#I never even really read the blurb before reading a book so all I know about them is the edits I see on tumblr

[p1astr81]

baby piastri - op81

in which: Oscar is learning to take care of his new baby girl.

pairing: dad!oscar piastri x mom!reader

warnings: none I don’t think?? fluff, super short blurb

‧‧₊˚ ⋅* ۶ৎ ‧₊ ‧₊˚ ⋅

You woke to the sound of yours and Oscar’s child crying. It’s been only three weeks since you brought her home, but it felt like ages, as you have hardly slept. Oscar usually slept through her cries. You never wanted to bother him, so you took care of it yourself despite his many protests.

Tonight was no different. You didn’t care about the time as the concept of it became irrelevant to you in the past weeks. But at some point late in the night, your little Isla started to fuss. You rubbed the sleep from your eyes, walking in zombie-like motions toward the baby cradle. You yawned as you reached into her cot, but your hands were met with nothing but air.

All of your senses immediately switched on high. You became more alert than that time you had three energy drinks in one day. You followed the sound of her cries, your feet moving faster than your brain could even process.

Your movements stopped when you saw Oscar pacing around the living room. He kept his usual calm demeanor, but you knew him so well that you could tell he was internally panicking. Little isla flailed in his arms as he softly bounced her around, hoping it would calm her. It didn’t. Her lungs worked overtime as she cried.

There was an open book on the coffee table. One of the books Oscar bought in preparation for the baby. A book all about parenting a new born. He leaned over to read something before turning to Isla, “You want your passy? Is that it?” He asked, offering the piece of plastic right in front of her mouth, but she swatted it away with her little hand. “No? Okay. Are you hungry then?” His voice was soft and low, overflowing with concern. “Mum isn’t awake but I’m sure there’s some food for you in the fridge.” He smiled lovingly down at your daughter.

“Oscar,” you called softly, just loud enough for him to hear you over isla’s screeching cries. His eyes met yours, an amount of remorse in them that you’d never seen before. He sighed. “I’m sorry, hon. I really didn’t want to wake you. I tried to get her to calm down.” He knew how much you’d been doing. How often you’d wake up and how little you slept. He always tried to help but you were so stubborn on being independent. His attention reverted back to the baby girl, tsk-ing out shushes as he tried to calm her.

You grabbed an unfinished bottle from the day before, and met Oscar in the middle of the room to hand it over. “I don’t know how you do it.” He chuckled and joined you on the couch. Luckily, isla clung to the bottle as soon as it was in her reach, solving the problem of her screaming. “You’ll learn,” you replied with a hum and rested your head on his shoulder. It didn’t take long for you to drift away from consciousness.

[moonlitwitchdaisy]

we listen and we don’t judge (?)

“Are we really doing this?”

Your husband’s reluctant voice pulled your attention away from the phone you were adjusting on the table.

“Come on, Ken, this will be so much fun. Besides, I know you’ve been curious about the kinds of books I read.” You focused on getting the angle right again after responding.

“Sweetheart, I can already tell just by looking at the covers when you leave them around or by reading the blurbs on the back while helping you carry them at the bookstore,” he replied, cutting you off before you could protest further. “And don’t you dare try to convince me that they hold actual literary value.”

You rolled your eyes and muttered under your breath while adjusting the timer for the TikTok video. “The moment there’s a bit of romance or sex involved, you immediately assume I’m reading nonsense. For the record, I’m not ashamed of what I read. I’m proud of it.” You adjusted your hair in the camera and pulled the stack of books closer.

“Alright, are you ready, love?” You turned to your husband with an exaggerated smile, clearly brimming with excitement.

Nanami let out a deep sigh. “I think so. Before showing the books, I’m supposed to say, ‘We listen, and we don’t judge,’ right?”

Still grinning, you pressed a big kiss to his cheek. “Yep. Oh, and if you’re feeling ugly, I can put a filter on for you.” You loved teasing him. Nanami wasn’t exactly a TikTok expert—he’d only just discovered that people made videos on it. It had taken countless attempts to convince him to do this trend with you. After he firmly said “no” each time, you’d sulk in defeat. But because your husband could never actually say no to you, he eventually came to you and said, “Do you still want to make that video about your smutty books?” You were so shocked that you’d practically jumped into his lap, shouting “Yes!” loud enough to scare the neighbors. Even though he didn’t want to, Nanami couldn’t care less about his own embarrassment as long as it made you happy.

“I don’t think I’ll need it,” he replied.

Of course, he didn’t. Even on his worst days, your husband was the embodiment of perfection.

“God, you’re so sexy. I can’t wait to show the world who I’m married to.” You kissed his cheek again before reaching to start the recording.

As soon as you hit the button, his blank expression made it nearly impossible for you to suppress your laughter. You still managed to start speaking.

“We listen…” You paused, motioning for him to join in. Nanami rolled his eyes but played along.

“And we don’t judge,” he added in a monotone voice.

You grabbed the first book beside you and held it up to the camera.

“Alright, this is one of the most famous and dirtiest books on BookTok. The main character’s parents die, and she goes to live with her uncle and cousins.”

Nanami stared at the book cover, which read Credence. It looked normal—innocuous, even.

He couldn’t have been more wrong...

“Don’t tell me—” he started, but you cut him off.

“And she sleeps with all of them. One by one.” You bit your lip to keep from laughing as you glanced at your husband’s wide-eyed expression.

“Oh… alright.”

Suppressing your giggles, you repeated, “We listen, and we don’t judge,” before moving on to the next book. This time, you held up a dark romance that had caused quite a stir online.

Nanami immediately recognized it. “You just finished this one,” he pointed out.

Beaming at him, you nodded. You’d only recently completed Haunting Adeline, and there hadn’t been a single scene that didn’t shock you. “In this one, the main character is a writer, and she has a stalker.”

“Sweetheart…” Nanami’s tone suggested he was rapidly losing patience.

“Shhh! We’re listening, not judging. Anyway, the guy is obsessively in love with her. One day, she brings another man home and hooks up with him—while the stalker watches everything.” You could barely keep a straight face while recounting the plot.

“And?” Nanami prompted, eyebrows furrowing as if he regretted asking.

You couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing. His horrified expression only made it worse. “Of course, he gets mad and chops off the guy’s hand, leaving it on her doorstep as a warning.” Tears streamed down your face from laughing so hard as Nanami stared at you like you’d completely lost your mind.

“And people say romance is dead…”

“Hey! He only did it because he loves her. Zade is definitely a green flag,” you argued.

“Zade?” Nanami raised an eyebrow at you, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

“Romantic stalker,” you replied matter-of-factly.

He rolled his eyes, rested his head in his hand, and muttered, “We listen, and we don’t judge,” with far more sarcasm than necessary. You chimed in late, too busy laughing.

The next book you held up was Birthday Girl.

“This one’s by the same author as the first book I showed you.”

A small smile tugged at Nanami’s lips. “Who does our main character sleep with this time? Her stepdad?”

You snorted. His dry humor was making it impossible to keep a straight face. “Close! Her ex-boyfriend’s dad.”

Nanami finally cracked, chuckling along with you. “So close. I assume you must really love this author.”

Feigning deep thought, you replied, “Hmm… Penelope is definitely great at writing sex scenes.” You reached for another book as the two of you recited in sync, “We listen, and we don’t judge.”

“This one’s kind of similar to the others. The main character is around 20—I think. She’s been in love with her dad’s best friend for years, and—”

“Let me guess: she sleeps with him,” Nanami interrupted.

“Yep, but in a more ethical way than the others.”

Nanami laughed loudly. “How is that more ethical?”

You launched into an explanation, as serious as if you were presenting a thesis. “Her dad and his best friend run a law firm together. After her dad gets into an accident and falls into a coma, the company is at risk. Also she’s not old enough to access her trust fund, so she marries his best friend to save it.”

He stared at you, slack-jawed. The fact that you could recount this with such sincerity amazed him. “Please tell me the company survives.”

“Of course it does! And her dad wakes up, too. Plus, by the end of the book, they have twins!”

The soft affection in his gaze was quickly replaced by something darker, more primal—the look he gave you whenever he wanted you.

“Hmm… I like that. Do you want to test if we can have twins too?”

You completely forgot about the video. The book in your hands slipped onto your lap as heat pooled low in your belly.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Nanami stood up and hoisted you over his shoulder with ease, giving your ass a firm smack. “If I’m a little rough during the test, I trust you won’t judge me, my love.”

The trend may have been left unfinished but you absolutely didn't judge your husband during the test.

a little note: i’m ovulating, so i just had to write something like this. i'm not sure, but i might also do a version with gojo…

all rights belong to the @moonlitwitchdaisy do not copy, reproduce, or translate my work.

[blackynsupremacy]

SHY LITTLE THING

pairing: nicholas a. chavez x black!fem!reader

summary: nicholas tests to see how quiet you can really be for him after he catches you reading an erotica.

contains: based on this request, short blurb, 18+ content mdni, college au, smut, fingering, squirting, mention of female masturbation, cum eating/sucking, risk kink, public sex, praise, degradation, swearing

taglist: @greengoblinswifey @thabiddie23 @hopefully-saturn @jkr820 @hoffmansgirl @austeenbootler @niteskysx @sabrinasopposite @thabiddie23 @hnch33rios @xoxoglittergossip @supaprettyg @motherismotheringggg @oscarisaackissmykitty @simply-lovley44 @elitesanjisimp @gxuxhdjdu @venic-bxtch @stargirl-mayaa

“shhh…y’know you gotta be quiet, don’t you?”

the man beside you whispered in such a demanding, but coaxing tone as his large, two fingers slowly slide along the dampness of your entrance that was still clothed behind your black, lace panties. you held back a moan, yearning for his touch, but still not wanting to get caught.

you’d never thought you’d find yourself in this type of situation. you’d never thought the sensual experiences you’d read in the filthy eroticas you possessed would become a reality as the school’s heartthrob, nicholas alexander chavez, had successfully seduced you within the smallest corner of the semi-crowded campus library. he was just supposed to be your study partner, but there was no denial that in all of the prior occasions of you crossing paths with him that the sexual tension between you wasn’t palpable. his lingering gaze, grazing fingers across your skin, and his close proximity to your body whenever he was close by were obvious signals of his desires. you tried to deny all you could because you were uncertain that you were ever his type. he was part of the scholarly, yet popular crowd, so of course he had girls flocking around him. you were just as studious as he was, but you kept to yourself in your own little box just trying to get your degree without any complications.

nicholas knew that you loved to read in your free time. when you’d meet to study, he’d encourage you to accompany him to a campus party whenever you’d feel comfortable of course. he just wanted to see you out of your comfort zone—maybe even see you move in a sexy, red number on the dance floor, but for you, he was patient in his persistence because you always gave him this response,

“i’ll think about it, nick.”

the weekly meet-ups for studying started to become less about academics and more about getting to know each other as people. nicholas being the social butterfly he is would ask you personal questions such as,

“i don’t wanna come off as pushy, but do you have a boyfriend?”

you hastily shook your head in response,

“it’s no worries and—no, i don’t. guys at this school don’t really look at me that way. i mean, look at me.” you confess with a shrug of your shoulders, a soft nervous chuckle emitting from your full, glossed lips. nicholas could only carefully examine your entire figure with his intense, brown gaze.

“i am—and they’re fucking blind.” he blatantly stated and smirked at your surprised, speechless reaction.

that’s when nicholas started his flirtatious behavior around you, getting you flustered every time. you were both in the library studying late for midterms, you were trying to quiz him on a question about a theory that was from the study guide only to look up to see his eyes never pulled away from you.

“nicholas? are you listening to me?” you inquire, the brown skin of your face heating the longer he held his stare.

“mhm, m’listening.” he responds before proceeding to answer the question correctly. his fingers softly guide your chin to face him when you try to go back to your book. he leans in slowly to whisper as his lips were mere centimeters from touching your own,

“here’s a theory i want to test—i believe you’d have the softest, most kissable lips than any girl i’ve ever met. would it be okay with you if i tested that, doll?”

that was the first of many acceptances to his advances which got more intense with every encounter. nicholas loved to hear any type of sound that came from you. he thought there was no way in hell that someone as enchanting as you wasn’t getting what she rightly deserved:

pleasure.

which now brings you to this moment of him teasing you after he caught you in the corner indulging in a filthy paragraph of one your erotica novels. you were embarrassed beyond belief, thinking that he would see you as this creep reading such things in public. what you didn’t expect was his reaction,

“you have no idea how hot that is—so, that’s what turns you on, yeah?”

he took the opportunity to sit beside you on the floor, the fabric of his jeans grazing the bare skin of your leg. you instinctively clench your thighs because you were already aroused from the content you were reading, now with nicholas close by, he was adding fuel to the fire. you confessed that you started reading this genre ever since your freshman year, it was your own guilty pleasure. at these words, nicholas had one burning question,

“do you—touch yourself when you read that?” he asked, his lustful, curious eyes peering down at the book within your grasp. you weren’t sure what it would lead to, but you ended up confirming with a deliberate nod,

“yeah, i do. it must be nice to have some experience.” you trail off, your eyes shifting from his lips before quickly looking back into his eyes.

nicholas raised a brow in piqued interest, a smirk playing on his handsome face.

“would you like to know that experience?”

it wasn’t long before you gave in to your desires when you took his face within your grasp, desperately planting your lips on his in such a fervent manner. you try to keep quiet as he kisses your neck while his hand slides under your black top, fingers intruding into your bra to firmly grasp onto your breasts.

“go on, keep reading.” he’d murmur, now trailing his hand from your chest down to the warm, brown skin of your thigh. the higher his hand travels, the wider your legs start to spread to ensure him access to a place no one, but you has dared to go to. it’s ironic that the character you’re reading about was about to receive the same treatment from her lover as you were from nicholas.

“fuck, baby, you’re soaked.” nicholas whispered, the tips of his fingers caressing your slit through your panties. “m’bout to get these out the way, you good with that?” he inquired in your ear, you don’t make a sound, but give him a nod to signal your consent. your legs were propped and your knees slightly bended as he started to pull your panties away from you. nicholas softly cursed in satisfaction when he saw the long, clear string of your arousal appear the further he pulled until they were at your ankles. he didn’t waste time when he brought the rough pad of his thumb to caress pressured circles on your clit. your breath hitches within your chest as you try to keep quiet while focusing on the page.

“look at you, reading that filth while you’re letting me touch you like this—you’re not as innocent as i thought you were.”

god, he was making this so much harder than it has to be. his voice alone was like sex itself. you try to lean to your head back against the bookshelf behind you.

“oh, no, baby, keep reading f’me.” nicholas softly demanded, deeming you ready enough to effortlessly slip a finger inside of you while his thumb was still working on your clit. he briefly praised at how tight and warm you were for him, driving your desire for him to be more intense than before. your shaky hands turn the page and your breathing starts to get ragged as he now has two fingers performing a scissoring motion deep inside of you. due to your silence, you could only hear the soft sound of squelching that emitted from your sex as people carried on with their casual conversations unbeknownst to the unholy act that was occurring in the corner of the library. you start to buck your hips as his fingers increase in tempo, you want to cry out each time they hit the spot that even you couldn’t reach when you attempted to do so in the past. nicholas had noticed the your yearning to make a sound, still with the rush of not getting caught he had a solution.

“you’re being a such good girl—you gonna cum soon, yeah?” with a rapid nod, you don’t hesitate to grab him by the shoulders to silence every lewd sound you wanted to make into his mouth. as his tongue skillfully caressed around yours, your walls grew tighter around his fingers as the heat within your abdomen grew stronger. nicholas made sure to hit that spot repeatedly while making all sorts of shapes on your sensitive bundle of nerves as you drew closer,

“go ahead, beautiful. cum f’me.” he coaxed after pulling away from the kiss, not stopping his movements as you coated his digits and your inner thighs with your slick when he took you to your climax. your mouth was wide open, but no sound dared to come out. nicholas pulled his fingers out of you, leaving you to feel empty from the loss of his touch. he put his glistening index within his mouth to silently indulge in the taste of your nectar, you observed as he hummed in contentment before he guided his middle towards your lips,

“c’mon, i bet you never tasted yourself. trust me, you’ll love it.”

he was right, you never went that far, but for nicholas, you were ready to explore the uncharted territories of pleasure in which you were happy to follow his lead. your hands grasped onto his wrist, taking both fingers in your mouth to suckle off the rest, your eyes dare not to leave his amused, yet intrigued gaze.

and to think that you were just a shy little thing.

[atlabeth]

table thief

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader

summary: spencer's routine, thoughts, and plans are thrown off by a girl he meets at his favorite cafe --- not necessarily in that order.

a/n: i dont know where this came from but uh. enjoy this lil fluffy blurb! ill get to those 3k requests sometime. set during spence's time at caltech

wc: 1.6k

warning(s): none, all fluff

Spencer’s mind is a whirlwind of information while he stands in line at his usual coffee shop, trying to keep everything in order as he goes over everything he needs to get done. It’s a particularly busy afternoon for him, hence his coming here directly after class instead of stopping by his dorm. 

There’s a research paper for him to finish, office hours to make for his most elusive professor to get some questions answered—why she only has them open for two hours on Wednesdays, Spencer has no idea—a thousand papers to grade for the class he’s a TA for, and naturally, a coffee to give him the energy for the rest of what is going to be a long night. 

Of course, he knows he should probably try and do it without caffeine—it’s one of the most popular drugs in the world, and most people live in ignorance of their obvious addiction to it—but Spencer has decided to forgo some caution in the name of getting all his work done. 

He doesn’t really have a choice, honestly. He’s planned out this whole day meticulously, much like every other day. He packed his bag with everything he would need for the rest of the day so he wouldn’t have to make the aforementioned stop at his dorm, he picked the line with the barista that has never gotten his order wrong—and, he’s realized over numerous trips to this shop, is the fastest in the entire cafe—and his usual table is big enough to hold all of his books and papers. 

But as Spencer finishes pouring in his last bit of sugar, he realizes his meticulous plan is foiled before he can even take the first sip. 

Because his table is taken. 

The table he sat at the first time he stopped in here before class and the table he has sat at every other time since, the table that has honestly become a part of his routine and is the only one big enough for all of the work he has to get done this afternoon, is taken by some woman wearing a Caltech sweatshirt and reading a book. You’ve got your own thermos in front of you, so at least you care about the environment, but that thought doesn’t stop the flareup of annoyance inside of him. 

You have to be a student, and you have to be his age, and you have to either be oblivious or have a whole lot of nerve because Spencer has seen you around campus and in this coffee shop before. That means you know this is his table and you still took it anyway. 

“That’s my table,” Spencer says, and after it leaves his mouth he’s able to hear how stupid he sounds. It’s a table in a public coffee shop. Of course he has no claim to it—just because it’s obvious to him doesn’t mean it’s obvious to you. You probably didn’t even know. 

You look up from your book, and the second stupid thought to hit him is how pretty you are. “I know.”

