#nosy little alien

[bamsara]

bam i put a bunch of your IZ stickers in our little free library (hiding behind the books so zim jumpscares you when you take something) and there's this kid who just hovers and tries to copy them into her sketchbook when she gets dropped off at the park and my HEART oml. I had to tell u, it's just real precious.

do you have any idea how absolutely heartful this is. this is precious indeed. I'm gonna be thinking about this all day

[kenananamin]

Where did Nanami go?

a small collection of events where the people around nanami wonder if he's been abducted by aliens where they switched his brain after seeing how different he is with you (but they love it and keep hoping to see more) fluff, nanami being the best boyfriend, fluff literally just typed this all in one go and did not edit. lol enjoy!

nanami is the 'i'm not reading all that, im happy for you or im sorry that happened' person to gojo. but you send one long long message to nanami and gojo glaces to nanami's phone and just sees his whole screen covered in one long blue bubble. he asks if you're ok or if he needs to step away to call you but all nanami says is no and starts reading the message. gojo sees nanami read a bit, then types a small reply, presses enter for the next line, reads some more, then another small reply, and repeat. is he replying to every single sentence in your message?!

gojo gets curious so he leans a bit closer to actually see the message. it was not an emergency... but your review and interpretation of the 2009 movie Mother?!

gojo leans back shocked. nanami would never reply to such long messages he'd send. if the message was longer than 4 lines, then nanami might never even reply to it. but he's carefully reading your message as if it was the latest report that would be the difference between life and death in the next fight. he's replying to every single point you're making and are those emojis?!

gojo is floored, truly baffled and entirely speechless.

gojo wonders, what movie can i watch that might interest nanami and get him to reply to me in a message longer than a sentence?

———

gojo and itadori walk out of the school with nanami. it's time for nanami to clock out but gojo and itadori are heading out to try a new restaurant that evening. nanami gets a call at 6:01pm while he's still walking with them and stays back a few steps to answer your call. nosy gojo perks up his ear to listen if nanami's voice changes when he answers your call. it's not too different but gojo swears it did change a bit as if there was a little smile on his face. there was.

you ask nanami if he'd like to join you for dinner at a restaurant after work and nanami just asks for the address and says he's on his way. he excuses himself from the guys and gojo wiggles his eyebrows as nanami says he's got somewhere to be. yuji continues to talk about the last movie he saw that he loved but megumi kept rolling his eyes at.

gojo and yuji get to the restaurant after their leisurely walk and see nanami - wait! nanami setting the table?! they're both shocked bc even though their steps were unhurried, it's not like they took a long time to get to the place. you walk into the restaurant and spot nanami wiping what would be your side of the table with his hand, wiping anything that might have been missed by the cleaning cloth.

"kento!" you smile and jog to the table. he looks up and smiles when he sees you, but the smile drops when he spots the open mouthed gojo and yuji you just passed by. you stop walking and turn to see who or what he's looking at.

gojo snaps out of it and goes to introduce himself to you before leading the group of three to the table that nanami is now standing next to. he had heard about you because he pestered nanami enough to tell him about your existence and your name, and that's really all gojo knew. he asks nanami how he got to the restaurant so quick and nanami blandly replies that you work nearby and he wanted to get there first aka he lightly jogged but gojo didn't need to know that.

nanami was kind of expecting it but it still surprised him a bit when you extend a courteous invitation to gojo and yuji if they'd like to join you both for dinner. what was not a surprise was that gojo immediately sat down. yuji hesitates a bit but you tell the young man to sit and assure it's ok. nanami sighs but decides to just roll with it and goes to slide out your chair so you can sit. gojo and yuji give a quiet 'ooooohh' to the action and nanami just shushes them and sits next to you.

nanami is stiff at first and you notice so you slide your hand to hold his under the table. gojo notices the action though and feels like giggling and kicking his feet for his friend. it still takes a while for nanami to relax a bit but he eventually slumps a bit in his seat and smiles a lot easier after a few drinks w you. gojo and yuji stick to their sodas and nanami is happy to order wine for you both.

gojo and yuji make easy conversation and everyone genuinely has a nice dinner. nanami is ready to say bye to the guys as you finish a conversation with yuji about a show. gojo and yuji excitedly watch you both walk away as nanami keeps a hand on your lower back to lead you down the street then moves to hold your hand. they start giggling out loud, a little too loud, when you step even closer to hold his arm with your other hand and lean your head on his shoulder as you walk back home.

———

yuji excitedly goes to nanami to ask if he can join you guys after work. nanami is confused but yuji tells him to check his phone. you had asked if he wanted to visit an ice cream parlor and bakery with you and that you had asked yuji for the name since he brought up the place at dinner.

“we were talking about the show hannibal and she recommended a movie if i liked that show so i did the same and recommended something. she said she'd let me know what she thought the next time she saw me but i didn't know when that'd be and i think she read my mind so we exchanged emails,” yuji rambles nonchalantly about exchanging information with his girlfriend.

"nanamin, i thought you didn't like sweets?" nanami confirms that he does not care for them but you like them and he always finds another bread or alternative to eat as you eat your sugar-filled dessert.

yuji gives a thumbs up and that the man has his respect. nanami tries to ignore the comment… but the compliment feels nice. what didn’t feel so nice was two other kids attaching themselves to yuji and nanami for the ice cream.

he gets in the car and looks back at nobara, yuji, and megumi through the rearview mirror and hopes you don’t mind these kids attaching themselves like leeches on your date. and you don’t mind, it was nice to finally meet some of the people he’s talk so much about and you liked hearing new stories about him.

you’re getting a couple samples and pass them to nanami once you’ve tasted a bit. he wouldn’t get a full ice cream for himself but he could do samples... and indirect kisses. you read his mind (bc you were thinking the same) and try to flirt and raise your eyebrows at nanami seductively but shy away and start to laugh instead. nanami know what you were trying to do yet again and he finds it endearing every time you do it. he pulls you in from your waist and leans down to kiss your bare shoulder thinking the kids are too busy looking for their own desserts to notice. they were not busy, they were looking and saw it all.

the kids are shocked, nobara is taking notes bc she wants that romantic gesture, yuji wants to cheer him on, and megumi's eyes widen but he wonders just how long nanami's been hiding this side of himiself. all in all, all three kids want to see this side more and start planning ways to go out with you both again.

———

nobara and maki go shopping for some spring clothes and as nobara is talking about a store she saw while maki got an iced coffee she stops in her tracks. nanami is inside the store they were about to pass and he's standing as still as a statue... holding a couple shopping bags in one hand and a purse on his shoulder. maki follows nobara's gaze and chuckles but prepares to walk away. nobara grabs her arm and pulls her into the store but hides behind a rack to keep watching nanami.

you come out of the dressing room in the perfect little black dress and nobara and maki can't help but stare in appreciation and awe. they were impressed by how you looked but even more impressed when nanami took out his phone and took a picture. even from afar, they could tell it was a damn good picture and that that man knew your angles.

———

gojo wants to go to a club. he knows nanami will say no straight up so he starts the conversation with, "hey you know what y/n might like?" gojo tries to sell the club the best he can but nanami just says ok and walks away.

gojo texts nanami later that night to ask (plead) him if he'd want to go and all nanami says is that you both will meet him there. gojo hums as he gets ready and arrives to the club. he sees you and nanami walk into the dark and loud room but immediately notices nanami's black button-up that has the top few buttons opened and no tie, and your little black dress. it's shorter (and honestly sexier) than what gojo imagined you'd wear in an outing with nanami but he has to admit that his pair of friends were a damn wonder to look at. he discreetly takes a photo of you two and sends it to nanami. it becomes nanami's favorite photo.

gojo compliments both of you and you thank him saying you had told nanami he'd look great with that simple button-up and gojo agrees. nanami blushes a bit at your compliment. gojo asks about your dress and you laugh recalling when you were getting ready. you had asked nanami if you could wear the dress since you weren't sure if it was too short and he just nodded and basically said 'dress slutty, i can fight' (not in those exact words but that's how you registered it and you fell even more in love with the man). nanami really did not care about what you wore, he would definitely voice if something was not appropriate but he has not said anything about any of your clothes since you've met. gojo couldn't even laugh at nanami's response to your question, he was impressed and turns to nanami to give a thumbs up (and writes that down to use later).

———

all the students sit with nanami and gojo in the cafeteria. they're sitting around waiting for their meal after their mission when nanami remembers that he promised to call you after he was done. he had accidentally let it slip that the mission seemed dangerous and you asked if he could spare a moment after the mission to call or text you to make sure he was fine.

he excuses himself and gojo faintly hears your voice before his friend fully walks out of the cafeteria for his call. immediately after nanami leaves, the students huddle closer to the table and start talking about you. gojo is kind of shocked by the student's reactions but they all look at him and in their own way talk about how much they like you for nanami. a cold and serious man has the embodiment of bubblegum on his arm and they loved it. gojo joins his giggling students and nanami waits a moment outside the cafeteria door to listen to his team rave about you before walking back in with a light blush on his cheeks.

