#razor writes
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razorblade180 · 7 months ago
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9 days of Lancaster 2024
Training
Dealer’s Choice
Oblivious
Aftermath
Hidden Relationship
Hoodie Thief
Partners
Beach Day
Firsts
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For your convenience.
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onlymagpie · 5 months ago
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In which Milva asks Regis for a trim, and she finds out about the vampire-mirror phenomenon
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star--nymph · 6 months ago
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Vivienne's fear being 'becoming irrelevant' isn't something that's linked explicitly to her pride, no matter what Solas says about her (and the irony of Mr.Pride himself saying that should not be lost on you), it reveals what and who Vivienne truly is.
She's a survivalist.
Because we don't spend as much time in the Free Marches or Orlesian circles, we don't get to experience what being a mage is in these cultures. In Ferelden and Kirkwall, a mage is a lesser being without freedom no matter what they do--but in the Free Marches and Orlais specifically, mages are commodities that are given freedom so long as they play an entertaining enough role. They can explore the world if they have a noble patron, if they catch the right person's eye. They are, in a way, two sides of the same coin--refusing mages agency and forcing them to relay on higher powers. Vivienne lucked out, as sad as it is, when Bastion fell in love with her; she found someone who was contrarian enough to recognize her as a full person and also someone with power that could help her rise through the ranks. This is not to say that Vivienne on her own wasn't an exceedingly talented and intelligent individual--by nineteen she was already the youngest full fledged mage in Circle history and she was skilled enough to make herself an enchanter. But, I can not emphasize this enough, none of that matters if she didn't also play the Game and impress enough people.
Vivienne could have been the most brilliant mage in the history of Thedas and it means nothing if she was overlooked by nobility.
So when Bastion made her his mistress, she gained not just a lover but also a means to an end. Now she can use her magic to protect herself. Now she can roam where she wants and not be question for it because she's Madame Vivienne. Now, she can walk into the Orlasian court and belong there.
And what happens? Celene notices her and makes her the Court Enchanter, a position that has always been the equivalent of a jester. Vivienne took that title, ignored that it was essentially a glorified insult to who she is, and made it a position of power. She made the Court Enchanter into an advisor, a political rank. She had done the impossible and made mages an actual political entity in the Orlasian Court, something that wasn't seen outside of Tervinter (not counting what players can do under very specific conditions if they made mages in DAO and DA2).
All that, however, only continues as long as the court recognizes her as something worth their attention. Vivienne needs to maintain her act as Madame De Fer, The Lady of Iron, the Court Enchanter, The Jewel of the High Court, because the second she just becomes Vivienne, it's over for her. The assassins coming raining in, her name gets devoured by rumors and gossip, and she'll be found dead at bottom of the stair case with a dagger in her back if she's lucky.
So of course when the Circles fall apart during the Rebellion, she clings to that Loyalist Mages to maintain that structure--of course she moves her pieces to the Inquisition, knowing that if the Circle DOES fall, she at least as another place for herself and mages latch onto--of course when she hears that Celene replaced her with a new Court Enchanter that appeared out of no where, she grows to resent Morrigan.
Like, Morrigan literally pops up out of thin air, makes herself invaluable to Celene, and then plants herself in the place Vivienne had to claw her way up to and create so she could survive. Would you not be resentful when your life's work is usurped by some random witch of the wilds because she happened to charm the Empress? Everything Vivienne strived for all whisked away because the court find a gem who glimmers ever so slightly more than Vivienne.
So yes, Vivienne fears becoming irrelevant because the world has made it so that irrelevance for an Orlesian mage means death.
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feral-ballad · 4 months ago
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Kim Addonizio, from Lucifer at the Starlite: Poems; “The first line is the deepest”
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tofulikesmala · 1 year ago
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s/o with a comfort pillow (or toy)
who?: Xiao, scaramouche, Neuvillette, gorou, freminet, razor
gn
genre: fluff
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Xiao
He would see you hugging it, man would get jealous. You hug it while you sleep, you hug it while you work, you jut bury your face in it once in a while. But he doesn’t understand, why are you so attached to it? Eventually, he starts to get jealous. Lying on the bed, you’re supposed to be hugging HIM not your comfort toy/ pillow >:( he would def feel tempted to rip it to shreds, but once he sees your crying face when you find it missing, he’ll sigh and give it back to you. When he asks why you were so attached to it, you explained that it has been with you since you were really young, that you have become so attached to you now you can’t let go. He looks away and huffs “foolish mortal”
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Scaramouche
Well….this guy is another one who would get jealous…. and has a higher chance of actually ripping the comfort pillow/ toy than Xiao. He would enjoy teasing you about it, but as much as you hate the teasing, you still keep the pillow/toy with you. Once he hid it in secret and you panicked BIG TIME, once scaramouche had enough of your sobbing he’ll give it back, you made him promise not to do it again. (He will lmao)
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Neuvillette
He would politely ask you to put it away and hug him instead LMAOOOO this time is not him teasing you, it’s you teasing him as he craves for your attention. He buries his head in your neck as he holds you, his face turning a shade of red. At least his nice, he’ll let you hug it during the day, he won’t take it from you either, but once you get into the bed with him, it’s him time >:(
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Gorou
Man, he would be realllly pouty and clingy. He wouldn’t be one to take it or hide it from you, but he will be jealous
Gorou sits up a little, confirming you are asleep. He gently removes the pillow/ toy from your grasp. Suddenly, he felt you shift in your position. He stops as fear consumes him for a while. But once incoherent words come out of your mouth, he knows you’re still asleep. He gently placed the pillow/toy on his side of the bed, as he slowly pops into your arms, making you hug him instead. He shifted his tail so that you could feel the fluffiness. He sighs as he drifted off to sleep as well
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Freminet
This boy is just the sweetest hejajajrbrhwhaj
anyways, after explaining what a comfort toy/pillow is, he'd def make a huggable version of pers and hug it together with you on bed >333 He's not one to get very jealous over a comfort toy/pillow, but he will. A little.
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Razor
My boy is gonna be like what's that💀. After explaining, he curious, he wants to know WHY you’re so attached to it, even if you've been with it a long time. So…. You reluctantly give it to him, but how could you ever refuse those puppy eyes of his? He holds it gently, before burying his face into it. He inhales the scent as he slowly said “remind me of s/o….”
Razor was left alone in the house, you had gone out to run some errands, leaving razor to do his own things. He missed you, he softly whined as he wanted a hug :(((. Just then, he saw your comfort toy/pillow. He lay down on bed and hugged it tight, it was as if he was hugging you. Your scent filled his nose as he buries his head into it. It somehow made him sleepy, he closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.
“Razor I’m home!” You closed the door as you stepped into the house. However, there was no reply. It was strange….did the worst happen? Panic rose up in your heart as you entered the bedroom. But the sight only made your heart melt. You quickly changed your clothes as you lay down the bed, hugging him from behind. And so you too, drifted to sleep.
Notes: THIRD FIC LESSGOOO HAHAHA I HOPE ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO STILL HAVE THEIR COMFORT PILLOWS OR TOYS WILL FIND HAPPINESS WITH THIS ONE
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raynesbunny · 7 months ago
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WHAT MAKES THEM EMBARRASSED?
Mashle headcanon!
💌: GN!reader, fluff
⚠️: Ooc and maybe cringe, slight suggestive on Orter's part?
Requested by: @rainee-da
Characters: Orter Madl, Rayne Ames, Abyss Razor
Others: Guess who's back! I was thinking of finishing all the short stories before going back, though— but I don't want to keep you guys waiting! I'll feel very bad if I do so。:゚(;´∩`;)゚:。 Angst Rayne A. x reader coming soon! Still fixing a lot of errors<33 Enjoy reading, pookies!(≧▽≦) (this is my first time writing a headcanon so please do leave a message if there are errors!)
Orter Màdl
♡ It's almost impossible to make this man feel embarrassed; he hardly shows any expressions regardless of what others do—always wearing a straight and serious face! Many have attempted to make him laugh and smile, but their efforts have always been in vain, no matter how much they've tried. It almost seemed like expressing emotions is against the rules to him!
♡ And then there's you, his dearest, his partner, his beloved, his darling, his sweetheart, his sunshine, his angel, his lover, the one who melted his icy heart and kept it warm—the only one capable of evoking emotions within him that he never thought he would experience someday. (although, this rule-obsessed man cannot bring himself to admit it openly!)
♡ If there's one thing that can make Orter feel embarrassed, it would be your unexpected, sneaky and quick yet soft kisses and pecks!
♡ Whenever you peck his cheek, his brain momentarily stops functioning, and his heart flutters. His body freezes (and a faint blush is visible on his cheeks) at the touch of your soft lips against his skin.
♡ Your innocent and delicate feathered kisses drives him wild, but he would never dare to utter a word about his longing for more of those adorable little kisses!
Extra:
♡ Today was another busy day for the young man, Orter Màdl. Well— busier than usual that he had forgotten to bring his lunch with him.
And here you are, now in his office to deliver the homemade lunch to your hard-working lover, along with an encouraging letter you poured your heart into creating!
Upon noticing your presence, Orter averted his gaze from his work and looked up at your approaching figure with a small bag in your hand.
"What brings you here?" he asked.
"You forgot your lunch at home, and I won't allow my man to work with an empty stomach, so I decided to bring it here to you," you replied.
Orter remained silent, choosing to turn his focus back to his paperwork. However, his shoulders seemed more relaxed now, and his facial expression had softened. That sight alone was enough for you to know that he was grateful, and he doesn't need to express it through words or pay you back.
(The pile of paperwork on his desk bothered you. You seriously wanted to help, but this stubborn boyfriend of yours would not let you, and you were left with no choice.)
(Last time, you tried helping him, but it only ended up with you wrapped in his sand magic.)
"Here's your lunch, by the way. Don't forget to eat it at lunchtime," you said, placing the small bag with his lunchbox inside on his desk. When you heard no answer, you glanced at him, seeing that he was focused on his work.
This seemed to be the perfect time to take the chance and sneak a kiss.
As your lips were about to reach his cheek, Orter turned around (on purpose), causing your lips to meet his instead.
You were about to pull away immediately, only for the desert cane to grab your wrists, pin you down on his desk and deepen the kiss, preventing you from moving and keeping the kiss from breaking. Leaving you breathless and blushing, a flustered mess.
Rayne Ames
♡ Just like the rule-obsessed divine visionary, he's often cold and serious. But believe me when I say that he isn't cruel! He's just having a hard time expressing that he actually cares for the people, especially those whom he's fond of, interested in, and of course- you.