He frowns. He can’t think that table thieves are pretty, especially ones with apparent malicious and knowledgeable intent. “You— you know?”

You nod. “I’m here almost as much as you are, Mr. Reid.”

“Doctor Reid,” he corrects, almost on instinct. 

Your eyebrows rise. “Doctor?”

“I have two PhDs,” he explains, though he feels even more stupid doing so as he gets on the edge of stammering. “I’m working on a third. Chemistry.”

“And already I know more about you in a minute than I’ve gotten in the past month,” you muse. “That’s why I took your table, Doctor Reid.”

Spencer frowns even more. “You took my table so I could tell you about my PhDs?”

“So I could get an excuse to talk to you,” you correct. Your smile grows a bit and you huff a quiet laugh, more to yourself than anything. “You’re a little intimidating.”

That gets him completely, his brows furrowing deeper yet. “I— I’m intimidating?”

“Well, yeah,” you say. “You’re a gorgeous guy who always looks like he’s got something to do, so I never wanted to interrupt you. But I really wanted to ask you out, so I finally decided to take matters into my own hands.”

Spencer feels like his brain is short circuiting. He’s still stuck on the intimidating comment, and he’s still kind of annoyed that you took his table, but you specifically went out of your way to get his attention and now you’re calling him gorgeous— 

Just who the hell are you? 

“You’re not busy, are you?” He’s drawn out of his head temporarily as you speak again, dazzling smile still on display. “I would get it if you were. I mean, third PhD and all.”

“No,” he says immediately, shaking his head far too rapidly, “no— no, I’m not busy.”

He just has a whole lot of work to do, work that he came specifically to this cafe to do, but you’re throwing him off of everything in the first five seconds of knowing each other. 

“Wonderful.” Your smile grows and Spencer feels his face grow hot. He finds his annoyance quickly fading, replaced with some mix of confusion and interest and embarrassment. “If you’ve got the time, I’d love to sit down and talk some. Get to know you a bit.”

And again, Spencer hardly even knows what to say. He— he doesn’t talk to girls. Girls don’t talk to him. But here you are, stealing his table and flashing pretty smiles and wanting to get to know him— wanting to ask him out. It’s all so absurd that a part of him thinks he might just be dreaming, but he’s sure he’s fully conscious. 

“Why?” he blurts out, and he would be even more embarrassed if it wasn’t such a genuine question. 

You give him a wry look. “Why what?” 

“Wh— why would you want to get to know me?” Spencer stammers. “There’s more than 2,000 other students here. There’s almost 40 million people in California. I’m no one.”

“You are Doctor Spencer Reid,” you say, looking him right in the eye. “You drink your coffee with an absurd amount of sugar and cream, you always seem to be in a hurry, you’re one of the most beautiful guys I’ve ever seen, and I want to know more about you than passing observations. That’s why.” 

For once, Spencer finds that he’s speechless. He doesn’t think anyone has ever been this blatant, this honest with him, over a matter like this. He— he doesn’t think he’s ever been asked out. Are you asking him out?

“If you think this is totally weird and you want your table back, say the word and I’ll get out of here.” Your eyes move to the free seat across from you, and you tilt your head. “But… if you don’t think it’s totally weird, there’s room for another.” 

Spencer stands there for a second, a thousand things flitting through his mind once again. On one hand, he has a lot of work to do. This is throwing off his entire routine, and even if he just spends ten minutes talking here, he’s going to have to get all his work done, and he’ll probably end up running to his office hours to make it there in time. Part of the reason that he plans things out so meticulously is so he can avoid sprints across campus that he’s most certainly not built for. 

On the other hand, he’s known you for two minutes and he’s already enraptured. He wants nothing more than to ignore that voice in his head and sit down across from you, absorb every bit of attention you’re willing to give and every word you say, and get to know this strange table thief. 

It takes another moment, but Spencer slings his bag off and takes the seat across from you. He sets his bag on the ground and his oversugared coffee on the table, and he notices the way a weight seems to leave your shoulders. 

You were nervous. Nervous to talk to him. The thought is almost laughable, that someone feels the way about him that he usually feels in every social interaction. 

“It is a little weird,” Spencer says, and he finds a small smile tugging at his lips that he can’t fully control. “But that’s kind of my specialty.” 

Your smile grows, and Spencer thinks you’re one of the most beautiful girls he’s ever seen. He has no idea how he got lucky enough for you to intercept him like this, but he’s grateful for it. 

“Good to hear,” you nod, and you let out a soft chuckle. “Sorry for stealing your table, by the way. It was the only thing I could think of to get your attention.” 

He shakes his head as he blinks a few times. “I don’t blame you. It’s a good table.” 

“It’s not really the table,” you say wryly. “It’s you. You’re very intriguing.” 

“Well,” Spencer says, clearing his throat as he tries his hardest to calm his nerves, “I guess it’s not really my table anymore. It can be our table, going forward.” 

Your eyebrows rise, and your smile is as bright as your eyes. “I like the sound of that, Doctor Reid.” 

His face burns as he tries to act casual, and he hopes you can’t tell how much he likes the sound of that. 

You start talking, asking him questions about himself and what he does and how in the world he has two PhDs already when you’re the same age, and he finds himself attached to every word—it’s an active effort to not get lost in those bright eyes of yours. 

(Spencer never does make it to those office hours.)

[burrowdarling]

"Don't act so innocent.."

Summary: As things get a little heated, you get the courage to ask for something new you want to try. Requested by @samanthamark5

Pairings: lsu!joe x shygf!reader

Warnings: oral (male receiving), praise, descriptions of sex, MDNI

Note: Hi! Here's the first request based off of this prompt list. It's very loosely LSU Joe if you squint, really just the fact that they're in college. I hope you all enjoy it! Requests for it are still open!

Word Count: 1.7k (this was meant to be a blurb, I might've gotten carried away..whoops)

Check out my Masterlist here!

Joe always had this presence about him, with him being the star quarterback of the football team for LSU. Everyone’s eyes were always drawn to him when he entered the room, in class or otherwise. That was especially not different when the two of you started dating. The spotlight was never really your thing, opting more for small groups of friends or staying in with your books. Being with Joe has started to push you out of your comfort zone, but that didn’t mean it was going to happen overnight. A prime example was the party that was happening tonight, which you were pleading to stay home from.

“C’mon baby, I wanna have my girl there with me” Joe pleaded.

“You know parties aren’t really my thing Joey, can’t I just wait here till you get back?” you pleaded back, just as whiney as he was being.

He didn’t give you an answer, just stared at you with a look that said ‘does it look like I want that as an option?’ Joe pushed off the door frame to his room and walked over to where you were sitting on his bed, your current read opened in front of you. He climbed onto it, crawling up to you until you were underneath him, tossing the book to the side in the process. 

“Joe! I was in the middle of that, I didn’t even get to mark my page” you exclaimed, feeling overwhelmed with all of the attention he was giving you.

You and Joe had been dating for a few months, but he had significantly more experience than you. Only having one real boyfriend before him, he wasn’t the most giving in the head department, nor did he ever really want anything from you. That relationship didn’t last long before he broke things off with you, proceeding to get with some cheerleader shortly after.

Joe has been tender with you, taking things at your pace and knowing when to test your limitations within reason. He knew your body better than you did, knowing how to get any type of reaction from you that he desired. He was extremely giving in bed, always making sure you were the first to finish. One thing you had yet to try together was you taking control for a change: giving Joe a blow job.

With his arms caging you in on either side of your head, his body weight pressing you down into the mattress, you felt stuck in the best way possible. Joe always knew how to get a reaction from your body. Your breath hitched in your throat at the feeling of his erection through his jeans, causing your cheeks to flush and your mind race.

“Can you feel what you do to me, at least let me make you feel good before I leave. That way I can leave with the taste of you on my tongue” Joe said, his lips trailing kisses along your jawline, making his way to your lips.

It felt like now was as good of a time as any, trying to block out any of the anxious thoughts about what his reaction could be to your request. You tentatively reached your hand between your bodies, palming his hard on which earned you a deep groan from above.

“I wanna try something tonight instead” you said, your voice slightly wavering as you looked into his eyes peering into yours above you. The blue of his eyes was something you had grown to find a sense of comfort in. 

“And what would that be, baby?” Joe said with a sense of care lacing his voice, a knowing smirk gracing his lips.

“Are you really gonna make me say it?” you asked, feeling yourself wanting to abc out, to make the awkwardness go away.

“Mhm. If you wanna do it, I wanna hear you ask for what you want. It’s something we're working on, remember?”

You nodded shyly, remembering how Joe has made it his mission to bring up your self confidence. It started with some smaller tasks like asking for help when you needed it or not being scared to take charge of a situation. When you guys finally slept together, it’s since spread into the bedroom. Joe always makes sure you feel safe and secure, wanting you to always feel comfortable to tell him anything. He always wants you to ask for what you want and not be afraid to bring anything up.

“I’m not gonna say no sweetheart, I just wanna hear the words come out of your pretty mouth” Joe said, raising a hand to graze your cheek.

His words caused you to feel even more flustered, feeling the need for Joe growing by the second.

“I wanna try to blow you” you said, feeling the heat rise on your cheeks at your attempt to come off as confident as you could.

“Go right ahead, I won’t stop you” Joe said, moving off of you to lay back against the headboard next to you, slipping his shirt off in the process. 

You took a deep breath, gathering your courage and fighting down your insecure thoughts before exhaling and shifting closer to Joe. He helped you to work his pants down, leaving them at his ankles before kicking them off. You took his boxers with them knowing you needed to do it all in one go or you’d feel like you’d chicken out of the whole thing. The sight of Joe’s hard cock sent heat to your center, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before.

You took him in your hands, Feeling the nerves come across in your actions, Joe placed a reassuring hand on the back of your head as he directed you towards him for a kiss.

“No need to be nervous baby, it’s just me” Joe spoke gently, moving his hand to stroke your cheek lovingly.

WIth a nod of understanding, you took the leap and leaned down to place a kiss to the tip. You took him in your mouth the best you could, using your hand for what you couldn’t fit. 

“You’re doing such a good job, babe. Know how to make me feel so good” Joe moaned, head thrown back in pleasure.

The sounds Joe was making above you were egging you on, taking in all of the praises that were coming from him. You continued to take him, getting past the awkward feeling of having him in your mouth fairly quickly. You would occasionally pop off to lick a stripe from his base to the tip before taking him again.

“I’m not gonna last long if you keep doing that baby, I swear” Joe groaned.

You took that as your cue to keep going, knowing that you were bringing him pleasure. 

“Where do you want me to finish?” Joe rushed out, clearly feeling close to the edge,

You came off of him, continuing to stroke him as you spoke. You were taking the moment to use your last bit of courage to ask for what you wanted.

“Right here” you said gesturing to your chest with a glimmer of lust in your eyes, earning a deep groan from him in response. 

You knew how much Joe loved your boobs, mentioning in the past that this was something he’d love to do when the time felt right to do it. You slipped off the bed to the floor, getting on your knees ready to take what he would give you before he could give you a proper response. Joe took over then, giving you the opportunity to prepare yourself. You slipped your shirt off, trying to not feel so exposed in front of him in the position you were in. The sight of him standing above you stroking his cock drove you wild, it felt as if all of your insecurities had flown out the window in that moment. With a few more strokes, Joe was finishing with a loud moan, covering your chest.

Joe sat on the edge of the bed, taking a minute to compose himself. Before he could make any other moves towards you, you stood up in a hurry.

“I’ll be right back, i’m just gonna go to the bathroom” you rushed out and made your way quickly, attempting to fight off any other insecure thoughts before they could come up as you felt your shyness creeping back in. You heard a faint ‘okay’ as you shut his bathroom door.

You walked out of the bathroom after getting cleaned up, your cheeks hot showing the brightest shade of red from everything that had just happened. You stood timidly in the door of the bathroom while Joe sat on the edge of his bed on his phone. You didn’t know exactly where you stood at this moment, wondering if he would stay or go out. You secretly hoped he would opt to stay with you, but wouldn’t want to force him even after everything. You felt too tired after all of that to go out and be social with other people, especially ones you didn’t know. He had pulled his underwear back on, leaving him clothless otherwise. When he heard you, his eyes looked up and a smile crossed his face. 

“I hope you have fun. Can you let me know when you’re on your way, if you remember?” you spoke, unsure of where to put your eyes. 

Joe walked over to you, placing a hand under your chin to lift your eyes to meet his own. A shiver ran down your spine at the look in his eyes.

“Don’t act innocent when we both know where your mouth was two minutes ago” Joe said with a teasing smirk on his lips. 

He placed a kiss on your forehead, his other hand falling to your hip. You cheeks felt as if they were the brightest shade of red they had ever been, letting the images of the past few moments replay inside your head. You felt a shiver creep up your spine as your need for him came back full force.

“If you think I’m leaving after that and not giving you anything, we’ve got a lot more work to do with you”.

[ferrstappen]

aren't we supposed to surprise you? l Charles Leclerc blurb

pairing: dad!Charles Leclerc x female reader.

you can find more of my version of dad Charles' here <3

summary: you somehow manage to overshadow Charles and Jo's gift.

Charles was an anxious man. Even more so since Josephine was born two years ago.

Yes, people laughed at him but he didn't care, he was going to sprint towards his daughter every time she took a wrong step and fell down, or his system would shut down whenever her lower lip trembled. Charles could communicate with his daughter through her eyes, they told him everything he needed to know in the meantime before she learned how to properly express herself.

They were an unstoppable duo, everybody knew that, but Charles was aware the reason both him and Jo could feel at ease and safe was you, and maybe he didn't remind you enough of that.

His mother and younger brother accompanied him to the various shops around Monaco, Pascale having to fight Charles to let her carry the stroll on the street, Arthur shaking his head at Charles' antics, playfully pitying his niece.

"I am going to make sure to take her to the worst tattoo parlors and pubs when she's older and then I'm showing you the images so you can die of a heart attack," Arthur teased his brother, earning a glare from Charles while being chastised by his mother, but the youngest Leclerc saw a smile on his mom's face.

Arthur winked at his niece and she giggled. Lorenzo had no chance of ever being the favorite uncle.

They entered different shops, not wanting to go for the typical jewelry and overly expensive designer clothing and accessories. No, Charles wanted to give you something you'd truly appreciate, something for you to relax and show yourself some love and distraction. Now it was turn for Arthur to carry Josephine while teasing his brother for being a simp.

A couple of books he thought you'd enjoy, different colored bath bombs, luxurious soaps and candles were some of the goods you were going to receive for Mother's Day.

Dad and baby Leclerc arrived got home greeted by the smell of coffee and some kind of pastry. It smelled like Charles' dream life; his life.

You smiled at Charles and gave him a quick peck on the lips before taking Josephine from his arms, your daughter babbling about papa and maman.

It was past midnight, Josephine sound asleep on her room after both you and Charles read her a short book in Italian, trying to accustom her to the language, all while you marveled at how Charles did the different voices and intonations.

Now it was just you and him in bed, his naked chest against your own skin, while his familiar hand found its place on your thigh, drawing shapeless figures, enjoying the peace of having you with him.

"I have to tell you something," You made sure to not make eye contact with Charles, hiding your face against his neck.

Charles chuckled with your reaction, "What is it and why are you hiding, bebé?" He tried to get you to face him.

"I know this wasn't planned or anything," you began talking but know Charles felt tears on his chest, it got him worried and helped you sit on the bed while assuring you whatever it was, you'd be able to find a solution.

"Babe, I'm two months pregnant," you announced and Charles placed his hand on his mouth in astonishment.

"No, in Bahrein?" Charles blurted out and a smile appeared on your face, of course that would be his first reaction as his brain processed the news.

You didn't know what you were expecting, maybe it was a problem because Josephine was still too young, maybe Charles didn't want another baby, you never really discussed it after Jo was born, but even in the dark his glossy green eyes were shining as his hand found its known place on your neck, his thumb softly caressing your cheek before lovingly kissing you.

those one of a kind kisses, the ones that were special and held so many emotions. neither of you could hide the smile appearing, only smiling at each other, Charles still caressing your cheek.

but suddenly he dropped his hand to your thigh, an unreadable expression on his face.

"But it's mother day and you're surprising me? No, I have this whole thing planned!" Charles protested and this made your eyes tear up, now it was your time to find his lips.

God, maybe it was time for a boy to mimic his dad.

[gucciwins]

hi angie :) i was wondering whether you could write a little blurb based off an idea i’ve had recently? so harry and (yn) are a new couple and every time they go out (yn) is super conscious of how she acts and what she’s wearing/doing because they’re in public and harry just wants to calm her down :(( i feel like new boyfriendrry would be so gentle and kind :(

hope you enjoy this 2k blurb, sweets 🤍

+

Y/N really liked Harry.

He was funny, charming, and intelligent. Harry loved discussing the books she was reading and, to her surprise, would go on to purchase them so he could also share his thoughts with her. They were introduced by a mutual friend, stating they would get on well because of their love for poetry. Y/N wasn’t one for meeting new people–let alone being set up but Dezzie promised she wouldn’t regret it. Harry was told he’d be meeting his perfect match, and Dezzie was not wrong. Y/N had been someone straight out of a storybook with her perfect hair and a laugh that made his heart skip a beat every time he heard it. Harry was absolutely smitten. 

They started with one date that turned into three, and soon enough, Y/N and Harry were talking every day, trying their best to work their schedule to fit each other in. One time a week was not enough for either of them. With more dates, there was more time together, and before they knew it had been a month of dating. 

It’s not been three months since they met, and they’ve never been happier. Harry feels secure and loved in his relationship. He knows Y/N protects him as he does her. Y/N came in with her heart guarded high, but Harry crumbled her walls too quickly, and she knew she had no chance against him, so she let herself go into this relationship with an open mind and heart. Y/N knew that while Harry shielded their relationship, it wasn’t impossible to stop random fans from taking photos even when Harry asked them not to or to be trailed by paparazzi on a date night. Harry did his best to protect her, and Y/N knew he was doing everything he could. Being a new couple and someone no one knew about, it’s as if everyone was trying to find the skeletons in her closet. They were all waiting for her downfall. 

Harry had promised her it would die down, but it seemed overnight there were articles of her everywhere, from the shops to every social media outlet. Y/N didn’t actively look for them. She knew it wasn’t good for her, and family members would send them her way. Old high school friends who still had her number began asking to hang out with her. Her parents sent her the articles because a nosy neighbor would text them. It’s as if no one was watching out for her. 

She felt it was her against thousands and felt herself beginning to lose. 

