flower. Musically speaking, the harmony moving in the same rhythm with the same words as the soloist creates a sense of movement, congruent with Ody’s temptation.

Here is where we get to how this harmony works. This is the section that will actually answer your question.

First of all, I also struggle with overstimulation so I totally get what you’re talking about. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do backing vocals, and I know from experience that writing harmonies as complex as this takes skill and practice.

I think that’s why music is so special to me. The sensory calm certain sounds and songs give me, the good kind of stimulation and the bad kind. It has always made me so curious as to why and how the choices made in music can impact a person psychologically, make the listener feel immersed in a story, inflict specific emotions.

This is what fascinates me about music theory. Yes, it should overwhelm you. Yes, it should sound wrong. But it doesn’t. It WORKS. And what’s so interesting to me is why.

Jorge describes it as “crunchy and punchy” which is honestly perfect.

He is of course, referring to dissonance.

I have been studying music most of my life, and pretty much every music teacher I’ve ever had describes dissonance as just “sounding smushy”. It’s actually “a lack of harmony among musical notes”, usually two notes next to each other played at the same time.

But why does this sound “crunchy” and not “smushy”?

The Melody remains modal, as it has done the entire song. This is our grounding, our “Home”, but the harmony does something different. It’s moving down and up, flowing like wind, like the sea. And it’s doing this chromatically- using notes from the G minor key instead of the Aeolian mode- which creates clashes. Also known as dissonance. Also known as “smushy”.

And this is where we break out the good ol’ notation! I transcribed this myself by ear, so it might not be perfect. I can sight read tablature but not sheet music, so if this is wildly off then I’m sorry. I find it easier to explain music through annotations, but in order to make this screenreader accessible, I’m just gonna cite the lyrics and explain it in the text underneath.

In this section, “Wouldn’t you like to have some of the magic? Wouldn’t you like your outcome preferred?” The melody pretty much remains on C this whole time, only changing at the end of each two-bar phrase. This gives a forceful, repetitive, driving feeling. Hermes is being very persistent here.

For the first two-bar phrase- “Wouldn’t you like to have some of the magic”- both harmonies are the same. They then split at “Wouldn’t you like your outcome preferred?”

“Wouldn’t you”- The harmony starts on G, which is the root of G minor (the key that we are in). This is diatonic (using the notes from the key)- so it sounds nice, not “smushy”.

“Like to”- We then go down to F sharp, which is dissonant to the Aeolian mode, even though it’s the major 7th of G minor. This is why it sounds “smushy”

“Have some of the”- And here is where the “crunchiness” kicks in. It’s resolving down to the flattened 7th, which is F natural. The flattened 7th is the modal note.

“Magic”- The first two-bar phrase ends in E natural, which is dissonant to the mode. The melody also ends in D, which provides a lot of dissonance with the E as they are right next to each other, which can create clashes.

“Wouldn’t you”- This is where the two harmonies split. Harmony 1 goes back to G, which is the root of the mode. Harmony 2 goes down to E flat, which is also consonant (not dissonant).

“Like your”- Harmony 2 goes down to D, which is dissonant with the note in the melody (C) because they are next to each other. Harmony 1 goes to F sharp, which is dissonant to the Aeolian mode, as said before.

“Outcome”- Harmony 1 resolves to an F, and Harmony 2 goes back to an E flat.

“Preferred”- The last two notes “smush” as F natural (Harmony 1) and E natural (Harmony 2) are a semitone apart, then both harmonies join at E natural, which clashes with the D in the melody.

So the pattern goes from “nice” to “smush” to “nice” to “smush” to “nice” to “smush” to “nice” to “even more smush” and then when the next part of the harmony starts “deep in the night” you resolve back to the G, which is the tonic note.

Why does the dissonance work in this song?

It’s passing. Going down by step and resolving to a modal note. Passing notes that resolve don’t have that smushyness. They crunch.