♡ Speaking of you, you are his everything. He'd do anything to keep you safe, make you feel loved, respected, and comforted! Even with his busy schedule, he'll find a way to prioritize you, no matter what. (You matter the most in his life, aside from his rabbits and Finn, of course he'll prioritize those who are important to him.) Though, there are times that he must attend to his duties first, but he'll be sure to make it up to you! It just takes some time, and hopefully you'll understand.
♡ And when I say you're his everything, I mean; you're his joy, his comfort, his warmth, his flower, his world, his dream, his reason to smile, his strength, his motivation, his star, his light—
♡ If there is something that makes this man embarrassed, it's the way you know or understand what he wants (sometimes mentioning it) and letting him know that you have given him your consent!
♡ He will hesitate at first, but will give in as soon as he knows that you are certain. Like those days where he was staring down at your lips with a troubled expression, and this will never go unnoticed by you.
♡ You held yourself back from laughing, it was truly an adorable and amusing sight!
♡ You would press your forehead against his, your lips parting to mutter the words that you have given him your consent.
♡ Rayne's face would turn bright red, his gaze snapping to you with a look of embarrassment. He cannot believe he got caught again!
♡ You chuckled at the expression on his face, but your laughter died down when Rayne immediately brought his lips to meet yours in a gentle yet firm kiss, the contact sending a warm shiver down your spine.
Extra:
♡ You were playing with Rayne's pet rabbits in your shared room, wearing the comfortable rabbit hoodie that matched with your boyfriend but in your favorite color.
"There! All done!" You chirped and stroked Usao's fluffy fur, staring at all the rabbits decorated with ribbons in awe.
"[Name.]"
At the sound of his voice calling your name, you turned around to face him. Once you did, you're met with himself close to you, the sudden closeness making your eyes widen in surprise and confusion. "Is something the matter?"
(It was hard reading him this time, not even a single clue was visible! Is he doing this on purpose?)
Said boyfriend shook his head before gently taking your hand in his, caressing it tenderly.
He closed his eyes and brought your hand up to his lips for him to place a soft and long kiss.
The kiss lasted for a while and it took you some time to process what just happened. When you did, you found yourself stunned and flustered.
Abyss Razor
♡ Believe when I say THAT THIS MAN GETS ALL FLUSTERED WITH EVERYTHING YOU DO. (You were just too much for his heart to handle, he might explode in embarrassment.)
♡ Even the simplest, smallest things you do, like getting close to him, holding his hand, or even a gentle poke on the cheek, headpats, or your compliments, cause him to freeze in embarrassment or leave him trembling and a stuttering mess. (Even your smile and voice!)
♡ The last time this happened was when you were combing his hair and you stopped when you caught a whiff of the scent of his hair.
You drew closer to him, hoping to smell that pleasant fragrance again.
"Say, Abyss, what shampoo do you use?"
♡ He responded with silence, you were just too close to him! Close enough that his brain stopped functioning!
♡ Abyss.exe has stopped working.
♡ You are welcome to shower this lover of yours with affection, but please have mercy! He has zero experience when it comes to this! (Your affections for him might be the cause of his death /j)
♡ He is so adorable, please don't ever hurt him. Cherish him with all your heart, for goodness' sake! He deserves all the love and care.<33
Extra:
Your fingers brushed the silky strands of your lover's hair, tucking it behind his ear before clipping it with a ribbon. (I live for the coquettish display<33)
Once you were done, you gasped at the sight of your lover with his hair neatly down and a ribbon clipped in place.
"My goodness! You look beautiful, my love, as always!"
"Even with my cursed evil eye?"
"Nonsense! I find your evil eye unique and beautiful! Even with or without that, you will always be a beauty in my eyes, both on the outside and the inside!"
Just as he was about to respond, you gently placed your finger on his lips and embraced him, burying your face in his stomach.
"Hush! Don't even think of saying those words. Your cursed evil eye has nothing to do with who you are! You have done nothing wrong! If no one else will accept the whole of you aside from Abel, then I WILL. I do not care what that evil eye of yours will do to me, I am willing to embrace everything in you. I will always love you, even with all your flaws. Nothing and no one can change my mind and my heart—"
You stopped yourself from rambling when you felt a sudden drop of liquid fall on top of your head.
"Abyss?"
You sat up to check on him, only for panic to rush through you as your eyes met his face that is soaked with tears.
"Did I say something wrong? Please, don't cry and tell me what's wrong! It pains me to see you in tears!" (You might cry too /j)
Receiving no response from him, you were left with no choice but to embrace him in a hug, hoping that it could provide him solace.
Abyss wrapped his arms around you in return, his tears soaking the fabric on your shoulder. (Which you did not mind at all.)
He could never be more grateful than being accepted despite the flaws he bore, especially his very own evil eye.
I'll add a few more characters for this headcanon after writing the second angst I'm planning to write! I hope you enjoyed reading my first headcanon! Have a great, wonderful day or night, lovelies!💌
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prettyboykatsuki · 1 year ago
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VIOLET | RAZOR. (GENSHIN)
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✾ tags ; afab + gn!reader, aged-up characters, virginity loss/first times, established relationship, mutual virginity loss, nipple play, fingering, oral (f!recieving), creampies (reader is using a contraceptive), reader is mentioned to be an orphan / run away , 18+
✾ wc ; 6.1k (went to edit and went 700 words over the wc. pain)
✾ a/n ; i'm losing my mind btw. razor my only triple crowned character my most greatly beloved my angel my sweet. also i added the aged up tag mostly bc its the genshin fandom but. if u dont like that dont read. ez peazy.
also trust and believe the voice im picturing in this is his jpn dub. this is important
✾ synopsis ; you resolve yourself after many long years of abstinence, you're going to ask razor about sex the minute he comes home.
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Razor is human. 
On a technical level, this information isn’t news to you. He looks human. His physical makeup is human. He needs to eat and sleep like humans do. Focusing on the technicals alone, Razor is very, very human.
It doesn’t change that he was raised by wolves, though. And you don’t want it too. You think it’d be a shame if he started to assimilate too much into human society just because he felt like he had too. You know how he feels about it. And that Boreas is the closest he’s ever had to a father figure, thus making his claim about Razor's humanity a rather devastating blow. He feels inhuman all while knowing he is. You think once upon a time, he really did wish to be a wolf. 
You’ve known Razor since you were a teenager. You’d ended up in Wolvendom after your exploration of Teyvat led you to its outskirts. You’d bonded over your similarities. Two orphans with no real place where they fit in completely and complete odd-ball personalities - Razor was an easy friend for you to make. Even when you eventually decided to settle into Mondstat - you’d made a point to visit Razor regularly and spend time with him in the forest. 
You made an odd pair of course, but you didn’t mind. If no one else understood you in the world - you know Razor always would. He’d listen patiently about all of your adventures and sit quietly as you decided to pester him by braiding his hair or teaching him new words. Loyal, obedient, sweet.
You never formally had the boyfriend conversation in the time you’d spent together. One day, however, Razor took you to meet Boreas out of the blue as well as the leader of his pack. You figured maybe it was something he did with his close friends. It only occurred to you that maybe this was a more serious meeting when Razor promptly gestured towards you and introduced you as his mate. 
Razor, predictably, was very confused about your minor freak out. You tried not to let it show during your little chit-chat, but afterwards you’d shaken him by the shoulders and interrogated him about his word choice. This of course didn’t register in his mind at all. According to Razor, you’d been his mate since long ago. He’d been courting you since the moment you met in the way wolves are known too. You’re an adventurer, well-versed in certain animal behaviors for the sake of survival, including wolves. 
And looking back on your interactions he was right,  Razor had been courting you from the start. The news made you flush, and you went back into Razors camp and thoroughly educated him on human courting rituals.
(“Why matter?” Razor asks, head laid in your lap while he looks up at you from inside the tent “Not important.” 
“Why would it not be important?” 
He turns towards you, head facing your stomach as one arm lazily wraps around your waist. He yawns sleepily, seemingly not worried about a thing. 
“You are mate. Mate last until death.” He explains, casually - like he’d always believed he’d spend every minute of his life with you. Like that was the only natural outcome for you both and that he’d never consider anything else. You want to explain, it’s different for humans. Humans don’t usually mate that way, you should say. But the words die out in your mouth as he clings closer to you “Sorry for..not asking.. properly. What are we…as humans?” 
You look down at where he lays, thumb brushing over his cheek. 
“Lovers or life partners. They’re closest to the word mate, in definition.” 
“Lovers easier,” He grumbles, eyebrows tightening at the complex words in your sentence “You want to be lovers with Razor?” 
You laugh. Light and bubbly and warm as you lean forward and try to mask the tears welling up in the corners of your eyes. 
“Yes. We’re lovers from now on. And mates. And lupical, right?” 
Razor sighs contentedly into your midriff.
“And lupical.”)
According to Razor, you had been mates from the minute you met. According to your human timeline, you have been dating since you were both around 17. It’s been a long time since then and nothing in your relationship has changed.
You’re an adult now and you work with the city of Mondstat studying wildlife populations. You live in the city in a cottage, and Razor lives with you - though he spends most of his day outside. He does the domestic labor while you whittle away at papers and projects. Because of your job, you still spend a fair bit of time together in the wild. He has plenty of insight about the wildlife in Wolvendom and is keen enough on changes to give significant contribution to your study. His work as your partner is unofficial, but everyone acknowledges that you come together in a set. Where you go, Razor follows.
You’re happy with your life. With your relationship to your wolf-boy boyfriend, with the career you’ve carved out of scratch and the life you’ve built. You left your orphanage young and spent a long time on the run. You’re incredibly thankful for all of what you have and you could never think of what more to ask for. 
This is especially true for you and Razor. You’ve never had any real major obstacles in your relationship. Part of this comes from the wolven habit of mating for life. Concepts like pride are foreign to Razor. He says sorry even when he doesn’t completely understand and he has no concept of betraying your loyalty. Most things you can teach, he learns very quickly. But there are also some things no one ever teaches you to navigate. Some boundaries you can’t be sure you’re allowed to cross. 
You’re a blossoming, healthy person in their twenties and so is Razor. He’s scarred and athletic in the outdoorsy way and he’s a little more rugged now that you’ve both grown. He’s hit a growth spurt and he’s taller than you and every time you see his arm flex carrying in an entire boar to butcher in your yard - you start getting so hot under the collar you feel like you’re going to explode. 
The problem is: you want to have sex and you want to have it badly. You want it so bad it’s starting to make you feel like you’re a deviant. Like you’re some kind of harlot masquerading as an archon-fearing civilian.
But it’s so hard to bring up and you don’t know how you’re ever going too. 