Y/N had a bad day, and all she wanted to do was wallow in bed, though she had already planned a date night with Harry. She would hate to cancel on him, so Y/N dragged herself to shower and got ready. While Y/N loved dressing up, the article she got sent today was about how outdated her style was and that it all looked well-loved–which meant worn out. Y/N made a decent income enough to keep a roof over her head and indulge in gifts occasionally, but she was conscious about the clothes she bought. Y/N didn’t support fast fashion; instead, she loved trading clothes with her friends or spending a day at the thrift shops with her grandmother, who always loved a good bargain. Today, all her clothing did not feel good enough, and she decided that her well-loved oversized leather jacket and black flares would do. A simple black top underneath when she got too hot in the restaurant. Y/N was lost in her head that she didn’t hear her doorbell. She broke out of her trance when her phone rang. It was him asking if everything was alright. 

It would be now. 

Time with Harry always healed Y/N because she knew he was worth it. It was still early days nearing the three months of dating, but Y/N knew she saw a long future with Harry. She opened the door and found him with a bouquet of bluebells. Her absolute favorite, she thanked him with a kiss and told him she’d only be a second. 

The drive to their favorite restaurant was quick, the chatter about their day making time go even quicker. Y/N always loved hearing what Harry was up to because their lives were very different. Y/N worked in the publishing industry, where she edited manuscripts daily in an environment she enjoyed while Harry was world-known. He was working on his next album, and with no future tour insight, he was available to spend more time with her. Y/N’s family, specifically her older sister, would ask why Harry doesn’t post her online because, quoting Heather, “if he doesn’t post you, he clearly must not like you.” Y/N would defend Harry to her dying breath. Most of her family didn’t realize how much Harry deserved privacy. Yes, he’s a public figure, but doesn’t owe anyone anything. Harry had told her he would if she wanted him to; honestly, Y/N was fine living in their own world with Harry’s closest friends knowing. 

Everything was usually good, with Y/N being in public. She’d order her favorite food, sometimes a burger or pasta. It always filled her up, and she’d take the leftovers for lunch the next day. Y/N never thought anything of it, not even when she was with Harry, but fans of Harry began to take photos of them in restaurants. They criticized her meal choices, how she held her fork and even her posture. It’s as if everything she did was something to laugh at her for. Y/N wasn’t the most confident person growing up, but she learned about self-care and respecting herself over time. Y/N grew to explore her fashion sense, began to speak her mind, and saw life with a brighter outlook. It wasn’t until she had what felt like a million eyes on her that she began questioning her every move. Suddenly, everyone had become someone to be wary of, and she hated thinking like that. 

Their waiter greeted them with a smile, showing them to a table. Y/N frowned because their usual waitress, Karla, was out tonight. Harry squeezed her hand in assurance, and Y/N knew it would be fine. 

“Uhh–I’ll do an iced water,” she smiled timidly at the waiter, not wanting to order alcohol or soda.

Harry looked at her confused but didn’t question it. When they returned to take their order, Y/N ordered a Caesar salad, stating she had a late lunch at work. Harry ordered her favorite pesto pasta and a plate of tilapia for him. Harry began worrying because he noticed she kept looking around and was fidgety with her hands. She kept slipping the ring she wore on her pinky that Y/N got gifted for her fifteenth birthday on and off. It’s a sign she’s nervous. He hadn’t seen her do that with him since their first date; she excused herself to the restroom before he could ask her. 

He sits back in his chair confused, until he sees a quick flash in the corner of his eye. 

A camera. 

It would be minutes before that made its way online. Harry waved down his waiter, asking him to make their food to-go as quickly as possible. Harry stood up to go to the bathroom, needing to check on Y/N.

“Y/N,” he knocks on the door. He hears the sink, but no reply. Harry tries the next one. “Y/N, sweetheart. It’s me.” The lock of the door turns, and she lets him in. He finds her eyes red, but her mascara looks intact, almost as if she had reapplied it. Harry feels defeated. He knows this hurt is his fault, even if partially. “Oh, my love. I’m sorry.” 

She shakes her head, brushing off his words, “what are you on about?” 

Harry places his hands on her face, his thumbs caressing her cheeks, trying to comfort them both. “Baby,” he sighs. “Don’t have to pretend with me. I’m supposed to be taking care of you can’t do that if you’re not honest.” 

Those words are enough to break her open. Y/N sets forward and falls into his arms. She forgets everything outside, all those people looking at her and judging her because she knew she’d be safe here with Harry. “It’s been a hard day,” she whispers. 

“That’s okay,” he assures her. “We’ll go home. Make you a cuppa and eat dinner in bed.” 

“But the crumbs,” she mumbles, remembering his dumb rule.

“Fuck it. It was a stupid rule.” 

Y/N giggles, and it lightens the tightness in his chest. She’s calming down and feeling better. “I only got a salad,” she pouts. 

“Got the pesto for you, silly girl.” 

Her eyes lighten up, “you’re perfect, Harry Styles.”

“Only for you.” 

Harry gently kisses her lips, knowing she’s still sensitive. Y/N surprises him by replying eagerly, but he slows her down with a slight nip of her bottom lip, and she moans. A simple kiss wasn’t supposed to get this heated. He pulls away and sees her pout on full display instead of giving in like he usually would; he pecks her lips and guides her out of the restroom after slipping her bag on his shoulder. 

“My bag looks good on you,” Y/N teases quietly. 

Harry smiles at her, “yeah, think I should model for Baggu?”

“Only if they let me take the pictures.”

“No work would get done with your pretty face.”

“What’s that mean?” She looks at him with a sly smile, already knowing his response. 

“That you are a pretty distraction.” 

Before she can respond, Y/N realizes they’ve made it to the hostess stand, where their food awaits them all packed up. Harry slips out two hundred dollar bills and passes them forward. “Have a good night.” Harry walks them to the car, and she’s thankful no one is outside. He opens the door for her and lets her slip in. Harry sets her bag on her lap and reaches around her to buckle in her seatbelt. Y/N softens at his actions because he’s always been gentle and careful with her from the moment she met him. It’s never changed. 

“Harry,” she calls for his name softly. 

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Thank you,” she tells him honestly. 

“Nothing to thank.” Harry presses a kiss on her cheek. Then, he puts away their food and drives them to his house. Y/N turns in her seat to look at him. He sends her a wink at a red light but keeps his eyes on the road. Y/N rests her hand on top of his, resting on the clutch. Harry feels the butterflies return, and Y/N’s touch makes him feel grounded. 

Harry knows what he feels for Y/N is not something he’s ever felt before, which makes him want to protect her even more. His feelings are growing, and it’s why he knows what Y/N is growing through is something they have to deal with together, or he might end up losing her. At the end of the day, he will do whatever is best for her. Even if it means Harry not being in her life anymore. 

He ushers her inside from the clothes, telling her to get comfortable while he gets dinner sorted out, but she tugs on his hand to stop him. 

“Y-y-ou don’t want to talk?” Y/N asked, confused.

“You sure?”

Y/N knows she needs to stop keeping everything tucked inside. She wants to share how she’s feeling because if anyone would understand, it would be Harry. They walk over to the couch and sit next to each other. If Y/N moved another inch, she’d be in his lap. Y/N can see Harry is itching to pull her into him but is holding back. She appreciates it and does the next best thing: hold his hand tight. 

“Being in the eye of the public is something I’m sure no one can prepare for, but right now, it’s all gotten too much. I don’t go online anymore because there always seem to be new photos of me. My phone constantly blows up with texts from people I stopped talking to after secondary school. My family sends me photos of every headline, asking me if they’re true,” Y/N blurts it all out. Harry listens intently as she shares how she only feels comfortable around him and her three friends from university. That support keeps her going, but he knows it will only break her down if she continues to listen to everything around her. 

Harry pulls her into his arms, letting himself comfort her, but he knows it’s also for himself. He repeatedly kisses her temple as he whispers he’s got her. “Sometimes even the people we love hurt it. It’s okay to take a step back from them.”

“But they’re my family,” she defends. “I can’t.”

Harry knows it’s hard, but he needs her to understand she’s hurting more because of it. “Listen, sweetheart. We can talk to them together and set boundaries, but what they’re doing is hurting you. I-I can’t take that.” 

“What do I change?” 

“Nothing, you live normally. You can keep everything online private if you want. You’re allowed to live your life. Not a single person has a say in it. Not even me,” he emphasizes. “Your phone number would be good, though.” 

“Was thinking of that,” she confesses. “Do you think the media will die down?” 

Harry grins, “Of course. We're such homebodies. They’ll forget we even exist.” He kisses her nose. “Together. We’ll do this together if you want?” 

Y/N wants Harry in her life. She never once thought of letting him go. “Together.” 

“Good, now give me a kiss.” He pats her ass. “We’ve got food to eat and movies to pick.” 

[rafescvntyclubgf]

Relax, Sweetness - JJ Blurb

+18 Minor DNI

JJ x GF!Reader

⭐ republished ⭐

+18 Minor DNI

🪄 Warnings: smut, language, pet names, gunplay, cum tasting, brief unprotected p in v

📖 JJ enlists his girlfriend (reader) for a little help christening his gun.

✨ “You don’t trust me?” He gives you a crooked smile, lifting the gun up to his head, pulling the trigger. You hear the clinking of metal on metal making you gasp. “So… We good? You gonna help me, angel girl?” ✨

700 words

Reader’s POV:

“Don’t you think it’s a little much, Jayj? Do you really need a gun?” You ask wearily, cocking an eyebrow at your boyfriend who’s a little too excited about his new gun as he moves around his room stealthily, aiming at invisible bad guys as you continue to read your book.

“‘Course I do, princess.” He gives you a smirk, cigarette dangling from his lips, nothing but some white boxers on his tanned body.

“Why though?”

“Protection, doll. Think of it like a condom. Yeah? Ya keep it in your pocket, just in case. Wouldn’t wanna risk not having one of those. Same shit,” he chuckles raspily; twirling the gun around his finger.

“Is it loaded?” You whisper.

“Nah… Used all the bullets up this afternoon.”

“Doing what, JJ?”

“Shootin’ stuff.”

“Like…”

“Cans, mom. I was shooting cans with Pope, alright? What are you so worried about?” He chuckles as he saunters your way, ashing his cigarette out on your metal bed frame. He turns his hat backward as he leans in a little closer, giving you a sweet kiss. “I know what you’re gonna say-”

“You, Jayj. M’worried about you. Why would you all of a sudden need a gun?”

“I’ve always needed a gun,” he mumbles. “And, could you stop bringin’ down the room? It’s fine. It’s fine. Alright? Nothin’ to worry about. Papa J is safe. Even safer now. One regret, though… One big ole regret. Never got to christen this thing.”

“Christen your gun… How do you do that?” You ask, apprehensively.

“With good pussy,” he chuckles, his response making your heart race as you puzzle together what he wants to do with your help.

“It’s not loaded… Like – Are you sure?” You ask weakly, feeling a steady pulse between your thighs, terrified but excited all at the same breath.

“You don’t trust me?” He gives you a crooked smile, lifting the gun up to his head, pulling the trigger. You hear the clinking of metal on metal making you gasp. “So… We good? You gonna help me, angel girl?”

“Yeah-” He pushes you back on the mattress, flipping your skirt before you can change your mind. JJ loops his fingers around the string of your panties, tugging them away.

You feel the chill of the metal against your warm skin as JJ traces the gun higher and higher. Goosebumps spread across your body as he reaches your inner thigh, making you draw in slightly. “Relax, sweetness. You’re safe. Alright?” He mumbles as he crawls a little closer.

“Fuckkk,” he moans as the gun hits your slick, gliding through your folds. He plays a little more, collecting your essence on the muzzle. JJ swirls the tip gently on your clit, watching as you whimper and moan below him. Your eyes widen as he moves lower, assuming what’s to come.

“Uh – Jayj? I… Um,” you stammer as you prop yourself up on your elbows.

“My cock’s bigger,” he rasps, giving you a little wink before pressing it inside, making you toss your head back.

“Shit, JJ,” you gasp.

“My girl likes it. Huh?” He lowers himself to your lips as he strokes nice and slow. Your tongue greets his, reeling as he swallows moan after moan.

You feel him draw it out completely, eyeing the weapon glazed with your wetness. “Beautiful,” he groans. “For you.” He extends it your way, your hand trembles as you take it off his. JJ rolls to his back, working his boxers off his hips, tossing them to the side. “Co’mere, darlin’,” he drawls.

You hover over his rock-hard cock, gun clasped in your other hand. “Now what, Jayj?” You smile. He clasps your hips, lowering you slowly down on his length until you’re fully sat.

“Look at you,” he praises. His baby blues brimming with lust. “Fuck. You look good.” JJ’s hands rest on the fullness of your hips, looking at you hungrily as his tongue glides along his bottom lip. “Let me taste it.”

“Jayj…”

“C’mon,” his lips part ever so slightly. The gun passing his lips. JJ sucks off your slick, eyes rolling back as a deep moan rumbles in his chest. His eyes flutter shut, sucking all the way back to the tip. “So fuckin’ sweet,” he groans as you rest the piece down on the comforter. He smacks your ass roughly, soothing the sting with his heavy hands as he grips your ass. “That’s how it’s done, baby.” JJ reaches up, wrapping his hand around the back of your neck, towing you close. “How’d that feel?” He whispers as his lips graze yours slowly.

“Good,” you giggle breathily, still riding an indescribable high. You start to wind your hips, grinding on his cock as he smiles against your lips.

“Just another reason I needed that gun, Princess.”

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[charliehoennam]

hero's homestead

A/N: just a lil blurb I've had stuck on my mind and had to frigging get out since watching Road House

Pairing: Elwood Dalton x f!reader

Warnings: physical injuries, jealousy, kissing, mentions of grief and death

SHARING IS CARING, SO PLEASE REBLOG

Growing up in Glass Key made your face quite familiar around these parts. Everyone knew you, not because you were popular or from a rich family. Lord knows you wish you were.

But because the island was just so small, like a little fishbowl with too many sharks circling around their prey, everyone knew each other around here. However, the small island was full of a strong sense of community.

Your friendship with Charlie started while you were in high school. You were just a freshman and Charlie was six when Stephen and his wife would very often ask you to baby-sit.

Saying no to them was nearly impossible. Not only did they pay you well, but they always offered you a ride home and made you sure you had dinner before leaving. They really treated you like you were part of the family and helping one another in the community was just so normal.

They always treated you with welcoming kindness and respect so, if there was anything you could do to help them, you did it. Aside from baby-sitting Charlie, this included working at their book store.

You were around there most of the time. If you weren't at home or at school, you were at Glass Books.

As you got older, you started to spend less and less time there in order to focus on your own personal and professional life.

That didn't mean you were never around anymore. You still made your frequent stop to buy the new read of the week.

"Why don't you just get all the books you want for the month, so you don't have to keep coming back?" Charlie questioned genuinely curious.

"Nah, I like coming here. I like the service. And besides, you'd miss me too much, kid" you chuckled watching the young teenage ring your book up at the register.

When Stephen told you about his wife's illness, it really took you by surprise. She could've easily been voted the happiest woman of Glass Key. The aura she possessed could make the dullest room become the brightest. Her sense of humor would have even the most no-nonsense person cracking a smile. She was an amazing woman and a motherly figure to most.

The entire community mourned her loss. The blue sky and the tropical environment wasn't enough to brighten the day for your neighborhood's residents. The heavy rains that followed that entire week led you to believe that even the island was weeping for her absence.

Between medical expenses, funeral costs and a growing teenager, Stephen had to learn to be a single father quite fast. And that meant working a full-time job to make end's meet.

He asked you to help out with the store and you happily agreed. Glass Books was his wife's dream. She loved spending her days there, in the cozy little bookstore she'd built with the love of her life.

Although you know Stephen has a lot on his plate, you can't help but wonder if he wants to avoid the store and her memory altogether.

You refused to accept money for it, knowing the shop didn't make so much money. Even so, Stephen would still transfer you a small amount whenever he could and would often bring you breakfast, lunch or dinner because he felt it was the least he could do.

All you wanted to do was help.

He was more than grateful, especially when he saw how you could make Charlie laugh by putting on music and dancing in the middle of the store with her.

He could see her slipping into a dark place after the death of her mother. Dealing with his own pain, he did his best. But, you were the best friend she needed. A feminine figure she could go to talk about more embarrassing situations or just to get her mind off of the loss.

Gradually, it seemed like their small family was beginning to heal. Although the loss was a still a fresh wound, and Stephen would often find Charlie clutching a small portrait of her mother asleep in bed, they were managing to keep the pain at bay.

You understand how important this store to them. It represents so much more than being just a simple local book store. It represents her.

The store was just as special to you as it was to Charlie and Stephen.

It had always been your refuge, but now, it was always the place where you met him.

Charlie, with her overly friendly nature that she inherited from her mother, struck up a conversation with the then stranger just outside the bookstore.

Her overprotective father was soon outside within seconds. Although the friendly streak ran deep within him too, he knew these parts were full of men with bad intentions.

Once he realized the stranger wasn't from around, he felt a little more at ease.

Although you remained inside the shop, you could overhear their conversation as you inched towards the door and opened it to stand in the doorway, eyeing the stranger with caution.

Stephen was surprised to know he'd come out of town to work at the Road House. To be honest, neither of you expected him to last very long. At that place, security never does.

The bouncer turnover never ceased with the riots that broke out there almost every night. So, you didn't bother getting your hopes up.

However, Dalton kept coming back. Every other day, he came in with the excuse of using the computer or buying a book just to strike up a conversation with you and lay down his flirtatious charm.

Charlie was the first to notice he would always come around when you were there and, if you weren't, he'd always make sure to ask when you were.

She had quite a bit of fun poking fun at you, telling you he had a crush on you or mocking the unconscious change in your voice you had when talking to him.

It didn't long take for feelings to develop between you and him. There was no doubt in either of you. Although unspoken, the magnetic attraction was undeniably present.

Some of those talks were deep and you felt you could confide in him to share things you hadn't shared with anyone at all. He, in turn, told you about the night on the train tracks and how the last fight he had in the ring haunted him every night.

There was no denying the bond you were forming. However, the rumors that were spreading around the island about the closeness between Ellie and him made you hesitant to make the first move.

When you casually brought it up into conversation, he shook his head and told you it wasn't anything serious and that she'd took him on a date once. You wanted to ask him if he had feelings for her, but that would be too much.

"So what's the deal with you and Dalton?" Charlie curiously asked, having picked up on the constant courtship that you two refused to act on.

"There is no deal. We're just friends. Hardly that."

"I may be young, but I'm no fool. I know there's something going on between you two."

"Sorry to disappoint you, kid, but there isn't. Besides, I hear he's got a sort of a girlfriend" you replied without looking up at her from the book in your hand.

You were both sat in fold-out beach chairs placed in front of the store, enjoying a couple of white cherry slushies, hoping the ice cold drink could soothe the hot, humid weather.

"How do you have a 'sort of girlfriend'? Either she is or isn't."

"Those things are complicated. I guess they're getting to know each other," you shrugged wishing you could avoid the topic.

"Like you guys are?"

"There is nothing going on. Sure, he's cute and funny and all, but he's seeing someone else. He's not interested in me, Charlie."

