I made Jack dense when it comes to sexual stuff because I didn't want to write a pervy protag character since I grew up with a lot of shounen series I was into occasionally having them and they always threw me off some.
I also just love it when characters are oblivious to sexual stuff while their partners are flirts.
I don't REALLY need to give a deep and serious backstory to Jack about why he doesn't know a lot of sex stuff before he gets with Nana. And I don't want to make a super serious one since it's meant to just be a lighthearted thing since not everyone is super sexually active or has an interest in it.
Right now, as it stands in my head, Jack is new to sex and thinking sexually because he just never experienced it growing up and didn't find it that important tbh.
He typically was too busy with helping on the farm or adventuring the small area outside the farm he was allow to free roam. So Jack never got to experience any deeper relationships. HONESTLY, before Beanstalked started, Jack didn't have any friends growing up. HUMAN friends I mean. He got along super well with animals and Malt was his childhood friend but when it came to humans, he always struck out since other kids viewed him as weird. So romantic relationships were never an option for him.
Around when puberty kicked in, his mom probably tried to explain the changes he was going through...and then she just had to resort to giving him books she checked out from the small town library.
Books Jack probably didn't read because his attention span was shit growing up so he got distracted and would just procrastinate or just not think about the changes he was going through.
So being a grown adult now and being in a sexually active relationship is a whole new world to him. EVEN ROMANCE IS NEW TO HIM. All he knew about it before getting with Nana is what he learned from books, his mom's stories about his father, and other people's own experiences (typically older farmers that had been married for years).
BASICALLY this farm boy figured he didn't have anything to worry about because he didn't think there would be any romance in his future so he just neglected learning more about intimate stuff. ONLY for him to be wrong because he fell hard for a wolf girl he met one day and somehow managed to get her to like him back and now he's going through sex ed in real time.
Nana doesn't mind though - she has a lot of patience for her boyfriend and understands where he's coming from. She also had no romance experience growing up but she had better resources for learning. There are def some things she didn't know before she got with Jack that she knows now.
THEY ARE BASICALLY FILLING IN THE GAPS OF EACH OTHER'S KNOWLEDGE!
It's just that Jack has even more gaps to fill than Nana because lad was too busy drawing in his sketchbook all day.
Bitterbat: We should makeout to the point if someone took a spit swab from your mouth for DNA testing, I would pop up in the results
Sweetheart: Batty it is 3 am in the morning
Bitterbat: That gives us plenty of time to start-
Sweetheart: If you don't move your horny ass back to YOUR SIDE OF THE BED
Sweetheart: that shit might work in Umbra with your tall ass default heights but on Earth you are a 6'6 ft grown man who I just witnessed chuck a semi into a hero because he winked at me
Sweetheart trying to talk to Shannon (news reporter she often gets interviewed by) but Bitterbat is tied up off screen from the aftermath of their battle and he won't stop blowing smoke hearts at her
They keep floating in frame and hitting her in the side of her head and she is trying to be normal
Shannon: Should we move from this spot or--
Sweetheart: NO-no, we're fine here. He'll stay relatively behaved if I'm still within his eyesight
Bitterbat: 🥺 *whines*
Shannon: He looks like he's about to cry
Sweetheart: Don't make eye contact - he thrives from pity
Bitterbrat (aka when Bitterbat was a kid) is when he did the most shitty things to Sweetheart. Like straight up kidnapping her (because he wanted her attention) or biting her hard enough to draw blood (since it's normal play for young Monstrums), threatening to kill her friends or destroy the city (because he was a very jealous and territorial kiddo), etc. All def stemmed from Lord Vile's teaching ofc.
Sweetheart eventually tamed his ass and he dropped all that over the course of becoming a teen. And now, as an adult, he cringes when he remembers all the shit he did. If Sweetheart brings it up in a playful manner, he can't help but feel guilty over it all.
A key fact I forget to go into when it comes to Jack and Nana's relationship is that for a good bit of canon time, Nana lives with her mom in the Lupine forest while Jack lives in Briar Patch.
Nana's mom doesn't like Jack so he can't visit her at home as often as he'd like...so he sneaks in 👀
Nana has a big af tree outside her window and she's aware of how good a climber Jack is. He can scale them bad boys in seconds.
So, she winds up helping Jack sneak into her bedroom whenever she knows her mom isn't home or when it's late at night and she's asleep.
Typically, their time in Nana's room is spent just hanging out and talking or cuddling.
Ofc they do get into more steamy stuff but typically the farm boy comes with pure intentions and Nana occasionally corrupts those motivations whenever she's in the mood to
They haven't been caught yet by her mother but they have def had some close calls, especially in cases when Jack spends the night
Farm boy has been buried under pillows and covers so many times because Nana's mom suddenly popped in to check on her
I want her to hear him growl when he goes Slayer and connect the dots that it IS possible for him to make Lupine-esque noises since his growling DOES genuinely sound like an animal's.
