Six Months Ago, When The Protagonist Had First Appeared In The Middle Of The Villains Compound, Scrawny

Six months ago, when the protagonist had first appeared in the middle of the villain’s compound, scrawny and half feral, the villain hadn’t thought much of it.

And then it happened again.

And again.

The villain thought something of it.

“Let me work with you,” they had begged. The villain was almost certain the protagonist was homeless. “Please, I have powers, I can—”

The villain said yes.

Maybe it had been whatever remnants were left of the villain’s stupid heart. Maybe it was the chocolate donut they had that morning. Maybe it was the desperation coming off the protagonist in waves.

Maybe they were just bored.

They paid it no mind.

The protagonist did have powers, but they were minor. The kind you see in small children, the first in a bloodline to mutate powers. Their great grand children would wield enough power to level buildings, be heroes and villains and everything in between. But for now, they sat in preschool classrooms and summoned the tiniest spark of flame.

The protagonist, trembling like a fawn, sweat slicking their brow, seemed to be one of those children. Albeit an older version.

Not useless, exactly. They had a startling affinity for picking locks—which explained the ability to get into the villain’s compound—a willingness to fight anyone, and a lack of fear. But they weren’t exactly the most useful sidekick the villain could have picked.

The villain wouldn’t trade them for anyone else, though.

Their stupid, half dead heart, it seemed, cared for the protagonist.

So, when the hero set out to kill the protagonist, the villain knew they would do anything to keep them safe.

They caught the hero’s hand, twisting to shove them backwards a step, and they felt rather than saw the protagonist wince.

“Violent today, aren’t we?”

The hero was seething, and it unsettled something in the villain. The hero was unstable, yes. But the villain had never seen them try to kill someone before; they hadn’t even considered the hero might try.

They dodged another blow, the hero’s power blasting apart a building behind them. Their spine prickled, and they dropped to avoid the next hit.

“Just itching to go to prison for homicide, hm?”

When the hero didn’t even attempt to respond to their half-assed banter, the villain’s gut roiled.

“Protagonist,” they said between breaths. “Leave. Now.”

“No.”

They managed to throw the hero to the ground, risking a glance at the protagonist. They were covered in dust, supersuit dirty and torn across one calf, but their feet remained planted, shoulders set. “You heard me. Go back to the compound—“

The protagonist’s eyes widened, and the villain knew they had turned away for too long.

The villain went down hard, ears ringing, as the hero shook out their fist.

“Stop it,” the protagonist’s voice cracked. They took a step forward, wavering like they weren’t sure if they should run or fight.

“Go,” the villain coughed, and the protagonist flinched. They rolled onto their back, struggling to stand as the hero’s power flickered dangerously.

The villain knew, innately, that the next hit would kill them.

The villain sucked in a painful breath.

The hero lunged.

And the protagonist, voice wrecked with fear, screamed, “Dad.”

The villain’s heart stuttered.

There was a flash of light.

In front of them, panting for air like they would never get enough, was the protagonist. The hero’s fist was planted against their chest still, and the villain could tell it had been a death blow. Anyone, even the villain, wouldn’t have survived.

And yet—

The protagonist stood, unharmed.

“Dad,” they said again, and the hero didn’t quite flinch, but it was close. “Stop.”

The silence was deafening.

Something in the hero’s jaw tightened.

“Move,” the hero said lowly. The protagonist didn’t falter.

“No.”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

“What exactly will you do to me if I don’t listen,” the protagonist gave a sharp laugh. “Hit me? You tried that already.”

The hero sucked in a breath.

“I am your—“

“You are my nothing,” the protagonist corrected. “Certainly not my father. You lost that right when I was eight.”

The villain managed to push themselves to their feet.

“That was stupid,” the villain murmured, but it didn’t have any heat to it. “You couldn’t have known that would work. You had no idea if you could survive a hit like that.”

The protagonist very pointedly did not turn around, shoulders tense.

“I did,” their voice was strained. “He lost the right to fatherhood when I was eight, remember?”

The hero didn’t say anything, but the villain thought that might have been shame creeping its way across their face.

Oh.

Oh.

The hero—

The villain had been harboring the child of the most powerful being on the planet for six months. A child the hero had tried to kill, or at the very least, hurt.

Their heart stuttered.

They had been harboring the most powerful being on the planet, their mind corrected. A drop of blood slid its way down their spine. Power grew with every generation, and with the hero already so powerful, any child they had would be something close to a god.

“You said you had mild telekinesis,” the villain said numbly. The protagonist half turned to look over their shoulder, eyes shiny.

“My mom,” the protagonist. “I got it from her. The rest…”

From the hero.

The protagonist scanned the villain’s face.