"So, you are interested in him?"

"It doesn't matter if I am. She's a doctor, she's smart and she's really pretty and drives a nice car. I know I don't stand a chance, so I'd rather not get my hopes up," you rambled, failing to read anything on the page you were stuck on. "Can we please drop this now?"

"Oh my god," she smirked staring at you. "You're jealous."

You scoffed at her ridiculous accusation and shook your head as you closed the book and set it in your lap.

"I am not jealous. I do not get jealous."

"Yes, you are! You totally are!"

"I am not! I just don't want to talk about this anymore, alright? So can we drop it?"

"Alright, alright. Sorry I brought it up."

She couldn't stop smiling as you opened your book to continue reading. Although you weren't her parents, her mind couldn't stop thinking of a way to parent-trap you into getting together.

However, her plans were brought to a halt when Brandt's lackeys invaded the shop just a few days later.

You tried your best to stand your ground and defend the shop along with Stephen. He told you to leave, but you refused.

After the beatdown you both received unwillingly, a fire had been set and the cruel men left. The adrenaline that surged through your bodies was enough to numb the pain in order to get you both quickly back on your feet to put out the fire.

Between the blood loss and the resurfacing pain, the billowing smoke got stronger and stronger. The flames became too strong too quickly and had engulfed the entire wall across the front counter.

Light-headed and dizzy, Stephen tried to save whatever he could from the store. As you rushed back and forth, you realized that the fire had grown too much and swallowed the front entrance.

The heat of it shattered the glass windows. The open air only fueled the fire more. Coughing from the heavy smoke, both you and Stephen got down on the floor to avoid the unbreathable air and attempted to crawl to the back exit.

Everything went dark after that and melded into one huge blur.

You don't remember when you actually blacked out, but you do remember feeling relieved once you heard the fire department's arrival.

The time you spent in the hospital was short - only a couple of days - but it was enough to make you reflect on your life.

An overwhelming sense of regret washed over you as you thought about Dalton.

You'd only known each other for a few weeks, but what if you could've had something special? What if Charlie's jokes were true and he actually ended up to be your soulmate?

She could be wrong too, but the fact that you could've died and never found out if you ever really did stand a chance ate at your mind.

You hadn't fully realized the extent of your attachment until a couple days later.

You show up at the store with a limp from the beatdown you'd received a couple days ago.

Stephan tries to assure you they're fine, that you need to rest and recover, but you argue that you'll go insane if you stay at home with nothing to do, high on pain meds.

Helping the owners clean and salvage whatever they can, Charlie casually mentions that Dalton and left her and her father a suitcase full of money to rebuild the store before he got on a greyhound bus destined to leave Glass Key.

The same regret you'd felt in the hospital strikes you again and secretly consumes you.

You try to play it off and instruct her to not to tell anyone about the money. You barely understand what she said after that. All you can think about for the rest of that morning is that he left and didn't even say goodbye.

When Charlie and her father invite you to get some lunch with them, you politely refuse, opting to stay back and keep yourself busy. You lie and tell them you had a big breakfast beforehand just so they won't worry.

You promised you wouldn't get your hopes up. You knew better than that. Bouncers never last at the Road House. You know this just as well as any of the other residents of Glass Key.

He's gone now.

You just want to be alone for a bit to process it.

The door opens and the bell above it rings as you sweep away at the shattered glass, forcing you to look back over your shoulder.

The sight you see has you frozen in surprise.

His face is impossible to forget. You could never forget those big blue doe eyes, even with the dark skin that circles his right eye.

You groan lightly at the shooting pain from your broken rib as you straighten and turn to face him, holding the broom by your side as you stand next to it.

Dalton closes the glassless door behind him as he greets you with a silent but friendly smile until the cut on your lip and the black eye remind him of the damage he caused.

He doesn't look too different from you. His eye is still a little swollen but mostly black now, his lip busted and the stitches on his eyebrow are all evidence that business has been handled at the Road House.

"So, the Glass Key hero returns" you smile at him, ignoring the sting on your bottom lip. "Charlie said you were riding off into the sunset. You forget something?"

"I'm not a hero and, no, I didn't" he starts, looking around the burned down shop trying to swallow his guilt.

"Changed your mind?"

"Someone kinda changed it for me, actually. A very wise person told me that heroes don't always have to ride off into the sunset. They can stay and make a homestead instead."

Joy bursts within you like fireworks on new years. You try to fight back the smile that creeps onto you lips.

"Thought you weren't a hero."

"I'm not."

You nod biting the inside of your cheek to mask your excitement. You take the second broom that Charlie had been using earlier and left leaning against the wall by the front door.

"This homestead could use a hand" you smile and offer him the broom.

He takes it with a happy grin, feeling finally accepted as if he finally found somewhere he belongs.

"There's, uh, one more thing" he says in a soft voice.

His hand raises to your chin, tilting your head up as he cranes his neck to kiss you in the most tender of ways.

Unable to forget about Ellie, you place a hand on his chest and gently push to stop the kiss.

Dalton's face contorts with confusion. He doesn't notice the breath he's holding, anxiety settling in as he fears that you'll ask him to stop. Maybe he got the wrong signals and you don't like him that way. He'd respect it, if that's the case, but it doesn't mean his heart won't be crushed.

"I thought you were seeing Ellie?"

He blinks slightly surprised. That's not what he had expected to hear, but it makes him kind of happy that you're not asking him to stop.

"She took me on a date and we kissed, but that was it."

"So, you are dating her?"

"What, are you jealous?"

"Why does everyone keep saying that? I'm not jealous."

"You sound a little jealous" he smirks.

"I'm not. I just... I don't wanna get my hopes up."

"I'm not dating her," he says gently stroking your bruised cheek. "I told her there's someone else for me, someone that I really wanna date."

He gazes into your eyes as you smile up at him and let him continue his kiss. You let his lips linger on yours and smile when you feel them stretch into a grin.

The cuts on your mouths hurt, but neither of you bother to pull away.

His kiss gradually intensifies. His tongue flicks over your bottom lip, politely asking for entrance. His free hand reaches for your waist as the other sets against your cheek, leaving the broom tucked in his arm.

You let his tongue slip past your defenses. The gentle way his hand cradles your face has you holding onto his strong forearm and the other broom for balance as the room spins around you from his vertiginous kiss.

Your chest presses against his as you moan softly into his mouth. It takes him every ounce of his self-control to not pin you against the wall.

The bell rings again, alerting you both of another's presence so you quickly pull apart, trying to quickly compose yourselves. Your eyes shoot to the door along with Dalton's.

You realize who it is, so he shyly lets his eyes wander around what's left of the store and sweeps the ashy floor.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything," Charlie smirks sipping her juice from a straw as she stands in the doorway.

"No, no," you reply nervously as heat pools in your cheeks. "Dalton and I were just, uh, cleaning up."

"Cleaning what? The floor or each other's throats?"

Dalton snickers at her candor, glancing at you until she continues.

"Good to see you're back though. And if you ask me, it's about time."

[bianquitasunderworld]

I’m obsessedddd with the idea of sub!frank. Like that man was a soldier and he follows karen like a lost puppy. Maybe not all the time, but yk that man likes to be told what to do

Submissive Solider

Warnings: smut, talks of sex.

Parings: Frank Castle x Reader

A/N: This is more of a thought/blurb? Omg I’m sorry I got carried away, this man just does things to me. Also does anyone know how you get one of these thin border/divider things, i’ve been looking for one in pink and I just can’t find one. ⬇️ 😭

This man absolutely follows his partner around like a lost puppy everywhere, everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, Frank loves being dominant, loves taking control of you, mind and body, but there are days where he just needs to take a break, days where he doesn’t want to think for himself.

On those days he starts arguments, and has an attitude until you decide you’ve had it with his behavior, with him. Some days Frank puts up a fight, he’ll be bratty, he’s giving you lip until you fight him into submission which is difficult. But on those days where he just gives in. No arguments, no talking back. Those are the days where you know he’s having a really rough time.

Frank is willingly to do anything on those days, he’ll listen and do as told, he’ll beg. He’ll get on his knees while looking up at you, kissing your thighs, pleading for even just a look at your chest or under your skirt.

He’s so shameless when he’s in a submissive headspace, he loves doing anything in his power to please you. Frank adores your whimpers, moans and whines, any noises that escape your lips from his doing is music to his ears.

Now I don’t think he’s the type to call you mommy in bed…but there has definitely been times where the word is on the tip of his tongue. There has been times where you just make him feel soo good and he just wants to groan ‘Mommy.’

I feel like he’s definitely more of the ma’am type, I don know if he’d be the type to say any other titles than Mommy and Ma’am.

One night though, one night when Frank is so tired, so, so tired and just needs a break, he’ll come home and find you cooking in the kitchen or reading some book he recommend and he just gives you ‘that’ look with his stupidly beautiful eyes.

You don’t have to ask any questions before you’re taking off your shirt and laying in bed, letting him suck your tits. He just lays there with you caressing his head, running your nails against his scalp comforting him to the best of your ability. Kissing his head while he runs his hand down your hips. He groans as soon as he wraps his mouth around your tit, sucking and groaning.

He treats this moment as if it’s something he never wants to forget, as if he never wants to leave it. Now, it happens when you have to pull him off for a second. He just so needy for you, he needs you. Frank groans ‘Mommy’ his voice is deep, it’s clear he’s desperate. He looks up at you. His eyes starring into your soul begging for more.

God the things it does to you just hearing it leave his mouth, God you didn’t even realize you liked that until it left his mouth, Franks mouth. You just have to give in, you have to. He’s your solider, ‘The Punisher.’ For the first time he’s begging you for something and you just have to give in, just have to let him have it.

This will usually always leads to passionate sex with soft caresses followed by ‘I love you’s’ and ‘So good Frankie.’

[ponett]

Bobby's 2023 Media Wrap-Up

So! Like I said before, this past year I kept a running list of everything I watched, every game I finished, every new album I listened to, etc., and wrote one-paragraph blurbs with my thoughts on every single one. Please enjoy this journey through everything I liked, or didn't like, in 2023, with my favorites of the year listed at the bottom.

(Yes! This is long!!)

Some notes:

I mainly only included things I finished. Exceptions are marked with an asterisk.

I included some YouTube stuff as "TV shows" - mostly particularly long, high effort video essays and documentaries.

I was a bit less adventurous than I'd like to have been this year. Part of this was just that I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up with Big Releases I felt obligated to check out, and part of this was just executive dysfunction from burnout. Wait until you see how long it took me to beat Mario Wonder lmao

Yes, I need to read more books. I don't read a lot of books these days. I need to get back to Discworld.

COLOR KEY

Video Games • TV / Web Video  •  Movies  •  Comics  •  Music

January

1/15: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (MSQ) - Very slow at times, the Primal shit is generally extremely lame to me outside of the boss fights themselves, but god if the quality of life improvements over WoW, the JRPG energy, and the fact that it Actually Has A Story carry it pretty hard.

1/18: Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island miniseries - One of the most creative and compelling uses of the Sonic IP… ever? Fantastic little self-contained arc about the struggles of Eggman’s abandoned creations that gracefully weaves between heartfelt optimism and moody horror with some of the best art ever seen in a Sonic comic.

1/18: Mega Man X4 - Glad I finally actually beat this after never even beating any of the Mavericks as a kid! I can see why it’s a lot of peoples’ favorites. The gameplay has very little of that X series bloat and is just fun, especially after getting X’s armor upgrades. (But the story really is a long series of missed opportunities.)

February

2/2: Donks - Felix Colgrave continues to be an exceptional artist. The sound design on this is fantastic and really sells this short as something unique. Had to go back and watch his older stuff again after this.

2/4: Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (3.0 - 3.3 MSQ) - I get it now. I get why people say this is just a proper mainline Final Fantasy game built into the framework of an MMO. That shit ruled. Not even walking back the drama in Ul’Dah from the end of ARR can sour me on it because the main storyline was so strong.

2/8: Disneyland's Forgotten Sci-Fi Rock Band - Live From the Space Stage - A nice and honest tribute to a group of artists who could have easily been forgotten. In hindsight this feels like a precursor to Kevin’s Disney Channel jingle video, a tribute to the unsung artists pouring their hearts into “lesser” art for a megacorporation, art that was designed to be transient but sticks with people nonetheless.

2/9: Metroid Prime Remastered* - Not gonna finish because I just played through the Wii version in 2021, but still. Very, very pretty remaster.

2/16: Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - It’s more Theatrhythm. What more could I want

2/17: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean (anime) - Probably the best part of the anime so far (assuming they continue on to SBR). A near perfect mix of the more structured plot of part 5 with the goofiness of parts 3 and 4 that crescendos into a fantastic, bombastic, emotional, bittersweet ending. The use of footage from the original opening and the new ending set to Roundabout in the finale were perfect, and made me intensely nostalgic for the early days of my JoJo fandom between seasons 1 and 2 of the anime.

2/22: Aggretsuko Season 5 - I don’t really know what to make of this one. Once you get past the agonizing initial arc all about Haida where Retsuko has to be his overbearing mommy GF who flips out and starts spying on him when she’s left on read and chides him when he misbehaves, it feels like an improvement over the previous seasons. But I don’t know how much of that is due to the extremely low bar set by season 4. And then the ending is extremely rushed and anticlimactic. They got legally married and the only acknowledgement was a shot of them signing the paperwork in a montage partway through the final episode?????????

2/24: Double Fine PsychOdyssey - God, what a journey the making of this game was. I already loved 2 Player’s past efforts at documenting Double Fine’s process, but this takes it to a whole new level. This feels culturally significant. The depth and honesty with which they depict not just the nitty gritty of making a game, but also the inherent struggles of working on a collaborative creative work for years at a time, is astounding. Not to mention that they were there to capture the shift from office life to remote work as COVID hit. So much of this would have been nightmarishly stressful to watch if I didn’t already know how successful the game was, but that’s just because they really didn’t sugarcoat it. And yet even after all that, it leaves me feeling optimistic about video games as an art form in a way that the constant headlines about cynical live service games don’t. There are still people out there pouring their hearts into making real art, and this is their story. Everyone who plays video games should watch this.

2/25: Cracker Island (Gorillaz) - New Gorillaz albums feel like less of an event these days, but after Humanz it feels like they’re just more chill with the project and their ambitions with it. Every couple years we get some more laid back jams from Damon along with some fun new collabs. Hard to complain. Favorite track: New Gold

2/25: Pool Kids (Pool Kids) - I discovered this band because Derek knows them and was excited when they got a song added to Fortnite through the Bandcamp collab. Always down to find more cool indie rock bands I can vibe with. The mix of dreamy vocals and energetic riffs on some of the tracks here almost fill the Crying-shaped hole in my heart. Almost… Favorite track: Conscious Uncoupling

2/25: Insane in the Rain (insaneintherainmusic) - I thought it was really funny timing when Carlos announced that his first original project would be a jazz fusion album inspired by acts like T-Square and Casiopea right as I was getting into those two specific bands. The final product does not disappoint. Favorite track: Insane in the Rain

2/26: Get Up Sequences Part Two (The Go! Team) - I’ve never been one to believe that a band’s sound has to remain exactly the same forever, but it really does hit you hard that the first two tracks here sound like classic The Go! Team. Their more recent cleaner sound is still here too, though, for a nice mix of old and new. Favorite track: Divebomb

2/28: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (Season 1) - Oh my god. Oh my god. I got distracted around the time I was finishing SLARPG, but finally catching up now, wow. My assumption that the seemingly lighter tone of the series compared to the prologue was there to lull us into a false sense of security before twisting the knife when war finally breaks out was spot on. This is peak Gundam.

March

3/4: Pizza Tower - One of the best platformers I’ve played in a long time. It transcends its blatant Wario Land inspirations with the sheer speed at which Peppino can move and the way things like the level design, his wall running, and even the hidden ability to do a second lap around the level reward getting into a flow state where you’re just constantly moving. This is the type of game that wants to turn you into a speedrunner. My only real complaint is a few iffy enemy designs that I wish would get patched.

3/6: Bloons TD 6 * - I bought this before bed one night on a nostalgic whim and then the next morning woke up and saw the Steam receipt email on my phone in one of the most “what did I do last night” moments of my life. I like when the monkeys pop the balloons.

3/7: The Book of Boba Fett - I put off finishing this show for a very long time but finally caved upon the release of The Mandalorian season 3. This show spends four episodes failing to make me give a shit about Boba Fett trying to be “the daimyo” and drive the drug trade off of Tatooine, then just gives up and becomes season 2.5 of Mando, which in turn feels like it undercuts the main series. It fails as both its own story and as a spinoff. I know that finishing this after Andor did it no favors, but WHOOF.

3/12: Obi-Wan Kenobi - Some interesting ideas in the first half hinting at a more introspective show, but it’s mostly swept aside in the back half so it can become a generic Star Wars adventure remixing things from A New Hope and Rebels (and apparently Jedi: Fallen Order). Action scenes have zero stakes because you know nothing can happen to any of the returning characters and none of the new ones are particularly interesting. Why there’s a second climax hinging on a Luke Skywalker death fakeout eludes me. Obi-Wan throwing the rocks at Vader is one of the funniest things in Star Wars history. But it was still better than Book of Boba Fett, I guess.

3/19: The King of Braves GaoGaiGar - Wow, cool robot indeed… GaoGaiGar isn’t going to blow anyone away with its writing, but sometimes you just need a really fun monster of the week mecha show with great action and lovably goofy characters. This is a show where like 20% of every episode consists of recycled transformation, combination, and signature attack sequences and I ate it up every time because they look fucking cool as hell. I don’t care. I’d watch Final Fusion another 49 times.

3/21: The Last of Us (HBO) * - Watched the first two episodes out of curiosity, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue because I don’t give a shit about The Last of Us. It’s definitely a well done adaptation, though, even if I know it’s inevitably going to devolve into miserable torture porn with questionable politics if they adapt Part II faithfully. The ending of episode 2 also lines up perfectly with where I stopped in the game in 2013 lmao

3/27: The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse (Folding Ideas) - Another banger from Dan Olson. This time the premise inherently gives him more time to just show off a bunch of stupid ugly bullshit made by crypto guys, which is fun. My main complaint was that I wished he would’ve brought up Second Life more as a point of comparison (a thing I basically always want out of discussion of “the metaverse”), but he at least did touch on it in the last section.

3/31: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog - I can’t believe after years of begging for the supporting cast to get more and better material in a Sonic game I got my wish in the form of a freeware murder mystery VN released for April Fools. This kicked ass.

