Eiiri's Workshop

Translations - Very welcome, including into languages for which a translation is already available (different translators bring different flare to the art)! I prefer, but do not require, that translations of my writing be posted in a login-protected way, such as archive-locked on Ao3. I'm happy to answer clarifying questions from translators when, inevitably, English doesn't map neatly onto other languages, if that would be helpful. Do not publish machine translation as your own work.

Podfics - Very welcome, including of fics which a podfic is already available! (Like above, different narrators or casts bring their own flare!) I prefer, but do not require, that podfic of my writing be posted in a login-protected way, such as archive-locked on Ao3. I'm happy to answer clarifying questions for things like pronunciation of OCs' names.

Podfics in Translation - Go for it! Same caveats as above. If you are not the translator, please check with the translator before podficing their work. Do not use machine translation.

Fanart - Yes please! Including NSFW art! I'm happy to answer clarifying questions or provide references if I have them. Absolutely no machine generated "AI" images.

Fan Comics - Absolutely! Including NSFW ones! I'm happy to answer clarifying questions or provide references if I have them. Absolutely no machine generated "AI" images.

Fic of Fic - Generally welcome, but I prefer you check with me first, just in case. This includes fic of OCs from my fics, alternate POV versions of scenes or fics, "meanwhile elsewhere" type stories set during my fic, "what if" or plot divergences of my fics, and so on. I'm unlikely to tell you no, but depending on how I feel about the story you're choosing to tell, I may choose not to link to yours from mine or reblog it on tumblr. "Same story rewritten 1-for-1 with different characters" type """remixes""" are not welcome.

Use of OCs - Broadly welcome! If you want one or more of my OCs to make an appearance in your fic of the same media, go for it! Just credit the character to me in an author's note. If they're going to be a central character in your story, then that's fic of fic and the set of permissions for that above applies. If you want to bring them into unrelated media, that feels a little weird to me, and I encourage you to create your own OC instead. I'm happy to answer clarifying questions or provide additional info about OCs if that would be helpful.

Fanbinding - Very welcome! Please only share non-editable typeset files (such as PDFs) with other fans. Please only handbind my fanworks (no printing service). Please let me know if you're planning to bind one of my fics so I have half a chance of doing an additional proofread before you download the text.

Music Orchestration and Recording - Very welcome! This includes both music inspired by my work, and renditions of the songs/poems that appear in some of my stories.

Cosplay, Other Garment/Accessory Creation - Very welcome! This includes cosplay of OCs, cosplay of canon characters in specific outfits from my stories, and recreation of such outfits for reasons other than cosplay. If you post photos showing the cosplay or garment patterns, etc, please credit to the story the outfit is from or, in the case of OC cosplays, credit to me more broadly if they appear in multiple stories.

Other forms of Fanwork - When it comes to anything not specifically covered here, the general rule is that things representing elements of my work are welcome, things transforming my work (in ways similar to fic of fic) I ask that you check with me. If you're not sure, please ask!

The next day, Elio marched determinedly up to the bar where Husk and Alastor were comparing calendars over a bottle of rye, clambered up to perch himself on a stool, and smacked a pack of cards on the bartop. “Want win.”

“Yeah?” Husk picked up the pack, getting the cards out to shuffle. “Whatcha wanna play, bud?”

“He didn’t say he wants to play,” Alastor pointed out with a canny grin, “he wants to win.” Conspiratorially, Alastor leaned down to stage-whisper to Elio, “To which end, mo garçon, I would recommend challenging someone other than two out of the three most proficient card players in the hotel.”

Elio frowned thoughtfully, little ears tipping back, then held a demanding hand out to Husk, gesturing with another for him to give the cards back. 

Husk did as requested, Elio glared at the scoreboard for a long moment, hopped down off his stool, and strode away across the lobby, hollering for Charlie. 

Once he was gone, Husk’s gaze slid back over to Alastor with a smirk. “Two of the three, huh?”

“Oh, hush, Husker,” he huffed. 

“Formally conceded your spot to Sasha, then?”

“Only temporarily. She and I have a rematch scheduled for Saturday. On which note—” he tapped at Husk’s planner with his own pen “—how does your Friday morning look?”