You’re very good at asking for what you want usually. It comes with the territory. And thanks to your boyfriend's cluelessness about human social convention, asking for things isn’t embarrassing. Concepts like shame are learned through a lifetime of socialization that he lacks and while you could sit and try to teach him - you don’t think he would care either way. He listens if you tell him he shouldn’t do something, but that’s because you’re his mate and his lupical. 
What other people think is none of his concern. He cares about his Lupical. So if Lisa or Bennet or Klee tell him something, he might take it into consideration. But they, like you, love the parts of Razor that make him how he is and his complete innocence in some ways is part of that. 
You know you could very well ask Razor for sex. You’ve spent a lot of time together and you’ve learned many things about him. It’s not like there’s nothing there at all. Like his every other trait, Razor normally relies on instinct to guide him. You’ve learned through kisses and dry-humping that he can get hard at least. You’ll probably never know the details of his arousal, and the only you’ll ever find out is by having sex with him. 
You don’t know what else he knows. What Lisa has told him of the birds and the bees. 
You have tried to ask Lisa inadvertently, but she enjoys making fun of you too much to give you any straightforward answers. And in her own maternal way, she thinks it’d be better for your relationship if you go ahead and ask yourself. 
She’s right about that, but it’s also not very easy. You know Razor would never judge you. He doesn’t even have the capacity to do so. But while Razor knows nothing of shame, you certainly do. 
It’s your problem to get over. You know that. You rationalize that your fantasies are healthy and normal for someone your age. But there is something terribly humiliating about trying to express the extent of your desire apart from just having it. Is it fair to teach Razor about desire? Does he know of it already and the both of you just suffer in silence? 
Razor is a man. A grown man, and tougher than most men you know. He’s seen more than almost anyone else as part of living in the woods. You know he’s not some innocent fairy. But you can’t get over the feeling like you’re corrupting his sweet preciousness somehow. 
(This has its own charm, but that’s not relevant. Or maybe it is. Maybe there’s guilt for that too but it’s not something you can unpack) 
You’re reaching your upper limit on patience. Your hand can only do the job so long (though the import of sex toys from Fontaine do help) nothing can truly replace what you want. And what you want is Razor.
So, you’ve made your choice. When Razor comes home from…what he’s doing today - you’re going to ask him to have sex.
__
You’ve finished all of your work, did as many chores as you can, and now you’re waiting in your bedroom trying to read a book.
You haven’t even read past the first page, actually. But you’re trying. It’s hard to do anything meaningful when your brain keeps pivoting back to what's going to happen when your boyfriend returns home. 
You’re nervous and fidgeting, rubbing your socked feet together and running over the laundry list of talking points you’ve concocted trying to make this happen. You shaved but not bare because you know he definitely wouldn’t like it, but you’re clean. You aren’t sure if he’s going to like that either and he’s expressed that he likes when you smell natural. But it soothed your anxiety to shower so he’ll have to leave with it. 
You have no idea how this could go. You don’t even know how to prepare for the worst, because you don’t know what the worst is. But you reassure yourself with the fact Razor loves you and leave it at that.
You hear the door open and take a deep breath. 
There’s heavy footsteps that get louder and louder. Razor cracks the door open politely, peeking his head into your shared room. He makes a face, the softest little smile you’ve ever seen - before letting himself in and shutting the door behind him. He’s quick to undress himself - jacket and scarf abandoned along with his boots. Leaving him in green pants and a bandage around his chest and arsm. 
“Hi,” He says simply, coming down over to where you’re laid. He chooses to sit on the floor, folding his arms on the bed as he looks at you patiently “Missed you,” 
“Hey there,” Your heart is pounding just looking at him. He’s unreasonably handsome. Had he grown up in normal conditions, you think he would’ve been a very popular loner type. “How was your family?” 
“Good,” He says shortly, eyes warm and light “New pup. First time seeing since I was little. Very small and cute.” 
“I’m glad. Bet it’s nice not to be the youngest anymore.” 
“Come next time,” He says genuinely “They miss you.” 
Your heart is so full you think it might burst. It temporarily soothes your anxiety.
“Of course I will.” 
Razors eyes examine you for a minute. Your heart is still racing. Of course he notices it. He knows much more about you than you’ll ever know about yourself. His brow creases in concern. 
“What’s wrong?” 
You look at him apologetically, immediately warmed by how worried he is. You give him a small smile. 
“I’m okay. Just a little nervous. Wanted to ask you about something.” 
“Okay. I listen. No need to..be nervous.” 
Right. He’s right about that. You sit up and Razor remains where he is. He’s seated comfortably on the floor, on his knees - between your thighs. He’s a sight for sore eyes, terribly rugged and scarred with nothing but honesty settled in his gaze. Carmine and beautiful. You fold your hands in your lap and before you can worry too much, Razor grabs one in his hand. 
He kisses your knuckles so gently, leaning his face into your palm. 
“It’s okay.” 
You figure it’s best to be straight to the point. 
“Uhm. Razor. Do you…know what sex is?” 
“Yes.” 
“Well, it’s—wait what? Did you just say yes?” 
He nods again. “Miss Lisa taught me.” 
That witch. You take a deep breath. It’s now or never.
“And uhm, what did she tell you about it?” You ask tentatively. 
“Like mating but for humans. Best to do with mate. Good to be careful or else pups will come too soon.” 
You stare at him, jaw slack. 
“Right. And what else?” 
He racks his brain right in front of you. 
“Uhm. Can be for…feel good. Should go slow. Lots of things different from wolf.” 
“...Do you know how it happens? The specifics?” 
Razor goes a soft pink. Razor blushes. 
“Yes.” 
You have no idea what to feel. Not the faintest clue in the world. This is the first time in your entire relationship either of you have been in an awkward situation. You’re partially relieved it’s not completely foreign, partially feeling hot between the legs because you’re not corrupting anything. You make a face of uncertainty. 
“Oh. Uhm. Do you—have you ever.. I mean—have you ever wanted to have sex with me then? I-is that something you’d…want to do?” 
Razor almost looks perplexed by this question. He nods, then follows up. 
“Yes. A lot.” 
You nearly choke on your spit. 
“A lot?” 
“Yes. But.. Miss Lisa said to wait. Until mate asks.” 
You’re going to have a serious discussion with that damned woman later. You take a shaky breath, looking at him carefully. This is going to break you in a way you don’t know if you’ll recover from. But you’re fine, you’ve made it this far. And you don’t want to back down when you haven’t gotten to the finish line. The final blow. 
You’re not completely sure where you go from here honestly. Your brain was fully expecting to go on a long rant about sexual intercourse. Now that that’s out of the window, you’re at a loss. You decide, internally, that going straight forward is the best thing you could do for now. 
“Then… would you want to have sex with me?” 
His eyes widen then he pauses, looking worried. 
“Well…yes. But, worried. Not sure…how.” 
“Well, uhm. Normally it starts with kissing and t-touching and things like that. You can just do what feels right. Uhm.. and I’ll tell you… what I like. A-and what feels good.” You offer, trying not to show just how nervous you are even suggesting “But uhm… I also… think about it. A lot. With you.” 
His eyes light up, and you can practically see the change in him. You’ve never let yourself get close enough to look but when you see him now that you know, it’s obvious. He’s looked at you like this before. 
Like he wants you. 
“Razor,” You say, bracing yourself for impact “Come up here.” 
He’s quick to his feet. You lay back down and Razor lays himself ontop of you, hovering gently. He smells like forest, the rich warm scent of dirt and sunlight mixed with sweat that you’ve grown fond of. Looking down at you, he presses his forehead against yours with his eyes fluttered closed. 
“Mate,” His breath is warm like he’s been chewing mint leaves and sweet flowers. He does it sometimes before coming home “Love you,” 
“I love you too, Razor. You don’t,” You swallow thickly, suddenly aware of your proximity “Don’t hold back okay? You won’t break me.” 
“Want to..” He thinks slowly, brain clearly struggling to come up with the right word “Cherish. Want to cherish mate. Cherish you.” 
You give him a breathy laugh as he leans in close to you. 
“Did Miss Lisa teach you that?”
“Yes,” He replies, pressing his cheek to yours and rubbing himself against you innocently “Cherish you a lot.” 
“I cherish you a lot too,” You offer and he smiles. You feel your heart thump as you look up at him less innocently “Let’s kiss first, okay” 
He doesn’t reply. This much is familiar. Though this was something you had to teach him at first, you would go as far as saying Razor kisses better than you. He’s better than you in these ways most of the time. He knows how to read your body language down to the most irrelevant details, attuned to your physicality in a way that could only be inhuman. The first time he noticed a change in your cycle after starting some herbal contraceptives, you were turned on as much as you were afraid. 
His mouth is hot and overwhelming, plush as he kisses you passionately. He’s quick to open your mouth up with his tongue. Razor likes to taste. It’s natural for him to slip his tongue past your lips and lick at yours. You think if anyone else did it you’d be turned off. But with him hovering you over you, desperate as he pulls and nips at your lower lip - it’s stimulating.  It makes you wet before you can think about it too hard. Your hands curl themselves around his neck, tangling at the thick roots of his gray hair. 
He moans when you tug, and your eyes nearly pop out of your sockets. You do it again, a little harder and the same broken sound leaves his lips in the middle of kiss. You swallow the noise before pulling away, looking at his face. His face is perfectly rosy, lips swollen from where you’ve been kissing them.
“Did you,” You look at him erratically, eyes going over every part of his face “Did that feel good?” 
He nods, dumbfounded. 
“Felt good but,” He shakes his head in disbelief “Don’t know why.” 
You giggle, delighted with the outcome. 
“No it’s good, that’s normal.” You say trying not to babble “It’s like your body’s weak point.”
“Not weak.”
“It’s not a bad thing. I have some too. Like my neck.”
You can see the gears turning in his head.  He tucks his chin against your shoulder and before you can speak to ask him about it, he’s pressing his lips against the skin of your neck. He doesn’t stop at a kiss, though. He proceeds to lick the small patch of tender flesh, before sinking his teeth into it.
You moan. You moan sharp, almost like a gasp of pain. He opens his mouth to ask if you’re okay but when he sees you he stops. He blinks, then gives you a look you’ve never seen. 
His voice is almost chipped - richer and more hoarse as his fingers go over what can only be bite marks.
“Feels good?” He says, then adds more urgently “Where else?”
You’ve made him discover something. You’re sure of that. He looks awfully determined about it, too. 
You sigh shakily, grabbing his hands. Even though you’re trembling mercilessly, you want this. You want him. You let his hand squeeze around the swell of your tits - your nipples peeking through the thin fabric of your shirt. With your eyes locked on his, you brush your nipples.