April

4/7: Berserk - Completed Miura’s run and caught up on the chapters that have been released posthumously. It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t been said about Berserk, universally agreed upon as one of the greats of manga and fantasy fiction as a whole. What begins in its first few volumes as a nihilistic and edgy action comic built to facilitate as much sex and gore as possible quickly evolves into something deeply human and vulnerable and beautiful, both figuratively and in terms of its lavish art. The world sucks and is immeasurably cruel, and you will see that cruelty illustrated in graphic, sickening detail repeatedly throughout the series. (Perhaps a little too often throughout the Golden Age, where it feels like Miura never misses an opportunity to threaten Casca with sexual assault mid-battle.) But the point isn’t to wallow in that misery. It’s the story of a victim of horrific abuse learning to slowly open up to others, having those people he cares about torn away from him in the worst night of his life, hardening himself into a cold killing machine, and then slowly learning to open back up again, even if it means leaving himself vulnerable to more hurt. Anyone who says that the series peaked with the eclipse and went downhill in the “Guts’ JRPG Party” era is missing the point. Guts needed to find new people in his life to care about, to begin to find happiness again. Because no matter what unspeakable things Guts has gone through, it’s still possible for him to heal and to be loved. It takes time, but eventually you stop and realize that life has moved on.

4/8: Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe - Skipped it upon release because I didn’t particularly care for the minigame in Triple Deluxe, and I didn’t miss much. It’s fine as a little distraction, but not as a standalone rhythm game with only seven songs. If you don’t bother with the hard modes or chase after high scores this game is 15 minutes long. Oh how I yearn for Kirby to get the Theatrhythm treatment.

4/10: The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL - Eh… It was okay. Lots of cool robot fights, but said fights are stitched together with a mediocre plot that tries too hard to be more “mature” than its unabashedly schlocky kids’ show predecessor. Not crazy about the ending, either, which tries to be a bittersweet farewell closing off the series once and for all while also teasing that maybe there’ll be ANOTHER sequel after the OVA series they literally called “FINAL.” Ah well.

4/11: The Owl House - Sad to see this one go, but it’s hard to imagine them doing a better finale than this, even if they had gotten the six seasons they deserved. I’m not as obsessed with The Owl House as I probably would’ve been had it come out when I was, like, 20, but it’s a really fantastic show for all the reasons people always say. Great characters, great world, great story. I love that this starry-eyed fantasy story about a teenager finding love and a place where she belongs is also set on the rotting corpse of a titan with Hieronymous Bosch-inspired scenery and freaky monsters everywhere. What a great mix. If anything, I just wish I would’ve watched the first season as it aired so I could’ve had more time with it.

4/29: Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Version - FINALLY beat this via the new collection, 20 years after playing it as my first Mega Man game. (Technically my first was White, not Blue, but whatever.) There are more annoyances than I remember - lots of really really bad forced backtracking sections where you have to revisit every previous part of the internet, low chip drop rates, some really aggravating bosses like BubbleMan and KingMan, etc. But it’s still a great time overall. It’s Battle Network. In the back half the story gets surprisingly emotional, too. I was always under the assumption that the Hub stuff never came back up much in the story after 1, so I was pleasantly surprised with how relevant it was to the emotional arc of 3.

4/30: Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun * - Yeah I’m not playing through the whole thing lmao. I just wanted to play the first couple hours for nostalgia’s sake, and as a baseline for how much better the rest are. Even before getting deep in the game and having to deal with all the shit gated between doing two new game+ playthroughs, it’s immediately obvious how much of a downgrade this one is. Tons of glaring errors and typos all over the script, blander music, a way more boring aesthetic for the internet, and a premise that mostly just recycles the tournament idea from 3.

May

5/14: The Venture Bros. - Glad I finally sat down and watched all of this with Anthony after having seen one (1) episode as a teenager and a bunch of random clips in the years since. Great show. Some jokes in the early seasons haven’t aged gracefully, but what the show grows into over time... man. Hank and Dean go from being the butt of the joke to being characters you actually sympathize with - while still also being funny little goofballs. And the journey Henchman 21 goes on throughout the show. Man. Amazing that a comedy like this could run for 20 years and maintain its level of quality. Can’t wait for the movie.

5/18: Future Me Hates Me (The Beths) - Okay yeah I’m now just discovering bands through Fortnite lmao. I can’t complain really, they pick some really great indie artists for the in-game radio stations. Anyway: It’s very easy to win me over with a combination of energetic power pop, catchy guitar riffs, and earnest lyrics like this. One of those albums where three or four tracks in I know I have to buy it. Favorite track: Not Running

5/18: Jump Rope Gazers (The Beths) - Ditto. Favorite track: Dying to Believe

5/18: Expert In A Dying Field (The Beths) - Another good album. (I’m listening to these in release order.) I’ve been a bit slower to warm up to this one, initially thinking it was a little too mellow overall, but it might be my favorite after a few listens. Some real high highs. Interestingly, the lead singer’s New Zealand accent is also coming out more in her singing? Favorite track: Your Side (or maybe Head in the Clouds)

5/19: The Super Mario Bros. Movie - As a Mario fan, I think I enjoyed it? As a movie, less so? It was decent, in spite of feeling like they came up with a list of fun action setpieces first and then wrote the absolute bare minimum possible for the story scenes tying it all together. Full thoughts here. (This is the first movie I’ve seen this year, huh? I really don’t watch a lot of movies.)

5/23: Don't Know What You're In Until You're Out (Gladie) - I feel like I don’t like Gladie as much as I should. Their style of noisy indie rock is very much in my wheelhouse, and I do enjoy listening to them, but I dunno. Maybe it’s that the particular style of vocals makes it more monotonous to me. A good album nonetheless, if not 100% my thing. Favorite track: Nothing

5/24: City Slicker (Ginger Root) - Yes I am still making my way through Bandcamp artists I heard on Fortnite don’t @ me. Any excuse to get me to listen to some cool city pop-inspired funk like this is a good excuse. Favorite track: Loretta

5/24: Rikki (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: Why Try

5/25: Spotlight People (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: The Classic

5/29: Succession - A good dramedy series that increasingly focuses more on the drama than the comedy as it progresses, but it’s hard to complain about that since the drama is so compellingly produced. I enjoyed it. That being said, I kind of rankle at the claims that it’s The Greatest TV Show Of All Time. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. Amazing performances all around. But the show LOVES to spin its wheels, to repeat itself, and to let most of its interesting dramatic developments fizzle out before anything really comes of them, almost as if the show is constantly getting bored with its own ideas. To some extent this is intentional - Logan Roy is the untouchable billionaire, his kids fail at everything (but will nonetheless remain billionaires), and in the long run none of them really give a shit about anything other than their own status. But it’s not like things tend to visibly impact anyone else, either, be they supporting characters or the world at large. Even the Big Scary Election, where the Roy siblings are directly responsible for plunging the nation into chaos, ultimately has zero impact on the finale a mere two episodes later. Certain Other Things do have an impact in the last season, though, allowing things to meaningfully change for the cast and for the show to sit with the ensuing drama, which has stopped me from souring on Succession more. There was finally a payoff for something. But it does still kind of feel like a show that goes in circles until it’s ready to call it quits, even if those circles did contain a lot of great acting and music along the way.

5/29: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts - I’d watched the first 12 episodes when they originally released, but I guess the Netflix binge release and the fact that all three “seasons” came out in one year led to me waiting until it finished… and then I just never got around to finishing it. Glad I fixed that! Really fun and stylish cartoon with an art style reminiscent of Teen Titans, a hip hop-filled soundtrack, dynamic fight scenes, and a colorful post-apocalyptic world filled with mutant (mostly anthropomorphic) animals. I’ll admit that at times I do kinda roll my eyes at Kipo’s unshakeable belief that everyone can be friends in a way that I don’t necessarily with similar shows like Steven Universe, and not every joke lands, but I dunno. It’s a kids’ show. That’s to be expected. It doesn’t detract from the overall package for me.

June

6/1: Craig of the Creek (Season 4) - It’s been years and I’m still processing the fact that kids can turn on Cartoon Network and hear Jeff Rosenstock. Anyway! Craig continues to be one of the best cartoons on TV, consistently funny and creative and way more engaging than a show about a bunch of kids LARPing in the woods has any right to be. This season turned into One Piece with the gang effectively hunting down the Poneglyphs in search of a legendary treasure. The kids think it’ll be magic. It isn't. An increasing number of cartoon logic gags aside, this show is firmly set in the real world. Does that make it any less interesting? Hell no. Season 3 turned a game of capture the flag into an all-out five episode war between the heroes and villains, filled with dramatic turnabouts and a climactic guest appearance from Del the Funky Homosapien. I’m sure however they wrap things up in the (sadly shortened) final season, it’ll be great. (Also? I would watch a whole show based on that “what if” episode that jumped forward to everyone’s 20s.)

6/6: Barry - Holy shit, what a show. I ended up binging it in less than a week in a cycle of “okay, just one more episode.” The way this show is able to swing between tones and genres while still feeling like a cohesive whole is truly masterful. It’s a layered character drama, a tragic crime thriller, a farcical comedy, an understated action series, a surrealist morality play, and a scathing satire of Hollywood, all in one. Even within the criminal underworld subplots the show ranges in tone from Breaking Bad to Paddington 2. And it works! While the show naturally gets bleaker over time as it confronts the repercussions of Barry’s murders, it never completely loses sight of its comedic roots. My favorite episode was easily season 2’s “ronny/lily,” a mostly self-contained episode that somehow manages to keep throwing the perfect curveballs to escalate its dark comedy.

6/12: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) - Y’all heard of this movie? Pretty good, it turns out. (I’d seen the theatrical cut before, but this was my first time watching the extended edition. I’ve also only seen parts of the other two movies, so it’s time I finally watch all the extended cuts. The Gollum game pushed me to this.)

6/13: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) - give it to us RAW and WRIGGLING

6/17: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Extended Edition) - I’m not crying YOU’RE crying

6/22: Clone High (Season 2) - While the first episode being about “cancel culture” (or, more accurately, a teenager from 2003 being transported to 2023 and putting his foot in his mouth a lot) put a lot of people off, I ended up enjoying the new season of Clone High. The new clones grew on me as the season went on and their roles in the web of teen romance melodrama crystalized, and it made me laugh a lot, and Cleo/Frida is galaxy brained. Also they played one of my favorite Antarctigo Vespucci songs like a minute into the first episode. I don’t think I could really ask for much more.

6/28: The Mandalorian (Season 3) - I'd been watching this weekly but put off the last episode for no real reason. Responses to this season have been all over the place, but my blistering hot take is… it was fine. Is it as good as the first season? Probably not. But Mando no longer needs to carry the whole franchise on its shoulders and set the bar for how good the live action Disney Star Wars shows can be, because Andor exists, and it’s never gonna top Andor. The Mandalorian is free to just be a pulpy space adventure show where Giancarlo Esposito plays a scenery-chewing cartoon villain and a little puppet does wire stunts. These are things Andor cannot and should not do, but that’s Star Wars, baby. It’s delightful. I could watch Grogu get underhand tossed like a sack of flour all day.

July

7/2: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Season 2) - LOVE WINS. (More nuanced take from way later: It definitely feels like a lot of the more messy political conflicts in this show got swept aside by the big final battle where some more easily resolved family conflicts take center stage. I’m not sure the ending is the most satisfying. But also this show only got half the episode count that damn near every other Gundam show ever made got, so that might be a factor here. Idk. Still one of my favorite Gundams.)

7/4: Final Fantasy XVI (watched Anthony play) - I had to write my longest Medium article ever about this one because I was so frustrated

7/10: Home Movies - “Things I like that I’ve never seen in full” has certainly been a recurring theme this year. Home Movies remains an all-time classic of animated comedy that went out on a high note before things got stale or the characters became parodies of themselves. While it’s mostly known for its funny improvised banter, throughout the last season you can really see the arc where Brendon no longer enjoys making movies, yet he feels obligated to keep using them to escape from the real world. In that light, the ending where the nature of their dysfunctional makeshift family is cemented, Brendon’s camera suddenly breaks, and life moves on really does feel like the perfect note to end on. Truly one of the best to ever do it.

7/15: The Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom - Wow. Just… wow. I had serious doubts about TotK in the months leading up to release due to how close Nintendo was playing their cards to their chest. I didn’t want this to be a Saints Row IV, where the game is fun enough but the recycled map makes it feel like a rehash. Instead, I found a game that made me look at BotW’s map in a whole new light, brimming with so many more things to do and people to meet. Add on a better, more versatile set of tools, more varied dungeons and bosses, and a story that I felt was told somewhat better and we’ve got a real contender for my new favorite Zelda game. It was hard to tear myself away, but as this list shows, it’s been basically the only game I’ve played since it came out.

7/16: Sonic Prime (Season 2) - I liked the parts with Shadow and Chaos Sonic, but I’ve come to the sad conclusion that most of this show is just mediocre. More thoughts here.

7/18: We ♥ Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie - “I’m a dog, but I love Katamari Damacy.” Truer words have never been spoken.

7/19: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Pretty good! It didn’t blow me away, but after how bad the Bay movies got I’m just thankful to have a decently cohesive Transformers movie where the human story is okay and I like the bots (although half of them needed more screen time), even if it is just another Hollywood blockbuster about two sides fighting over a macguffin that devolves into a big CGI battle against an army of nameless monsters in the third act. This is basically a mid-tier MCU movie but with Transformers, which won’t do much for most people, but again: the bar was underground.

7/22: The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart - God DAMN. A phenomenal ending for the series. While I would have loved to see a full final season to get some more one-off episodes in there, this doesn’t feel creatively compromised in any way–either due to the time constraints, or due to a desire to make it more marketable as a movie. It really does feel like they just took their outlines for the canceled final season and gently massaged them into the shape of an 84-minute movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s completely on par with the previous seasons. A hilarious and fitting sendoff for one of the greats of adult animation.

7/23: Beautiful Katamari - This was one of my first Xbox 360 games, but a frustrating temperature-based level made me put it down for 16 years. “Maybe it won’t be as bad now that I’ve beaten the first two games and am better at Katamari,” I thought. Nope! Still an absolutely dogshit level. But also, turns out the whole game is only like two hours long lmao. It’s still Katamari, so it’s still fun - the final level in particular, which seamlessly takes you from ground level all the way to space, feels like a logical endpoint for the series - but beyond that it just doesn't have the same soul without Keita Takahashi's input.

August

8/4: Doom Singer (Chris Farren) - I’ve been waiting so long for Chris and Jeff to do another Antarctigo Vespucci album, but god damn. This is the best of Chris’s solo work, and a contender for his best record, period. Every track’s a banger, with more energy than some of his previous solo work but also a good deal of variety. Favorite tracks: First Place, Cosmic Leash

8/4: Transformers Earthspark (Season 1) - This show had a bit of an uneven start, unsure if it wanted to have the emotional maturity of a more serious action cartoon or a preschool cartoon where the characters have little kid mood swings and outbursts and learn basic lessons. It also felt like it was speedrunning its Wholesome Found Family Dynamic with characters who just met, which didn’t feel earned. While these problems never completely go away (see: the cheap and corny way the otherwise very dark season finale suddenly resolves), the show improves quickly, and the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s so great to have a Transformers cartoon that feels fresh, giving us a post-war setting with a bunch of new characters and new dynamics between the Cybertronians and the humans. The returning characters are also uniformly great as the old veterans overseeing the new generation. (Reformed Megatron! Danny Pudi as Bumblebee! Steve Blum returning as Starscream! Keith David as Grimlock!!!) And those super dynamic action scenes! I can nitpick, but Earthspark’s a ton of fun, and easily the best new Transformers cartoon since Prime and Animated.

8/5: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (remaster) - Everyone who told me this game was a masterpiece was right. I had played the first chapter when it dropped as the demo for the iOS version years ago, but never went further than that until now. What a game. Absolutely incredible through and through. Great story, great twists, great characters, great puzzles, great art direction. Everything comes together so perfectly to form a totally unique, unforgettable package, a top tier video game murder mystery. Everyone should play this, preferably going in as blind as possible.

8/15: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 16) - Wow! Recent seasons of Sunny have been kind of up and down, with some interesting experiments (Mac Finds His Pride, the Ireland arc, etc.) paired with some comedic duds. Most of this latest season is standard fare for the series with fewer big creative swings, but it’s just hit after hit in terms of comedy. Not a single dud, whether we’re seeing Mac and Dennis try to start a rental business for inflatable furniture or watching the gang meet Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, believing the entire time that the latter is Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle. Even the attempts at topical comedy landed better. Easily the funniest season in years.

8/16: One Piece Film Gold - It’s easy to see why this one has kind of been forgotten in the wake of Stampede and Film Red, which revolve around established fan favorite characters, but this was still pretty fun. Perhaps a little too long, but it’s fun to see the Straw Hats fool around in a giant casino and do a heist. They definitely cranked the fanservice up even more than usual in this one, though, as I probably should have expected for a movie made alongside the anime’s adaptation of Dressrosa.

8/17: One Piece: Stampede - This one goes for a different kind of fanservice. While most One Piece movies are isolated from the ongoing plot and its expanded cast of characters, Stampede instead asks “What if we just put damn near every active character on the same island and had them fight?” The answer: a fun time! It would get old if all of the movies were like this, but after a bunch of movies that are just like “the Straw Hats are gonna land on another new island and fight some more weird guys” it’s fun to see characters like Law and Buggy and Smoker get in on the fun. It’s also nice to get a movie with the Wano era art style, and Usopp surprisingly gets some really good character moments in here.

8/18: One Piece Film Red - This really is the best of the One Piece movies, huh? (Baron Omatsuri is a close second.) It really feels like a change of pace after the last four with the most interesting and emotionally engaging story out of any of them. And even if the events of these movies are never canon, it still feels significant in my understanding of Shanks as a character as we move into the final phase of the manga.

8/21: Pikmin 4 - The opening hour of the game made me really question if they’d changed too much, with all the focus on your new dog unit over your Pikmin and the extremely dull, drawn out dialogue scenes with your new companions back at the base. But once I got into the swing of things I had a blast. This is probably my new favorite Pikmin game. There’s a great mix of activities here to keep things fresh. I also really ended up liking Oatchi’s role as basically your second captain who can also serve as your tank or a rideable mount. The Dandori stuff and nighttime missions in particular show off how useful Oatchi is for your multitasking without necessarily overshadowing the Pikmin.

8/22: Never Get Tired: The Bomb the Music Industry! Story - I literally backed this on Kickstarter eight years ago (my name is in the credits!) and then never got around to watching it for no reason. It’s on YouTube now, and Jeff’s got a new album out next week, so now feels like the perfect time to watch it. And man… what a great documentary. Obviously I’m just a fan of the band, but this also really spoke to me as an artist. Jeff wanting to stick to his principles and give out his music for free and play cheap all ages shows, his discomfort over the idea of selling merch, and the struggles that come with not playing the game like that… It's hard. They readily admit that Jeff is an idealist, that people fight him on this stuff, that he’s missed out on some big opportunities because of these stances, and that he’s had to compromise a bit on some of these things over time. But that incredible climax with their final show, including a full opening performance of the slowly building “Campaign for a Better Next Weekend” and the closing performance of “Future 86” where the whole audience is singing along as the members of the band are hugging and crying… it’s beautiful. This may have been a band where the members had to go back to their shitty day jobs after every tour because they weren’t selling out arenas, but their art meant something to people, and that makes it all worth it.