“Depends on when the delivery for the bar gets here.”

With a hum of consideration and a dramatic loll of his head, Alastor looked down at the ivories.  “I think six hands is quite enough for one keyboard, my dears.”

“Donchu know how to play any other instruments?” Sasha asked, cocking her head in the same direction.

“Harmonica, banjo, recorder, and—very poory—upright bass,” Alastor answered automatically.

“If you kinda suck at bass,” Lucia said thoughtfully, looking to her sister, “and we kinda suck at piano, why don’t you play that, and we can all kinda suck together so’s maybe we’ll suck less tomorrow?”

Alastor blinked twice and shoved himself away from the piano with a shrug.  “Well, I can’t argue with that logic!”

He conjured a somewhat garishly red-stained bass for himself in an alarmingly large plume of emerald flame.

When Angel got home, he found himself greeted by the discordant hootenanny of several people trying to play the same song on instruments they didn’t really know how to play.

“What’ve we got goin’ on in here?” he asked, half laughing, over the noise.

Everyone stopped playing, not all at quite the same time—the twins still at the piano, Alastor with his bass, Husk with a saxophone, Charlie with a violin she was currently holding as a fiddle, Cherri with an electric guitar Angel had seen before but not in several years, Vaggie with a fucking harp of all things, Niffty with some kind of pan flute, and Elio with a harmonica he was chewing on more than playing.

“We’re having a jam session!” the twins announced proudly.

“Specifically on instruments we’re not terribly well practiced at,” Alastor added.

Husk leveled a playful smirk at Angel.  “Haven’t you mentioned being put in band class?”

“Yeah, for one semester!” Angel laughed.  “Like a century ago!”

“Aw, c’mon!” Cherri goaded.  “What’d you play?”

“Trombone,” Angel admitted, still laughing.

“A perfect addition to our ensemble!” Alastor declared.

“I don’t have one!” Angel objected without any real ardency.

Alastor’s ever-present grin widened as he conjured a trombone to hand.  “Now you do.”

“I have had a grand total of two drinks all night,” Husk countered, “and I don’t have a habit of eating pedestrians because they looked at me too long when I’m drunk.”

Alastor flicked an ear and lounged back against the bar, mic staff cradled in the crook of the elbow he was leaning on. 

The “miserable excuse for a blues band” finished their set, the dancers accompanying the live music collected what tips hadn’t made it into their clothes yet, and the emcee took to his own mic to remind patrons to fill out their Battle Ballots and introduce the next act, an all-female five-piece who, judging by the slinkiness of their dresses, were very aware of what audience they were playing to. 

Not that Alastor much cared about the depth of cleavage on display, but he did find their playing more appealing, too.

After the last band of the night finished, the dancers kept the audience occupied for a couple pre-recorded songs while Diamond and Sheffield—matched set snow white and jet black bunny girl and boy—went around collecting up ballots as though they were cash. 

The emcee took to the mic again, this time to introduce Angel to announce the results. He was dressed to the nines in a black sequined bodysuit with ruffles on the butt, gloves and boots to match—beautiful, but to the eyes of those who knew him best, drawn a little ragged at the edges from the long day of filming he’d come straight to the club from. He covered the exhaustion with a showman’s megawatt smile that could be rivaled only by Alastor’s own and vamped through the entire process of revealing each band’s scores—audience votes, special judges’ points, and dancers’ tips collected during each set all calculated together by some formula Husk had concocted. 

“That makes our winners, goin’ home tonight with new audio equipment generously donated by Alastor the Radio Demon, an’ appearin’ with me on his show next week,” Angel simpered dramatically as he turned over the last card on the scoreboard, “the Pentacle Princesses! I’d say, with that name, ya oughta ask Charlie to join ya but that would ruin the pun a ya bein’ a five-piece,” he said over the applause. “Get on up here ladies an’ take another bow!”

Back stage, as the remaining dregs of the crowd were herded out by security and cleanup began, Husk herded Alastor along with an outstretched wing, ushering without touching, towards the spangly sprawl of spider spread across two chairs in the office. 

“Schatz, are you up for cuddles?” Husk asked, pulling the door closed. 