“H-here,” You admit watching his eyes go dark. Animalistic. “Uhm. W-with your mouth, you c-can suck on them.” 
He’s quiet. 
“Like pup?” 
You laugh. 
“A little bit like that, I guess. But it’s different.” 
He makes a small, approving noise with his mouth, once again thinking hard about something before he continues down his path. He leaves open kisses all over your skin, hands reaching to undress you. You help him, peeling your shirt over your head and tossing it somewhere. His eyes are shut closed, in bliss as he licks and bites down your neck with no real grace. His tongue is wet and rough all over you. 
You can tell you’re being primed for something animal. Like being tenderized, worked apart in a way that makes you melt into something soft. Something that can be broken without teeth, that can be swallowed in one go. It’s not a romantic kiss as much as it’s a hungry graze, a gnawing lust. He’s not being so reserved anymore, and that means sinking his teeth as far into you as he can go, not enough to break the skin. Razor would never break you. But he might ruin you, might melt you down from your very center until he can tear you apart. 
You thought it’d hurt, and it does - but in a good way. There’s some sick sense of relief in how achy your whole body is. You’re burning up because Razor wants you like he’s starving. An emptiness claws at you, makes the back of your gums ache. Makes all the hairs on the back of your neck stand nearly straight as you sink deeper in. You want to be full of him and you want him to get so full off of you. 
Razor doesn’t stop his tirade even when he gets down to your chest. Instead his mouth closes around your tit, hard incisors sinking into the supple skin but only slightly gentler than before. His canines feel sharper than yours. They must be. 
“O-oh,” You can feel your voice shake as you hold onto the back of his head. He touches the other one with his free hand, squeezing and massaging the skin. He rubs your nipples experimentally in the same way you did a moment ago. “Razor, hngh,” 
A noise is pulled from the back of his throat, a growl - so hard and heavy that it reverberates into your skin. You can feel it spread through your whole body, your core tightening up. Your skin is prickly. A solar flare shooting through your spine. 
You don’t think you’ve ever been so aroused. You can hardly breathe around the weight of it sitting in your chest.
“Your scent..change.” Razor says through a breath, a thick layer of saliva where his mouth once was “Hot. So hot.” 
You nearly whimper. 
“ It’s because I’m wet…Aroused.” 
“Wet?”
“It means I want to be touched. I want you to touch me down there.” 
A beat of silence. 
“Want me..to mate with you.” He sits up onto his knees, staring at you. Your legs are around his waist loosely. He presses a hand to your clothed sex. You jolt at the contact. “Want me to fill you, here?” 
He puts his hand on your hip, on your stomach - before tucking his fingers into the waistband of your shorts.
“Want to see. What’s wet, I want to see.” 
You lift your legs slightly, pulling your shorts off as you're bent at the knee. It’s embarrassing being bare naked in front of Razor, though you’ve seen him in the same state plenty. He’s quick to grab your knee and force your legs apart wide. He’s got that same focused stare, tongue poked out as he brushes the coarse hairs on your mound with his knuckle. You squirm under the feeling. 
“Pretty,” He says first, then follows with “It’s…very warm. Hot but doesn’t hurt” 
Razor explores with his hands. He runs his finger along your slit, before using his thumbs to spread you apart. He nudges your clit. At first you wonder if it's an accident, but when he does it again - rubs a pointed circle on the aching bundle of nerves you realize he’s being intentional. 
“Here, right?” Razor says slowly and gauges your reaction “Feels good for you…here. Helps.” 
You want to ask who taught him such a thing but you already know the answer. You nod helpless, feeling the way his thumb goes back and forth. He tries it in different ways, watches whatever way makes your breath hitch the most. 
“Here makes you… jump. Like bunny rabbit. Like prey”
The word prey almost takes you out. You can’t make your words out very eloquently anymore. “It’s uhm sensitive.” 
He knows the word. You’ve taught him it. He looks at your bare cunt all awestruck, gloved hand resting on your sex as he continues to toy with your clit. You squirm and shake, even trying to pull away. Razor manages to grab you, keeps you pinned with your legs spread, using his own body to keep you like that. 
“Razor,” You moan, grabbing at his wrist “Razor.” 
“Mm. It’s soft. So soft.” 
“I want to see yours.” 
It takes him a second to register your words, but he’s not ashamed in the slightest when he does. He takes off his gloves right before. You’ve felt it, briefly, the weight and heft of his cock through clothes but you’ve never actually seen it. You gasp as he pulls it out, tucking his pants down under his balls. He’s hairy - thick dark gray hairs nested at the base. His cock has a pretty curve up, tip ruddy and bright. It’s drooling, dribbling pre-cum and heavy. He wraps his free hand around the base and strokes it instinctively. It’s a good length, but it’s thick. Thicker than you could’ve ever conjured up in your own mind.
You reach for it between your bodies, your hands trembling as you touch it. Razor lets out another throaty growl. Your hand doesn’t fit around it completely. The back of your throat tightens up.
“You’re—it’s big. I can’t—not at once. I h-have to open myself up a little bit.” 
Razor tilts his head to one side and you shake yours in reply. 
“I need to uhm,” You gesture vaguely “Make it more..wet and stretch myself out. So you fit i-inside.” 
“Want to help. Teach me.” 
“...Teach you?” 
“Easier if I..learn now. When we do it again later. Teach me..how to touch you.” 
The words sound sweet coming out of his mouth, honeyed and loving. An obedient and eager pupil, Razor has always been that hasn’t he? And he always listens the best he can, tries his hardest. You suppose that this instance is no different. You suck in a breath and spread your legs a little more. 
“Watch,” 
Razor watches. He watches as you dip your fingers into your mouth and coat them with saliva. Watches as you snake a hand in between your legs and dip your middle finger down low into your cunt - with a trembling sigh at the sudden intrusion. He watches intimately as you pump them in and out, rhythmic and noisy. The sound of your own wet heat rings in your ears as you spread yourself in earnest. 
Half-way through, Razor puts a hand on your thigh. He pushes your own hand away, and waits for you to open your eyes. He stares at you, long and hard. 
“I want to eat you. Want to lick,” His hand cups your bare pussy “Here. Make you wet. Open you by myself. Want to eat.” 
You’re speechless. Profoundly turned on by the sentiment, so much so you can’t make out your own voice. 
“Uhm,” You close your hands into a fist, tucking your chin. “You can do whatever you like, Razor.” 
He assesses the statement and you watch him take it in. He ends up on his stomach, lying between your thighs. You’re fascinated by his assurance in himself. He takes the right position between your legs. You spread out to give him easier access and he gives you a silent look of thanks. His breath is warm as it fans your cunt. 
Before you get a chance to breathe, Razor sticks his tongue and licks. It’s animalistic with no real finesse at all. He makes up for it with enthusiasm and some conclusions he’s drawn with your assistance. He sucks on your clit nearly feverish, takes it into his mouth like he did your tits minutes prior. It’s drooly and sticky and nasty in a way that makes you ashamed. You’re more ashamed because you like it, you love it really. Spit is running down, dripping down to your ass. It’s a loud slurp - a shameless, nasty hunger in how he licks up your arousal with his mouth and drenches your pussy with spit. 
His groans reverberate into you. He likes what he’s doing. The sound and touch and taste - Razor overwhelms you with all of it. There’s a tangible intensity wrapping up around you, keeping you trapped in the wolf's den. 
You don’t teach him to use his fingers. He seems to have figured it out. The pad of his middle finger draws the spit pooling along your seam before pushing itself into your tight hole. You gasp at how invasive it is at first. Razors fingers are thick and scarred and you can feel the ridges of your raised skin from healed injured when he fucks you open with them. 
It feels good. Being wanted. Being consumed voraciously and openly without any care for shame. Razor is the embodiment of raw desire and all of it- every ounce of it is being used to devour you. The descendant of wolves, the son of the forest - laid between your thighs and eating like something delicious left at an abandoned altar. 
Even clumsy, you’re turned on beyond reason. Arousal leaves you shakily pawing at him to slow down. Your voice is reduced to nothing but small whines and mewls - pleas to slow down that fall on deaf ears. 
“Razor,” Your voice is clipped “Razor, please - it’s enough. Just.” 
When he snaps out of his haze, his chin is soaked with arousal and spit. He wipes it with the back of his hand, looking at you. 
“Tastes good. You taste nice.” He praises, heaving and out of breath. 
Your stomach flares up with new found lust, hands covering your face. 
“Archons, just. Come here.” 
Razor climbs up on top of you again. You cup his face and kiss him hard, tasting yourself on him. 
“You’re so unfair. But I can’t get angry because you’re not even doing it on purpose.”
“Sorry,” 
You shake your head, kissing the corner of his mouth. Trembling with need. 
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I want you inside. Want you to fill me in here, so bad, Razor.” 
His eyes widen. Your desperation must reach him this time, because he nods. innocently. You’re thankful beyond words you’re on contraceptives. At this point, you think trying to use a condom would break you down.
“You just have to put it inside. But please go slowly, okay?” 
“Go slowly…won’t hurt you.” 
Razor sits up on his knees again, drawing your waist down towards him. Before he pushes into you, he lays his cock against your sex - pushing it between messy folds. His expression morphs, his jaw tensing as the head of his cock swells and throbs against your aching clit. It slides and slips so messily, pussy clinging to his hard length. You guide his cock towards your entrance while he leans forward over you. His palms are rough as they grab your hips, hands settling up under your knees. 
You can feel his cock as he rolls his hips slowly. Your nails dig into his back, indenting the skin as you cry out. It’s thick, intrusive as he pushes into your tight little hole. Even after opening you up, there’s an ache inside as the head stretches your pussy open. The raw drag of skin on skin as Razor pushes inside of you. You can feel him with every movement, your legs wrapped around his waist tight.
Razor has always had a limited vocabulary. He likes to speak in short sentences since it’s what he does best. His speech now is a lot more developed, but he still finds it troublesome. 
It stuns you when Razor's grip tightens and he swears under his breath - a single word, long and drawn out as his cock pushes into you deeply. 
“Fuck,” 
“R-razor?” 
“Feels good…feels so good. Want…move. Please.” 
“You can move, just let me hold onto you okay?” 
Razor tucks his head against your neck before he fucks you. In one smooth motion, he pulls himself out completely before shoving himself back in. It’s as gentle as he can go, but you can practically feel him shaking above you. How his whole being urged him to fuck you llike an animal. The desperation rolls off of him in waves, his own hands gripping tighter as he slowly finds a rhythm to fuck you in. Clumsy thrust that turns into careful calculated ones as you urge him to go deeper. 