8/25: Nimona - I haven’t read the original comic (yet), so I can’t compare them too much, but it’s nonetheless pretty apparent that some things were softened and easy kids’ movie jokes were added by the studio to squeeze this graphic novel for teens into a PG animated movie. Regardless, the emotional throughline hits REALLY hard, particularly the very blatant trans allegory and the climax. (It’s no wonder Disney was afraid of this movie seeing the light of day lmao.) The animation is also very squishy and fun to watch throughout. Great movie.

8/26: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - Spider-Verse really has done so much for animation, huh? This one was as good as everyone said. Beautiful use of stylized color and lighting throughout, and every time this movie very conspicuously shifted to different framerates for a flashy fight scene it owned. Very cute and heartwarming story, too, which thankfully gave its second act plenty of time to explore the cast and let them go on their journey, unlike a certain plumber movie that came out a few months later. Also I would let Death [redacted]

8/28: Holocure: Save the Fans! - This isn't really something I can beat, but I've been addicted to Holocure lately. I don't even watch VTubers aside from maybe seeing a funny Korone animation every now and then, this is just a really, really good freeware Vampire Survivors clone with a huge roster of varied characters to pick from.

8/31: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock) - A new album from Jeff is always a major event for me. If there were any worries that he was starting to go soft at 40 (because one of the three singles off this album was a gentle acoustic piece), the frantic opening of this album put those worries to rest. The first two tracks are Jeff screaming out for help as he’s pulled in a million directions by the chaotic state of the world, a theme that becomes the thesis of the album. I’d say it lags slightly in the middle, but overall this is another extremely well-rounded record full of bangers that’s unapologetically Jeff, with possibly my favorite closing track he’s ever done. Favorite tracks: I WANNA BE WRONG, 3 SUMMERS

September

9/3: One Piece (live action, Season 1) - They did it. I can’t believe it, but they did it. While I have my nitpicks (Usopp and Sanji don’t get enough big moments to shine), this is an extremely solid and faithful adaptation of the first few arcs of One Piece with a great cast. For the most part the changes feel smart and logical, and the big emotional beats of the story are all there and executed very well. I doubted it a little in episodes 2-4, where the Orange Town and Syrup Village arcs saw some major changes to shift the action indoors, and the increased focus on the drama in favor of repeating every gag and battle from the manga 1:1 took a bit of getting used to, but by the end I was having a blast. It’s a different take on One Piece, but it still feels like One Piece. Genuinely very excited for season 2.

9/4: Pseudoregalia - A great little N64-style 3D Metroidvania focused on platforming and very satisfying movement. I always love entries in the genre that are less prescriptive in what order you have to tackle areas in, a la Symphony of the Night or Hollow Knight, and this one’s great in that regard. While there are a number of new moves to find, most of the map is open to you very early in the game, and smart use of your moveset can allow you to “sequence break” without even realizing it. (You would not believe how long I went without getting the wall run.) I do wish it had a map, but that’s already being patched in.

9/6: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk * - Not a bad game at all, but I quickly remembered how bad I am at skating games, so like… eh? Not sure I have much desire to play past chapter 2. Also the soundtrack is sadly kinda hit or miss for me outside of the obvious Naganuma tunes.

9/9: The History of the Minnesota Vikings (Dorktown) - Jon Bois never misses. Even as someone who doesn’t actively follow sports, Jon Bois is a master storyteller, using graphs and statistics and funny anecdotes to explore these deeply human stories. He can convey why people care so much about these teams, these people, and sports in general, and how our popular sports reflect on American culture. He could tell the story of just about any team or player in any sport and I just know I’ll come out the other side a misty-eyed fan. And what a fascinating cast of characters we have this time, with origin stories for everything from the Hail Mary pass to a Minnesota state supreme court judge to the Griddy. Nine hours well spent.

9/10: Timespinner - A fun and highly polished Metroidvania that maybe doesn’t quite have enough of its own identity in its quest to replicate Symphony of the Night…but also, like, this was pitched as a Symphony throwback on KickStarter in a pre-Bloodstained, pre-Hollow Knight world, so I can’t really blame ‘em! Stopping time to avoid boss attacks is fun, the pixel art is gorgeous, and I liked the dark science fantasy story about warring empires and meddling with time a lot more than I thought I would - lore journal text dumps and all.

9/14: The Decay of Sam & Cat (Quinton Reviews) - All the stuff at the end with Matt Bennett (the actor who played Robbie on Victorious and Sam & Cat) in this was really good and sweet. It’s that kind of thing that makes these videos feel like they’re still worthwhile on some level. But the padding and the things Quinton chooses to spend the colossal runtime on does drive me more and more insane with each passing Nick sitcom video. I don’t know how much longer he can keep this schtick up. I hope he’s able to move on to other things before too terribly long instead of continuing to extend this “miniseries.”

9/19: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales - AKA Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 1.5. It’s fun for the same reasons Peter’s first game was fun. I had a good time swinging around New York again in preparation for the sequel, and there’s a lot of cute stuff with Miles becoming Harlem’s neighborhood hero, but WOW did the Underground v. Roxxon conflict fall flat for me.

9/20: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson - I understand so many posts now.

9/25: Spider-Man (2002) (rewatch) - It’s you who’s out, Gobby! OUT OF YOUR MIND!

9/25: Futurama (Season 8) - I was ready to be a hater, recalling the fact that Futurama has already had three “perfect endings” with the show getting a little weaker with every revival. Then I watched the first new episode on a whim and thought it wasn’t bad, so I was like, eh, sure, I’ll watch the rest. Overall Hulurama is hit or miss. There are chuckles to be had, and it sure as hell beats modern Simpsons, but almost every episode is either a belated take on an overplayed Topical Issue (the pandemic, Amazon, cancel culture, etc.) or a direct sequel to an old episode people liked. Or both! It’s also really noticeable that certain voice actors sound way older - Billy West is struggling with the Fry voice in particular, and it hurts his comedic timing. But just when all hope seemed lost after the nigh-incomprehensible toy-themed anthology episode, possibly the worst episode of the entire series… the last episode, where the Planet Express crew explores whether or not the universe could be a simulation, was really, really solid. Great note to end on to make me not regret my time with this season as a whole.

9/26: Spider-Man 2 (2004) (rewatch) - Once the GOAT, always the GOAT.

9/27: Spider-Man 3 (rewatch) - Revisiting this movie for the first time since I saw it in theaters… it’s not bad. It’s fine! It continues to have the heart and sincerity that make the first two movies work. It’s just not as concise with three villains vying for the spotlight, but I also wouldn’t cut any of them, necessarily. I guess Eddie/Venom would be the easiest, but Peter getting the black suit and giving in to his resentment feels too central to cut. (Yes, even with Emo Peter becoming a meme.)

9/28: Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake - I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this one, especially since I was never really a fan of the genderbend episodes in the original show. (At the time they mostly just felt like an excuse to crank up the teen romance stuff to 11.) But MAN. This was a fantastic coda to the original series. It made me care about Fionna and Cake and their friends as their own characters separate from their original counterparts, it gave the Simon/Betty arc a much more satisfying (if no less bittersweet) resolution than the original finale had time to do, and it even managed to be a multiverse story that didn’t make me roll my eyes in 2023. A+ all around. Makes me wanna rewatch the original show again. [spoiler: I did]

9/29: Meanwhile (aivi & surasshu) - It’s been a whole decade–they were busy with, you know, all the music in Steven Universe, among other things–but we finally have a new aivi & surasshu album! Their chiptune/piano fusion style is familiar, but they’ve definitely grown as composers in subtle ways. Favorite track: Time Travel

October

10/1: This is Financial Advice (Folding Ideas) - A lot of the nitty gritty finance law stuff turned into white noise for me, but still, great video. I had no idea that the GameStop stock craze devolved into this bizarre cult that thinks they’re going to crash the global economy and rise from the ashes as the new kings with the value of their GME stocks. Glad this video exists to try and balance out the narrative.

10/5: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon DLC - Good ideas, absurdly frustrating and tedious execution. Full thoughts here.

10/10: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (rewatch) - I didn’t plan this, but very fitting that I would end up rewatching this on 10/10.

10/12: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - ha he! (Seriously though, that finale was a fucking masterpiece. The RTVS crew has an incredible knack for using the framing device of video game livestreams to blur the lines between comedy and horror, or ironic anti-humor and complete sincerity. I’ve never seen anything else like this.)

10/15: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Not sure how much I can say that hasn’t already been said. The most visually creative movie I’ve ever seen, grounded by some really excellent storytelling about Miles (and now Gwen) that’s probably better than his actual comics. But it also does feel like it’s about to end and then the movie just keeps going like ten times over lmao. Can’t wait to watch this a second time on a better TV.

10/20: Sonic Superstars - A mostly really solid and fun 2D Sonic game that’s unfortunately dragged down by an extremely hodgepodge soundtrack and some overly drawn out boss fights. I spent HOURS trying to beat the final boss of the bonus scenario (which is required for the true ending in this one) before giving up. Really a shame that that’s the note I’m leaving the game on, because I otherwise enjoyed it, but ah well. More thoughts here.

10/27: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 - Another good Spider-Man game from Insomniac. Liked the story more than the one in Miles Morales, but maybe not as much as the first game. Extensive thoughts here.

10/28: Venom - Was in the mood for more Venom after the game. As expected this was not a very good movie, but the dynamic between Eddie and Venom made it a fun watch. Tom Hardy is constantly about to shit his pants in this movie. It’s great.

10/28: Venom: Let There Be Carnage - I had a way better time with this one. Is this a good movie? No. But it cranks the insanity of the first movie up to 11. Goofy as fuck in an extremely watchable way.

November

11/5: Pluto - An absolutely masterful series that anyone interested in sci-fi needs to watch. The anime adaptation was great, and I immediately understand why people who’ve read the manga speak so highly of it. Really makes me want to get into Astro Boy more, and also read some of Urasawa’s other works.

11/18: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off - Wow, just wow. When news of a Scott Pilgrim anime broke I was cautiously curious to see if we’d get a more direct adaptation of the comics, and instead it veered off in the exact opposite direction in the best way possible. This is almost entirely a different story, one that’s in conversation with the previous versions (sometimes in very meta ways), and I think it’s really valuable to see O’Malley revisiting these characters with new things to say about them. The major story divergence gives us a chance to examine the characters from a new angle - particularly Ramona, who’s the real protagonist of this version, and the evil exes, who completely steal the show. This was a great reminder of why I fell in love with this series as a teenager. I now genuinely hope we get more Scott Pilgrim.

11/22: Void Rivals (Issues #1 - #6) - The first arc of the new Robert Kirkman series that kicked off Skybound’s new “Energon Universe” is now complete, and I’m left thinking Void Rivals is… okay? I thought the first issue was a decent (if not particularly original) sci-fi comic with an appealing art style, which just so happens to also briefly have a Transformer in it so there can be a Big Surprise. And the series still hasn’t quite shaken that feeling to me. It’s an okay sci-fi series that arbitrarily dedicates a couple of pages of every issue to something from Transformers, but I’m not really sure what the shared universe stuff adds to Void Rivals, or what Void Rivals adds to Transformers and GI Joe. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

11/22: Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History (Defunctland) - Yeah, gotta be honest, I only got halfway through this one. It seems like Kevin just 1) really wanted to push himself creatively and 2) make a love letter to Epcot, and while I respect that, I think it suffers as a historical documentary. It’s Fantasia but for the creation of Epcot. That might be very impressive on a technical level, but it feels more like a piece of Disney propaganda than prior Defunctland videos due to a lack of context and nuance. 

11/24: Aperture Desk Job - A short, sweet, and funny little tech demo for my new Steam Deck set in the Portal universe. More effort was definitely put into this than was strictly necessary.

11/26: ESCHATOS - I am not good at bullet hell games, but I enjoy them from time to time and I really love this one’s FM synth soundtrack, so I picked it up on a whim in the Steam sale. I only beat it on Easy, but still, I had a lot of fun with it! It’s straightforward but very flashy, with the camera dynamically zooming around from set piece to set piece at ridiculous speeds and each level segueing directly into the next. The lack of a powerup system on the main mode in favor of just needing to know when to use your different shot types makes it feel very approachable.

11/27: Lunistice - A great little 3D platformer with a good soundtrack that I had fun hunting down all the secrets in. This is an easy recommendation for fans of games like Kirby or Klonoa - whimsical games set in colorful dream worlds where the underlying story can get a bit more somber. (Although the story in this one is mostly told through mildly cryptic lore dumps, so your mileage there may vary.)

11/28: Spark the Electric Jester 2 - The leap from 2D to 3D here is impressive, but this is very clearly a rough draft for Spark 3. Very, very fun Sonic-style 3D platforming, but the combat is lacking and the storytelling is just kinda bad. More extensive thoughts on this and the above two games here.

December

12/2: Fortnite (Chapter 4) - This was my first full chapter of Fortnite, after having been roped into the game by the siren songs of Zero Build mode and Goku during Chapter 3. This means it’s harder for me to compare this chapter to previous ones, but still, Fortnite remains a genuinely very well made Battle Royale shooter that’s a blast with friends. If I have any complaint about this Chapter, it’s that they would regularly introduce zany ideas and then slowly reel them back in, whether it was the Augment system or the increasingly mundane movement items. It also felt like it was a little too easy to get the perfect loadout in every match, meaning the final showdown would almost always be against players with Slurp Juice and gold shotguns. And I missed the smaller mid-season map updates of Chapter 3. But overall I still had a really good time, and look forward to playing more for the foreseeable future.

12/4: Plagiarism and You(Tube) (HBomberguy) - This will get written off by many as “YouTuber drama,” but this really is an excellent video essay that feels like the kick in the pants that YouTube needs. If video essayists are gonna be a major source of information for so many, then they gotta have standards. I also think it does a good job of highlighting the people that have been plagiarized and trying to drive more attention their way in an attempt to right those wrongs.

12/6: Transformers (Skybound comic) - We only got the first three issues of this in 2023, but I just HAVE to say something about how incredible this series is here. Daniel Warren Johnson is knocking it out of the park. This is the new bar for Transformers. The hand-inked art is extremely dynamic and full of character, and the story is using the familiar beats of G1 Transformers but doing very new things with them. You can tell this from the very first page, but the emotional scene of Optimus accidentally crushing a deer in the forest and realizing how fragile life is on Earth sealed the deal for me. And yet in the very same comics Optimus can do suplexes and clotheslines and lord knows how many other wrestling moves on Decepticons, and it doesn’t feel like tonal whiplash? These comics just fucking rule, and anyone with even the slightest interest in Transformers should be reading them.

12/8: What We Do in the Shadows (Season 5) - [spoilers] WWDITS has very much settled into being a status quo show. Every season has its own little arc where one or two things change to keep things interesting, but then everything returns to normal by the end. Guillermo finally becoming a vampire, only to become a human again in the end, might just be the most egregious example of this yet. But also… the show’s still really funny? And I continue to be happy that Kristen Schaal has stuck around as a series regular as the Guide. So it’s hard to complain. I could see the show running out of steam over the next few seasons, but it’s still hitting for me right now.

12/12: Pony Island - Finally got around to this since the trailer for the sequel dropped. I feel like playing this years later in a post-Inscryption world where Pony Island is a known quantity kind of lessens its impact, but still, it’s a fun and funny puzzle game where you try to hack your way out of a possessed arcade machine. I’m not sure I found it particularly scary, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to be? The way the game messes with you during the Asmodeus “boss fight” was probably the highlight for me. I also like being able to say things like “The part where you have to not kill Jesus was so hard. I kept getting terrible butterfly patterns.”

12/16: Breaking Bad VR but the AI is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - As always, Wayne and co.’s commitment to the bit is unrivaled. This kind of got interpreted as just a way to troll HLVRAI fans, but so many moments in this genuinely made me laugh out loud.

12/18: Soul of Sovereignty Prelude - As someone who would list Cucumber Quest as a big creative influence, I was naturally very excited for this first chapter of GGDG’s new visual novel. Their mentality of both scaling things back in terms of labor while also going more shamelessly self-indulgent in terms of storytelling after burning out on making webcomics has really spoken to me, and WOW, the end result of that new process of theirs is shaping up to be something really special. The art and music are sparse but extremely evocative, giving you the rough sketch of the world and letting your mind fill in the rest. The story blends literary high fantasy vibes with the style of fantasy seen in ‘90s JRPGs (you can definitely tell this came from an idea for an RPG), but rather than constantly winking at the audience and making self-aware video game references it plays these storytelling ideas extremely sincerely, giving them real dramatic weight while still indulging in fun tropes to their fullest extent. While it’s a far cry from their most famous work with much more mature content, GGDG always excels at creating characters and worlds that immediately grab me. I can’t wait for the rest.

12/18: Barbie - I’m only… what, five months late for the whole Barbenheimer thing? Perfect timing. Anyway! On the one hand, I get the critiques saying that this movie is just a major corporation funding a self-aware feminist critique of their own product as a marketing ploy. And I kinda agree with that. And the movie is a little too long, and I don’t really know what to think of the way the Barbie/Ken conflict plays out. Anthony asked me to summarize what the story ended up being about, and I had no idea what to even say. But also… I did still like the movie? We don’t get a lot of cartoonish, absurdist, fourth wall breaking comedies like this anymore, and this is a good one of those. Also the whole cast is great, the set design is kind of stunning, and the cinematography is consistently appealing. I wouldn’t say it’s a revolutionary work of feminist filmmaking by any stretch, but it’s a good comedy movie.

12/21: Dr. Stone: New World - Man, Dr. Stone is great. I’ve said this many times, but I just love that this series uses all the trappings of shounen that would normally be used to hype up the protagonist learning a new move to instead hype up things like the protagonist building a loom or a hot air balloon. It’s shounen Bill Nye. I didn’t completely love everything about the Treasure Island arc this season, but it all built towards a really fun climax with a lot of satisfying turnabouts where the heroes use their ingenuity to just barely win.

12/23: The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records (Summoning Salt) - Truly one of my favorite Summoning Salt videos ever, even with how repetitive Punch-Out can get to watch. It’s just so hard to beat “and that runner… was me.”

12/24: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - What more can be said that hasn’t already been said? It’s the best and most creative 2D Mario game since the ‘90s. The only real flaws are that it’s a little easy, the Search Party stages are annoying in singleplayer, and I wish that every boss prior to the final boss wasn’t just some form of Bowser Jr. fight. But those aren’t nearly enough to drag the whole experience down. It was a blast.

12/24: Do a Powerbomb! - Got this from Anthony as a birthday present. This is the previous series by the creative team currently doing the new Transformers comics I was gushing about a few entries ago. Even with the high bar set by those comics, Do a Powerbomb! exceeded my expectations. Holy shit. An absolutely entrancing fantasy wrestling miniseries full of dynamic, energetic action and tons of heart. These comics where a guy wrestles a giant talking orangutan almost made me cry. Twice. An instant favorite.