The voice lessons would be very cute, especially when Nana has to guide him on where to purr and trill from via cupping his chin in one hand to tilt his head up some as she trails a finger from the middle of his chest up to where the underside of his jaw meets his throat with the simple direction of "Purr from the chest, baby" in her low voice.
Jack will be GONE but he'll subconsciously manage a little rumble out, which will make Nana happy because it's progress.
I will start this off by saying that this ain't a dig at people cracking "HAHA MAGICAL GIRL WITH A GUN" jokes at Sweetheart.
I totally get it. Sweetheart being a magical girl with a gun is funny just because of the different energies both of those seemingly contrasting things got. Initially that's why I gave her a gun as a weapon, just because of how strong of an image it is.
This is just a deeper ramble about how I view her having a firearm as her Charm weapon because I put myself into character's shoes sometimes. Which means her wielding a gun is a lot less funny than it initially used to be.
Sweetheart has to be more tuned in to how she handles that thing. Her gun can shoot nonlethal energy bullets but it can also fire genuine lethal rounds like a real gun can. Typically, she sticks to her energy rounds when she battles Vents because they're enough to take them out without harming anyone around or trapped inside them. But when things get more serious and she switches to lethal bullets, she has to be way more cautious in case there's civilians around that haven't evacuated yet.
Her handling guns means she gets especially mad when people have bad trigger discipline. If someone is waving a loaded one around, she gets pissed. If someone is showing their gun off but their finger is on the trigger and not resting on the side, she gets frustrated.
She gets clowned on by non-American heroes because she is viewed as "The Most American Magical Girl!". She fulfills that stereotype of us being gun crazy. HELL she gets shit sometimes in America because she's a black magical girl who has a gun. She's gotten more than couple derogatory "Gangster"s and "Ghetto"s tossed her way.
Sweetheart likes her Pitter-Patter pistol but sometimes she sees the joy other Charms bring when they pull out their staffs and wands and other cutesy weapons and feels envious. When she whips out her Pitter-Patter pistol, she sees the visible change in everyone around her and how they get more nervous. She notes how people become more aware of every movement she makes and tense up when she turns in their direction.
Sweetheart is very aware of how thin the line is between being a hero and being a threat the moment that gun is summoned into her hand. And the best she can really do in that moment is ham up her magical girl shtick, even more than some other Charms do, because she needs to show she isn't a threat.
And sadly, acting more sweet just digs an even deeper hole for herself and how squeaky clean she has to keep her public image.
I very much wanna have Bitterbat pick up bits and pieces of how Sweetheart talks (because he loves her and loves absorbing her into his being) but I want to do it in small little ways as instead of how people horrifically butcher AAVE.
The best example right now in comic is this panel
Bitterbat before Sweetheart would have said "Doesn't mean I won't beat your ass" but because of Sweetheart's influence, he says "Doesn't meant you're safe from this ass whoopin'"
It's not overly obnoxious and is subtle enough, which is how I imagine Sweetheart's influence on him talking is like
Bitterbat is such an unexpectedly complicated character when it comes to people asking and making assumptions about him because he isn't afraid of getting violent but because I made him so open to murder - many people believe he solves ALL his problems through killing someone.
Bitterbat is the embodiment of the "find out" in the "Fuck around" equation.
He doesn't JUST have murder up his sleeve, his toxic gas is capable of many things and death is just ONE potential side effect. At the time of me posting this, all the smoked Monstrum you see in comic are alive
They are traumatized, of course, because he uses a special fear gas that is absolutely HORRIFYING due to it causing the people who inhale it to see their worse nightmares which is why I keep drawing them crying and whimpering in limp heaps on the ground.
But none of them are dead.
Bitterbat is a threatening character because he doesn't just kill. He gets a reading on his opponents to determine the best strategy to handle them - which means you can't predict what he'll do to you.
All that is certain is that you will have lasting scars from it - either mentally or physically.
Sweetheart, while walking down the halls of the Decking City Defense Squad's building, receiving a text from Bitterbat along the lines of "Just checking in on you, beautiful~💜" and her responding back with a "I'm doing great, thanks handsome 🩷" and seconds after she presses send - she realizes the mistake she's made by matching his energy because the minute she turns a corner and starts to walk past a random storage closet, she hears a faint poof from inside, followed by a hand with a spiked bracelet grabbing her by the back bow and yanking her inside.
Jack's slayer instinct means he naturally has a need to confront potential danger and powerful beings because it's a defense mechanism that helped monster slayers in the past.