“Deep,” Razor pants against your neck, his breath tickling your skin. His voice is a low growl as his hips snap up to meet the back of your thighs with each thrust. Your bed creaks each time he moves, the frame knocking against the wood “I’m deep inside you,” 
“Razor,” You sneak a hand between your bodies, clumsily toying with your clit - pleasure ruining your every thought “Harder. Give it to me harder.” 
As soon as the words leave your mouth, Razor gives up on trying to hold himself back. He fucks you with nearly reckless abandon, an impressive amount of strength and weight behind each thrust. His dick pushes in and out of you hard and fast in the most unromantic way. You can feel it all the way up to your throat. It makes the back of legs and and your lower half feel tingly. Your head is blank, nothing but spotted white in your vision. You blink them open to look at Razors face. 
He’s biting at his lower lip hard, focusing all of himself on his thrusts. He’s enduring it well. Your insides clench, a fluttery sensation starting to build up between your legs. You can feel it in your belly, the knot starting to untie. 
Razor is starting to feel it too him. 
“Inside so, ngh - hot.  S-something coming, going to—” 
“A little more. Gonna cum soon, Razor. Feels so good, you make me feel so good.” 
Your mindless praise makes him whimper. A soft noise that echoes through you. You repeat it over and over, in a high voice like you’d praise a puppy. Razor takes it in beautifully, trying so hard not to succumb to his own desires. He restrains despite how hard and how fast and how deep he’s fucking you. You know it’s not easy. 
“I’m gonna c-cum, Razor,” You say, at the very edge “Cum with me. It’s okay, you can let it out.” 
You cum hard. Harder than you think you ever have in your life, then you’ve ever been able to manage by yourself. The sensation hits all at once, like falling through the sky, you can feel the clouds pushed away by the weight of you coming down through. Your insides tighten and tense one last time before everything releases at once, and waves of the aftershock leave your pussy fluttering. You’re washed with pure euphoria, crying out Razor’s name as you cum. 
Razor is quick to follow you. Your own orgasm seems to drive him over the edge, and he cums deep inside. He muffles his cry by biting into your shoulder, groaning as hot seed spills into your cunt with a harsh stutter of hips. He fucks into your pussy, soft and messy before bottoming out and nearly collapsing on top of you. 
It takes you a long minute to catch your breath well enough to speak. 
You rub Razors back soothingly before you do. He lifts his head, eyes heavy as he looks at you. 
“Wow,” He says, eyes wide and blown out. You can’t help but break out into a fight of laughter “Love you…”
“I love you too, Razor.”
“Wanna do it again,” Razor says, looking at you seriously “Can I?” 
You feel a pulse of warmth through your whole body before nodding. 
“Uhm. Yes. Just give me a break first, okay?” 
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sapphicslaylist · 2 months ago
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Slay The Princess Borrower Fic, Anyone?
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Life has never been safe for a Borrower in a world governed by humans. Viewed as evil omens, any power-bearing “Fae” find themselves prey to black market circles where their fates are drawn to the highest bidder. And sometimes, the winners prefer to place them into the ring and hedge their bets even higher on a gladiatorial fight against something much, much worse.
As is the fate of a pair of escaped siblings, surviving in the woods by the skin of their teeth. But when evading their opponent proves too challenging, it may take deciding between trusting the owner of a nearby cabin or trying to outrun an enemy that can’t be killed.
But the tenants of that safe haven have one damning condition: they must reveal themselves to him first to be granted shelter. In order to make peace with the present, it may take unraveling the horrors of the past and the entwined destines between them all to save who still remains of all Borrowers, Cryptids, and Fae - and perhaps even the very forest itself.
When on Borrowed paths, some things cannot be returned.
Info on the series, its inspiration, and the intended message of the fic are under the cut! You do not need to know anything about Borrowers to understand the story; just think “Princess Tiny.”
Please take care of yourself while reading. Themes of Realistic PTSD, STP-Typical Violence, Internalized Ableism, and Childhood Trauma are all major factors in this work. While I can promise a kinder ending, much like Slay The Princess itself, have heart and see the horrors through. This is a love story about how to trust again.
Was very determined to have the first of these up in the fandom and it appears I managed to do so! For those unfamiliar with the Borrowers, the basic gist of the series is that they’re mouse-sized people who live underneath the floorboards and survive off of lost objects. The original series does depict their plight with humanity (“beans”) and survival of genocidal practices including extermination, imprisonment for entertainment, and otherwise dehumanizing aspects. Combined with the elements of Slay the Princess which often stand for feminine survival of abuse, these two themes clicked together nicely for a properly dark and heartfelt exploration of survival and recovery. All are properly researched and/or experienced, and maintain respect to victims.
I’ve often found myself dissatisfied by how quickly Borrower fics tend to have the beans & borrowers mingle, or how romanticized the brutalism is on people who stand as reference for marginalized communities. For this reason, this work is done as a depiction of their existence in contrast to these actions, and all trust build (handheld elements, interaction of free will, and other prominent soft tropes in this fic) are built up to vs gained immediately. Expect some slow burn and relationship conflict which will be resolved.
I do hope you enjoy it!
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belphegorskiss · 1 year ago
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𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐁𝐈𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄 𝐖 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍 𝐌𝐄𝐍 𓆩♡𓆪
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he’s excited. he heard about it months before and he’s been preparing himself for the release. he insisted that you accompany him to the mall to shop for all pink outfits together (forces you to match with him as well). when it’s finally release day, he all but explodes once you get to your seats. whispers in your ear the whole time at every single scene. bought the barbie cup too (it was sixty dollars).
venti, kaveh, lyney.
scoffed when he saw all the cutesy posters and flashy promotion. looked disgruntled at everyone’s enthusiasm. dragged his feet to the theater and begrudgingly went along since he knew you wanted to see it. he expects nothing when he’s there, but finds himself pleasantly surprised by the true depth of the movie. deeply enjoys it, but is too ashamed to admit how much he did.
xiao, wanderer, diluc.
thinks little to nothing of the movie when you tell him about it. assumes it’s supposed to be targeted towards little kids so he feels surprised when you’re so enthusiastic about going. when you both actually see the movie together, he feels surprised by all the adult jokes and themes in it. you even hear him giggle a bit. overall, he thought the movie was funny. he mostly enjoyed that it made you happy.
kaeya, ayato, childe, baizhu, heizou.
doesn’t know what a barbie is. the feminist themes fly over his head a bit. but he watches it with you and he likes the colors and the way it’s shot. he thinks some parts are funny. you’re happy, so he’s happy too.
razor, bennett, chongyun.
“i’d rather watch oppenheimer,” he says. his statement is quickly rescinded when he sees how furious you look. stares at his phone for most of the movie, looking bored. until the second half of the movie plays. he watches the monologue attentively, and decides to give it a chance. he actually enjoys it and thinks the feminist themes are very relevant. cried a little bit at the end when barbie spoke with barbara.
alhaitham, dainsleif.
goes in with an open mind, choosing not to make any assumptions and not even viewing the promotional material. he goes into the cinema with absolutely zero expectations and actually has a fun time with you. he mostly watches you during the movie, paying attention to your reactions, your laughter, and how your expression shifts during the more morose scenes. when it’s over, he asks you about every scene, discussing the whole thing with you. he just loves the way your eyes light up with excitement.
kazuha, thoma, albedo, xingqiu, pantalone, zhongli.
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snekjoy · 1 year ago
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Sometimes I see Razor headcanons that say he has sharp teeth or fangs because he was raised by wolves and while that's adorable and I do sometimes write or draw that, I also like the idea that he has nothing like that at all.
No defining traits that point him out as a wolf. Nothing that lets him look at a mirror and see anything but a human pretending.
He longs for fangs and claws and fur, and when he runs with the pack he sometimes feels like he does have them, but at the end of the day he stares into the lake and his body stares back, stubbornly human.
His claymore weighs heavy in his hand, his iron claws, his steel fangs. He can't shake the daunting knowledge of its fakeness. He has nothing. If he were to brush his hair, put an adventurers guild uniform on, and learn how to act like a human, there'd be no difference between him and Bennett. There's nothing he can use as proof. No leverage to help himself solidify his reality. No matter how hard he wishes, or how long he wants, he'll never run with padded paws or hunt with claws and fangs, because all he has are feet, nails and teeth. All he has is a body that separates itself from how he feels- a horrifying dichotomy between boy and animal, an excruciating sense of wrong when he sees himself and feels the need to hunch, to hide, to run away on all fours and curl up in Andrius's fur and howl rather than cry, because wolves don't cry.
The tears fall anyway.
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razorblade180 · 12 days ago
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Do you have any plans for the next AU longer story? Idk if there's more you plan to explore in TSF but I loved seeing updates for that. Lasting Embers was a close second for me!
Thank you. You know what? I guess now is a good time to have this conversation. I have ideas and legitimate stories I want to tell. I just get in a runt cause the general cycle is a write a chapter, post it, and then it gets like 12 notes; so I generally just assume most people don’t read them or care much.
I don’t particularly care about a big influx of people to be interested but those posts take a decent time to write but the engagement is so low to nonexistent that it makes me write other stuff that’s shorter or one off. So for all my regulars on this blog I will make a deal with you right now.
I’ve started Ignited. There’s like 5 chapters already on here. I could probably finish that entire story in 6-8 months. Probably even faster if I’m serious, but for me to feel like it’s worth prioritizing I need a little fanfare. Comment, share it around to any who might be interested.
I’ve written three separate stories in the Lasting Embers AU. I will reblog the master posts that have all the chapters in one place. If I see notifications pop off on them and engagement then I will lock in starting with Ignited.
Also to answer the other part of your question, I do know what I would want to do for a Twin Snowflakes sequel
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razorblade180-heated · 2 months ago
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Me:I didn’t feel the need to write a full smut, but if there’s a desire for it, I can write an additional chapter.
Ao3 Comments: YES
Me:…I forgot where I was for a moment. That’s on me.
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miraculouslbcnreactions · 3 months ago
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Sorry if this seems confrontational, but for the life of me I can’t get into your “Chloe has no growth” point when the show itself retracts growth from everyone and is inconsistent with everyone. You saying “The show just lays down basic character traits in Chloe” doesn’t make sense when her basic character traits are supposed to be her being selfish and spoiled.
S2 built off of that and despite what you say, had Chloe doing things that in S1 she wouldn’t have done. She apologized multiple times to the people she wronged, she willingly put herself in harm’s way to help the people she cares about and she was openly vulnerable to Ladybug in “Malidiktaor”. Something S1 Chloe wouldn’t have done. If there’s a distinct difference between a Chloe back in S1 and a Chloe in S2, then growth HAS taken place. But it doesn’t stay because of the formula (and the writers just don’t want her to keep that growth)
So what I’m asking is…what do you mean “Chloe doesn’t have growth”?