[hijinxinprogress]

Everyone in YJ is multilingual (mostly bc they’re nosy)

Everyone on YJ speaks at least 14 languages which is a skill they all use to fuck with the jl and their villains like oh??? We’re having secret conversations??? I would like to be included and everyone’s like wtf why do you speak this fucking random dialect of Russian?? This is Arizona??

They all speak binary for some fucking reason (they’re nerds) Also Kon tells people binary is Tim’s native language which starts a debate on whether it counts as Kons native language)

Diana is swearing in ancient greek under her breathe and Anita laughs before responding in ancient greek so Diana’s time monitoring yj is spent trying to make sure the public knows she did not teach those little miscreants to swear in her native language however she did teach them some technically lethal combat moves which is not better but she thinks it is

Anytime aliens come to metropolis or anywhere else on earth, occasionally Kon shows up and starts speaking to them in their native language so Clark’s like 🤨 …did Cadmus teach you that?? I don’t even know that language and kons so offended bc no?? Bart crashed our fucking spaceship and we were stranded in space for like 8 months…you didn’t notice??? I know their language bc we fucking hitchhiked back to earth (yj also pissed off multiple entire planets of people but 🤷🏾‍♀️) and Batman’s so pissed when Clark complains to him about this bc Tim told him they were doing undercover recon in Eritrea

the jl is trying to translate a threat from the league of assassins while batman is off planet but cissie showed up bc damian was insulting the jl in the leagues dialect and being purposefully unhelpful (he sabotaged the leagues plan like three hours ago and he enjoys making adults feel stupid esp if they’ve tried to baby him) so everyone else is confused when cissie laughs at damians remarks and casually corrects green arrows translation (she also invites damian to blow stuff up with yj which is immediately rejected but he changes his mind when olivers lets them know he can hear them and tries to lecture them)

clark is talking to Diana in kryptonian and he hears a collective gasp of offense from yj and he’s like ?? (Tim followed all the supers around for like a month to teach himself kryptonian and then taught Kon and the rest of yj)

J’onn walked in on Greta and Cassie discussing how to ditch their green lantern in the watchtower break room and snitched immediately bc they finished his secret stash of cookies but he also has inside jokes in martian with them (despite this yj does not listen to him in any capacity)

They all know Interlac (Bart kept cussing in interlac and decided it would be great if yj also did this) but really the rest of the jl is under the impression it’s some fucking code yj made except the speedsters are like Bart ☹️ no spoilers you promised!! and he’s like it’s not even a real language 🤨 didn’t you hear?? Rob made this fucked up cipher and I hate it 😞 it took me like six minutes to learn (they have to let it go when Bart goes oh so you don’t think tims smart enough to create a language on his own?? within earshot of the bats)

Or Anita starts muttering in patois while they’re being lectured by the jl and bart laughs and she’s like 🤨 someone cooked here and I don’t know if I like that 

[gothamite-rambler]

Mirage, you're a dead woman!

Dick: Star, I'm so sorry. I didn’t know… I thought she was you, and then we… can you ever forgive me?

Kori tilted her head, studying her boyfriend's expression. Dick’s body language wasn’t defensive or deceitful; it radiated shock, slight terror, and guilt. Except he wasn’t guilty of anything. After a few seconds, Kori closed her eyes and smiled sweetly.

Kori: I was never mad. From how you're reacting, it seems you’re more upset. It’s okay—especially since what this Mirage woman did was not just wrong, but illegal. I’m going to handle it.

Calmly, Kori left the room, with Dick and the other titans trailing behind her.

Dick: Star, what are you doing?

Kori (removing her earrings with a calm determination): I'm going to have a conversation with Mirage about what sexual assault really is. And that impersonating someone else to sleep with their partner is a crime.

She tucked her earrings into her pocket and pulled her hair into a ponytail.

Donna: Do you need backup?

Kori: No. I can handle this on my own.

Garfield (Beast Boy) and Wally West walked down the halls as the group made their way to the holding room Mirage was at.

Garfield: Where are you guys headed?

Donna: Star is going to beat the shit out of Mirage for having sex with Nightwing, but he didn't know.

Wally: That's a crime. That was the context? That asshole!

Garfield (walking off to tell the others): Yeah pretty much... give 'em hell Starfire.

Kori: Oh I will.

Dick: You don't have to do this.

Kori: I want to though, because she took advantage of you. Am I upset that she had sex with you? Yes, but that's not your fault.

Dick: Aren't you mad that I technically cheated on you?

Kori: Cheating is partaking in sexual or emotional relationship acts with someone else while in a relationship. This isn't that and the only one in the wrong is Mirage. I understand you not wanting me to murder the vermin Tarantula, but here I will only make her wish I killed her.

Donna (rolling up her sleeves, walking off): And I’ll deal with Pantha calling you a slut while Kori “talks” to Mirage.

Kori: Sounds like a perfect plan. Dickie bear, having learned about your history, I will continue to protect you. We could be friends, and I'd still do so. If you don’t want me confronting Mirage, though, we can leave. You deserve to choose, because you’re the victim in this.

Dick's eyes widened in surprised at this being taken seriously as it should be.

Wally: I was eavesdropping because I'm nosy, and I say let Kori punch her in the nose at least.

Dick closed his eyes, releasing a relieved sigh. When he opened them, he took Kori’s hand.

Dick: Kori, don’t, like, murder her, okay? I can’t afford to bail you out of jail, and… murder's wrong.

Kori: What’s that thing you and Batman say? Letting them live after you’ve savagely beaten them is punishment enough. If you’ll excuse me…

Kori turned towards the doorway where Mirage was being held and forcefully kicked the door in. She entered with a determined smile. Mirage, spotting Kori, immediately assumed a fighting stance.

Kori (closing the door behind her): We’re going to have a little thirty-minute girl talk. Chat amongst yourselves.

With the door sealed, the room filled with sounds of screams (Mirage's), thrashing, and alien curses. Most the Titans stood by listening into the fighting while Dick stood a few feet away hiding smile by sucking in his lips.

[heylittleriotact]

Smut Prompts!! Number 10!

@smoreofbabylon also sent me this one and I love you both - I was really hoping for this one.

It got uh… it got out of hand. I’ll probably post this on ao3 later, but for now:

10) finding their partner’s sex toy/toys and making them play with it in front of them

Emmrich x Rook Modern Funeral Home AU

He’d never been in the bottom drawer of Rook’s nightstand - never had any reason to: she kept the condoms in the smaller upper part, and unlike her, he wasn’t a nosy snoop and didn’t help himself to the contents of random cupboards and drawers.

But having just been invited to slip a finger or two inside of her cute little arsehole, a pause for necessities was called for: lubrication, specifically - he simply wouldn’t entertain proceeding without it, even despite the fact that her soft pink lips were plenty drenched after twenty-some-odd-minutes of him teasing her… bringing her right to the edge and backing off, over and over - much to her frustration.

He'd get her where she needed to be, certainly - and they both knew it - but oh - how he loved wringing every quavering moan from her lips… every softly whispered plea to - this time - please, please, please…

“Bottom drawer!” She’d urged when he told her he would be honoured to play with her glorious ass - and to the bottom drawer he went.

“What?” She asked at the sound of his sharp intake of breath when he gripped the wobbly handle and pulled.

“Ohhh, darling…” he exhaled, eyes widening at the sight before him.

Lube. There was definitely lube.

It was nestled innocently atop a collection of toys that could only be defined as a small hoard: a cheap, robin’s egg blue vibrator - brutal and efficient with a cock head and a base you twisted to power it on, a classically shaped dildo made of clear silicone and filled with rainbow coloured confetti; a smaller, flesh coloured one; a rabbit vibrator; a variety of differently sized butt plugs; an insertable that looked to be made of hand blown glass; a set of leather wrist cuffs and a matching collar; anal beads; handcuffs; something that had to be a dildo but looked… alien and intimidating; nipple clamps, nipple suckers; a harness; and goodness - candles…?

He was torn from his spontaneous cataloguing when Rook’s hand clapped against his bare ass playfully but hard enough to make him flinch.

“I’m sorry, are you online shopping, or are you getting lube?”

“I knew you were naughty, darling, but I must say I hadn’t entertained the idea of such… variety…”

“What - a girl’s not allowed to have interests?” Came her voice from the bed above him. He gasped in surprise when she reached between his legs and tugged on his cock, stroking as he leaned over the edge of the bed, surveying the trove of toys in front of him.

“I’m very intrigued by your interests…” he swallowed, thrusting into her hand, an idea presenting itself to him - a great idea: a sordid idea. “I would very much like to see them in action.”

Mind made, his fingers wrapped around the bottle of water-based lubricant and a sleek looking device he’d seen advertised online but never encountered personally.

He slid the drawer shut, shuffled back and sat back on his knees between Rook’s ink-covered legs.

“Here you are, dearest,” he said as if he was passing her a breakfast sandwich, but actually he had slipped the toy into her hand.

“My Satisfyer?” She queried. “What, you’ve never seen one of these before?”

“I’ve seen them,” he told her, pouring a decent amount of lube onto his fingertips, his expression placid. “But I’ve never seen one in action - and I would like to.”