They were searching for signs of violence, the villain realized. The protagonist wasn’t afraid of the hero anymore; no, the protagonist had seen the worst they could do. But somehow, the protagonist had begun to care for the villain. And they were terrified the villain—the person they trusted the most—was going to hurt them over a secret. The villain could see it all, scrawled across the protagonist’s face clear as day.

The villain was going to kill the hero. Painfully.

“Protagonist,” the villain kept their voice even. Gentle. Slow. “I’m not mad. And I’m not going to hurt you.” Their eyes slipped past to the protagonist to the hero.

“Him, however, I will be.”

The protagonist worried their lip between their teeth, and the villain watched as their power—their true power—sparked along their shoulder blades.

The villain stepped forwards—

“Don’t,” it was little more than a whisper.

The villain stopped.

The protagonist slid in front of the villain once more. “Just,” they raised a hand, as if taking a moment to choose their next words. “Stay.”

The villain stayed.

When the protagonist’s attention turned back to the hero, it was bloodthirsty. It spoke of war, and hatred, and revenge.

“You’re going to leave,” the protagonist’s voice was sharp enough to cut skin. “And you aren’t going to come back. I don’t care if it’s because you don’t want to, or because you know that if you do, I will kill you and I’ll like it—you won’t come back.”

The hero swallowed.

“The city needs me.”

“You are a plague to this city, and I am ridding it of you. Get. Out.”

The hero stumbled a step backwards, as if they had been hit. Their expression twisted.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” the protagonist seethed.

They all knew the protagonist meant it.

The hero was halfway down the block, news vans and reporters scrambling their way onto the scene with cameras raised, when the protagonist called after them.

“Oh, and Dad?” The cameras snapped to them, and the protagonist grinned. It was vicious—it looked like the villain’s. “Parents who abuse their children don’t get to be heroes. Especially not you.”

They waited a beat, two, three.

The press exploded.

Above the din, power crackling around them, the protagonist mouthed two words.

“I win.”

Hey!! How is your Thursday treating you? Very well I hope. I saw your writing advise and I was wondering if you could give me some pointers. I know your probably busy so answer this on your time. My story’s setting is a very high end posh all girls boarding school. My main character’s family has major and integral ties to the school unknown to her since she was basically raised by her mothers parents (her father is the son of the headmaster) and the school is funded by the “government”. All the parents say that there child had loved the school and curriculum, only every girl that walked out of the school changed. Their behavior, their thoughts, their morals…all changed. They became more isolated and more withdrawn. I say this because the school actually trains the young girls to be assassins. They believe cultivating young minds is crucial. The facade of the school is well done so much so that admission is a long and tedious process. They start recruiting slow. They have a group of young girls who have been through the process scout out for young girls they think would make a good fit. It’s the setting and overall feeling I’m having trouble writing. The school at first should seem like a dream. The school is set in this wonderful eighteen century like building with beautiful grounds and various rooms and various chambers. The new students board in a different wing than the young girls who are in training. It’s all very hush hush. I want it to be scary, riveting, keep you on your toes. What are some techniques you use to write unsettling atmospheres?? I want it to be unsettling. Like you know somethings wrong but you can’t put your finger on it. It’s dark and mysterious and fearful. The teachers are in on it as well. So i it gives “lamb to the slaughter vibes”. The girls who are part of the training and are the leaders are mean and cruel, they like to scare the recruits, make life hell for them. They’ve gone through a lot of trauma and are emotionally broken. Do you have any advice for writing the girls? I want them to come of menacing, but also have a odd sense of sympathy and pity for the girls. Because they know first hand how it will be. This project is proving harder to write 😂😂 I was about to give up on the whole thing but I figured I would ask my favorite author for help first. ❤️

Thank you for the ask, you’re very sweet!

For writing unsettling atmospheres, I normally rely a lot on subtlety, especially when the main character is in the dark.

For example, one of the short stories I wrote ended with the main character getting her identity stolen by a fae. I hinted at it all throughout, but I put it into the characters own thoughts—how the other girl’s laugh sounded like hers, how the other girls hair was the same color as hers but it was better somehow. Going through it, it gives childish envy, but on a second read, it becomes more clear that the fae was slowly transforming to look more and more like the MC.

Along with that, don’t draw attention to unnecessary things to make it seem more unsettling, because that doesn’t feel natural. State something that’s slightly off or unsettling, and leave it. People will think about the implications naturally. Why is that door locked? Why don’t we go on the second floor? Where did the girl from the first week of classes go too, since we can’t go home?

When thinking about the setting you described, with an older house you can make a lot of assumptions about what’s happening. People’s first reaction is never “bloodstain” it’s normally mud, or tea, or paint. So have your character notice some strange staining on the wall outside one of her rooms, and bring it up to a teacher/supervisor, completely innocently, like mentioning they think there’s a water leak. Have the supervisor draw the silence out, make it feel uncomfortable, like she thinks she did something wrong, and then have them dismiss it with a “I’ll have to fix that.”