I can understand the “No arc” argument because an unfinished arc feels like there’s no arc at all (even though they are fundamentally not the same)
I wouldn't say that the show retracts growth from everyone. It's more that no one is ever supposed to grow. Every episode resets the cast. That's just how pure formula shows work and Miraculous is being sold as a pure formula show. The characters are meant to be static (one of the writers literally compared Miraculous to Dora the Explorer).
That static nature is why pure formula shows normally avoid giving their good-guy characters major flaws. It's the wrong medium for that type of thing specifically because the characters cannot change in meaningful ways throughout the show. They can learn little lessons that don't really change them and maybe have big change between seasons via a special or movie, but that's about it. Thus things like the season four conflict working so poorly. It's just a terrible choice for a formula show! The conflict is literally not allowed to develop properly because of the chosen format.
But sure, let's talk about Chloe and why I will die on the hill that she never demonstrated meaningful improvement even with the issue of the inconstant writing. In fact, seasons-one-to-three Chloe is one of the most consistent characters in the show. For this discussion to work, we need to start off by discussing character development and the two main forms it can take: character establishment and character growth.
Character Establishment
When the audience meets a character, they know nothing about said character. It's up to the writer to guide the introduction process. To choose when to reveal already existing elements of the character's personality, skills, and backstory. This is called character establishment. It is the writing telling you who the character is on a baseline level. Those reveals don't need to happen at the start of the story, though. They can be - and often are - held back for when the time is right.
When these reveals are delayed, it's important to remember that these elements were always part of the character. The reveal isn't changing who the character actually is. It's just changing how the audience views the character.
For example, we spend a good chunk of season one uncertain why Gabriel is doing what he does. Then, in Origins, we learn that it's all for Emilie. This is new information that adds depth to Gabriel's character, but it doesn't change him in any way. This is who he always was. We just know him better now and can recontextualize past events with our new understanding of his motivation.
Character Growth
Character growth is when writers take a character's personality or world view or even just their skills from point A to point B, allowing the audience to watch the character change and become a new better - or lesser - version of themself. This is usually part of a larger character arc where all the moments of growth add up, but it can take the form of small moments of growth that don't fit into a bigger picture, too. I'd probably still call that an arc, but we'll use the word "growth" a lot in this post, so let's just call it growth to be consistent.
Miraculous doesn't really have either arcs or growth because - once again - formula shows don't allow characters to meaningfully change, so I'm going to have to make up an example here. I'll use one that illustrates how character establishment and character growth can and do intertwine as that's an important thing to acknowledge to help guide this discussion.
Let's say that we have a character who lost their family at a young age. We'll call this character Mary. Mary's loss guides her character throughout the entire story, but the other characters and the audience are never told that this is what's going on. We just know that Mary acts in seemingly illogical ways at times and that she trusts no one.
Throughout the story, Mary learns to trust her costars, leading to a big, dramatic scene where she finally tells them - and the audience - about her past. This big dramatic scene is both the culmination of a character arc and a piece of baseline character establishment that allows us to understand Mary's character better no matter what part of the story we're reading.
Because these combo growth and establishment moments are so common in stories, it can feel like character growth when we learn new things about a character in a dramatic moment, but that's not always what's happening. Sometimes dramatic moments are just there to reveal what was always there by forcing a character to act differently than they usually do through the power of extenuating circumstances. These extenuating-circumstances moments are not character growth because, once the moment is over, the character resets to their normal self. The moment wasn't there to let them grow. It was there for the sake of the plot.
This is actually a really important thing that writers need to know how to do. Figuring out what circumstances will make a character say or do a thing they generally wouldn't say or do is part of how stories work. I have started stories with characters acting wildly "out of character" because I put them in the a situation where the behavior suddenly was in character!
Oh, you don't want to talk to this total stranger because you're an introvert with social anxiety who has yet to learn how to love yourself and open up to others? That's nice. Your leg is broken now and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere. What you gonna do sucker? Lie there in the dirt or talk to the nice lady who wants to help you? Your choice! (Spoiler: he talked to the nice lady. He even let her physically support him when he'd usually never let a stranger touch him!)
As soon as that scene was over, the character reverted because it wasn't growth. He didn't become a more open person. He just did something he normally wouldn't do because the situation demanded it. It was extenuating circumstances so that the freaking plot could start.
This is what happened with Chloe in season two. Everything that people call growth is really just extenuating circumstances that reset by the end of the episode or even by the end of the scene.
Let's Talk About Chloe
Chloe does not have a character arc, aborted or otherwise. She is never taken on a journey where we watch her change. All we get is delayed character establishment via extenuating circumstances, but it's given in ways that make some people feel like she was being given an arc. Let's talk about why that is.
Season one Chloe is a one dimensional mean girl. She has almost no depth. She's just here to be petty and cause akumas. She is not a fully realized character.
Season two takes those traits and keeps them, but also gives Chloe a lot more depth to round her out and make her feel like a real character. She's just as petty and mean as she always was, but we're finally allowed to see her in some moments that make her feel like a well of potential to become something more, which the writers basically had to do if they wanted to let her be a hero. The audience needed to feel like Chloe could be good in the right situation.
The feelings evoked by her newly discovered depth are why people go "oh, she had a character arc! My feelings about her changed in a big way!" But she didn't have an arc. You just got to know her better by seeing her in moments where she was forced to be vulnerable. That's not growth. Growth is meaningful, lasting change, not situational change. Everyone changes based on the situation! It's why the "True Selves" stuff is such nonsense. It implies that there's one set way that we're supposed to act in order to be authentic and anything else is some kind of lie which just isn't how the world works.
Let's look at some examples to drive home what I mean.
Season one established that Chloe idolized Ladybug. It's why we get things like this moment from Evil Illustrator:
Ladybug: Fine! You stay! Later! Cat Noir: What do you mean later? Ladybug: I mean, you're the one who wants to protect her, so you don't need me. So, later! (swings away) Chloé:(looks over balcony) Ahhh! Ladybug! Text me! OK!
And this confession from Antibug:
Ladybug: [Chloe] pretended she was me?! How often does that happen? Armand: She idolizes you.
So Chloe adores Ladybug and wants to impress her/be her best friend. Cool. Got it. That never goes anywhere in season one because season one doesn't see Chloe and Ladybug interact much. The most we get is Ladybug saving Chloe from akumas, which doesn't allow for deep conversations. I don't think that they're ever alone in a moment where they can actually talk.
That changes in season two. In season two, they get to interact a lot and it's often in moments where there's a big threat and no one else is around, letting us see a new side to Chloe. But that's not Chloe changing. It's just the writers revealing that Chloe has more to her than the mean girl stuff because of course she does! Pure mean girls don't exist. Everyone has depth. We simply never saw that depth before because Chloe was never put in a situation where she needed to be open. We can't say that season one Chloe wouldn't confess things to Ladybug or chose to sacrifice herself to let Ladybug win because she never had the chance to do those things!
In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that season one Chloe probably would have done the same things as season two Chloe because season two Chloe doesn't really contradict season one Chloe. Antibug showed us that Chloe was pretty desperate to be loved and welcomed the way that Ladybug is loved and welcomed:
Chloé: Jagged Stone! Jagged: (thinking she's the actual Ladybug) Ladybug! What are you doing here? Chloé: Um… when I find out you were here, I knew you'd wanna see me! I had to come say hello. (Sabrina waves at Jagged)
and Chloe has always been a stubborn girl who stands up for what she wants even if what she wants is something bad. Antibug also showed us that Chloe can be genuinely nice to the people she cares about. Her and Sabrina's relationship is shown to be complex with them often having a lot of fun together.
Similarly, Origins sees Chloe showing her father genuine affection after she's saved from Stoneheart:
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[Image description: Chloe and Andre hugging and looking very happy to be together]
Origins is the baseline episode that tells us who the characters are on day one, so I never once doubted that Chloe loved Andre, but Andre didn't get akumatized because of Chloe's actions in season one. He didn't even get akumatized for something that Chloe had nothing to do with! His first akumatization is in season two, so it's not shocking that we don't get a Malidiktaor type scene until Malidiktaor.
Chloe was vulnerable with her personal hero when her beloved parent was in danger, but not before? Shocking! Who would have guessed?
Me. I would have guessed. I didn't even realize that people were reading it as some sort of character growth because it clearly wasn't. Malidiktaor didn't feel like something new for Chloe's character. It just felt like the writers were leaning into things that we'd always known about Chloe and using them to better establish her character as someone who genuinely cares about select people. She just doesn't show most of the time.
The same thing goes for Chloe's sacrifice and apology in Zombizou. Chloe only sacrifices herself when there's no one left but her and Ladybug. When the choice is to let the terrorist win or take the hit and let you personal hero save the day. Brave? Sure, but also not growth. Chloe is team Ladybug for all of seasons one, two, and three! She wants Ladybug to like her! Plus even a petty brat can have moments of goodness where they pick a hero over a literal terrorist.
This honestly would have been a damming moment if Chloe didn't sacrifice herself. She functionally had no other choice here. The entire episode builds itself to the self-sacrifice moment so that Chloe is forced to make that choice even though she's been her petty bratty self throughout the whole attack. It's genuinely solid writing.
Then, in the heightened emotions directly after the Zombizou win, we get this:
Miss Bustier: But I hurt a lot of people... Chloé: No... I did... I forgot your birthday, once again. And when I saw everyone had prepared a gift for you, I totally lost it. Because I, too, would've liked to offer you something. I'm sorry, Miss Bustier. Miss Bustier: Thank you, Chloé. Those words are the best possible gift you could ever give me. (hugs Chloé) (Chloé hugs her back, forgetting herself for a moment.) Chloé: Huh?... Uh, yeah. Okay then, we're all good.
A brief moment of vulnerability that quickly ends and does not stick around because Chloe's change was situational, not true growth. The next scene of that episode starts with Chloe being her usual self:
Chloé: Me? You want me to apologize to the entire class? Ridiculous! They should be thanking me for saving everybody.
And ends with the reveal of Chloe's gift to Miss Bustier, which was given in private via a note.
Once again, nothing new for Chloe's character. She acts as she always has, being mean to everyone while having moments of vulnerability when things get tense. Remember that hug between her and her father that we talked about earlier? Same concept. She had just almost died from an akuma attack and so she needed some emotional support, leading her to act more openly loving than she usually does when he's around. Once the moment is over, she reverts to the petty mean girl default.
