Listening to Pon de replay and it very much makes me think of Dancer SY so here we go
Transmigrated demon SY who has no idea that he lives in PIDW because he hails from a group of minor background/npc demons that didn’t even have a set name. All they seem to do is dance, so Airplane didn’t see a need to name them.
Well this type of demon is a succubus subspecies that hails from the hotter plains of the demon realm, rarely found in the cooler (cool when compared to the human realm, MBJ’s realm is like a different league of coldness) areas of the human realm. Shen Yuan’s group migrated close to the border of the demon realm to score easy prey.
Being a succubus subspecies they can feed off of sexual energy and bodily essence but they don’t really need it to be sexual. Due to the way they’ve evolved and how much they’ve entwined dancing into their demonic culture rather than feeding off of sexual pleasure brought forth by seduction, they tend feed off of the emotions brought forth by dancing (namely joy, awe, and excitement). Because of this they tend to be kept as playthings for nobles who find their dances amusing. SY’s little group comes from the territory of an overthrown demon and after being removed from the land they opted to settle somewhere near the human realm where they could catch easy meals. Working for demon nobles was much too hard, charming some sleazy human nobles with their refined skillsets wouldn’t be too hard.
So SY’s quite young when he transmigrates which gives him the perfect excuse to be clumsy at dancing. It takes him a while to for a dancing pattern of his own and he opts to tell/act out stories (most of them from novels. He’s a reader, not a writer.)
Well because he’s a disguised-demon I’d assume that his group poses as wandering/rognue cultivators because
1.) cultivators rarely come to the small villages the group frequents, so there’s not many who can call their bluff
and 2.) They haven’t caused any harm or done anything to warrant suspicion. They can easily earn the trust of the people and grow their reputation.
Anyways so they post as cultivators and stuff, so SY has opportunities to tell tales of their “adventures” and he does this through the use of dance and another tool. (Haven’t decided if he uses ribbons and/or paper to aid the form of monsters and/or beasts, uses shadows themselves to tell his stories, or something else but I am leaning towards ribbons/paper because it’d make more sense and gives him that sense of nobility because like… what commoner can afford enough paper to play around with the way SY does? Idk)
So it’s like he has this giant paper beast baring its teeth at Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan has a little fight-dance thing where he avoids the monster with fluid movements (dancing) as music plays (Also haven’t decided if he plays the music using his paper puppets or if he has someone else with him playing)
When the song reaches its climax SY likes to act like he’s lost, riding on the way the song seems to calm before preparing for a big buildup at the end where he’ll slay the beast. (Of course with different tunes the way he plays out the story will change. This is his favorite way to do it though)
…
Anyways so there’s like two main routes I was thinking about taking this:
SY—Who’s reputation as an esteemed dancer has spread far and wide—gets hired by the Qiu household once and Qiu Haitang’s awe for everything new she faces leads her to beg her brother for dance lessons. QJL caves and hires SY temporarily (he’s skeptical but SY’s fame is on the level of like… famous merchants, he’s not some typical commoner so QJL can probably rest easy..?)
QHT struggles to keep up and ends up getting SJ to learn alongside her so she doesn’t struggle alone. SJ’s actually able to keep up with SY decently well—namely on the grounds that he’s used to using every part of his body (fights, escaping, sneaking around, etc) so getting into the flow of things is way easier for the wild and untamed him compared to QHT who’s most likely learned some form etiquette since she was young.
Right well stuff happens and yk SJ learns to dance. It’s not all terrible until SY’s tribe calls for his summons (a new baby has been born and they’re hosting a festival for it (they party hard. And having a child in the human realm is significantly harder for any succubus type demon—sub branch/species or not, so one being born here is a definite cause for celebration.) and stops coming for a period of time.
During this period QJL bans SJ from dancing over something small, and SJ’s mental starts dropping. Then the whole stabbing-him-killing-all-men-and-then-burning-the-house-down thing happens. And it happens the day SY is set to return. So SY is just standing in front of the burning manor mildly surprised.
(His years of living as a demon have slightly dulled his humanity—not enough to disregard a life in front of him but enough that such violent scenes are more of a “huh, tragic” moment rather than an “Oh my god oh my god oh my god” moment.)
He sees SJ standing there and he’s like “hmm I taught you, I might as well teach you ‘till the end” so he takes SJ with him and they wander for a bit as SY continues teaching how to dance ‘n weave fighting into dancing. Life’s not perfect but it’s one hell of a step up, and it’s one that SJ absolutely appreciates. He doesn’t talk about YQ, or what happened at the manor much. SY doesn’t ask either.
Yeah so eventually SJ wants to grow stronger and SY’s like huh well I can’t have a kid forever huh, it’d be better if he lived with humans. So he drops SJ off at CQMS sneakily and disappears (he lays low for a long while after that) and gives SJ uncountable abandonment issues. Imagine the reunion lolol.
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Anyways so the second route is LQG (before the caves incident) meeting SY in the middle of fighting a demonic beast. He’s been chasing this thing down and now he’s frozen at the sight of some slender looking man just avoiding it’s rapid attacks with skillful ease and grace, weaving a song out of the surrounding sounds as he faces it head on. LQG can’t even bring himself to intervene because damn, this is a good fight. Instead he stands back and analyzes the fight for future reference—ready to step in if needed of course. LQG was honorable though and had no intention of joining the fray and stealing this kill unless the person was about to die and there was no other option.
So then SY kills the thing and it’s then that LQG notices that the demonic energy wasn’t just coming from the beast and goes on high alert because this demon clearly has skill…
Anyways cut to LQG trying to fight SY while SY dances around him before escaping with relative ease. It starts a little love-hate game of cat & mouse where LQG’ll chase after SY each time he sees him (which is more times than he’d like) and SY’ll impress him with dance moves LQG didn’t know could be incorporated into battle/action like that.
Uhhh the plot was lost this is kind of stupid