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The Etwahl and Long-Term Effect

I’ve written before about how consistent exposure to the music Sona plays can have a lasting and gradual effect on both people and the environment, but I wanted to go into the more subtle ways it can effect people - and Sona’s own understanding of just how deep that effect is.

A few things to preface for those who haven’t read my past posts on the subject (and for the sake of clarity, these are all headcanons):

Sona avoids actively ‘manipulating’ people unless they give consent. Once she came to realize the effect her music really had on people she started to worry about the ethical implications.

‘Manipulation’, in this sense, is the emotional and slight physical shift that her songs can create in people. She can empower and enliven, or she can weaken and hinder. She can cheer up the depressed or devastate the most confident man.

These effects (on a grand and noticeable scale) only last for as long as she plays. For for example, she can’t outright cure depression and anxiety. She can help someone work through it though.

Most all living things can be positively effected by the Etwahl. This includes plants and animals.

She considers people buying tickets for her shows as consent to play for them. But she doesn’t ever unleash her full abilities during a concert. They’re only a taste of what she’s actually capable of.

The Crescendo is the only chord she knows (so far) that can actually physically manipulate someone to move (i.e. dancing). It takes a lot out of her though, and the effect doesn’t last very long before the people effect regain control of themselves.

I think that’s everything worth noting for now. I think.

As for the topic at hand, something Sona is still trying to study and understand is the long-term effect of her music as well as any unexpected effects. She’s heard from some of her fans that their mood, general energy during the day, body aches, and other various ills have been eased after listening to her perform. Most all of them, directly after a performance, have described how at peace they felt or that a weight was removed from their shoulders. Some have even had a good cry for the first time in a long time.

But there are negative responses as well. Some haven’t exactly enjoyed their emotions being laid bare in what they’d consider a public setting. Some felt disturbed by the sensations. Some describe it as “invasive”. These comments are harder for Sona to track and understand without interviewing those people directly, and most of them don’t seem like the type of people to want to talk about their feelings on the subject in full anyway.

An interesting pattern on both ends of the extreme though is that in both positive or negative experiences, those people are still likely to return for another performance. That makes sense for people who enjoyed themselves, but for those who didn’t it doesn’t seem logical that they would want to attend again.

Whether or not Sona fully realizes it, her music has an alluring effect. This is only enhanced further by all the positive feelings she can share with people, but it explains why even those with negative responses are drawn in a second time. I don’t want to go so far as compare it to an addiction, but I think in some cases with some people it very well could manifest that way. Emotions are extremely complicated and vary in intensity tremendously from person to person. What one person might feel is just a craving for a sweet, another might feel the need for a full course meal.

So while to some the allure of Sona’s music might be as gentle as a curiosity, for others it may go as far as to become an unhealthy obsession. Plenty of people have fallen for her even before seeing her perform, only to afterward swear they were madly in love. She never means to charm people in that manner on purpose. Her best guess is they simply enjoyed her abilities far too much and mistook one feeling for another. Like mistaking someone waving at them as an immediate “I love you”.

These are infrequent instances of course. It’s not as if the bulk of people who love her music are all madly in love with her or freaking out and wanting to smell her hair or anything creepy like that. It’s just that it does happen sometimes. And it’s difficult for Sona to tell what exactly is causing it and what she can do to stop it.

At the very least, the benefit of this alluring effect makes people trust her quickly and be more at ease around her. Under normal circumstances that should really be all they experience; a heightened sense of trust. Not out-right infatuation and obsession.

By her own experience when playing in nature, it certainly makes animals trust her. They tend to scatter once she’s done practicing though.

For a last thought, just how long does this effect last? Again, that varies. Technically this lingering allure shouldn’t last very long. But if the person effected keeps purposefully exposing themselves to her songs they may be preventing themselves from coming down off the “high”. Of course, it’s not as if Sona performs concerts every day. She may not even perform for span of many months, or said person may not have access to her concert. So constant exposure is hard to achieve anyway.

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