Giving gifts to placate people is also something that we've seen before. A pretty similar thing happens at the end of Evil Illustrator, it's just played less sympathetic towards Chloe because the writers weren't giving her depth back then:
Sabrina: Too late. Chloé and I are doing the project together. Marinette: You mean, you're doing the project? Sabrina: Well, of course! After all she's been through... Marinette: Ughhh.... Nice new beret, by the way. Sabrina: I know, right! Chloé lent it to me. She really is my BFF! Chloé! Your geography homework's ready!
For any of this to be character growth, we need to see Chloe act differently over time. For her to be put in similar situations and get different outcomes, but we don't see that in part because Chloe didn't change and in part because season one didn't do much to develop Chloe's deeper side. We rarely see her alone or in moments of extreme vulnerability, but you need those moments to show her depth. That's why Despair Bear had Chloe crying alone after Adrien threatened to end her friendship and not before. Chloe is very reluctant to openly show depth. You have to force it out of her, which perfectly fits the character we met in season one.
Even her standing up to Hawkmoth and rejecting the akuma isn't character growth in my opinion. Chloe has always stood up to authority and demanded whatever she wants. She has wanted to be Ladybug's friend and be seen as a hero since season one, so it's not shocking that her extremely strong will would allow her to defy a terrorist. If there is anyone in this show who can stand up to a terrorist on shear "no!" power alone, it's little miss I-always-get-what-I-want. I could see a variation of this happening at any point in the show, just change Chloe's reason for defying Gabriel to match the situation. Rework these lines to be about a party that she wanted to go to and I'd still totally buy it:
Chloé: No, Hawk Moth! I am a superheroine! I am Queen Bee! Ladybug will come and get me when she needs me! I WILL NEVER JOIN YOU! (throws her photo onto the ground as the akuma exits it... and pants)
Chloe acted like a hero here because she wants all the perks of being a hero and can't believe that Ladybug would actually bench her. That's impossible! Ladybug wouldn't do that!
As soon as Chloe accepts that she won't be a hero again, Chloe stops acting heroic because acting heroic wasn't growth. It was her playing a part the same way she played a part in Despair Bear. She was doing what she needed to do to be Queen Bee again and not because it's the right thing to do. This would only be real growth if she rejected the akuma after accepting that she wouldn't be Queen Bee again, but that's not what happens. As soon as she accepts that she's out, she no longer has any reason to play nice. She never grew into a character who did what's right for the sake of doing the right thing. It's always been about getting what she wants or being seen how she wants to be seen. Until that changes, she hasn't changed.
So no, Chloe didn't have an aborted arc. They didn't start to redeem her and then change their minds. All they did was make Chloe one of the most complex characters in the show only to then not do anything with the character they wasted our time establishing, ignoring the complexity they gave her while also cranking her mean dial up to the point of absurdity where she's not even fun in her original role anymore.
I get why it feels like she had an aborted arc. The fact that the character establishment was delayed makes it feel like something shiny and new about Chloe. There's also the fact that the character establishment we get in season two is the kind of character establishment that you'd do if you were setting up for a redemption arc, but that doesn't change the fact that it was all establishment work. None of it was a true arc where we watched Chloe grow. We just saw her put in situations that revealed hidden depths.
Her showing depth is not her growing because when in the world does she show off this supposed growth? She only acts differently in the type of scenes that we've never seen her in before or around characters that we've never seen her truly interact with before. When she's around the established teen characters or in her usual scenes, then she acts the same way that she always has. We never see her be genuinely nice to Marinette or something like that. She's only nice to Ladybug and she's still rude to Chat Noir. That's not character growth! That's character establishment that can then be used to guide character growth!
Same thing goes for the stuff in Despair Bear. We learn that Adrien can push Chloe to be better, but he never does it again and she reverts as soon as he lets her off the hook, so it wasn't character growth! It was just Chloe establishing that she can play nice when she needs to. This means that she could grow if the story chose to take her down that path because we've established that she knows what being nice looks like. Fake it til you make it plot go, go, go! But the plot never went, went, went so meh?
Add in the fact that season one was a bit of a test season with lots of elements that got dropped and the fact that characterization in this show has always been wildly inconsistent from episode to episode and I'm really not seeing a strong argument for Chloe having an intentional arc that somehow got aborted. People just saw the potential for her to have one and argue that potential is the same as an aborted arc when it really, really isn't.
To give an analogy, Chloe's story is like walking into the kitchen and seeing grandma laying out the ingredients for her famous chocolate chip cookies. We get excited because, hey, cookies! Then we come back an hour later and there are no cookies. Nor is there some other sweet that uses the same ingredients. There's just ingredients, sitting unused in their original packaging, making us wonder what the heck grandma was up to. At the same time, she never really started making cookies. She just set out ingredients. They're still there, totally unused, waiting to be made into something, so we can't call them a failed cookie attempt. That implies a level of commitment that was never there. She didn't even say that she was making cookies! We just assumed she was because we, understandably, wanted cookies and wanted to believe that grandma had a purpose to her actions.
#ml writing critical#ml writing salt#chloe deserves better#I did initially think that they were going to redeem Chloe#But they only ever did the initial setup work#They never committed to anything#In fact I though Queen Bee's intro was the writers saying that she wouldn't be redeemed#And that the hero Chloe thing was just a fakeout to make people watch season two#Which is still what I think Queen Bee was#The writers love cheap fakeouts like ending a season on a mass reveal that then goes nowhere#Chloe's writing is par for the course and not anything especially bad compared to the rest of the show#Queen Bee was just an excuse to make you keep watching#Chloe was never getting redeemed or even properly damned#Is that deeply frustrating? Yes#But it's also the most logical read of her story with strong backing in the text itself#I'm not a fan of the conspiracy theories about the writers sabotaging her on purpose#That's just not how this goes#Sorry to disappoint but occam's razor applies to writing too#Bad writing is just infinitely more logical than a bunch of writers purposefully risking their careers to get back at online randos#Chloe stans are just not that important or influential#I can point to so many shows where people came up with insane theories to justify the bad writing and it's just...#I get the desire for complex reasons to explain why a thing you loved failed you but that's just not a logical conclusion in most situation#Nor is it all that healthy to go down those conspiracy rabbit holes. That's just going to damage your mental health#Curious to see the reaction to this one#Remember we're talking about fiction here and play nice please
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idontknowreallywhy · 3 months ago
Text
Resurface 35 - Reappraise
Story to date in order (Tumblr / AO3)
Previous chapter
ART!VIRGIL KLAXON
Perhaps if you hadn’t read them before these two chapters (here and here) may make more sense of what Virgil has been drawing.
And if you missed the wee!Earth&Sky flying machine adventure, that is contained in this one and this one.
But now, onwards! Virgy-boy still has some demons to exorcise and needs Scooter to help him. Points to whoever spots the cameo from an old friend 😈
💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚
The view from Virgil’s balcony was very similar, but subtly different. They weren’t adjacent - both John’s often-empty and Dad’s always-empty room lay between - and the shift of a few metres to the left meant the light reflected off different facets of the damp rocks of Mateo and the shadows changed shape. The sea met the shore at a marginally different angle, the light refracting through the shallows and hitting the greener end of blue. Two of the trees visible from Scott’s were hidden by the curve of Roundhouse Peak.
Scott hadn’t noticed any of this before Virgil pointed it out. What he did know was that on his own the breeze was stronger and there was fractionally more sky. On a hot day he’d always advocate for the cooler, more exposed position. Where he could see as far as possible. Where he could breathe.
But on a cooler evening, there was something comforting about how the sun’s residual heat radiated from the stone and bathed Virgil’s preferred haven in a warm glow.
Virgil had added to the warmth that evening by opening a bottle of Scott’s favourite scotch which he’d clearly stashed away at some point. Had it been one of the others who produced such a thing, Scott would be waiting for ‘The Favour’ or ‘The Difficult Question’. In Gordon’s case, quite frequently ‘The Confession’.
Virgil, however, often just did it to be nice. And Virgil knew that, unlike Dad and himself, Scott preferred his liquor without rocks. He took another sip and rested his head back with a contented sigh, allowing the liquid to rest on his tongue.
“Scott?”
“Mmmmhmm?” The heat spread through his sinuses as he breathed over it.
“Can I ask you a favour?”
Oh!
The whiskey hit the back of Scott’s throat and his eyeballs burned. Virgil seemed hesitant which mean this was going to be important! He coughed and croaked out a hurried confirmation:
“Always.”
Virgil, staring out to sea, appeared not to notice his brother’s nasal passages vaporising which, again, indicated something was Up. Scott scrubbed at his eyes with a sleeve and with an iron will, forced himself to get a grip of his respiratory system. He was about to say something else encouraging when Virgil suddenly spun to face him and in a voice of utmost seriousness stated:
“It’s a weird one.”
Scott raised an amused eyebrow.
“I can do weird.”
“Would you wear it again?”
The other eyebrow joined it with vigour.
“Wear what? If you’re asking about Halloween and that cursed Superman costume, Alan beat you to it and it’s a hard no. I might be persuaded to consider Batman but only if you’re Robin.”
Virgil snorted and swirled the ice in his glass. The not ungenerous measure he’d poured himself having already disappeared.
“As you very well know I don’t do tights. Not after the Christmas debacle.”
“I think you made a lovely elf.”
“You’re deranged.”
“Yeah but you love me.”
Virgil threw an ice cube at his head before conceding: “I do. Yes.”
He then frowned.
“Scooter, are you CRYING?”
“Nope. No no I’m just… enjoying this with ALL my senses.” He raised the glass and winked.
Virgil narrowed his eyes as if invisibly scanning his brother, then with a quirk of an eyebrow seemed to conclude there was no sudden emotional devastation and released him from scrutiny. He looked back out towards Mateo and tracked the petrels swooping to and from their rocky nests.
Scott followed his line of sight and started a little. There was a small cave at the base of Mateo which was invisible from Scott’s balcony. How had he never seen that before? He was about to point it out when he realised he’d distracted Virgil from his question.
“If you didn’t mean Halloween… what are you asking?”
“Your uniform. The, uh, air force one.”
“Hell no. I’m planning to burn it. That’s not part of my life anymore.”
“That doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly…”
“Alright bury it then. Shred it and bury it. No… shred it, dissolve it in acid then bury it.”
Virgil blinked. “Have you been watching murder mystery reruns again?”
“They’re relaxing.”
“Riiiiiiight.” Despite the feigned disbelief, Scott knew that Virgil had been the one to add three hundred and thirty-six hours worth of ‘A Century of Detective Classics’ to the family server and he knew Virgil knew that he knew that he’d done it as a cunning way to tempt Scott into some downtime. Devious little brothers… who… needed reassuring, immediately.