Leaky roof? Sure. Is it under the training rooms and one of the baseboards leaked blood down the inner wall? We’ll find out, won’t we?

Silence freaks people out, but so does the abrupt change from sound to silence. Make information change on a whim. The character thought this is what the supervisor said, but everyone says she’s wrong—when the information did change, just in order to keep the peace. I think a lot of the unsettling atmosphere will come from subtle environment factors—blood stains and locked doors and a wall around the school to keep the horses in, but the protagonist hasn’t actually seen any horses yet….

Now, for the girls. They can be BIG contributors to the unsettling factor. But you have to decide how you want them involved. Are they mean to the new girls because they’re jealous of their innocence? Are they mean because they’re trying to provoke them into leaving the school before it’s too late? To have them have that kind of “menacing” aura, then any subsequent sympathy or pity will also be a bit gruffer. It sounds like they’re mean partly because that’s one of their only pieces of freedom they have, but also because they’re jealous. I hope I’m making sense, but if I’m not, here’s kind of a snippet my brain spat at me regarding your questions.

She had watched as they demonstrated knife throwing aptly, because scared as she was, she wanted to do it right.

She had listened to all of their advice, sharp tongued as it was, and studied the way the older girls fingers danced along the blades.

She had always been good at learning this kind of stuff by sight, so she had double checked her hand position, and threw.

And promptly sliced the palm of her hand clean open.

She didn’t even have the thought to gasp at the pain as she watched the blood begin to well. Her cheeks went red as one of the older girls snapped her gaze over, fixating on her bleeding palm.

She wasn’t supposed to screw up, she was supposed to be proving herself—

The older girls hands closed around her wrist with a startlingly efficiency, stretching her fingers out to view the wound. When she winced, the girl shushed her, half harsh and half distracted as she eyed the wound.

She just barely kept up as the older girl dragged her into the bathroom, rummaging in a cupboard for a box of bandages.

“Be quiet,” the older girl snapped as she opened her mouth, eyes dark. “I’m fixing your hand right now because you messed up. This is the only time you get to do this.”

She could only watch as the older girl wrapped a bandage through her fingers and around her wrist, leaving her capable of movement and still covered fully. She wondered how many times you had to get an injury like that to learn how to bandage it so well.

“Listen to me,” the older girl hissed. “I helped you this once, and it won’t happen again. You don’t get to make mistakes; we don’t get to make mistakes. So either you don’t make them, or you learn to hide them, do you understand me?”

She nodded, just once.

“This school has a 100% graduation rate.” The older girl’s eyes bore into hers. “And they will never let that change, so don’t try.”

The older girl left her in the bathroom, clutching her aching and bandaged hand, wondering just how many of the stains on the sink were blood.

I hope this helps!

Do you prefer yellow or green?

Yellow when it’s that golden color because it feels like love and smells like home, Green when it’s that deep dark color because it reminds me of secrets and childhood.

I prefer green a lot because it’s a soothing color and I’m loud, though

Hello! (Alternatively titled, send me writing requests please!)

Ok I have been absent for like….a long while, which is partly the fault of the education system. Mostly the fault of it, honestly.

Anyways.

I’ve hit spring break, so I have two weeks of freedom, and that means writing (oh my god, writing). Naturally I have more free time, but I also have several 7 hour plane rides to contend with, and I have this extreme compulsion to write when on airplanes. My notes app will never know peace.

So, to anyone reading this who feels so inclined, please send me writing requests I beg of you (no writing advice asks right now please, I cannot do critical thinking)

Heroes villains sidekicks protag and antag, literally anything. I always enjoy writing asks!

Thank you!

hey i recently found your work and love your writing. Can you write something about a supervillain dad and a hero son??

“Hands up,” the super villain motioned with his gun, face impassive. The hero swallowed as he complied.

“You won’t shoot me,” the hero said, but it was too hesitant to come out as confident as he wanted it to.

His dad raised a brow. “Won’t I?”

The hero sucked in a breath. Held it in for three. Out for three.

“Do it, then.” He was proud of how steady his voice was. “Shoot your only kid.”

“You say that like being my child means something.”

“If it didn’t, I’d be dead already, dad.”

His father’s face was weary, but the gun didn’t lower.

“I’ve let you have your heroics. I’ve been very generous, actually. Do you know how many plans you’ve fucked up? Plans I gave permission for?” The hero didn’t respond. “It ends, now.”

The hero steeled himself.

“No.”

His dad lowered the gun, but he suspected it was more out of surprise than anything else.

“No?”

“No,” the hero repeated more firmly. “You heard me. I know you did.”

“I heard you,” his dad agreed. “I was giving you the chance to change your answer.”