She sat up on her elbows a little. “I fucking love this thing. It’s easy—” She angled it sideways and indicated a button on the handle with her fingertip. “You just press and hold this button until it turns on, and then put it over my clit. You can increase the suction if you keep pushing the button. Easy.” She repeated, and held it out to him.

He didn’t take it from her.

Poor thing… she hadn’t quite caught on, had she?

The lube, slightly warmed by his heat but still below body temperature, wrenched a sharp intake of breath from Rook when his fingertips dipped between her cheeks and brushed against her tight hole.

“I would love a demonstration,” he purred, continuing to languidly spread the lube and her own slick over her, while lazily doodling circles over her knee with his other hand.

His middle finger slipped in to the first knuckle just for a moment - a fleeting pass over the threshold and out again. Rook groaned.

“Will you show me?”

His tone was pleasant - downright cordial - but he felt the tug of the covers beneath him when Rook’s toes curled into them at his words.

Up to the second knuckle this time: he lingered, slowly exploring the plush, soft give of her. She groaned - deep and abandoned - and he watched intently as she placed her fingers on either side of her cunt and pulled up towards her belly button, exposing her flushed, swollen clit in all of its rosy glory.

The toy hummed to life and she enveloped her clit in the small opening at the top like she was snuffing a lurid candle.

Instantly she whined, and precum had already started beading on the tip of his cock at the sight of her, reposed in pleasure before him.

He made an approving sound far back in his throat - like he was appreciating a particularly well-preserved corpse - and pressed deeper still, taking his time - careful not to hurt his beloved: Rook’s back arched off the bed a little and she clenched around him. He withdrew the finger almost entirely, and then slowly reintroduced it.

“More…” she urged breathlessly, clicking the button on the toy and uttering a giddy whimper when it hummed a bit louder. “I want more…”

Oh how he wanted to acquiesce her, but…

“Manners, dear.”

‘Manners’ had become central to their dynamic, rendering a nearly Pavlovian response from his rough-around-the-edges sweetheart when he uttered the word: she practically melted when he said it.

“Please,” she amended, hips jerking against the toy as it whirred and sucked on her clit. “Please?”

“So long as you keep that toy right where it is, my darling girl,” he capitulated, pressing the tip of his ring finger against the taught ring of muscle - feeling her relax and take him in. He stroked her thigh encouragingly and she moaned again - rougher and deeper still: Emmrich’s cock twitched and he reached down to stroke himself. “I think I’m beginning to see why you’re so fond of it…”

He was so hard it hurt: the warm, tight suction around his fingers, gently pulling them deeper was nothing short of divine… as was the way her lovely gray eyes fluttered and her gaze landed on his cock in his hand - completely unable to resist pleasuring himself at the sight of her mounting bliss.

“That’s it…” he whispered, voice thick, scissoring his fingers and stretching her patiently while he jerked off. “Oh… keep going, love… keep showing me how well you take care of yourself…”

Her eyes were locked on his dick, teeth dragging over her lower lip, chest heaving as she watched his hand move up and down his length in tandem with the languid thrusts of his fingers - his little voyeur… she was enjoying this, wasn’t she?

“Do you enjoy fantasizing when you play with your toy, darling?” He prompted, watching the lewd sink of his fingers into her hole. He could make out a line of slick as it dripped out of her cunt, carving a path down towards her asshole: she was reacting very favourably to this experiment indeed…

Rook whimpered, ramping up the suction on the toy again. “Mhmmm…” she squirmed against the pillows behind her, hips stuttering, taking one of her exquisite breasts in her hand, squeezing it and pinching a nipple.

“Why don’t you tell me how you put that stunningly creative imagination of yours to use…?”

Over the soft fleshy sound that accompanied his fist on his cock, and the low hum of the Satisfyer, Rook made a decadent noise, fucking herself on his fingers with a shamelessness that was nothing short of outrageously arousing.

“I like to think about you… your hands, your mouth… your hard cock…”

“Is that so?” He said more breathlessly than he meant to: everything about this scenario was like something out of a dream - the kind that had his eyes opening in his darkened bedroom sometime in the early hours, cock throbbing painfully, overstimulated by even the soft sheets that clung to the sticky evidence trapped in his pubic hair and lingered on the tops of his thighs.

“I think about you all the time, Emmrich… kissing you, fucking you - making love to you. Sucking on that handsome dick of yours…”

Unbidden, he uttered a soft groan and his hips jerked against his hand at the knowledge that she pleasured herself like this - gasping and whining and breathing hard - while thinking about him.

“Another? Please?” She asked - as politely as possible through the blissed out warble of her voice.

Emmrich buried his fingers to the last knuckle, sweeping them against her walls and coming to the conclusion that she was indeed adequately prepared for a third.

“So good for me…” he purred, observing her face for any sign of pain or discomfort that would have him stop in an instant as he pulled back his hand added a bit more lube to it before urging it forwards again, this time introducing an additional digit. Rook gasped and cursed - but not in displeasure. “If you fall apart this ardently when you’re on your own, I must tell you I am very flattered to hold the great honour of being your muse…”

He curled his fingers, exploring her depth and the slick, viscous pull of it, his movements quickening when he felt assured that she was accustomed to the stretch of his fingers, causing her hips to lift off the bed.

“Gah—!”

It was a sharp, breathy cry: one that tipped Emmrich off to the fact that she wasn’t far from release.

“Good girl…” he encouraged, feeling his own release coming up on him: the decadent tension banding through him poised to snap as he feverishly stroked himself, Rook’s eyes still watching his every move. “Ohhh… Rook… so so good…”

There was something so undeniably intimate about anal play, regardless of gender: there was a certain amount of trust and vulnerability that it required, along with the capacity for those involved to communicate well with one another. Sometimes it was lawless and sloppy, other times sensual and romantic, but it was always special - at least… it was for him.

“Fuck - Emmrich… ah! Keep— keep going…” She keened, voice straining, hips bucking against the toy and the fullness of his fingers inside of her. “Maker… pl-please don’t stop— holy fuck!”

“I won’t—” he promised, his drooling cock throbbing under his fingers. “Let go, darling— come for me… I want to see you come…”

His invitation was all that she needed, because her hand left her tit and she grabbed the base of his wrist, holding him fast so she could ride his fingers, grinding against them until she could take him no deeper, still holding the toy over her surely aching clit.

A strangled cry ripped from her lips and she tightened around him, the toy slipping from her fingers as she gushed forth, soaking his hand and the blanket beneath her. His name - then babbled profanity. Sitting forward, teeth clenched, her insides massaged him and it was enough to send him over the edge as well, cum spurting from his dick and painting his wrist, her cunt, and the insides of her thighs.

He might have cursed too: he couldn’t tell over the overwhelming sensation that racked his entire being as he spent himself all over Rook, baptizing lines of ink and swaths of colour with glistening pools and trails of semen that dripped over her form, gloriously decorating her in their carnal majesty.

Then she was wrapped around him, his fingers slipping out of her to snake around her waist when she crushed herself against him, his mess smearing all over both of their bellies.

“I love you…” she breathed against his lips when she parted from them. “I love you so fucking much.”

“I— mmmph!” She kissed him again before he could finish, tangling her fingers through his sweaty hair, holding his face in her hands. “I love you too—” he managed to blurt when she took a breath. His own hands wandered over the curves and planes of her back as they embraced, upright on the bed, naked, sticky, sweaty, and trembling.

“Keep making me cum like that and I’ll love you forever…” she whispered, collecting a bead of sweat from the shell of his ear with a dainty tongue.

He squeezed her ass and pulled her tighter to him, reveling in the heat of her body and the smell of her sweat. “That can certainly be arranged, my sweet, darling Rook…”

He flipped a wayward lock of hair away from her face and lost himself in her eyes for the millionth time.

Forever sounded just fine to him.

[stevieschrodinger]

Part One Five

“Robs!” Steve shouts through the apartment, toeing his shoes off at the door.

“Kitchen!”

Steve heads through, and he can’t help but notice something looks kind of off. It looks different in here but he can’t quite put his finger on it, “Robs, did you do something to your apartment?”

“Yeah, I cleaned it.”

“Oooh. Yeah,” Steve looks back through the kitchen doorway, “yeah, that’s what’s different.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, bitch.”

“Fuckface.”

Steve frowns, there’s a cookbook propped open and actual like, fresh ingredients on the chopping board, “what are you doing?”

“Is that a rhetorical question because-”

“Robs, I have literally never seen you cook anything more complicated than eggs and toaster waffles, what is this,” Steve goes over to be nosy, “chicken satay skewers and bang bang cauliflower- what the actual fuck. I didn’t even know you knew what recipe books were.”

“Fuck off. And it’s for Chrissy, she said it’s her favorite-”

“Oh my god. I’m dead. I’m dead aren’t I. I got into a crash on the way-”

“Steve.”

“Alternate dimension-”

“Jesus Christ-”

“Abducted by aliens?”

“Steve, I can cook a nice meal for my girlfriend, alright, it’s not, like, illegal-”

“Your what?!”

She stops and actually turns to look at him, she’s wearing her absolute dead serious face, “Steve. I like her. A lot.”