12/25: Adventure Time (rewatch) - We ended up finishing our rewatch of Adventure Time (the main series, anyway) on my 30th birthday, which feels appropriate. I already kinda knew this, but this rewatch has truly confirmed that Adventure Time is my favorite TV series of all time. The entire show is even better on a full series rewatch. In hindsight, even parts that annoyed me when they aired end up being important parts of the beautiful tapestry that is this series. The many low points of Finn’s adolescent love life are important stepping stones in his growth as a person, which leaves him in an extremely satisfying place by the end. Jake having kids didn’t get to be a huge status quo change because they grew up instantly, but then they did a bunch of fun episodes about Jake’s relationships with his adult children that deepened him as a character. And most of the big lore questions they kept teasing over the years (“Where’d the humans go?” “Who are Finn’s parents?” “When’s Finn gonna get a robot arm?” etc.) ended up getting satisfying and creative answers, because the show left itself the room to figure those things out later. This is a truly special, one-of-a-kind series, one that lasted nearly 300 episodes and yet still seems like it was over too soon. And yes, I did in fact cry during the final montage, like I knew I would. I will always cherish this show with all of my heart.

12/25: Olive the Other Reindeer (rewatch) - Haven’t seen this one since I was a kid! It was a favorite of mine back then, and while it might not be quite as funny as I remember it’s still very cute, with a 2D/3D hybrid art style that remains very unique and appealing. As an adult I can also appreciate the cast they got for this, with like half the cast of Futurama bolstered by guests like Michael Stipe from REM and The Sopranos’ Joe Pantoliano.

12/26: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio - Anthony and I capped off our Christmas with the most jolly and festive stop motion movie of all! Jokes aside, man, what a beautiful movie. The animation is immaculate, and we really just don’t get children’s animated films like this anymore. Ones that overtly feature real world politics and religion and so many other dark themes in a way that doesn’t talk down to kids or sugarcoat things. This one hits hard. We need more movies like this.

12/31: Oppenheimer - This was an interesting one. Despite being three hours, the way that first hour jumps around in time makes it feel like Oppenheimer is constantly being propelled forward through life at a breakneck pace, swept up by the rising tide of nationalism in spite of his personal left wing politics, never really reflecting on what he’s doing until it’s too late. Then when he’s no longer useful to the empire, he’s chewed up and spat out, only to eventually be honored as a national hero as a symbolic gesture. It’s a compelling story. However, I’m a little torn on how certain aspects of history were framed. Does the abstraction of the bombings detract from the true weight of those events, in favor of sympathizing with the man who built the bomb? Or is it clever a way to show how the realities of the war were compartmentalized away by people who were complicit in its most heinous acts of violence? One minute a bunch of physicists are talking theory, thousands of miles away from the theaters of war, and the next they’ve killed 200,000 people. So which is it? Eh, probably somewhere in the middle, I guess. But I liked it overall.

12/31: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe - I’ve been really surprised by how good this rerelease is. It kind of flew under the radar for me. I liked the original game, but at the time it also almost felt like the New Super Mario Bros. of Kirby. It was a straightforward throwback game where you went through a grass world, then a desert world, then a water world, etc., and also they added four player co-op. But returning to this one after the kinda mid Star Allies has made me appreciate just how solid RtDL is as a Kirby game. I really like the updated graphics, too - yes, even the new cel shaded outlines around the characters - even though I didn’t think it looked that great in screenshots. Also the two new copy abilities (Sand and Mecha) are fun, the minigame collection is shockingly fleshed out to the point that they could’ve sold it as a standalone eShop game, the collectible character masks are fun, and the new epilogue mode where you play as Magolor is one of the coolest bonus modes they’ve ever done. This is a top tier Kirby remake any fan of the series should check out.

Ongoing things I followed in 2023 that don't have a blurb:

Halo Infinite multiplayer

IDW Sonic the Hedgehog (main series + specials)

One Piece

Chainsaw Man

My Hero Academia (not caught up)

The JOJOlands (not caught up)

Things I started in 2023 that I still need to finish:

Freedom Planet 2

Hi-Fi Rush

Live A Live

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Picross 3D Round 2

Rhythm Heaven MegaMix

Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team ProtoMan

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Spark the Electric Jester 3

Sonic Dream Team

One Piece (Wano arc, anime)

Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 (I’ve already read the Shibuya arc already in the manga, though)

Astro Boy (2003 anime)

Futurama (original run rewatch)

One Piece (manga reread)

The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee/Ditko era)

Scott Pilgrim series (reread)

And finally... my favorites of 2023!!!

Overall favorite game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Favorite indie game: Pseudoregalia

Games remastered in 2023 that are now among my all-time faves: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, We Love Katamari

Most pleasant surprise in gaming: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Favorite film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Favorite live action show: Barry

Favorite anime: Pluto

Favorite anime written by a Canadian guy and an American guy based on the Canadian guy's old graphic novel series: Scott PIlgrim Takes Off

Favorite live action adaptation of an anime that I still can't believe they didn't fuck up: One Piece

Favorite Western cartoon: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake

Favorite older cartoon I only got around to watching in its entirety this year: The Venture Bros.

Favorite documentary: Double Fine PsychOdyssey

Favorite semi-improvised semi-scripted absurdist comedy/horror/tragedy Twitch livestream performance art thing: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware finale (wayneradiotv)

Favorite manga: Chainsaw Man

Favorite older manga that I only read this year: Berserk

Favorite Western comic book: Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers

Favorite album: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock)

And that's a wrap!!!!! Happy new year, everyone! Here's to me maybe actually reading a goddamn book this year

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #52 – The Mercy of Gods by James S. A. Corey

Introduction

I have never technically read any of Corey’s work before, but I really loved all the seasons of the Expanse I’ve seen. So, as it would be months and months before I could actually get a copy from the library, this is the rare book I actually bought off the strength of the blurb. Even rarer, this actually worked out! This is genuinely quite good, meaty, even fairly original space opera!

On the world of Anjiin, a human civilization has developed from the ruins of some prehistoric colonization mission that ended in atomic fire, their origins a matter of theology and myth. Through blatant nepotism (his aunt is a very important administrator whose made his career her way of honoring her dead sister), Dafyd Alkhor is a research assistant on the most prestigious and celebrated lab/project on the planet – a successful attempt to bridge the gap between the native plant life of the planet and the earth-descended life humanity brought with it. But even as everyone’s enjoying their moment in the limelight, the project is in danger of being split up, the credit and prestige a juicy enough prize for the academic politics to get vicious. And then there’s Dafyd’s rather poorly hidden crush on Else, a much more senior scientist and also the Team Lead’s girlfriend. Everything begins to come to a head, and then-

Well, and then aliens invade. The Carryx and their servitor-species more-or-less effortlessly destroy every human attempt to resist, and then execute one eighth of the population where they stand. Like some massive, chitinous, latter-day Assyrian Empire, they then sort through and abduct a few hundreds or thousands of humanity’s administrative and intellectual elites. Hostages to bring to one of their world-palaces to live at their pleasure and prove their worth as subjects until a place in imperial society can be decided for them – with ‘mass grave’ being an entirely plausibly option if they fail to please. Dafyd, honestly a pretty shit scientist but a natural courtier and schemer, then finds himself desperately trying to understand the Carryx actually want from humanity, and why they refuse to communicate any of it.

Complicity and Collaboration

So this is overwhelmingly a novel about how to react to subjugation – of different emotional and trauma responses to seeing your loved ones killed to make a point, to seeing everything you know destroyed in the space of an afternoon, to being forced into an overcrowded ship and sent to a terrifying new world where your life is valued exactly in proportion to your captors' whims. As the novel reaches its climax, it becomes increasingly about the morality of fawning, servile collaboration and nobly suicidal resistance – of whether it’s better to live kneeling or die standing, essentially.

This is one of very few books I can ever remember reading that make a big dramatic point of that question, and then come down on the side of ‘live kneeling, bide your time until you’ve earned their trust and know enough to stab the knife somewhere vital’. Partially just because every other genre story in the world does stack the deck towards resistance (making victory an almost foregone conclusion if people just have the courage to fight) and this does in the opposite direction (‘resistance’ would be at best a few spectacular terrorist attacks before they’re all hunted down and executed, the first thing the rest of humanity would know of their noble fight is when the retaliatory genocide starts), but still.

I found the start of chapter epigraphs a greater flaw, honestly – they’re quotations from an imprisoned Carryx after some future fall of the empire, who lays the blame squarely on humanity. I’m sure this is building up to some lovely dramatic irony in future books (and is a fun window to Carryx state ideology), but the constant reassurance that the plan works and isn’t just a rationalization for surrender really does drain some of the moral stakes out of the question, you know? From a dilemma with genuinely unclear outcome to just a particularly cruel and slimy trolley problem. Which I mean, still juicy character drama! I did enjoy it.

As Space Opera

There are many works of SFF which are, frankly, setting bibles with an excuse of a story stapled on out of obligation. This isn’t one of them, but it is a book written by people who clearly enjoyed the worldbuilding for its own sake and were always looking for little excuses to show off a bit of it. This is probably clearest with Anjiin – from a plotting perspective, they could have sketched out the basics of the world in a paragraph, assuming they didn’t just use some vague future Earth or Mars instead. But Anjiin actually feels like a fully realized world with its own politics and hypocrisies, its own culture and theology, and (especially) its own beautiful and profoundly alien landscapes and architectures. The last thing makes the book’s job much harder, really – the sense of shock and alienation (as well as a guilty sort of curious wonder) at the Carryx world-palace is vital to the book, making the home the cast is stolen away from so strange and unfamiliar as well can only make it harder to evoke in the reader.

The book spends something like the first fifty pages on Anjiin before the Carryx arrive – before (almost) anyone have the slightest idea they exist – introducing the main cast and their dynamics, sketching out their daily lives, and grounding Anjiin a real, vibrant place that it’s possible to get properly attached to. Vitally, it’s not a world without conflict – Dafyd et al spend the entire time embroiled in high stakes academic intrigues and interpersonal dramas, of a kind that could easily sustain a book on their own. This was a big part of why the book worked so well for me, I think – the loss of Anjiin felt like a loss, the cutting off of possibilities I wanted to see play out, the execution of characters I enjoyed seeing on the page. Given how often these sorts of stories can (unintentionally or no) read ‘and then they were whisked from boring mundanity with dramatic fireworks accompanying them’, I’m glad the book spent the wordcount on it.

The Carryx needed to really overawe and impress, which I think the book mostly manages. Their society seems both plausible and viscerally alien. The book does a neat job of obscuring the exact border between their (weird and fascinating) biology and their obsessively eugenic imperial ideology, in a way that seems very fitting given that both the characters we spend any time with at all are middle/lower-middle ranking strategists and overseers in the imperial project.

This is very much an empire which starts with the iron fist and only bothers mentioning the existence of carrots after a new subject population is brutalized and terrified into full submission. Their ideology is a half-step short of pure power worship, and makes no excuses butchering and exterminating to make the world more convenient for them – none of them ever refer to other species as anything but ‘animals’. This isn’t an empire that tries to convert and persuade – but then, it’s not one that needs to.

The world-palace and assembled ranks of other species gathered in it does an excellent job of being genuinely awe-inspiring even for the characters who hate every solitary thing about it. One great advantage of written science fiction over more visual media is that there’s no real need to make your aliens humanoid or relatable-looking, and Corey takes full advantage of it to fill the prison camp with dozens of memorable, different species – absolute none of which could be played by an actor in makeup.

Of course, those aliens are mostly just set dressing – with the exception of one species of primates that humanity is placed into competition with that ends up in a mutually escalating and quite bloody vendetta – the only alien species represented by actual characters with names and points of view are the Carryx and the infiltration-swarm sent by their great enemy to get scooped up along with humanity and gather information about their inner workings. It does this by consuming and possessing one of the main cast, and the book has great fun keeping coy about who for half the book while still using it as a secondary Point of View. Even more than the Carryx, it does a good job of coming across as both genuinely alien (probably because it is an alien-ness in conversation with the humanity of the two hosts it has assimilated) while still being an incredibly compelling character.

Characterization

Dafyd has a habit/nervous tic of looking for people’s ‘pathological behavior’ – the habits and tendencies they default onto in situations of high stress or while they feel in danger or powerless. This is, then, the lens the book invites as far as its characters go. Every one one of them spends the vast majority of the book cycling from one trauma response to another, and each is probably mostly characterized by the way they respond and the things they fixate on as their world is destroyed and they reckon with their own powerlessness. Fixate on the research the Carryx want and at to try and pretend life is still recognizable, or get angrier and angrier and jump at the first chance to justify beating some other inmates to death to feel a bit of agency and control. Plot out a nobly suicidal strike back against your oppressors, or try desperately to understand what they want so you can manipulate them and ensure the survival of you and yours. Or just constantly make off-color and mostly unfunny jokes.

None of it is exactly subtle, but it all rings pretty true, and does a good job making (almost) every cast member compelling and memorable. It helps, I suppose, that we end up spending at least a chapter or two in the head of half the main human cast, and get plenty of careful observation or intimate conversation with the rest. I’m aware some people really despise this sort of POV-hopping in a story (especially when it’s mostly just different perspectives on the same broad events/circumstances) but personally I rather adore it when it’s done well and they each seem both plausible and distinct, which this book easily manages.

In Conversation with the Wider Genre

I am at this point a bit of of a connoisseur of the hyper-specific subgenre of ‘space opera/spec fic more generally deeply concerned imperialism, colonialism, the experience of subjugation, and the internal logics of complicity and collaboration’ – a shelf which its always great to add new works to. I don’t particularly think Mercy was written in direct response to or is actively commenting on any similar works, but it is fascinating to do a bit of a compare/contrast. Well, it is for me, anyway.

Compared to your Memory Called Empire’s and your Imperial Radch’s the most salient really thing is how uncomplicatedly awful the Carryx are. Not that the empires in those books ostensibly aren’t, but they’re simultaneously also cultured, elegant, rich – in a word, alluring. We spend as much or more time on the intricacies of Radachi tea ceremonies and soap operas as we do on their atrocities, and even that makes the messy brutality of imperialism far more foregrounded relative to the seductive beauty of salon poetry and monumental architecture than it is in Memory. Mercy, in contrast, mostly shows the awe-inspiring beauty of the Carryx world palaces through the windows of a prison-camp. It’s there – we even meet the subject-species who were enslaved instead of exterminated because they can architect such wonders – but only really incidentally. The glory of the Carryx is their vastness and their overwhelming might, all the elegance and beauty they have is the fruit of conquest – and more often than not, different subject-species are introduced with hints or notes of how much more they were, before they were crushed and carved into something the empire could use. (This is almost certainly related to the fact that the only point of view we get whose at all a native or wiling agent of the empire is very minor, and clearly a villain without much in the day of redeeming or morally interesting features).

The better comparison is really Exordia. Or maybe I’m only saying that because it’s the one I read this year, and thus the one whose interesting little complications are at least somewhat clear in my head. Better put, Mercy is exactly the story Clayton from Exordia thought he was in. In both the empire is both alien and undisguised in its malice (two things that are probably related, really), in both the empire doesn’t feel any need to understand or integrate humanity, when overwhelming superiority in technology, scale, and availability of coercive force allow it to just threaten and brutalize until it gets what it wants. The humans in Exordia are just both more and less lucky. Less, because their alien invaders are even more monomaniacally (indeed, metaphysically) malevolent to the point that even being their willing accomplice only buys hours to days of life. More, because they have an ancient relic of a plot device buried in the mountains to give a bit of cause for actual hope in violent resistance (and so a final act of the story concerned with an entirely different suite of messy trolley problems).

It’s an interesting addition to the subgenre anyway – I really can’t recall any other books that have a protagonist collaborating with the empire while not at any point being seduced by it. Well no, that’s a lie – Machinaries of Empire does hit the same beat, just in extraordinarily different ways.

Should Your Read This Book?

The answer is at least partially conditional on how the rest of the series turns out – the narrative absolutely requires sequels, and oh how they could retroactively absolutely ruin it. But with just the one book and a bit of optimism? If the premise seems even slightly intriguing, then absolutely.

[jhoneybees]

Real lonely

Here's a little blurb for @atleastpleasetelephone I love our conversations so much, I cherish them dearly to my heart and to show how much I love ya girlie is to write so here you go!🫶

Characters: Late 70s!Elvis X reader

Warnings/triggers: swearing

Tags: @atleastpleasetelephone @another-identityofmine @i-r-i-n-a-a @theelvisprincess @thelonelyheart

_____________________________________________

These little moments you have with Elvis are what keeps your relationship so strong, just snuggling up together in bed with him reading his favourite books. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself." Elvis reads out softly, his arm under your neck as you rest your head on his shoulder, your hand rubbing slow circles on the curve of his belly as he leans his cheek down to lay upon the top of your hair. “Ain’t that true, hm?”

You hum, quietly. Lifting your head up to look at his pretty face, smiling as he places a gentle kiss on your forehead.

You never expected in a million years that you’d be dating Elvis Presley, never expecting him to love you the way he does. He’s the man you’ve been looking for all your life, he’s gentle, kind, loving, generous, funny, you really can’t list off everything. He’s perfect for you.

“Getting tired, baby?” He asks, humming into your hair as he skims the pages of the book.

“Hmm, no I’m not tired. Just really comfortable laying here with you.” Gliding your arm around his front to give him a little squeeze making him chuckle.

“M’kay…here’s a good one…” Pecking your temple. “Love one another, but make not a bond of love, Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of the lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.”

“That is a good one.” You hum, impressed. Nuzzling your nose into his jaw, you grow a little needy for his affection. “I love you, Elvis.”

He smiles, contently. “I love you too, baby” closing the book and placing it on his bedside, he moves to wrap his arms around you. Playfully squeezing you in a tight hug before admiring your doll face, laughing along with you as you scrunch your nose.

“What would I do without my baby, hm? What would I do without her?”

You giggle softly, wiggling to get up closer to his face, pressing a loving kiss onto his pillowy lips. “I don’t know…what would you do?”

He hums in thought, his smile growing wider when his gaze drifts down to your lips. “Be a real lonely sonofabitch.”

The both of you break into soft giggles, exchanging little pecks here and there as your hearts press onto one another..

“I’d be real lonely too if I didn’t have you.”

[lovebugism]

how about "are you comfortable?" with stevie and he's just being really needy with reader

✶ ┄ PUPPY !

summary: steve isn't just needy, he's downright insatiable, and he'll take you any way you’ll let him. pairing: sub!steve harrington / f!reader word count: 1.5k warnings: sub steve always needs his own warning, dry humping, r calls steve "puppy" once (spoiler alert: he likes it), smut 18+ a/n: thanks for your request, anon, and for giving me more oppurtunities to write sub!stevie <3

( BLURB SLEEPOVER ) | ( MASTERLIST )

Steve Harrington was a sweetheart — the sweetest of sweethearts.

