#symphony meta

prior to chapter 22, it’s intentionally written for leo to come across as romantically interested in viola-chan. viola-chan, who is second only to leo when it comes to reading nonverbal cues, actually does a pretty good job of sussing out that this isn’t really the case. other people (donnie, april, etc) think that leo has a crush, but viola-chan is pretty adamant that no, they’re just friends.

then, in chapter 22, we have the reveal that actually, all those actions were leo weaponizing donnie’s feelings for viola-chan in an attempt to bridge the gap between him and his brother. leo had been hiding his true feelings for viola-chan, which were hatred and envy. (i point again to cleric’s breakdown above for those moments as she captured them quite well.)

over time, as he got to know viola-chan, however, those feelings faded. it wasn’t perfect; he probably would have gotten to a more genuine relationship with her had he not smelled where donna was scenting viola-chan at the end of chapter 10, something that is erotic and requires a lot of touching. the beginning of that conversation were, in truth, leo being truly affectionate with her. seeing the way she ached for them over krang had him feeling genuine, and he probably would have had his full heel-face-turn at that point were it not for that hug.

this is when his inner conflict really begins. he recognizes that viola-chan is a good person who helps him selflessly, who loves him, who loves his family the way he loves his family. she is a hamato. but also she is an outsider, an interloper, and he can’t stand it. the two feelings battle, and we see moments where he’s distant and moments where he feels genuine. in chapter 16, we even have him admitting to viola-chan that he’s avoiding her to “decide what it is he wants.” this is written so on a first reading you think it’s him warring with romantic feelings for her; it is in fact him warring over the fact that he doesn’t really hate her as much as he wishes he did. does he want her to go away? or does he want her to stay in his life? what is it he wants?

the answer comes for him in chapter 20, when viola-chan comes to him after the revelation with donnie. he sees the way she’s hurt, and it’s at that moment that his feelings resolve. it hurts seeing her in pain, and in fact he takes viola-chan’s side throughout the entire incident. he doesn’t go comfort donnie; he goes to comfort viola-chan. he doesn’t blame viola-chan for seeing something that wasn’t there; he blames donnie for not seeing what clearly was there.

at the time of chapter 22, i got a lot of people saying that leo could have “kept that shit to himself” and never hurt viola-chan by telling her how he hated her in the beginning. but i said then and still hold today that no, that absolutely had to happen. viola-chan told leo that her number one expectation for a good relationship was honesty, and the way he manipulated her for so long was an albatross that would have haunted him forever. as such, even though he would have rather carry that to his grave and pretend he was always team viola, we see the events of chapter 22.

the rest of the fic until 41 shows leo and viola-chan becoming real friends. he learns how to respect her boundaries, she learns to forgive and let herself heal from such a painful emotional wound.

and then chapter 41 happens, and we have the reveal that bad future symphony!leo not only had romantic feelings for his viola-chan, but he acted on them in a way that led to her death. you will notice that i used the exact same words in chapter 41 (leading to the eventual reveal that bfs!leo had romantic feelings for viola-chan) as the ones in chapter 20 (leading to the reveal that s!leo had negative feelings for viola-chan). i did this on purpose; by invoking the same words, i purposefully planted the seed of doubt, both in viola-chan’s mind and in yours. bsf!leo and s!leo said the exact same thing. are their feelings the same? then again in chapter 41 and chapter 44 i do it again. (“You keep me grounded. Always do. It feels nice.”)

bfs!leo 100% had romantic feelings for viola-chan. in fact, i think he fell for her very early on, but he didn’t act on those feelings because of the time not quite being right, and later because he could see that she was melting through bfs!donnie’s cold shell. he only kissed her in a moment of desperation and lapsed judgment, smelling the pregnancy, feeling like she was slipping out of his grasp. i think he felt a little like she was his, as i imagine he was the one that brought her into the resistance, the one who got her on her feet, the one who drank tea with her and listened to music with her and had vulnerable conversations with her. she was something to him that nobody else was, and he hated the way he couldn’t be that for her.