“So now you’re what, fucking pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen-”

“Steve! Look. She’s clever. She’s funny. She’s kind. She calls me out on my bullshit and she is extremely hot doing it. She plays volleyball Steve. Volleyball. Have you ever seen girls play volleyball? Not only is it insanely aggressive but the shorts are so tiny they’re on the verge of disappearing up her crack and it’s socially acceptable for me to go out and watch that Steve.”

“Yeah but- you don’t have to like, date her to get all of that-”

“I do. I do Steve. Because I want to. We can’t just do,” she gestures vaguely, “this for our entire lives.”

“But whyyyyy?” Steve whines.

“Because we have to grow up at some point.”

“Yeah but...now?” Steve knows he’s pouting.

“Good a time as any, anyway, aren’t you literally about to go to dinner at Eddie’s uncles place? Literally the only notable family member that he has? His only parental figure and therefore the most important person in his life-”

“You can stop now.”

“I’m just saying that sounds kind of serious-”

“I will throw myself off the roof to get out of this dinner. Don’t test me.”

Robin completely ignores him, “I’ve seen how Eddie looks at you,” Steve scoffs, rolling his eyes, “Steve, that boy looks at you like he’d crawl a mile over broken glass to sniff your farts. Could you just like, appreciate that about him for thirty god damn seconds.”

Steve has a range of acceptable beer. He has picked up a six pack of something from uncomfortably near the bottom of that range. He takes a deep breath as he grabs it off the passenger seat.

Steve’s pretty sure he’s never been inside a trailer once in his damned life, and he has absolutely no idea what to expect. From the outside it looks...cramped. Steve’s certain his entire bedroom is bigger than this whole place.

Steve prepares himself to be polite about whatever he’s about to walk into.

Eddie fucking lights up when he opens the door, it makes Steve skin itchy while simultaneously something flaps about in his stomach, “oh wow, you bought the good beer!” Eddie looks thrilled as he takes it to put in the fridge.

Which he makes it to in about four steps because the kitchen is like, right there. And Steve’s taken one step in through the door and he’s already in the middle of the lounge, which is, efficient, he guesses.

“Here, come sit at the table, Wayne’s about done with dinner.”

“Errr...thanks.” Eddie indicates a place at a cramped little built in breakfast nook type thing, and Steve slides in just as Wayne appears from down the hall.

It was fucking awkward getting in, it’s even more awkward getting straight back out again so he can shake Wayne’s hand, “good to see you again Sir.”

Steve gets a firm handshake, and then not two minutes later he’s eating the first bite of what might be the best thing he’s ever put in his mouth. Wayne Muson makes a pot roast that should win a Michelin Star. Who could have fucking predicted that.

[slutoru1207]

Invincible!Dad x pregnant reader (Bonus scene)

Uncle William, Anunt Amber and reader having some fun

Amber’s apartment was cozy, filled with the scent of vanilla candles and whatever overpriced tea she’d been obsessed with lately. The three of you were sprawled across her couch and floor, half-empty snacks littering the coffee table.

William was already on his second glass of wine, dramatically fanning himself. “Okay, now that we’re all sufficiently buzzed—except you, of course, mama-to-be—” he shot you a look, “—it’s time for the real conversation.”

Amber smirked, crossing her legs. “Oh, this is about to get good.”

You popped another piece of chocolate in your mouth, already knowing where this was going. “Do I even want to know?”

William grinned. “Yes. Now spill—what’s the absolute freakiest thing Mark has done to you?”

Amber gasped. “Ooooh, wait, yes, I need to know this.”

You groaned, covering your face. “You guys are so nosy.”

Amber nudged your foot. “We’re living through you! You’re the only one here sleeping with a half-alien god—details, please!”

William leaned forward eagerly. “Yeah, is he like… normal in bed? Or is it different?”

You hesitated, but then sighed dramatically. “Okay. So… you know how strong he is, right?”

Amber nodded, sipping her drink. “Uh-huh.”

William raised a brow. “Go on.”

“Well,” you bit your lip, pretending to be embarrassed (but let’s be real, you were loving the attention), “sometimes he forgets his strength a little. Like, one time? He pinned me down so hard I was stuck—like actually stuck—and he panicked, thinking he broke me.”

Amber nearly choked on her drink. “Wait, WHAT—”

William screamed into a pillow. “STOP IT RIGHT NOW.”

You burst into laughter. “I’m serious! I had to calm him down because he was freaking out, but I was just like, ‘Babe, just let me breathe for a second.’”

Amber wiped a tear from her eye. “Okay, that’s hilarious, but also? Hot.”

William gasped, clutching his chest. “Oh my GOD, I cannot believe this.”

Amber leaned in. “Wait, what about positions? What’s his favorite?”

You smirked, taking a slow sip of your water before answering. “Okay, so—”

William slapped a hand on your arm. “Bitch, don’t you dare tease me.”

You laughed. “Fine, fine! Honestly? Mark loves when I’m on top. He pretends like he’s all in control, but if I take over? He melts. It’s the cutest thing.”

Amber clapped her hands. “Oh my God, YES! I knew he was a softie.”

William shook his head, looking personally victimized. “This is TOO much. But also? What’s the wildest place you’ve done it?”

You exchanged a look with Amber, then bit your lip. “Okay… so you know Mark can fly, right?”

Amber’s jaw dropped. “Oh. My. God.”

William grabbed a pillow and screamed into it.

You grinned. “Yeah. That.”

Amber covered her mouth. “You did it—IN THE SKY?”

You shrugged, enjoying the way they were losing their minds. “It was… an experience.”

William shook his head. “No. No, I need therapy after this.”

Amber was wheezing. “Girl. You are living the DREAM.”

William pointed at you. “Mark is an actual menace, and I love that for you. But also? If you fall out of the sky mid-orgasm, I am not planning your funeral.”

You snorted. “Duly noted.”

Amber wiped her eyes, still laughing. “Okay, okay—what about the freakiest thing he’s ever asked for?”

You hesitated for a second. Then—

You leaned in. “He really likes it when I—”

The door suddenly swung open.

And there stood Mark.

With a bag of takeout in one hand.

And a look of absolute horror on his face.

The room went silent.

Mark blinked. “What… are you guys talking about?”

Amber lost it, doubling over with laughter. William, meanwhile, was dying, wheezing into a pillow.

You, on the other hand, just smirked.

“Oh, babe,” you said sweetly. “Just girl talk.”

Mark knew.

He knew you were lying.

And he was never going to recover.

---

Mark refused to step any further into the apartment. He just stood there, holding the takeout bag like it was a shield against whatever unholy conversation he’d just walked in on.

Amber was dying. William had collapsed. And you? You were just grinning at him.

Mark’s voice was flat. “I know you guys were talking about me.”

Amber smirked, sipping her drink. “Oh, babe, we were definitely talking about you.”

Mark groaned, rubbing his face. “Oh my god.” He looked at you. “What did you say?”

You tilted your head, feigning innocence. “I don’t know, what do you think I said?”

Mark stared at you. Narrowed his eyes. His nostrils even flared a little, which, honestly, was kind of hot.

Then—William gasped.

“Oh my god,” William sat up, pointing at Mark like he’d just uncovered the biggest scandal of the century. “You know. You totally know what she said. That means it’s true!”

Mark turned bright red. “I—I didn’t say that!”

Amber grinned. “So, you do have a favorite position.”

Mark groaned into his hands. “I hate this conversation.”

William clapped his hands. “Oh my GOD, you’re so guilty! This is amazing.”

You smirked, enjoying every second of this. “C’mon, babe. You can tell them. What’s your favorite?”

Mark refused to answer. But the way his jaw clenched? The way his eyes flickered toward you, then immediately looked away?

Amber gasped. “Wait, I bet I know.” She pointed at you. “You said he likes when you’re on top, right?”

Mark visibly winced.

William covered his mouth, eyes wide. “Oh my god, he’s not denying it.”

Amber cackled. “Oh, he loves it. Mark, you kinky little—”

“I hate both of you,” Mark groaned. “I hate all of you.”

William waved a hand. “Okay, okay. Fine. We’ll drop it.”

Mark let out a relieved sigh.

Then—William smirked. “Unless… you wanna give us your wildest story?”

Amber wheezed.

You laughed, eyes gleaming. “Yeah, babe. Your turn.”

Mark looked at you. Then at William. Then at Amber.

Then—he did something none of you expected.

He smirked.

And when Mark Grayson smirked? It was dangerous.

“Oh, you guys wanna know?” His voice dropped just slightly.

Amber and William froze.

“…Yes?” Amber said slowly.

Mark tilted his head, tapping his chin. “Hmmm. Let’s see…” His gaze flickered to you, heat behind his eyes.

You immediately recognized that look.

“Babe—” you warned.

Mark grinned. The bastard was enjoying this.

He looked back at William and Amber. “Okay. You guys wanna hear something wild?”

William was practically vibrating. “YES.”

Amber grabbed a pillow, squeezing it. “Spill.”

Mark shrugged, pretending to think about it. “Alright. So… you know that one time we went to the mountains for the weekend?”

Your eyes widened.

Amber gasped. “Oh, hell yeah, I remember that. You two were so cute—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mark waved a hand dismissively. “Anyway… you guys remember that cabin we rented?”