“I’d fuckin’ love some cuddles,” Angel said without so much as lifting his head. 

“Great—have some drunk deer.” 

“I am not that drunk,” Alastor grumbled, batting away Husk’s hand nudging him forward. Nonetheless, he plopped himself next to Angel and faceplanted directly into his chest fluff. 

“Yeah, yeah, sure, except I saw your shadow fuckin’ melting across the bar playin’ with the condensation rings.” Husk crossed his arms.  “Angel, have you eaten?”

Angel shook his head.  “All I got in my system is nicotine, jizz, a couple ice pops, an’ a granola bar Orla threw at me when I got here.”

Husk sighed.  “Well, gimme a few minutes to get things buttoned up here, then how’s Chinese takeout sound?”

Angel gave a thumbs up then let his hand fall to the top of Alastor’s head, flattening his ears.

“I want shrimp rangoons,” Alastor mumbled, muffled, into Angel’s fluff.

That fabric lay like a blanket over Alastor where he lounged comfortably across a sofa near the fire, one hand holing the book he was reading, the other occupying itself by twirling the stubborn cowlick curl in the front of his son’s hair where Elio had fallen asleep in his lap some half hour ago.  At the table, pens scribbled and a borrowed typewriter occasionally dinged as Lucia and Sasha worked on a project they had decided would be way cooler if completed entirely in analogue—a decision which, when told to Husk, had prompted him to look over at Alastor and say, “Yeah, these are your kids.”

He’d pretended, melodramatically, to be offended by that assessment.

The tickity-tapping of Sasha’s typing stopped.  “Hey, Awa?”

“Mm?” Alastor acknowledged, letting his shadow turn the page of his book for him so he didn’t have to stop playing with Elio’s hair.

“What’d you call the thing how me and Daddy don’t really pronounce our R’s at the end a words?”

“You have non-rhotic accents,” Alastor answered.  “As does Cherri.”

“Thanks.”  She resumed typing.

Lucia leaned over to peer curiously at her sister’s page.

A flashbang burst of light from outside shook the hotel with the sound of the sky being rent apart, atom from atom, made the girls jump, Alastor’s ears flatten, and Elio startle awake, clutching at Alastor’s shirt as all the lights went out.

Alastor took a deep breath, exhaled, and vanished his book in a little pop of verdant sparks so he could use both hands to gently but insistently pry Elio’s sharp-clawed grip loose. “This is not the first time the hotel has been struck by lightning,” Alastor said with haughty calm, his shadow stretching completely the wrong direction towards the fire, now the only source of light in the room, to twiddle the radio knobs, bringing it back to warmly glowing life and turning the music up to better cover the sounds of the storm.  “Nor, I’m sure, will it be the last.”

“Well, I guess we’re done with homework,” Lucia said brightly.  “Can’t write in the dark.”

Elio shot her a skeptical look then glanced pointedly at the fire.

“We have night vis—”

Lucia clamped a hand over her sister’s mouth, then quickly pulled it away again.  “Don’t fuckin’ lick me!”

“You really brought that one on yourself, cher,” Alastor noted, conjuring a lantern to hand and nudging Elio the rest of the way out of his lap so he could sit up. “But your sister is right that we all see quite well in the dark, and,” he lit the lantern with a snap of his fingers, holding it up to illuminate his own puckish grin, “you did say you wanted to go all analogue with this project.”

Already he had enough of a reputation that he got wary looks from the few patrons lingering in the lobby and the lanky soot tag of a coat check girl and that was quite gratifying in a way, but not quite the high he was seeking just now. The music was just a little old fashioned for Alastor’s taste—not bad, just a bit tame—but he knew how to dance for it, so he snagged himself a partner in the form of a stony-scaled thing with Regency curls and twirled her around the floor until a nearby squawk of boisterous laughter made him flinch but then turn, recognition and intrigue swiveling his ears forward as he abandoned his dance partner. 

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said, shouldering unceremoniously past a demon with an unreasonable number of eyes, “I should have expected you would be too.”

Mimzy looked around and blinked at him several times. “Alastor?” She planted her hands on her hips. “What the fuck are you doin’ down here already?”