as for s!leo…. i think he does have romantic feelings for viola-chan. i look at chapter 20 as the moment where things changed for him, perhaps with him realizing that the angry rage in his chest at his brother wasn’t just because he hurt his friend’s feeling, but because he had what leo wanted and threw it away. that part of the reason he couldn’t keep hating viola-chan was because, little by little, he was developing feelings for her. slowly, against his will, but veritably. in my mind, he really accepts this in chapter 29, when he has the conversation with viola-chan after hugging donnie here:

…in my mind, when he presses his forehead to viola-chan’s, he thinks about it. leaning in and kissing her, putting those romantic feelings forward. but also, he knows donnie loves viola-chan, and he knows viola-chan loves donnie. he says here that he’d wait for her friendship forever. in my ear, i hear him saying he would wait for her forever.

so yeah, at the end of the fic, i think symphony!leo is very much in love with viola-chan. but nothing will ever come of it, because he would never act on it in a way to interfere with donnie/viola-chan, and with that relationship resolved they are 100% end game, grow old together levels of devoted. i think leo probably thinks about it, sometimes, when he’s alone in his room, and he never, ever refers to viola-chan as his sister—just “family.” but he’s also satisfied with how things are and he doesn’t resent or envy anymore, and is content.

it is true that donnie gets mildly annoyed by the yokai who is flirting with viola-chan. but it's kind of in a mild manner, because viola-chan is very clearly not interested, and donnie's like. yeah this fucker's not in her league, i ain't worried.

however. that's not the only thing that happens in this chapter.

remember this? specifically at this point, leo knows that donnie is watching you from the sideline. to try and make his brother jealous, he flutters his fingers against you--something that a red-eared slider does when they're indicating a willingness to mate. donnie knows this. leo knows donnie knows this. donnie knows leo knows that donnie knows this. i think in his mind, leo was trying to get donnie to come over and do something. the "gonna kill him" donnie says later is about leo, not the other yokai.

also, by this point in the evening, donnie is no longer sober. he wasn't thinking straight. jealousy and alcohol made him act without really being logical about it. immediately afterwards he expresses shock that he did something "like that" and it's viola-chan who convinces him it's okay.

also also, this is around the time when donnie is picking up that something is different about viola-chan. in the next chapter, we see him pouring over spreadsheets, and then immediately when he sees viola-chan he says "oh i was just thinking about you." on a second read, you're meant to think "oh shit those are The Spreadsheets." the fridge logic here of course being that hm. donnie fingers viola-chan while drunk. sobers up. then spends the next day going. oh. that was. out of character. why did i do that? (why did i do that? why did i do that? i wanted to. why? why? i want to do it again. no one else can do that to her. just me. is it something i want to do with someone else? no. why?)

see, here's the thing. someone once made a comment about viola-chan falling first, and donnie harder. and i responded "who said she fell first?" we see later in the fic where donnie tells viola-chan this:

he knew later what he didn't in the moment. that he was jealous because his brother was signaling he wanted to fuck his crush. he grabbed viola-chan and had his way with her in the bedroom because he wanted her to smell only of him and to make sure those fluttering fingers didn't mean anything. he says that he should start moving on to touching other people, but he wants to keep touching viola-chan. he has romantic feelings, he just didn't have the words for it, partially because of his neurodivergence, partially because this was his first romantic relationship, partially because of intoxication. you're his. he knows he feels that way. he just... doesn't really know what that means yet.

something we see later that frustrates him a lot, because, holy shit, how did he not know.

i'll just add a little personal note here, because i modeled donnie's autism off of my own. as someone who has been on dates and had people get upset with me later because i didn't reciprocate in an expected manner because i didn't really pick up on what was happening, it really sucks--for both people. and you do look back on it and think "wow holy shit how did you not know that was a romantic thing. how did you not see that this was obviously someone feeling blah." in the moment you just. don't see it that way. only hindsight and a lot of introspection gets you to the place where you're like. lmao you really are a fucking idiot huh. it's an awful feeling that makes you want to withdraw and just. not try again.