William nodded slowly. “Uh-huh…”

Mark smirked. Paused.

Then said, completely deadpan—

“Yeah, we definitely weren’t just hiking.”

Amber screamed. William collapsed.

You smacked Mark’s arm. “MARK—!”

Mark grinned, unbothered. “What? You guys wanted details.”

William was dying. “I TAKE IT BACK. I TAKE IT BACK—”

Amber was wheezing. “You did it in the woods?!”

Mark just shrugged. “More than once.”

Amber fell off the couch.

William clutched his chest. “I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT.”

You groaned, hiding your face. “Mark, I swear—”

But Mark just laughed, kissing your temple before setting the takeout on the table.

“You guys enjoy your gossip,” he said casually, walking toward the kitchen. “I’ll be over here. Being innocent.”

William threw a pillow at him. “YOU ARE ANYTHING BUT INNOCENT.”

Amber was still on the floor, absolutely losing it.

You?

You just sighed, because Mark had just won this round

[natequarter]

if other doctors did human nature:

one is badly cosplaying as a teacher at coal hill. susan, not having regenerative abilities, is watching over him. barbara and ian have never met the doctor as the doctor; as far as they know, he's just their crotchety coworker doctor foreman, who STILL won't share his first name. the doctor was on the run from gallifrey when he stumbled upon the family... now he's just on the run from the family of blood. regrettably, barbara got a bit too nosy in the doctor's office at one point, and took his fob watch. can susan recover the fob watch from ian and barbara before it's too late?

two lands jamie and zoe in jamie's era. look it's all very well and good that you know how to navigate eighteenth-century scotland, jamie, but i'm a bit out of my depth here!

if three did this, literally nothing would change, except that now the brigadier is being harassed by two human scientists who are smarter than him rather than one. the master lands on earth and tries to sell the doctor out to the family, only for it to backfire; the brigadier's men try and fail to shoot the family; liz insists the master pay for her therapy. the doctor barely notices the difference when he becomes a time lord again

there are two different ways i'd want to play four as a human. the first is this: harry and sarah have to put up with him. stationed at a naval base, harry and sarah must ward off the family whilst also warding off the doctor's insanity. sarah is disguised as the doctor's estranged younger brother (don't question the crossdressing) and harry is disguised as harry. inevitably things go wrong.

alternatively: rather than staying in e-space, romana returns to the main universe with the doctor. unfortunately, they manage to attract the family along the way; adric must badly pretend to be human whilst corralling two fob watched time lords who have chosen a really bad time to plan their wedding

tegan and turlough have plenty of experience with hiding from aliens, being on earth, and putting up with the doctor, but boy is he annoying as a human

the doctor gives peri exactly zero instructions and then lands them in the 1300s as an amnesiac human in the midst of the black death. peri is at her FUCKING LIMIT

much like three, very little changes for eight. this is the only one i'd still be tempted to set in 1913 à la the vna/nuwho episodes. charley gets to explore the recent past (to her, anyway) whilst acting as the severely amnesiac john smith's caretaker

honestly, rose and jack would be a remarkably competent team to be saddled with the doctor as a human... and he's falling in love with both of them, of course

amy vs the family: amy has won. rory gets possessed by the family but don't worry, it gets unwritten from time. the doctor is never doing that again, ever, yuck, he ate pears, YUCK

i don't think clara could be trusted with the doctor as a human, and if this was bill and nardole, i don't think the doctor would change much as a human. missy is not fob watched because she is in the vault and therefore simply inaccessible. bill continues to get set weird essays. the family are so focused on trying to get to missy (who they KNOW is there) that they fail to realise the doctor is there and simply perish within their three-month lifespans

[featherwurm]

Had another odd dream the other night:

A young lesbian couple moves to a remote small town in the Appalachian mountains. They go about their lives, becoming normal members of the community, working and living peacefully, but they become fascinated with the strange local happenings of the town. They begin to document in narrated video format, posted to social media, various places and events of weird goings-on:

Case 1:

Bleeding Tree – A large pine tree in the city park continually weeps a substance too thin and watery to be tree sap where a panorama of the local forest has been carved into it’s living wood. It is pronounced enough at certain times of year (mainly summer, when sap is slow flowing) that it stains the surrounding grass.

Case 2:

Roaring Barrens – At times, in the local pine barrens, the sound of chainsaws and intense machine-driven forestry can be heard rumbling through the trees even when there is no man made equipment for miles. It is dangerous to be in the woods when this happens as trees randomly fall, even with no one around to cut them, and no storm to cause them to topple. The damage resembles wind and lighting, but happens only with clear skies. This video features a lot of running.

Case 3:

Perpetual Rainbow – On Eden St. and Main Ave. if you hold your head at the right angle low enough to the ground you will find a small shoe-height rainbow that is visible in any weather, any time of day. Putting an object through it has no effect.

Case 4:

Graveyard Spiders – In the pioneer cemetery there are reclusive spiders the size of large dogs that inhabit the grounds and immediately surrounding vicinity. They are harmless to humans (and in fact will try to flee long before they are spotted), but locals have learned that their temporarily paralytic venom can induce a tremendous, euphoric high, and will go to lengths to imitate prey to be bitten. This has even factored into the local church’s religious practice for over a century, with practitioners seeing out the spiders and their venom as a strange ‘penance’ for various sins (bringing them ‘visions’ of heaven and hell.)

Cases 5 through 12 document a variety of similar phenomena and groups of people acting out of the ordinary, from cryptids to doomsday cults.

Case 13:

Wood Rot – The worst case the pair have looked into – as it begins to affect both of them. They both begin to suffer stiffness and eventual paralysis in their extremities as they take on the quality and characteristics of living wood – pliable, yet stiff, woody, but green under the bark, stiff, resilient, but not at all flesh. It progresses rapidly, and in a matter of days both are home-bound by their condition and unsure how to seek medical help in the town, as their uncovering of various strange goings on has left them somewhat alienated from those that once saw them as friends.

The two are rapidly nearly fully parallelized and struggling to care for each other, and when it seems they may die like this, unable to seek help, then they are visited by a strange creature. It is something in the form of a hunched little old man, looking to be carved out of wood himself. He cannot be more than three feet tall, although he walks at a constant crouch, limbs much longer than his torso. Bearded with moss, he looks out of place in an urban interior. He claims he is the old man of the mountains and he is punishing them for their nosiness and flippant treatment of his doings. He reveals the bleeding tree is his way of warning the town of his power, and the roaring barrens is his means of punishing interlopers – fallen trees usually killing those that go near.

With wild-eyed curiosity, the couple asks him about their other cases, and surprisingly, he is stunned. He has no involvement with any of these other odd things, and pours over their videos and notes with fascination, reversing their conditions immediately (to their shock and relief) to have them tell him about these bizarre phenomena. Clearly at his mercy (although grateful for their salvation), the two explain all of their known cases and all they have done to investigate and document them.

Curious, this strange, hunched and woody little man leaves their pair to their business, deciding no further harm should come to them, so long as they will continue to update him with what they know. Spending all his time in the wilds and hills, he has not kept up with the town in several hundred years, as he does not care for the company of people. They are now his key to investigating phenomena drawn to mankind. Before he leaves, however, he asks how they managed to escape the Roaring Barrens, as they should have been lost in a maze of fallen limbs that eventually drew them to a place where they could not escape a falling tree. They explain that while investigating and filming an instance of the event, they were distracted by an abandoned and malfunctioning knockoff teletubby plush toy on the fringes of the wood, and followed it’s light and sound to safety.

The mountain man grumps “Oh, that was god then” and hand-waves their safety from that event as though it means little to him, disappearing for now in a puff of mountain air.

I have other dream stories under my #Dream.

[brucebocchi]

Spring 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed bags and the gems

hey! i also post this on my ko-fi! this is very much a labor of love, so if you liked what i wrote consider throwing a few bucks my way! also you can find part 1 right here! thanks!

Yes, hello, I'm still here. Between work and AI: The Somnium Files -nirvanA Initiative-, I was struggling to find the time to get this out, but here we are! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go actually watch some anime again.

As always, the OP for each show is linked in the title. Watch them! There were some damn good ones this season.

Let's-a go:

Mixed Bags

Astro Note

I’m going to kick off this section by first stating that on the whole, I’m much higher on the anime in this section this season than I was last time: Nothing that I watched this season disappointed me nearly as much as Metallic Rouge or The Witch and the Beast, nor bored me to tears like The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. This truly is a collection of mixed bags; anime that I found enjoyable or interesting but still left me wanting in one way or another. “Good But Could Have Been Great” is too unwieldy anyway.

Astro Note was eye-catching from the jump: This is very clearly an homage to Rumiko Takahashi’s beloved romcom Maison Ikkoku, with character designs by Carole & Tuesday’s Eisaku Kubonouchi. The colors are soft and bright, everyone looks unique and has a wide variety of hilarious facial expressions, and the OP is a fun time right out of the gate. You come for the lovely visuals and Takahashi homage, and you stay for, uh, not much else.