All boyfriends were supposed to be nice, but he was perfect and then some. He’s made of marshmallow fluff, all gooey and saccharine. He loves you so much that it’s got him dripping honey.

It’s sweet. He’s sweet. But sometimes all of his mushy goodness is suffocating.

He’s always needing you. It’s like if he’s not touching you, he might die. Most of the time, it’s purely innocent — a hand on your back to keep you close, an arm around your shoulder to press you into him, fingers spread on your thigh to keep you tethered to him. 

But there’s always another side of that coin, a far dirtier side, that has him rutting up against you like a damn dog.

Freshly showered and winding down for the night, you lie in the middle of your shared bed on your stomach while you flip through a too big novel.

Steve watches you from the doorway. His step stutters when he catches sight of you. It leaves him frozen where he stands. 

Your underwear isn’t anything special, a cotton number he’s seen about a thousand times before, that leaves more of your ass covered than not. Your tank top is possibly older and decorated with a number of dubious stains you've never been able to get out.

And it's not like you’re in the sexiest of positions either, posed in wait for his arrival. It's quite the opposite really. You’re lazing and in your own world, totally sucked into the book you’re reading.

He might've been offended that you didn’t wait for him to come around so you could read to him like you always do, if he weren’t so incredibly hard at the sight of you.

Steve isn’t quite sure how someone could be doing something so mundane, at their most comfortable and more at peace than he’d ever seen, and still be so goddamn beautiful.

It’s just not fair.

He clamors on top of you without saying a word. He presses his nose to your neck, sprinkling tiny kisses onto your skin, while he grinds his hard cock into your ass.

His sweatpants-covered hips drag into you all slow — the feeling makes him exhale sharply in the place of a low moan. Chill bumps erupt at your skin, at the feeling of his warm breath fanning across your shoulder, and the gratification of your boy finding you so irresistible.

It’d be too easy, to roll over and let him take you like he wants. You don’t give in so freely. You rarely ever do. Instead, you take to teasing him, mocking him, because you know he likes that just as much as you simply giving yourself to him. 

“Are you comfortable?” you monotone as he rests the bulk of his weight on you.

“C’mon, baby, please,” he all but begs. “I’ll even take a handjob, I just— fuck, you don’t know how hard I am right now.”

“I think I have an idea,” you scoff out a laugh and flip the page, trying your best to ignore the throbbing cock he presses against your ass. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”

“I just love you,” he mumbles into your neck, punctuating his admission with a kiss.

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm…”

You laugh softly to yourself, several exhales through your nose, at the way he ruts into you all needy.

His cock is still prevalent through the thin layers both of you wear, warm and so incredibly hard. You still feel so much of him despite the fabric that separates you. You can tell he went without underwear for the night. It makes the raging hard-on he has for you, that much more prevalent.

It makes you wonder if it hurts. If the stiffness brings about a throbbing and ravenous ache.

“Flattery goes a long way with me, Harrington,” you purr.

You feel his smile contort against the skin of your neck, all proud of himself because he thinks he’s gotten you to concede. “Yeah?” he mumbles before pressing another wet kiss to your shoulder.

“Yep,” you assure. You turn your neck to look at him over your shoulder and it forces him to leave the refuge of you. He’s lit up with anticipation. You’ve got a playful glint in your eye that excites him. “So you can do whatever you want—”

“I like the sound of that.”

“—But you have to keep your pants on.”

His hips still. The smirk on his face washes away like an ebbing tide. His face contorts into a look of confusion — bushy brows furrowed, nose scrunched, and lips quirked. “…What?”

“I’m gonna let you come,” you shrug.

“But I have to… keep my pants on?”

“Yes, Stevie,” you affirm, almost stern as you arch a brow at him. “Do you understand?”

He swallows thickly, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, then nods with wide, twinkling eyes. “Yeah,” he mumbles before clearing his throat. “I understand.” 

When he humps his cock into your ass again, it takes little time for him to pick up the pace. He was needy before, heavy with his want for you, but now he’s downright desperate. He grinds his hips into you, holding himself up on his forearm — next to the elbow that props up your chin — while he lets out pitiful little whines into your skin. 

He might not be pleasuring you just now, but a similar feeling swirls in the pit of your stomach. You’ll always feel satisfied when he begs for you.

“Fuck, honey, you feel so good,” he murmurs, breathless. “Love you so fuckin’ much.”

“I’m almost done with this chapter. If you’re not finished by the time I’m done, you’ll have to get yourself off, ‘kay?” you warn with a voice that’s far too sweet. You know he’ll be done by the time you’re finished reading. Besides, it’s not like any of the words are sticking in your head, anyway.

But Steve likes a challenge. Give him a time constraint and an obstacle he has to get over, and he’s golden. Your subtle threat, the way you act like you’re not as into it all as he is — like your panties aren’t soaking wet — just makes him need to come more.

“I’m almost there, baby,” he promises under his breath. “I’m almost there— almost there—”

He mumbles it to himself over and over again as pleasure takes over every fucking lobe of his brain. His free hand tightens its grip on your clothed hip, keeping you nice and still for him while he pathetically ruts his weeping, throbbing cock into you.

His wet, pink lips part to let out every heavy breath and low moan. You wish you could see him right now — the glazed look in his honey-tinted eyes before they squeeze shut tight as his orgasm so quickly approaches.

You know that he’s close by the way his hips stutter against you, like he’s fighting to keep his rhythm as his impending orgasm threatens to take control of his body. His sweats go damp and sticky when several loads of come spit from his cock without much warning.

A whine escapes from the depths of his throat and he leans more of his weight against you, still warm and comforting as heavy as he is. His heaving moans are heaven in your ears and stars against your skin.

Steve stays like that, pressed so fully against you, while pathetic whines spill from his mouth. Even on the comedown of his orgasm, just having you so close makes him feel high.

His head is stuck in the clouds until he hears you laughing. Soft, hearty little giggles spill from your mouths — muffled at first like he’s stuck underwater, until he comes back to reality.

Then he’s laughing right along with you, lazy exhales at how good he feels just now.

You shift under him, silently asking for him to roll off of you, and he abides — still so obedient for you. You sit up on your side as he flops onto his back. Your eyes have a hard time leaving his fucked out face, all flushed and glowing red, to catch that darker gray stain at his crotch. Both sights are equally as beautiful. You don’t know which to gape at.

“Was it worth it?” you ask him with an arched brow.

“Every damn second,” he pants with a sloppy grin.

“Good,” you smile back at him, pressing a too innocent peck to his warmed, freckled cheek. “Now go get cleaned up. You’re a fucking mess, babe.”

Steve eyes flit from your face to the wet spot spreading on his gray sweatpants. He’s embarrassed, almost, feeling like a teenager who’s got the stamina of a goldfish. But he’s more so terrified of leaving this room.

To get to the bathroom, he’ll have to walk by Robin and Eddie’s rooms, and he’d rather die than run into them in a pair of come-stained pants.

“How am I supposed to walk out like this?” he wonders, bewildered.

You shrug in response. “You’re the one who made the mess. You figure it out, puppy,” you tease innocently, though you don’t miss the way Steve briefly perks up at the use of the pet name. The feeling of anticipation swims in your stomach all over again.

[radiant-reid]

Dad!spence x reader blurb where he was gone for a long time while on a case and his 4 year old daughter is very upset and teary and maybe even slightly angry asking him where he’s been 🥺

Spencer has only been home for five minutes before you're having to break some more bad news to him. "Heads up, Aubrey's a little mad."

He knew this day was coming when she wouldn't think he was a hero for being away. It didn't help that prior to the case he just came back from, he had been in DC for two weeks. That meant school drop-offs, pick-ups, soccer training, and ballet practice were all done by him. And then he was gone.

He takes a deep breath before knocking on her doorframe, waiting for his little best friend to pull her head up from her book. Despite what you said, he's still hoping she'll reconsider her feelings upon seeing him.

"Hi, Aubrey-strawberry." He says, walking over to sit on the end of her bed like she is.

She shuffles further away from him, keeping at least three feet of distance between them. "Go away."

"I want to talk to you about me having to leave." He informs her.

"Why?" She asks. "You don't care how I feel."

His heart breaks at the emotionlessness in her voice because he knows it's how he sounds when he's truly upset and trying to mask it.

"Baby, that's not true." He assures her. "You and momma matter the most to me in everything."

"Where were you?" She asks, her voice breaking slightly.

"I had to go to work in the night." He tells her honestly.

She turns to look at him and he sees the tears forming in her big brown eyes. "Why?"

"Some people really needed my help." He explains it delicately and without any hint of gruesomeness. "I'm sorry I had to leave you, though."

"You didn't say goodbye." She reminds him.

He nods. "I didn't want you to wake up."

"But I didn't know where you were." She tells him. "I was so sad and scared."

He can't give her space then, and he reaches over to pull her into his lap. "I'm sorry. I never wanted to make you feel like that." She cries on his shoulder softly, and he feels terrible for ever leaving her. "Hey, why don't we have a system?" She pulls back to look at him suspiciously. "Maybe when I go away in the night, I'll write you a little note and leave a fact about where I'm going so momma can read it to you." He offers.

"You'll write one every time?" She checks, and he nods. "And leave them on my bedside table?" He nods once more. "Okay." She agrees easily, snuggling into his chest. It makes him feel so much better in an instant. "But I can read it because I'm a good reader."

He laughs at her while nodding. "You're right. You are my smart little girl."

[russellsppttemplates]

My girls (Lance Stroll)

Lance gave Juno one job: to make sure his girls were looked after while he was away at a triple header

Note: english is not my first language. My baby fever has been through the roof lately, and while I was working on this, another blurb came through for dad!Lance, so I joined them.

Thank you so much to everyone who likes and reblogs, your feedback is appreciated 🤍 and I'm taking requests so if you have any ideas or concepts you want to share, feel free to do so as I'll try to get to them the best I can!

my masterlist

Tw: reader is pregnant

Tag list: @myloverjk-blog @hiireadstuff @c-losur3

"Have you seen Juno?", Margot asked her older sister while she did her homework, "where's mummy? She usually is where mummy is", Addalynn smiled, "I just need to finish this question and then I can go downstairs with you, wait a bit for me, please", she asked.

Margot waited for her, standing by her desk and watching curiously as her older sister wrote on her notebook until she finished, tidying her desk and storing the notebook back in her backpack, "we can go downstairs now", she smiled, holding Margot's hand and going down the stairs with her, the patter from Luna's paws and nails on the floor telling them you were in the kitchen.

You had only read about it in books, and since Luna had only been in your family for a little over a year, you never experienced being pregnant while having a dog. So far, besides your two daughters, you also had a four-pawed shadow following you around, "Luna, you can't get all tangled between my ankles, okay? Mummy can't see you that well anymore, only your tail every now and again", you giggled as you looked for her snout, hearing the girls approaching you.

"I knew she'd be here", Addy whispered to Margot as she called the dog, sitting on the floor to play with the dog.

"Are you hungry, girls? I can make you something before we sit down for dinner", you offered, figuring that dinner would still take a while to be ready.

"No, we just wanted to play with Juno", Margot said, pulling on the rope material so Juno could pull back.

"I finished my homework, too, and we knew Juno would be where you were", Addalynn added as you blushed slightly, "she's following daddy's request to look after you!", both girls giggled.

"She's looking after all of us - but I think she does come to stay with me whenever she wants a rest", you winked, "she knows I won't go too far too quickly", you offered.

When you finished dinner and tidying up with the girls' help, they were quick to go to the living room, turning on the TV and finding the channel.

"Is daddy on track yet?", you asked, ushering Juno to her spot on the sofa by your left before you sat down next to the girls on your right.

"Lizzie was saying they're going to start soon", Addy added as she unfolded the blanket on top of her and Margot's legs, "do you want some of the blanket too?", she asked.

"I have mine here, love, thank you, though", you smiled, arranging it under your bump carefully as you stretched your legs on the footstool, "Oh, forgot my pillow", you mumbled, changing your position.

"I'll get it, mummy!", Margot offered, getting the pillow you needed and placing it under your feet, "is it good?", she checked.

"It is, sweetheart, thank you", you smiled at her attentiveness as she climbed back on the sofa.

"Daddy is going really fast!", Margot pointed out, "is this the one where he could win?".

"This is practice still, the one where he can go for the pole position is much later and you will be asleep by then", you stated, not wanting to bend their bedtime routine even more than you were already doing.

"Okay", they said in unison, respecting your orders. Overall, they were pretty good at following what you asked them to do, usually only throwing tantrums when they were really tired and understanding what could and couldn't be negotiated pretty well. Of course they were still kids and had their developmental needs and challenges, but you also had an inkling that Lance had spoken to them about how they needed to behave extra well since he wouldn't be coming home for three weeks.

.

You rolled to Lance's side of the bed, finding Luna already looking at you, "the girls are not up yet?", you mused, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes.

Getting up gently, allowing your back and hips to stretch properly and readying yourself to go back to spending most of the day in a standing position, "Good morning, baby girl, you're up too, at least, you can keep me and Juno company", you smiled, rubbing your bump softly as you felt her movements, little feet kicking your ribs gently for now.

The silence didn't last for too long as when you were getting yourself dressed, Juno's ears popped when she heard noise, leaving you briefly to go to the girls' bedrooms. Putting on your lounge wear set and making sure it would be stretchy enough around your bump you stepped into the corridor to find your two curly haired girls petting Juno.

"Good morning, mummy! Did you sleep well?", Addalynn asked, coming close to give you a hug.

"Good morning, my loves. I did, did you?", you kissed the top of her head before kissing Margot's as well, hugging her too, "I'm going to let Juno out in the garden so she can do her business, are you coming down now?", you wondered as you picked out comfy clothes for them.

"I'll go in a bit - I need to pee!", Margot let you know before speeding to the bathroom.

You opened the back door for Juno first and then started making breakfast.

The doorbell rang, making Juno go up to the door with you, and once you opened it, she barked loudly at the man holding a box, "Juno, it's okay!", you assured her as she took a protective stance in front of you, "she's harmless, really, but she will bark at anyone she doesn't know, I'm sorry if she scared you", you told him.

"It's fine, no worries, I used to have one just like her when my children were younger", the delivery man, "Y/N Stroll, right? These two boxes are for you, may I?", he asked, wanting to help you by at least putting the package on top of the table near the door.

"Sure, thank you! Juno, come here!", you called the brown labrador so she wouldn't get in the way.

"There you go", he said, "I hope you have a good day!", he waved as he walked back to the car.

"Thank you, you too!", you waved back before closing the door.

The girls walked down the stairs, Addalynn in the outfit you picked out and Margot holding her clothes on her hand, "who was that, mummy?".

"A delivery man - we got two packages. Do you need help getting dressed, love?", you asked Margot, who nodded as she looked at the smaller box.

"Can we see what's inside?", Addalynn quesioned.

"Sure, you girls do that one while I do this one", you encouraged, ripping the tape on the box on the table to see a beautiful bunch of flowers along with a card.

I can't wait to be back home, I miss you girls so much!

There are some flowers for you and the girls and a little treat for Juno, too - figured she wouldn't be the most gentle with a plant!

I love you!

- Lance

"Mummy, this one has flowers, too!", Margot showed you two smaller bunches of flowers and a bag with some dog treats.

"These are from daddy! This one is for me, each of those is for you and then some treats for Juno", you explained, showing them the card so Addalynn could read it out loud as you carried the flowers to the kitchen so you could put them in water.

"Let's take a photo and send it to daddy, okay? Smile big, my loves!", you cheered, snapping a cute photo of the girls, Juno and the flowers and sending it to Lance.

Even though it was late where he was, your husband still sent you a text with many heart emojis and then another one reading "these are three of my favourite girls, and I would like to see the other two 👀".

Taking a selfie in the mirrow on the hallway, perfectly showing your baby bump, you sent it back to Lance, earning the same reaction to the first one you sent.

After having breakfast, you sat on the sofa to watch the qualifying session, the girls laying out their Lego sets, "daddy didn't tell you in which position he was starting?", Addy mused.

"No, I told him we would watch it today and I stayed away from the news, too, so I have no idea what's going to happen", you offered, pressing play on the remote to start the program.

Juno was quick to recognise Lance, getting up from her spot where she rested her head on your legs, tail wagging, "yes, Juno, that's daddy!", Margot squealed.

"Does that mean daddy got P3?", Addalynn asked as the voice over as they filmed the paddock spoke about a penalty, "yes, he goes up a place", you smiled.

Later on the night, your baby girl couldn't seem to settle so sleep wasn't coming by easily, "if your sisters find out that you're keeping me up so we can watch daddy's race, we're going to be in trouble", you spoke, fluffing the pillows as Juno looked up at you, "you can't tell anyone either, okay?", you warned the dog as you set up you iPad on your bedside table.

Lance ended up in second place, the podium celebrations showing his happiness as he sprayed the champagne on the other drivers, "mummy's tired, baby girl, and daddy is flying back soon", you tried to soothe her by rubbing your bump, hoping she would slow down enough for you to sleep once you turned off the streaming channel.

.

Lance couldn't wait to be back home, getting his luggage from the plane as soon as he could before he walked to his car, putting all his belongings inside and driving home to his family. Triple headers were hard as it was, but now that he had his family waiting back home, they were even harder.

He closed the garage door and parked the car, taking his luggage to the laundry room before expecting to meet the girls at the corridor but finding the whole floor empty.

Lance found you napping on his side of the bed, the girls napping on your side and Juno by the feet of the bed.

Smiling at the view, he walked up gently to you, Juno alert as she sensed someone else in the room and barking before noticing it was Lance, stepping closer to him to rub her snout on his legs, "hey, Juno, you did a good job here from what I can see!", he scratched her ears.

The girls stirred in their sleep, blinking their eyes a couple of times before looking at him, "hey, girls", he whispered.

"Daddy!", they yelled, making him kneel on the floor so he could hug them closely, "I missed you princesses so so so much", he said, inhaling their scent and squeezing their bodies closer to his.

"We missed you too, daddy", Margot said, kissing his cheek while Addalynn nodded, snuggling herself closer to Lance.

You turned on your side, opening your eyes to see Lance and the girls, "you're home already?", you croaked out, a sleepy smile on your lips.

Lance climbed up on the bed so he could hug you close, "I am, love", he greeted as his arms wrapped around your body.

"Hello, my love", you whispered against his lips before kissing him, feeling his hands rub your bump

"Hey, darling", he said once he let go of the kiss, "baby girl has grown so much these past weeks, hm?", he smiled, pecking your lips, "you're so beautiful, Y/N - isn't it true, girls? Mummy looks so beautiful", he added as they nodded, "I have all of my beautiful girls with me", he pulled them into the hug, squeezing you together for a family cuddle.