Dissonance is a funny thing. Often musicians stay away from it because it sounds muddy and awkward and not great, but it can at times sound quite sweet, and with skill and knowledge you can learn how to use it effectively.

It also works here because it fits with the aesthetic and Hermes’ character. We’re already in this spooky, mysterious mode. We’re in a minor key. And Jay is using all these other musical techniques to give a slightly uneasy, hypnotic feel. The dissonance feels strange- not the sweet, diatonic harmonies we’re used to hearing. This is what makes this song stand out, and what makes Hermes such an intriguing and appealing character.

There’s this “up and down” melodic pattern that occurs throughout the song in several places. While Harmony 2 is doing that, Harmony 1 is just going down, repeatedly. I find it interesting that Odysseus isn’t rising to this power, but falling to it. It hints at Hermes’ trickster nature. These musical motifs (harmony, the harpline, the synthline, etc.) go up and down and up and down and up and down like gentle waves. We’re on the ocean. It’s lulling, compelling, hypnotic. “Come hither” whispering in the ear. It’s creepy, to be honest, and shows a darker side of the song that I will talk about later.

Bridge (“Here in the root of this flower”…etc):

Jorge has talked about how this is one of his favourite bits to sing, and musically that makes perfect sense.

Firstly, you’ve gotta hand it to Troy Doherty’s amazing performance. Hermes is so expressive even without seeing him.

Quick note about vocal techniques- YOU CAN HEAR SMILES. The act of smiling changes the shape of your mouth and thus changes the quality of your voice. You can HEAR Troy break out into a smile on the line “Though it’s only for a moment, ‘til you’ve beaten your opponent”. This is also my theory as to why the line “Penelope Whyyyy, you know I’m too shyy” is so stuck in everyone’s mind. Try singing it without smiling and then try singing it while smiling. Do you think it would’ve been that catchy if Jay wasn’t such a cutie pie?

Smiling is contagious, even if you’re only subconsciously noticing it. Hearing a smile gives you that little hit of dopamine.

When we hit the bridge, the piano, bass, and backing vocals cut out. Again, it’s just drums, harp, and lead vocals. This signifies a new section of music and also does the same trick as before- drawing you into the vocalist- but this time making you focus on the melody instead of the lyrics.

This whole bit is solely in Aeolian mode. The downward motion of the bridge increases the intensity of the song, dragging you into his words, falling into the power of the root. It’s sort of a callback to the downward motion to the second harmony line.

The constant quaver rhythm of this rising and falling conjunct “stepwise” melody gives a spiralling feeling, leading downwards. The rhythm is almost conversational, which fits with a mode like Aeolian that flows like the wind. It’s also why it’s so catchy and fun to sing. I love how Jorge composes in this uncommon scale in this particular pattern to reflect this idea.

There’s also one particular detail about the rhythm of this riff that compositionally shows something even deeper:

THIS IS IN TRIPLETS.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT TRIPLETS SYMBOLISE IN EPIC???

RUTHLESSNESS.

Ruthlessness is usually a theme reserved for Poseidon, Act 1 Athena, and Act 2 Odysseus. You wouldn’t expect a “friendly” God like Hermes to be using it. But he is. He’s being persistent, constant. He is trying every trick in his bag to persuade Ody to take the flower.

Jay is VERY deliberate about his arrangements and his composition, so this is not a coincidence. He has established this “language” of musical voices, rhythmical voices, and motivic voices to symbolise all his characters and themes. It’s fascinating to me that he made this choice for Hermes. Ever so subtly hinting that the God might not be as benevolent as he seems.

Chorus 3:

The instrumentation of this new chorus is pretty similar to Chorus 2, except…

These DRUMS.