Takumi, a down-on-his-luck young chef, answers a job posting at a boarding house that promises its residents breakfast every day. It turns out that Mira, the odd but beautiful new landlady, is a dogshit cook and tried to attract a new one with a plagiarized job posting. Takumi doesn’t really care because she’s, like, really pretty, so he takes the job and moves in. He’s soon beset by a cast of wacky characters that includes an enigmatic unemployed salaryman and his precocious son, an indie idol who looks like a hard-drinking Futaba Sakura in her downtime, a nosy neighbor, and a rich, handsome romantic rival. We’re already approaching Maison Ikkoku territory. 

Shortly after moving in, Takumi believes he overhears Mira saying that she’s a widow, which would firmly plant Astro Note’s flag right in Ikkoku’s turf, but it turns out that Mira is in fact an alien from the planet Wid, meaning she is of the Wido race (this is as good of a localization as you can ask for; in the original Japanese he heard “miboujin,” not knowing that she’s from the planet Mibou). So we’ve got some Urusei Yasura sprinkled in for good measure. Her adorable poodle, voiced by Junichi Suwabe (Sukuna himself!) is from the same planet and helping her find a MacGuffin, hidden by the previous owner, that would help her take over as queen. There’s also some blossoming romance!

The alien stuff made for an interesting wrinkle, and it went a long way toward characterizing Mira as an endearingly odd but curious woman, but it often played out in wacky hijinks caused by alien spies, which felt like a designated make-the-plot-happen button more often than not. It paid off splendidly in the last couple of episodes, and I loved how all of the flashbacks of Mira’s mother looked like grainy Showa-era space operas, but getting there took a lot of “oh no, chase that Thing!” sequences. I found myself tuning out on those until they finally became plot relevant.

The central romance was fine, if a little underbaked, but what kept me watching Astro Note was the smaller moments with the ensemble characters. There were moments with both Wakabayashi the salaryman and his son Ren that slapped the apathy right off my face, and a side plot with Takumi and a person from his past was incredibly sweet. I did also love the massive turn the plot took in the last couple episodes, to the point where I found myself almost wishing that the show up to that point was different.

And that’s Astro Note in a nutshell: A lot of good pieces mixed with some filler, weird pacing, and an overall uneven experience in a nice-looking package. A fun little distraction but nothing entirely memorable. If I can give this show one major positive, it’s that watching it finally convinced me to read Maison Ikkoku, and for that I will forever be grateful. Read Maison Ikkoku.

Go! Go! Loser Ranger

I keep running notes for everything I’m watching as the season rolls on, and sometimes I’ll indulge in other reviewers’ early takes and jot down some insights that might spark from hearing outside perspectives. During Gigguk’s opening remarks on Go! Go! Loser Ranger in his early Spring season roundup, I made a note that the easiest way to summarize this show for a western audience is “basically The Boys but with the Power Rangers instead of The Seven.” And then he said pretty much the exact same thing five seconds later. I just want the record to show that.

Indeed, this is a sentai series with some spice. 13 years ago, the invading forces of evil were soundly defeated by the Dragon Keepers, a real-life sentai squad. In the present day, the Dragon Keepers now sit atop a massive organization protecting earth, and also dominating the entertainment industry: Every week, they hold an exhibition match against the remaining rank-and-file footsoldiers, skull-faced shapeshifters known as Dusters. In order to keep their lives, the Dusters were forced to give up their freedom and serve as the farcical Putty Patrol for what is ultimately a pro wrestling show. Sick of being a jobber and effectively a slave, one of the Dusters, known simply as Fighter D, decides the best way to destroy the Dragon Keepers and free his brethren is to do so from within: He’ll morph into a human shape, join their Rangers program as a cadet, and personally slay each of the five Keepers.

Fighter D is quickly found out, though. One of the recruiters, the lovely but mercurial Yumeko, isn’t nearly as dumb as he thought, but she fortunately has the same aim and quickly puts him to work trying to steal the Keepers’ insanely powerful weapons, the Divine Artifacts. He’s also found by the Dragon Keepers and manages to escape, though badly wounded. He’s found in a cave by Yumeko’s hanger-on, the upstart Ranger cadet Hibiki, whose family was badly fragmented by an unknown monster. While he still believes in the Keepers and shares their ostensible goal of protecting humanity, he believes that there needs to be major changes and agrees to let D impersonate him to infiltrate the Rangers. He’s soon embroiled in a prolonged examination trial against higher-ranked Rangers that soon turns into a fight to the death, made only more deadly by the inclusion of a female Duster and the same monster that killed Hibiki’s parents and paralyzed his sister.

Yes, that’s a lot, and everything up until that last sentence was just in the first four episodes. I’ve said repeatedly that I’m willing to be patient with introductory seasons for action-oriented shonen series, because those do usually take a minute to start cooking, but the first season of Loser Ranger is bizarrely paced. The first four episodes were an intriguing introduction, but they might have served better as a movie to kick off the season, because the overwhelming majority of the remaining eight episodes were pretty much just a bunch of people fighting in a fucking parking garage. I was under the impression that the first season was going to be 24 or so episodes, for some reason, so I was willing to be patient with it.

Maybe I should've been patient enough to wait until the second season, because I found myself getting whiplash between fascination and utter boredom. I still don’t know if I even like this show. There are so many moving parts, and many of them are fascinating, but to get bombarded with them so early and so often, only to then keep most of them in the background in favor of way too many new characters fighting in, again, a goddamned parking garage, frustrates me in increasing measure the more I write about it. I really wanted to like this show more than I did.

The production values are seemingly all over the place too. The OP is another Tatsuya Kitani banger, the voice cast is deep and talented (especially for the English dub, holy hell), the puppet outros are a hoot, and the animation is mostly fine. I’m rarely one to complain about CGI in anime (the ED for this show is entirely 3DCG and it fucks), but a lot of it in Loser Ranger, especially as an obvious means of cheaping out on having to hand-draw and -animate the Dragon Keepers’ slightly-elaborate costumes, is baffling. You could make a generous case for it representing them as larger-than-life personalities, but in execution it’s just kind of uncanny. The show looks and sounds fine overall, but little things like that just take me out of it.

I’m going to withhold judgment until the second season, but for now I can’t say I’m too impressed by the debut. Maybe just watch the first four episodes and put a pin in it until season 2 drops.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night

I’m beginning to worry that Metallic Rouge’s catastrophic narrative failure may have permanently made me nervous about any original anime to follow. It’s an unfair comparison to make, especially considering it aired at the same time as the bombastically audacious Bang Brave Bang Bravern, which I consider one of the best of the year so far and even one of the better anime to air so far this decade. At the same time, though, the millisecond I start to suspect that an original anime is losing its footing, as soon as the one synapse fires that tells me that this show may not be able to stick the landing, I start to get cynical. The good news is that Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night isn’t even in the same time zone as Rouge’s disappointment. The bad news is that it still never fully lived up to what it could have been.

Right from the jump, this felt like Doga Kobo flexing in between seasons of Oshi no Ko with yet another gorgeous showbiz anime. The debut episode is one of the best I’ve seen in some time; an immaculately animated and brilliantly storyboarded mission statement showcasing the self-doubting illustrator Mahiru and the disgraced ex-idol Kano meeting and finding new inspiration in one another’s work (if you’ve been reading Beat & Motion, this may sound familiar, except they’re both high school girls). It was a masterclass in depicting powerful self-expression and the spark of a truly fateful encounter. What followed was also pretty good, but...

Mahiru and Kano band together (pun intended) to form the multimedia collective JELEE, also enlisting social-outcast musical prodigy (and Kano stan) Mei, and NEET VTuber Kiui along the way. We see a lot of the nitty-gritty of trying to get a new act off the ground, as well as the reality that any new artist or creator nowadays is, ultimately, at the mercy of the internet. It was a treat to watch these four all come together, as was seeing the emotional bonds they forge with one another while also navigating their own personal issues, but it frequently came at the expense of an actual plot. That sort of thing is fine, I do love me some good slice-of-life, but I feel like the show planned on something a bit grander. While we’re focused on so many of these really lovely moments of character growth and interpersonal drama, everything about JELEE’s ascent, y’know, the main plot, just kind of happens, and before you know it everything turns out okay and the season’s over. It really felt like the writers had a big plan but ended up just laying down the tracks while the train was already in motion.

As mentioned, I’m not nearly as down on the anime in the “Mixed Bags” section this season as I was three months ago, but just thinking about how the plot sagged around the middle and rushed towards its ending leaves me frustrated. Unlike JELEE itself, Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night feels like less than the sum of its parts. This show feels like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle; what you can make out of the image is gorgeous, yet not only was it never completed, but someone clearly put a few of the pieces together wrong as well. There are plenty of themes in the story and character writing that could have blossomed into something amazing, like impostor syndrome, finding community and identity through fandom, young sapphic love, gender identity, and so many more, and it may have been possible to resolve at least a couple of these in 12 episodes, but Jellyfish seemed either incapable of or uninterested in actually getting there beyond a few vague overtures.