Nana's Lupine instincts means she naturally portrays herself as intimidating and threatening. Lupines have developed this so potential threats hesitate to challenge them. Many often just avoid Lupines all together.
So when you mix the two together like Jack and Nana's relationship, you wind up with a similar thing to where some male species of spiders see a female spider that obviously can and will kill them but the need to mate out weighs self preservation so the little guys always risk it.
This means that anytime Nana is scary or frightening, Jack's brain naturally goes wild and his need to smother her in loving outweighs that typical fight or flight people have.
I just got jumped by the concept of a dumb event happening in the early days of Jack and Nana getting to know each other in general (just recently becoming friends basically)
One day there's some situation where he stumbles across what he thinks to be some cute woodland animal whose tail is peeking out from a bush or from behind a tree or even just from under some blankets and he immediately is like "Oh a cute little creature!" and tries to call it over in various ways. Like making the "pspsps" sound or using baby talk and saying "It's okay to come out little guy, I'm not gonna hurt ya'" and even offering to "give it a treat" as he crouches down and holds out whatever he has on hand (a cinnamon roll or some random snack).
And Nana winds up coming out instead.
And it turns out said short fluffy little tail was hers and she just turns around and has a farm boy on his knees in front of her and she is confused but mildly entertained.
And for one of the first times she cracks a smirk and tilts her head to the side before responding "So what's the treat you were gonna give me?"
And Jack turns 10 different shades of red as his body temperature rises to a number rivaling the sun and he just lets out a pathetic ass squeak before literally turning heel and fleeing to wherever Nana isn't (most likely a tree) and marinate in his embarrassment.
Pinokuni finds him hiding later and asks why his face is so red and Jack just tells him he doesn't wanna talk about it.
Later on, when Jack thinks he's safe and has calmed down somewhat, Nana 100% finds him and pokes some fun at him with a "I'm still waiting on that treat you promised me" and Jack chokes on air.
Jack's slayer instinct means he naturally has a need to confront potential danger and powerful beings because it's a defense mechanism that helped monster slayers in the past.
Nana's Lupine instincts means she naturally portrays herself as intimidating and threatening. Lupines have developed this so potential threats hesitate to challenge them. Many often just avoid Lupines all together.
So when you mix the two together like Jack and Nana's relationship, you wind up with a similar thing to where some male species of spiders see a female spider that obviously can and will kill them but the need to mate out weighs self preservation so the little guys always risk it.
This means that anytime Nana is scary or frightening, Jack's brain naturally goes wild and his need to smother her in loving outweighs that typical fight or flight people have.
I know it's a thing for characters with stronger partners to point to someone and tell their partner to beat them up or something along those lines but Jack ain't one of those types.
He constantly treats Nana like she doesn't have super strength and isn't basically a walking threat. And I don't meant he patronizes her or acts like she is fragile and can break at any second.
Jack views her as his girlfriend, because that's who she is. She isn't a dangerous person, she is the love of his life and the best cuddle partner he could ask for.
Anyone she decides to beat up or scare is because she wants to. Often he winds up telling her someone did something mean just as part of a conversation or explanation for why he's a little scuffed up and the next thing he knows--Nana is marching in said person's direction after getting a whiff of their scent off Jack.
And the reason he doesn't come to Nana to fight people for him isn't any gross "I don't want a girl fighting for me" or any potential injured pride stuff--it's just that he doesn't want to bug Nana with his problems.
Of course, Nana isn't going to let her farm boy act like he has to support the world on his shoulders when she is right there with more than enough strength to help him.
So whenever Nana lends a hand, Jack is always grateful for the help. He doesn't get mad that she got involved because it's a relief sometimes to have someone be the "he asked for no pickles" in his life. The most of an objection she gets is him telling her she didn't have to do something. And she always tells him she wanted to because it's very much true.
Nana can tell Jack is a good guy so whenever people screw with him, she is more than willing to hunt them down and make them feel sorry or apologize to Jack's face.
The concept of Nova confessing to Pluto on the phone hits different.
Especially if they are out on a hit and they get the call from her and they pick up to hear her saying she loves them for the first time. It'd def be one of the rare few times there's pure shock and surprise on their face as they listen to her ramble on and on while her voice breaks some because "It's so hard to say I Love You for the first time again" since she is still healing from the scars of her past relationship and this is the most vulnerable she's allowed herself to be with someone.
Pluto telling her they love her in the softest tone she's ever heard that causes her heart to skip a beat.
Nova squeaking as they call her name because she went silent so she squeaks, blurts out a "I'll talk to you late 'kay bye" and immediately hangs up, leaving Pluto to let out a laugh. Not a chuckle for once but a genuine joyful laugh as they realize their favorite person ever, the one they've been in love with since they set eyes on them, finally feels the same way about them