I asked my dad about these while I was staying with my parents over the Xmas holidays, and it resulted in a 5-minuite-long infodump about a specific type of drum used in 80s pop music (yeah I totally definitely don’t see the family resemblance at all /sarcasm). Any Brit in the audience might recognise this drum sound as sounding almost identical the intro to a show called East Enders (which I never watched, but was aware of) and idk if that was Jay’s intention, but the drums apparently have a long and complicated history, which I will give you the abbreviated version. (If this is too much information you can skip the next paragraph if you so wish, I realise this can be overwhelming)

Bass drum called the Simmons’ drum- electronic drum pad- famous for being hexagonal- they were radical in that they gave an electronic palette to modern dummers- they weren’t well-built and the very earliest ones were made from the same composite materials as police riot gear- caused repetitive strain injury that became known by session drummers as “Simmon’s wrist” because it was a bit like using your drumsticks on concrete (What’s that? You don’t think music is as intense as sport? Musicians get injured just as much as footballers do)- the sound is one of the most distinctive sounds in 80s music and entirely synthetic, generated through synthesis so some poor technician had to sit and programme a synthesiser to sound like a tom-tom- in the 90s and early 00s it was seen as cheap and over-the-top but is now looked on with a sense of love and nostalgia.

This is, of course, a sample of the Simmon’s drum as I doubt Jorge owns a real one.

So what does that do for Hermes? It grounds the song it its 80s retro aesthetic, creating Hermes’ unique stylistic voice. Jorge has described how he got the idea for Hermes’ sound when he saw a retro, multi-coloured lamp that made him think of 80s music. Each character in Epic has their own soundscape, and this very particular drum sound adds to it.

It also adds intensity to this final chorus. These loud, heavy drum sounds give that adrenaline rush that the previous verses and choruses have been building to, when Odysseus finally takes the flower.

Then we get Odysseus singing the “oOOOooOoOOhHHHhs” as he eats the holy moly, then the chorus ends, and we get a repeat of the harpline from the intro as he thanks Hermes for the help.

My conclusion:

Odysseus has made a Faustian pact with Hermes, the trickster god. While Hermes’s words are friendly with no ill-intent, the composition and orchestration lean more towards this idea of “making a deal with the devil”. Gods know the game, and how it’s played. You, mere mortal, do not. When they entreat mortals to do their bidding will offer riches, money, fame, success, magic, power, but very rarely are their motives sound.

This is Odysseus’ first taste of the magic that separates gods and monsters from mortals. He is able to fight Circe as an equal, and this new development teaches him that he doesn’t always have to be strategic and diplomatic, but ruthless and relentless as well.

I know that the fandom see Troy Doherty’s performance of Hermes as “omg babygirl so slayyyy!!!” But there’s actually a deeper level to what he’s doing here. He’s a trickster God, tempting and teasing Odysseus down a path of magic and power- giving him the first taste of something that will later drive him into becoming the Monster. Hermes is almost seducing him to the dark side, using rhetorical questions, waving the Holy Moly in front of his face and saying “Come on. You know you want it. Wouldn’t you like a taste of the power? Wouldn’t you like to be victorious for once?” In his lyrics describing a “taste” of the power being something almost like a temptation. Odysseus is breaking from his norm- using magic and might instead of logic, diplomacy and reasoning. While he’s doing it to save his men, this is a major step in his descent into monsterhood, and it’s fascinating how Jay does this not only lyrically, but musically as well, using what’s called “word painting” (music and words working together) to create the sense of hypnotism and manipulation.

Hermes is being:

Ruthless (triplets),

Ceaseless (repetition),

Persuasive (rhetorical questions),

And hypnotic (lilting, lulling melody).

He’s drawing you in, forcing you to listen to him (stark instrumentation focusing on the vocals, then increasing the instrumentation as the intensity progressively increases, culminating in this big, expressive final chorus with this pwerful drum sound)

Overall Jorge uses all these techniques to show Hermes manipulating Odysseus into taking the flower. By subconsciously making you feel the temptation that Ody- the Narrator- is feeling through music and orchestration.

So anyway, those are my thoughts on “Wouldn’t you like”. I didn’t even have time to talk about “Dangerous”- perhaps I’ll make a separate post about that but no promises. Thank you so much for reading if you made it to the end!