I know I sound harsh here and I didn’t mean for this review to be mostly complaints; I did very much like this show, but I wanted so badly to love it. And it probably isn’t entirely fair of me to grade this show based on what it could have been instead of what it is, but so much was plainly left on the table that I’m not really left with another choice. I still recommend it much more strongly than anything else I've put in the Mixed Bags section so far this year, but be forewarned that you may be let down. This is a pretty goddamn good anime that could’ve been pretty goddamn incredible, but it just couldn’t get there.

Mysterious Disappearances

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I know what I’m about. If a new series rotates around a protagonist who looks like that, I’ll at least give it an episode or two.

Sumireko is a former child-prodigy novelist, now in her late 20s working at a bookstore with the sharp-tongued Ren, as she continues to fail at getting published again. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Sumireko accidentally takes home a book that was droplifted in the store, and shortly after reading it aloud she finds herself reverted into the body of a child. Suddenly struck by inspiration once again, she disappears from work for the next week, furiously typing away at her next novel. Ren manages to find her and tells her that she’s under a curse: The book is an otherworldly object known as a Curiosity, and its power can be deadly to those who use it. Though Sumireko is desperate to hang on to her newly-regained youth, Ren manages to smooth-talk her into changing back and handing over the book. Now aware of an extradimensional threat to daily life, Sumireko teams up with Ren and his little sister Oto to track down and neutralize more Curiosities before they cause widespread havoc.

This series is alright, if questionable in a lot of areas. I recognize that I’m not entirely the target audience; while I love a good supernatural mystery, each of these Curiosities is rooted in East Asian mythology and contemporary urban legends, very few of which I was familiar with going in. To those on that side of the world (or to Westerners with that specific special interest), I’m sure it hits different, but I got lost on a couple of occasions. Mysterious Disappearances also runs into the same pacing issues that I found with The Witch and the Beast last season, where the plot structure is effectively episodic, but each mystery can last a few episodes at a time, so if you’re not particularly invested in the subject at hand, you’re SOL for another week or two.

This show also just plain doesn’t look very good. The animation is nothing impressive and there’s something off-putting about the overall look that I can’t quite put my finger on. It looks retro in ways that probably weren’t intentional, like a 20-year-old digipaint anime that was upscaled from 480p. The audio element is great, at least; the music, sound design, and cast are all fantastic (between her turn as Sumireko in this one and her supporting roles in Reincarnated as the 7th Prince and Kaiju No. 8, Fairouz Ai has put in great work this season), and that’s a good thing because this one isn’t a looker.

If you couldn’t already tell from how the main character looks, Mysterious Disappearances is undoubtedly horny as hell, but often distractingly so. I do have to praise Sumireko’s design to an extent; for a large-chested anime lady, she at least hews closer to how a tall woman with somewhat appropriately large breasts would actually be built and how her clothes would actually fit. She looks like a more realistically-proportioned Nami. There’s no shortage of anime characters with gigantic boobs, but few that make me actually go “oh, this woman definitely has back problems.” There are a lot of slow-tilting shots up female characters’ legs towards their chests to the point where I tuned the dialogue out because I couldn’t believe they just kept on doing it. I skimmed through the manga, and though there is far more semi-gratuitous nudity as compared to the anime, I still somehow found the latter much more distracting with its attempts at fanservice. I also don’t really care for how the “camera” looks at Oto and her middle school classmates either; I found myself just getting nervous whenever a scene focused on them.

For its problems, there’s at least a series of solid emotional cores here. Similar to Sumireko’s desire to regain her youthful creativity, the wielders-slash-victims of these Curiosities are largely vulnerable individuals who are trying to make the best of their lives in spite of past traumas like bullying, neglect, and disability. All serious issues, no doubt, and the story tries to handle them as well as possible, but once you see through the pattern of “awful thing is happening, we get to know the character, then we learn their tragic backstory and there’s a tearful resolution while we move closer to advancing the overall plot,” it can feel a little cloying in the long run. Not that those resolutions can’t be potent; I really liked the endings of the stories of the missing hairdresser and the rogue VTuber, but as a plot formula it can ring hollow.

Mysterious Disappearances is a fine if unspectacular series of supernatural mysteries with an okay overarching plot, and your mileage may vary depending on your existing knowledge of East Asian occult and superstition. It’s also not that fun to actually look at, even if you happen to be into tall redheads with huge racks. Uh, not that I would know.

The Gems

Girls Band Cry

When Bocchi the Rock! made its unexpectedly earth-shattering landfall a couple years ago, it was inundated with a deluge of comparisons to the previous landmark girls-in-a-band anime, K-On!. It felt a bit trite at the time, and feels even more so in retrospect; each show is its own thing and they both stand on their own merits. And now here’s my dumb ass, reviewing a new girls-in-a-band anime, desperately trying not to compare it to Bocchi.

It’s really not a fair comparison either way; the focus being on an all-girls rock band is really the only thing they have in common. Rather than Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh, a perpetually-anxious recluse looking to join a band so she won’t have to get a real job after high school, we have Nina Iseri, who is… difficult. Nina has just moved to Tokyo after running away from home, but her train arrived too late for her to get her apartment key, and to make matters worse, her phone’s dead. While charging at a local coffee shop, she finds out that Momoka, the now-former frontwoman of her favorite band, is playing on a nearby street. After some ups and downs, they decide to form a band together, and butt heads more than a couple times.

Along the way, they recruit more members, each with their own issues: Subaru, the drummer, is struggling with the expectations placed on her by her grandmother to become an actress, Tomo, the keyboardist, is exacting and a little too opinionated to keep a steady role in a band, and Rupa, the bassist, is a soft-spoken foreigner who remains a cheerful enigma despite losing her parents. And Nina and Momoka are both flat-out stubborn in ways that do not mesh well with one another. There are a lot of yelling matches and many angry tears shed as the band Togenashi Togeari comes together: yes, the “Cry” in the title isn’t just for style points.

I will say that it’s refreshing that Girls Band Cry does not sugarcoat what an absolute pain in the ass Nina can be when she’s dug in: She ran away from home because she’s utterly convinced of her own righteousness, and it’s your damn problem if you think otherwise. She is avoidant and oppositional-defiant, and everyone else just has to deal with it. She may not pick her hills well, but by God will she die on them. Props for having a protagonist this openly messy and unpleasant. Plenty of musicians, or really anyone working in a group for that matter, can be abrasive and stubborn, and TogeToge’s growing pains are a necessary element of their development as a band. 

I know the bar isn’t very high for 3D computer-generated anime when it doesn’t come from Studio Orange, but this is easily one of the best-looking 3DCG anime I’ve ever seen. Between this and Trigun Stampede, I’m blown away at how expressive characters can be in CG, and how they react to what’s around them in real-time more consistently than you’d see in most 2D animation. Speaking of which, Girls Band Cry isn’t entirely in 3D; much of the OP as well as several flashbacks and background characters are hand-drawn, and they look so goddamn good that I’m almost left wondering what could’ve been. Not that I’m disappointed in the slightest; when the 3D animation hits, it REALLY hits in gorgeous synaesthetic waves that so perfectly depict an intersection of sound, light, and emotion. Hell, even the transition cards are huge eye catchers. Not everything looks brilliant all the time; the pets in particular are uncannily low-res and almost look like they got plucked out of KamiKatsu.

Of course, this is a band show, so the audio element has to be on point as well, and I’d say Girls Band Cry is up to snuff. The anime is part of a larger multimedia project, and the entire main cast consists of audition winners performing under mononyms, and they knock it out of the damn park; they’re pretty goddamn great for supposed newcomers. The music is a blast as well, not just in performance scenes but in the background as well. Togenashi Togeari already existed in the zeitgeist as a virtual band before this show went to air, so they already had a small discography out there before the show went to air and I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Infamously, this show isn’t particularly easy to watch. Not in the thematic sense, but literally: You cannot legally watch it in English anywhere in the West. Despite its popularity, Girls Band Cry was never picked up by any Anglosphere-based streaming platforms, for whatever reason, and the only official English subtitles out there are from an Indonesian streamer. So, much like the days of VHS trading and the early internet, we’re forced to rely on community translations. Far be it from me to encourage piracy (lol), but if you can find a good fansub, Girls Band Cry is very much worth your while. Pinkies up, motherfuckers.

Kaiju No. 8

I don’t watch Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia, so this was my designated Shonen Jump action show of the season, and it came with a ton of buzz: The way I see it, if I can pick up a volume of the manga at Target, the inevitable anime adaptation is gonna be a big deal. I’ve not read Kaiju No. 8 yet, but I’d say the anime lives up to a good amount of the hype.

Japan has had to handle a constant threat of kaiju for many decades now, and as a child the way-too-aptly-named Kafka Hibino made a promise to his best friend Mina that they would both grow up to lead the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force in charge of eliminating the threat. A couple decades later, she’s a national hero as a captain in the Force, while Kafka is in the private sector at age 32, cleaning up the enormous corpses and viscera Mina and her division leave behind. He hasn’t given up on his dreams, by any stretch; Kafka has failed every single enlistment application he’s submitted since he came of age, but he just keeps on trying.

Kafka and his work kohai, the upstart JAKDF hopeful Reno, manage to survive a kaiju attack at the end of a shift with minor injuries, but when they’re in the hospital, a potato-sized flying kaiju shoves itself down Kafka’s throat, causing him to transform into a kaiju. Fortunately, he’s able to change back to his human form just in time to pass the first round of Defense Force exams, with Reno warning him not to let anyone in on his secret during practical exams.

