It tugs, sometimes. Curious and foolish.
That traitorous heart mana of his, reaching out, drawing in, seeking connection in the way that's in their blood, their soul, their nature. Synchronicity.
Rei's not known it, before.
Where other demons might be attuned to family, Rei has no one to claim the spot. So, his heart mana sings, unblemished, its lonely little sonata, the song of his homeland. All there is to him, granted by air and earth and starlight.
He has so much to give, and yet, it isn't good enough. Discordant, they say. Human, they snarl, disgust evident in their tones.
Thus, growing up Rei learns to compose himself. Pushes himself to the brink in order to rewrite his heartbeat's melody. Puts himself out there, gets stronger, richer in experience, whenever he draws back. Over and over and over again.
Until one day, pushing himself past reason, he almost doesn't return.
But while he hasn't been looking, a new melody has taken residence by his side. Soft and steady high notes, barely perceptible.
Morofushi Hiromitsu, faded, yet giving himself so generously.
Rei hears him, takes him in and amplifies the notes he's given, until others may do so, too. Until Hiro may do it himself.
Their hearts mana, separate but inseparable, resonating in response.
And Rei's called back home.
.
Rye is low notes, a deep bass, slow and steady.
He could enrich their harmony, if only he wasn't so gratingly offbeat.
Rye's unrefined and ever-contradicting himself. Cold and uncaring, yet bleeding red like the rest of them. A long-ranged combatant, always too close. The smartest fool Rei ever has had the displeasure of meeting.
He takes Rei's heart mana greedily, gives it back tenfold.
Then he takes Scotch's, and their tentative song, not yet given voice, dissolves into dissonant whispers.
.
When they meet again, Rei doesn't want to feel Akai's heart mana for the longest time.
It's too painfully familiar, echoes of the past still trapped reverberating within. Misery-in-resonance almost dusts Rei.
It's his duty to be here, and so he stays, but there's others to preoccupy himself with.
So, he remains a careful distance away from Akai. Doesn't see the muted melancholy wrapped around him until it's too late, until Akai's almost gone dark and quiet.
When he heals Akai, he pours all of his heart mana into him. Their hearts still sing the same tune, after all these years, discordant notes and all.
.
The journey is too perilous to allow them senseless grudges. Their lives are one. If either falls, the story ends.
They rely on each other's mana like air, sharing desperate breaths like drowning men in a land that wants to drag them under.
What even is left of their individual songs? It doesn't matter, anymore. They've shared so much it really is one and the same, disjointed notes smoothed out through time and touch and trial, into an elegy for Scotch.
.
As they finally reach tentative harmony, they rip themselves apart.
.
There is dissonance in Demon Lord Furuya’s heart. A furious ache that even Hiro's return can't soothe.
But he has a duty, to his land and his people. He can't stop to rest. Besides, the one to replenish his heart mana, he who's grown so good at it over the years, has left, exiled by Rei's own hand.
Akai is a fool, but so is Rei.
He clings to the thrum of Akai's low warm notes, barely an echo within himself.
.
Da capo al coda, the cyclical rhythm of life remains the same.
Rei's still not good enough.
He's bested their best. He's saved the realms. And all that matters, in the end, is that they see his heart mana, and find it lacking.
But he's no longer the lonely manaspawn he once was. His song no longer just his own.
He's holding the position through skill and strategy, through force of personality. With the help of friends and allies gathered on his journey.
They'll have to listen to his tune, this time.
.
The key, of course, is an argument.
Their feverish crescendo crashes into mellow adagio - along with their lips.
Rei knows, then: if no one else accepted him, the boundless love in Akai's heart would be enough to supply his heart mana for as long as he lives.
It's exhilarating, to share every last bit of himself, to accept all of Shuuichi in turn. Synchronized in full, for now and as long as they live.
Pulsating, between them, the potential to compose a new melody, together. Point and counterpoint. Bright and warm and vibrant and home.
.
When he takes Akai's hand, leads him to the dancefloor, the festive joy of friends and family soaking the ambient mana with joyous ringing, it's enough to put pressure even on Rei's heart mana.
He can't help thinking that this should've been so much easier. But theirs has never been the easy way.
And it's not the conclusion, but the overture to their new life, together.
The waltz of their future, a thunderous symphony.
.
@floofiestboy's Demon King Furuya AkAm AU is giving me too many feelings. Go read it here.