1. the nape scene

in my veeeeeery first author note(ch. 1) i mentioned that viola-chan canonically has hair long enough that it needs to be tied up. this goes against my usual policy of not mentioning what kind of hair a reader character has to expand inclusivity, but i changed it for viola-chan because i had a vision of donnie coming up behind you while youre putting your hair up and whispering into your nape that every time you did this, it haunted him and made him feel funny. that scene is in this chapter!!

2. “you have soft hands”

throughout the fic, donnie has always told you he loves the feeling of your hands on him. this is because he has always loved them. how soft they are, how they move, how they make him feel. the “soft hands” from the summary is a metaphorical thing (a post for later if the people want), but it’s also a literal thing. ive been wanting a fic where he caresses your hands and tells you since before a word of this fic existed!

3. hashtag official

first, a clarification: when you refer to “leo’s one-sided feelings” being romantic in the fic it depends on which leo youre talking about.

bad future symphony!leo canonically was in love with his viola-chan.

symphony!leo is not canonically in love with his viola-chan.

s!leo’s canon feelings for viola-chan are that of envy (up until about chapter 19), then friendship (chapter 20+). his feelings being romantic in nature or not are intentionally left ambiguous. whether there’s more to it or not is for interpretation, and i’ve put breadcrumbs throughout for both a platonic and a romantic read of the text. have fun and debate that shit to the ground!

both of these were my plan from the beginning. if you look at early discussions with casey, he is explicitly uncomfortable with the idea of viola-chan getting “too close” to leo. this is because he knows how future!viola-chan died, and how bfs!leo felt about his viola-chan. he also kind of drops the ball and mentions bfs!leo’s feelings a bit (which was done for two reasons: one, to act as a red herring and make you think s!leo feels romantic feelings for viola-chan, and two, to reveal that bfs!leo did indeed have those feelings). i also use dialogue from the early part of the fic to set up parallel conversations. bfs!leo and s!leo say the same things…… but also not. they come from a different place, both literally and figuratively.

i personally think that s!leo is in love with viola-chan, but again, that’s not explicit in the text and therefore not canon. there won’t be a canon b-sides of leo pining. i may write it for fun, but that would be a separate thing.

hopefully that clears that up. as for the question of me always writing a romantic leo, that certainly isn’t the case. i actually don’t really like love triangles! if it is a donnie only fic, it will have donnie having feelings and no one else, and vice versa for leo fics. i’m a hopeless romantic who wants the pining to be reciprocated and resolved at the end.

so i'm not sure if you're asking specifically about the blurple symphony au or symphony itself. i'll point to both just in case.

for the symphony canon, i kind of already talked about the moment in this ask here. donnie going through old recordings, noting that something's up, and then attaching the word to it once he hears it from you. there's... more to it than that, which will be specifically discussed in the next couple of chapters, but that's the gist of it.

"the" blurple symphony au as it happened in the first half of the fic (the one you're probably talking about) is something that is so different from the rest of the canon fic that it's kind of hard to think of it as the same entity at this point. things would happen very differently, to the point that i haven't really thought about it. i think donnie would get really jealous as you and leo get together, but he isn't sure if it's because you get to touch leo (something he really wants) or because leo gets to touch you (something he really wants). i think it would be a lot more of a slow burn, because he doesn't have that same. hm. freedom to have the "oh shit" moment that we see with the spoon scene in symphony canon. or if he does, at this point he's like. well you're dating leo, he missed his moment, so, too bad. eventually you and leo would notice that something's up, have a discussion, and i think after a looooot of conversation he would finally admit it and then it would work itself out.

any blurple symphony au moments that i conceive of at this point i think would be their own individual spin offs, kind of like. hmm. the blurple symphony multiverse, LMAO. for example, in chapter 29, in the leo make up scene, for shits and giggles i wrote a few paragraphs where leo kisses you instead of pressing his forehead to yours. boom, a blurple symphony au was born where that was the beginning of the relationship. then again in chapter 30, i wrote a little blurb just for fun where leo fucks you on the couch. another blurple multiverse born.