“It hurt you so it’s got to die. Don’t worry. I don’t even want to touch it again. If Grandma hadn’t spirited it away somewhere to clean it would be gone already.”
“Oh.” Perhaps imbibing scotch straight into his brain had slowed him down, but Virgil didn’t seem as reassured as Scott had intended.
“Don’t you need it for Ash’s dinner? You should go to that, it’s important.”
“I’ll work something out.”
“Oh, ok.” Virgil went quiet again and Scott realised he’d given the wrong answer somehow but wasn’t quite sure how to change it.
“What’s on your mind, Virgil?”
He sighed and cracked his knuckles one by one, making Scott cringe.
“Would you… um, would you wear it once more if… I… for me to… uh…”
“For you?! But… I don’t understand! It made you so unwell? I thought you hated it?”
“I did. I do. But… I don’t want to carry that fear anymore, I can’t be scared of CLOTHES. It’s… I just can’t. It’s ridiculous. And, well… and I was thinking perhaps if I was prepared… if it wasn’t a surprise… it might… I might not react quite so badly? My last memory of it wouldn’t be… uh… so heavy? And maybe I could finish my book.”
“Your book?” Now Scott was really bewildered.
Virgil put down his glass and disappeared into his suite, returning swiftly with one of the large black ring-bound pads of thick art paper the like of which Scott had seen many times. This one was more battered than most and his little brother clutched it to his chest for a moment then cleared his throat awkwardly as he sat down.
“I found it when I was hunting for a sketch I wanted to work up for the exhibition next month. Some of them aren’t… very nice. I was going to just throw it away but Gordon thinks I should complete it… finish the story.”
“Gordon’s seen it?” Scott wasn’t actually jealous, he was relieved to discover - the little snakelike green monster’s appearance seemed to have been limited to the ‘other’ version of himself. But he found himself kind of intrigued that their fish brother was apparently giving art advice these days.
Virgil rolled his eyes and growled quietly. “You know what he’s like… I foolishly tried to hide it when he burst into the room and of course he noticed and he wouldn’t let up until I showed him.”
“May I see?”
Virgil chewed his lip and nodded. Scott shuffled his lounger closer such that they were shoulder to shoulder and felt his jaw drop as Virgil opened to the first page and he saw a vivid recreation in pastel of his toddler self proudly holding a tiny baby Virgil, Mom and Dad hovering in the background. The baby’s fingers were wrapped tightly around his thumb and Virgil had sketched several enlarged views of their chubby hands in pencil along the bottom.
He turned the pages slowly and Scott saw several scenes he definitely recognised from childhood photographs and some he thought must have come from Virgil’s memory. They paddled in a watercolour sea together, rode their bikes in oils, Scott dangled upside down from a charcoal tree with chalky Virgil underneath, arms stretched upwards. There was a cartoon school bus with a dimpled stickman waving from the window.
He smiled as he recognised the two of them with the flying machine on the roof, although he remembered it as much sturdier than the painting suggested. The faded but detailed cross-section taped in to the next double page disabused him of that impression. This one was covered in his own scrawly handwriting. Scott chuckled and raised a hand to the scar on his jaw.
“Oh DEAR, I’d thought it was a much better design than that!”
“Hmmmm.” Virgil rumbled “The basic concept was sound but the materials and our duct tape-biased construction methods left something to be desired and yeah… your “math” was a touch… shaky…”
Virgil smiled and turned over to another cross-section, only this time of a much more elegant design which was surrounded by small sketches of joints and diagrams showing balanced forces, each with the appropriate calculations painstakingly recorded in Virgil’s neat handwriting.
Scott gasped as he realised that this… this could work. Who was he kidding - it was Virgil’s design - of course it would work.
“You fixed it!”
“I did. I felt… bad that we never tried again and you didn’t get your moment.”
“My moment?! Virgil! I nearly killed us both!”
“You were only eleven.”
“Even so…” Scott tried very hard not to think of all the occasions since then when he hadn’t had ‘being only eleven’ as an excuse but the more he tried the more of them bubbled up in his memory like some kind of noxious gas polluting his only fresh water source. No. They were past this now… it was better. Things were changing. He was changing.
“I guess I had this idea that I could build it and if… if you ever came back…” he shook his head “it was just a silly…”
“No.” Scott interrupted, grabbing his arm and pressing his forehead into the side of Virgil’s head. “Not silly. Thoughtful. Ingenious. Seeing the potential in an idea and making it work? Very… YOU.”
Virgil gave a small smile and turned back to the book. Scott felt himself blush at page after page of sketches, all of himself - as a wide eyed child, a cocky teenager winking, a laughing adult flipping pancakes… even a few where he had apparently sprouted falcon wings, one where Virgil had them too.
Scott couldn’t imagine how many hours these must have taken to create
“When did you do all this?”
As soon as the words had left his mouth he knew it was a stupid question. Virgil shrugged and turned the page.
���When you were gone.”
Scott put his arm around Virgil’s shoulders and squeezed as he turned again, seemingly keen not to linger on any one image.
A blazing sun burned out of the page, the wall of colour marred only by a silhouette of the falcon-winged man, clearly falling, curled in on himself as the wings trailed limply behind, the dark shapes of lost feathers becoming larger and more detailed towards the top. No prizes for spotting the reference there. The real sun, heading swiftly towards the horizon seemed to lose most of its heat and a modern day Icarus-but-for-Many-Miraculous-Escapes wondered yet again how he could have been so blind.
If that one gave him a chill, the next made him shiver, the warmth from the whiskey had now entirely dissipated - a faint pencil outline Scott holding a heavily shadowed Virgil in his arms. Then… there was that same Air Force Grad photo, reproduced in a dozen different styles. The last one almost photo-realistic but crossed through in heavy red pen.
Virgil tried to skip several pages but Scott gently took his hand and turned back. He recognised the image of the crashing jet, over and over… pencil drawn, painted, scratched with a blade into a thick black layer of wax crayon. There followed a page solely of fire. Skeletal outlines of fighter jets. Storms. Crowds of agonised faces. An incredibly detailed map of Bereznik decorated with vicious-looking black insects.
The last few pages shocked Scott the most - all the pictures were drawn on scraps of paper, and then glued in. The largest was a drawing in black ballpoint pen of an almost unrecognisable bearded stranger in a hospital bed, covered in bandages and tubes. There were smaller pencil studies of bruised hands, a foot, an ear, eyebrows over sunken eye sockets, a nearly skeletal chin with a scar… his scar. Scott swallowed hard - he’d looked that bad?
One smaller image stood out as it had clearly been screwed into a ball before being flattened out to stick on to the page. Scott’s younger self winked and laughed up at him from behind the creases, one arm wrapped around a huge box of popcorn, the other hand reaching out of the page towards him. Virgil had clearly got hold of a blue ballpoint pen for this one and had skilfully used it to produce a rainbow’s worth of blue shades. The picture somehow gleamed at him and Scott felt the green serpent stir in his gut. He bit the side of his tongue and motioned for Virgil to turn over to the next.
The very last page contained only the sky in vivid shades of blue with light wisps of cloud: Virgil’s starting place.
Scott swallowed hard as he realised Gordon hadn’t been giving art advice at all.
“I put it away when dad brought you home.”
“It’s… Wow…”
“It was an outlet.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Scotty.”
“Not all of it. Some things though.”
He pulled his brother close again and planted a kiss in his hair.
“So how do you want to finish it?”
💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙
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birdmitosis · 1 year ago
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Okay, I was watching someone's VOD because I can't get enough Slay the Princess content and some people have gotten variations on routes I've never even seen before!!! I have somehow never seen the variation of The Razor where you start off with Hunted and Paranoid right away in Chapter 3, and I was not prepared for how funny Paranoid's unique dialogue lines are there.
If you choose to flirt with The Razor for your first option, while Hero and Hunted are like "I'd rather not":
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(Paranoid pls) And if you choose The Look option:
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(PARANOID PLS) (And I've definitely seen Hunted's line before but I always kinda forget how funny that is, too, when Hero is confused:
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I think it's the matter-of-fact delivery of it, LOL) Also, after she kills you, the part with the Cheated is hilarious too because, like, usually to me it looks like he's mostly really talking to Broken, but:
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And his line when Cheated suggests we start stacking Voices isn't as funny per se but I do want it as personal reference because it's interesting to me:
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Final note: I am actually pretty sure that outside The Adversary's route when the Narrator flat-out admits to you that if you think something it becomes real, and The Apotheosis's route where IIRC he says something similar to you about giving her power, Paranoid is the only one of the Voices who independently lands on the concept without any leading:
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(I've seen this line before, too, but I do really like that little detail.)
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dulcidyne · 28 days ago
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On the Care and Grooming of Gentleman Necromancers
Rook x Emmrich Volkarin/ /Rating: T/ / Spoilers: None
“Manfred has remarkably fine motor control in many things, but his skill with a straight razor leaves much to be desired for those who wish to remain among the living.” Emmrich reached up for the hand towel tucked protectively around his collar, accepting defeat, but before he could loosen it, Rook strode forward and plucked up said razor from the desktop. “Well then, allow me to do the honors,” she offered, unfolding the blade with a decisive flick of her wrist. “Just…try not to fidget. I’m not used to shaving people who can move.” (Emmrich’s straight razor shave gets surprisingly intimate. Feelings ensue.)
Featherlight fingertips brushed over his lathered jaw before flitting away again. She inhaled, sharp and sudden, as if startled.
“Sorry,” she said, and the word was shallow too, syllables breathy and catching on that near-gasp like petals tossed into the breeze. “I’m not…it’s so much different than I’d thought it’d be.”
Her skin was flushing all the way down to her neck in splotches of feverish red and her eyebrows knit together furiously, dark slashes against the riot of color. ”You’re—well, warm for one and—”
She sucked in another audible inhale, this one long and slow, as she flattened her unsteady palm against her stomach with a tremulous smile. “It’s just different, is all.”
Before he could move or assure her she needn’t push herself, needn’t continue, Rook squared her shoulders and reached forward to press her trembling fingertips to his jawline. Visibly gathering her bearings, a no-nonsense, well-worn patina of professionalism settled into place. She swallowed and fit her thumb more firmly to the underside of his jaw to tip it back for her expert examination. Then she reached for the razor.
Emmrich could only go utterly still, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe. Rook maneuvered his jaw left and right and up and down, thumb and forefinger skimming up over the soapy line of his mandible towards his stubbled cheeks, stretching the skin taut. He was acutely aware of her gaze following in their wake, feeling it as surely as he felt her touch—gentle and skilled, with eyes that missed no details. 
And then he felt the blade. A quick, even stroke with the grain. 
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