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cora’s bad time hell simulation steps or how to play “sprite station for girl” “harvest moon ds cute” the wrong way
(all ways are wrong this game is Accursed)
ok so here’s what my disorganized “guide” to myself for harvest moon ds for girl (aka indecipherable notes i wrote to myself as i played and revised as i tested various things and restarted due to mistakes) looks like. at some point when i become a real gamer i will write a legible guide meant for eyes to look at but uhhh this is how i play this accursed game personally
i’m not sure if anything i wrote will make any sense since i wrote it as notes to myself so probably definitely use fogu and fc2 jonason wiki (may not work but some pages should be archived) instead
ALSO if you’ve never played or barely played the game it won’t make sense at all! hmds was my first harvest moon so i am used to various horrors!
my play style is probably not fun in general HOWEVER if you are a grinding hell goblin like me then it’s GREAT!!!! if not you may still find it amusing that the game gives you permission to play like this
(it’s a great background task game while doing like productive stuff but otherwise playing this way would probably be unbearable)
(image limit)
anyway after that the days go a lot faster, you’ll get the island on summer 1, so on spring 30 i put all my money into million G tickets and sell 200 of em, do the 5x money thing, and save the rest. so when thomas comes the next day to sell you the 900 million G island you can just sell 180 tickets and do the 5x money thing again with like ~600 million G tickets left over. it takes up inventory but you’ll get the shelf in a few days. basically you just need to remember to order from the TV shopping every saturday and place orders with gotz and gray whenever they finish stuff.
random tips
after unlocking the fuckass hot spring sprites (the ones that require you to spend a total of 700 1 hour sessions in the hot springs) i usually grind grazing points— if you put your animals outside for 5 hours you get a “Love Point”, but if you interact with them after they earn that LP then the timer switches over and you can get another LP after 5 more hours. if you wear the time ring the whole time it’s 2.5 hours. i’m not very good at explaining this but basically if you’re super efficient you can get way more animal LP than you realistically should, which is great because the touch glove petting minigame is Bad!!!!
i usually wait on getting the rest of the purple sprites (the ones that require you to hire the purple team and ask for healing) until i’m totally done with the indigo team, cuz i wanna get HG’s purple heart event asap, but you can switch the order if you want
by summer y1 you’ll basically have a feel for everything. aside from Skye, Leia, HG and WP everyone can be married early-mid autumn if you want
if you want to Gay (in the japanese version only) keira is the quickest to marry. leia is the quickest to max affection but it’s impossible to get leia year 1 because the bottle you need to fish up can only be caught in spring. you have to wait until at least year 5 for WP and iirc year 6 for HG.
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god. one thing i LOVE about amir that he has no self preservation. i was thinking abt the episode GIRLS. specifically the moment where the 2 girls at the bar say amir looks better but amir is like - “um no its obviously jake ur wrong” and jake agrees…
it got me thinking…. Thinking about how much amir is willing to take for himself vs how much hes willing to go for jake, yknow? like amir gets mad sometimes when he perceives an “insult” but its not bc hes defending himself as much as he is acting out. but amir actively DEFENDS jake when it comes to some traits he doesnt even TRY to defend in himself - his looks(girls as mentioned, and subtle comments like Swag where hes like “i only hang out with the hottest guys”)… how people address jake (like in Ice Breakers, Bitcoin, jake’s sick). there are exceptions to defending jake but to me those arent really about something like jake’s personality/looks that he cant change, and more a reaction about how he treats amir (trust fall 2) or jake acting like J-Witz for other ppl (some insecure jake eps, esp the recent ones)
And for the most part he plays along with Jake being the better one of the two. Ace and Jocelyn… hes the SIDEKICK. “You consider me dumb!” In normal conversation. Going along with being the Troll Named Rod in Tiny Wings. APOLOGIZING TO JAKE IN CORDUROY PANT. In Table Read where ALL his main characters ARE JAKE…!! Small things like that. He KNOWS and WILLINGLY ACCEPTS his role as being the guy who gets beat up and looks like shit to everyone else because who CARES about their opinions when ONLY jake’s matters??
in a weird way, he’s entirely selfless. amir doesnt do things for the benefit of himself. like yeah. he has murderous tendencies. he hurts people. but all of it is either for attention (mainly to be able to tell a story to Jake), random insane urges(<3), or a form of like??? overdoing stuff which self sabotages him????? Which he’s aware of vaguely????
its just… amir holds such little value on his own appearance, life, and wellbeing to the point where he just doesn’t consider he matters. him being hurt and betrayed is another tuesday. But he would defend jake no matter what. because jake doesnt DESERVE that. and whys that? its because amir LOVES him. because amir loves jake and that CLEARLY means he deserves everything. all his self love goes to jake. even if it hurts him in the long run or makes him look dumb. yknow. because whatever. who cares. EVERYTHING hurts anyways and whats another day hurting himself??? And that fucking makes me INSANE.
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