The hero grit his jaw, shoulders set.

“It won’t change.”

His father sighed, rubbing a hand over his brow.

“Why must you make things so difficult?”

“I’m sorry my morals are getting in the way of your hobbies,” he snarled. “Here, let me move out of the way of your most recent murder attempt.”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” his father snapped. “Have you forgotten that you’re my most recent murder attempt?”

“How could I?” He scoffed. “Kind of hard to ignore my father’s attempts on my life.”

“And yet you still insist on playing hero—”

“Because it is the right thing to do,” the hero interrupted, hands clenched. “And I will never stop trying to do the right thing so long as you are doing all the wrong ones.”

His father looked like he didn’t have a clue what to say to that.

They sat in silence.

“Does family mean nothing to you?” His father said finally.

“Family is not an excuse for bloodlust.”

“Your mother—”

“Do not.” His gaze darkened, and his father shifted uncomfortably. “She is not a scapegoat for your actions.”

“She died—”

“And how many mothers have you killed trying to soothe the pain of her death?”

His father lowered the gun.

“I will not let my son continue to play hero. It is a sign of weakness, to have you out here undermining me. I won’t tolerate it.”

He realized, then, that there was only path out of this moment. There was one solution. One chance.

“Whoever you are, you are not my father.” The blow struck true. His father flinched. “And if that’s the case, if the choice is being your son or being a hero, then here’s your answer.”

Power began to crackle up his arms, reflected in his father eyes.

“It’s a shame, dad,” the hero said, eyes glinting. “You lost your only son, and you didn’t even have to kill him to do it.”

The supervillain paused, for a second, just one, pain flashing across his face, before he raised the gun once more.

This time, the supervillain didn’t hesitate before he fired. Didn’t bother to watch if the hero got out of the way in time.

The supervillain would never kill his son.

But if his son—the hero. But if the hero had decided he would rather be dead than family?

Well, who was the supervillain to deny him that?

Cuddle, an intense cuddle scene in the dark grotesque hallway filled with soft sobs, until its the villain flinching from the same dull fuzzy ache in very core of their heart, their skin feeling tingles against the warm of the cozy couch and flurry blanket wrapped around them with the hero sound and softy breathing in their arms. Their small hands cluched on the material of the loose shirt in their smol fist.

Now this is so wrong because they were just suppose to return the favour in time when they need. They almost lost the hope with a heavy longing heart to be ever to see hero again, but here they are giving in with their plead to, "...just hold me for once...hold me tight..." with their heart crumbling like cookie in their pious hand.

Actual ask:I always write promts of unfolding scene, lol. Can u do a quick monologue from villain while cuddles.

I craved reading the energy ur dailogue fumes with. Finally finding ur a/c here was like discovering a new nirvana. Congratulations on having just another supporter *flashing u my best giddy smiles* lol

The hero was sound asleep in their lap, and the villain was panicking, just a little. Not panicking exactly—their schedule wasn’t exactly conducive to panic attacks—but they were….frazzled. Yes, that was a good word for it.

They shifted slightly and the hero mumbled their displeasure. The villain froze, because what were they supposed to—they carded their hand through the hero’s hair as soothingly as they could. The hero quieted, hand clutching into the villain’s shirt.

The villain sighed with relief.

The hero looked exhausted. The kind of exhausted you find in hospital rooms and gas stations at 2am. Maybe that was why, when the hero had sobbed, “Can you just—hold me, for a second, I just—“ the villain had let the hero collapse into their arms.

The villain, selfishly, was glad they were asleep.

The hero needed the rest, sure, but mostly the villain had just wanted the hero to stop crying. They didn’t know how to handle that. They weren’t a gentle person, someone who knew the correct words at the correct moments; but the hero was. And the hero deserved the same kind of comfort in return, so the last time this had happened, the villain had tried their best.

The last time, the hero, crying and bloody and entirely a mess, looked at them, said their name in a collapsed hallway, and the villain had—not panicked, because they didn’t do that—become increasingly frazzled.

And then the hero had been in their arms, and they were sitting on the ground, because the villain had hugged them.

The villain was an idiot.

They swore it wouldn’t happen again, because it couldn’t. The hero could never be their friend, and the villain could never be theirs.

It happened again.

It was happening now.

And the villain, secretly, was glad the hero was asleep, because they just wanted this moment, this forbidden thing, to last. Because if the hero saw the villain’s face right now, the hero would know that the villain cared.

The villain couldn’t care. They weren’t allowed to.

But desperately, they did.

For now, they simply brushed the hero’s hair back. Held them tighter, resting their chin on the top of the hero’s head. They let themself have this stolen, forbidden, soft thing.

Because they knew, when the hero woke up, it would be gone.

So, they listened to the hero’s breathing, and selfishly, hopelessly, let themselves care.