Kafka is pathetically weak in his human form and is repeatedly shown up by the daughter of the Defense Force’s director general, the young hotshot Kikoru (Fairouz Ai once again), but he manages to save her life when a training exercise goes haywire and forces him to transform and share his secret with her. Reno and Kikoru get in, no problem, while Kafka manages to squeak in as a cadet. Of course, without exposing his little-big kaiju secret, Kafka can’t do much to help in terms of actual combat, but he does frequently act as an unofficial tactician in directing his squadmates on the battlefield and, in a very smart writing decision, applying his professional knowledge of kaiju anatomy to help them identify and target weaknesses. 

And from there we get a whole lot of early military training and bonding, and not just with Kafka, Reno, Kikoru, and their division’s vice-commander, the giggly Hoshina: There’s also, uh, Man-Bun! And Muscles! And Shark Teeth! And the Token Women! You know, those guys. Yeah, this is ostensibly an ensemble cast, as any good battle shonen should be, but I really didn’t get much from anyone outside the main few characters other than identifying features. I’m sure we’ll get more out of them in subsequent seasons but I have little to work off of right now.

The main three are great, though: Kafka definitely has shonen protag brain even at his age, but he’s still necessary representation for schlubby guys in their 30s who still have hopes and dreams (we exist and our stories matter), and for as serious and focused as Reno likes to think he is, he makes a great tsukkomi whenever Kafka starts acting up. Kikoru is already an icon as well; she’s basically Asuka Langley Sohryu for the zoomer generation. I feel a little weird about the fact that she’s literally half Kafka’s age and still acts kinda tsundere around him, but this is a shonen at the end of the day.

I have some small nagging issues with the story here and there, but nothing that outright ruins the show for me. Like plenty of others, I’m far more fascinated with the ins and outs of how Japanese society adapted to living with kaiju threats outside of just military preparation and response; Kafka’s initial job in kaiju cleanup was actually really neat and I’d have loved it just as much (and possibly more) if the series had just focused on that. I want some damn world building! I also am not crazy about the focus on the Defense Force’s powerscaling in the form of “Unleashed Combat Power,” but I also just plain don’t care about powerscaling to begin with. Wasn’t the entire point of power levels in Dragon Ball Z that it’s pointless to define someone’s fighting spirit by a number? Maybe they drop it later.

This show looks pretty darn good! Production IG clearly put its A-team on this one; the character animation is cartoonishly bouncy and expressive in ways we rarely see outside of Trigger productions, and the big-ass kaiju are all mercifully in outstanding 2D (though I wouldn’t complain about CG; the OP is entirely in 3D and looks exceptional). The silliness of the animation really came through in one of the funniest scenes in any anime I watched this season. Some of the textures can look a little distractingly muddy at times, but hey, these are big ugly monsters we’re looking at. Make those bastards ugly.

On a certain level, I can appreciate the effort put into this show to try to make it a crossover success; the manga is popular and kaiju films remain one of Japan’s greatest cultural exports. Streaming new episodes on the fetid corpse of Twitter was certainly a decision. I can also appreciate wanting to load up the soundtrack with popular Western artists; my problem is that they went with acts I actively avoid like YUNGBLUD (with writing by Imagine Dragons!) and OneRepublic. Suffice to say, I don’t care for the OP and ED on a musical level, but I know that I’m coming at this with a conscious bias. I’m sure they’re hits over in Japan, and for all I know there are music fans over there with the same tastes and disposition as me who think that some Japanese acts I learned about through anime like, say, Bump of Chicken or Queen Bee, are “coworker music” or whatever. I’ll live.

Kaiju No. 8, at the end of the day, is another battle shonen with guns and big monsters, but sometimes that’s all you need. I’ll be coming back for the next season.

Train to the End of the World

Spring 2024 was a banner season for girls anime. From the veteran director/writer duo that gave us cult hits like Squid Girl, Shirobako, and Prison School (and individual credits on a laundry list of classic and cult-favorite anime across the board) comes an original anime that’s not quite Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, nor Cute Girls Doing Amazing Things, but Cute Girls Being Fucking Weirdos in a Weird World.

7G technology has arrived in Japan and immediately wreaked unknowable chaos. Geography, flora, and fauna have all warped beyond recognition, and in the town of Agano, every human above a certain age has become a talking animal. Shizuru, a still-human high school girl, has been looking for her best friend Youka ever since they got in a fight two years ago and the latter ran off, just before the 7G cataclysm. She finds out that Youka has been spotted in Ikebukuro, and with the help of a babbling train conductor who managed to briefly turn lucid, learns to operate a two-car commuter train to get the hell out of dodge. Just before Shizuru leaves, train stocked with Agano’s famous goya melons, she’s joined by her classmates: The soft-spoken Nadeko, the temperamental bookworm Akira, and the rambunctious gyaru Reimi. Youka’s dog, Pochi, also joins for morale purposes. Along the way, they see just how warped Japan has become, with locals in the various towns ranging from mushroom people to zombies to Lilliputians to characters from their favorite anime, and more.

Try as I might, a summary does not do Train to the End of the World justice; this show is as offbeat as offbeat gets. It makes no bones about how flat-out weird it wants to get and actively revels in it. It’s not really interested in making the girls into a new generation of moe icons either; they are unabashed weirdos, in the ways that really only high school girls can be, and they handle the bizarre situations foisted upon them in similar fashion. They get into arguments about dumb shit, hurl insults at strangers, and occasionally just talk about poop. The writing in this series is fascinating, and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise coming from someone who also has script-writing credits for classics like Cowboy Bebop and Ranma ½ on her resume. The dialogue is punchy and comes at a breakneck pace in ways that you really only get in original anime like ODDTAXI.

Train to the End of the World is an incredible dichotomy unto itself because it clearly comes from a very literate way of thinking but has a blast being really goddamn stupid sometimes, in the best ways. It draws on a lot of inspirations of the epics of yore, gleefully cites the western literary canon, and ponders the future of the human race, and then has the girls negotiate their release from a Gulliver’s Travels situation by threatening to flood a park with urine. It is at once Homer and Homer Simpson. This show is funny in ways that are hard to articulate; comedy is so intrinsic to the show that it only has so many laugh-out-loud moments, but much more often I found myself shaking my head and remarking “this show is fucking hilarious.”

As a complete story, Train to the End of the World isn’t exactly generation-defining, but that’s perfectly fine. It’s an experience more than anything. It has really nice character moments and some heartwarming stuff in there, but I was mostly there for the weird shit. The ending was just okay, but I didn’t feel any poorer for having seen it; I’ll dive right into the cliche and say that it wasn’t about the destination but rather the journey. I had an absolute blast for the whole ride.

Now that I’ve made you read all of this, I’m going to go ahead and admit that I haven’t seen Squid Girl, Shirobako, or Prison School, but I kind of have to now, because I was bowled over by this show. This series revels in surrealism, so your mileage may vary, but it’s at the very least worth checking out. It may not have a lasting impact outside of some similar cult favoritism, but this was still my personal favorite new anime of the season.

Wind Breaker

A few weeks into the Spring season I felt like I was missing something. I gave Wind Breaker a shot and I realized about halfway into the first episode that what I was missing was just some dope-ass fisticuffs.

Haruka is a bit of a delinquent. His hair and eyes are heterochromic, and because he’s judged so harshly for his looks, he decided to lean into it and become the nogoodnik everyone thinks he is. He’s moved to a new town to join the local high school Furin, where he hears he’ll have to fight his way to the top, but as soon as he arrives in town he sees a young woman being harassed by a group of creeps. He takes them out on his own and in return receives a free lunch from the cafe she runs despite his protestations. After she teases him more than a little (his ass is NOT used to positive attention), the creeps return with more goons in tow, and Haruka is backed up by his new classmates. To his surprise, the locals shower the Furin boys with praise, and he then learns that Furin’s gang, Bofurin, exists solely to protect the town from outside threats. And Haruka thinks that is the coolest shit ever.

From there, Haruka gets to meet more of the Bofurin boys, and because of his standoffish personality, rebuffs their praises from the fight. Again, his ass is NOT used to positive attention. We get to learn the hierarchy of Bofurin, and it’s not exactly as Haruka expected: This is not a might-makes-right dogpile at all; it is a structured organization that protects its own and puts its community first. Soon enough, though, they happen upon one of their middle schoolers being hassled by a neighboring gang, and they organize a tournament on hostile ground to resolve their differences.

I am an absolute goddamn sucker for the “delinquent with a heart of gold” archetype, and Haruka is just a big ol’ tsundere from the opening minutes, so Wind Breaker hit like fucking catnip for me. For a show about gangs of delinquents, this could actually be a good example of positive masculinity if you look at it in a certain light. It’s very heavy-handed with the message that nobody can achieve greatness on their own and that surrounding yourself with the right people can change your life for the better. It’s not a rare theme in Japanese media by any means (it’s a central theme of the Persona series as well as another ultra-popular shonen series I’ve been reading in secret), but I really appreciate it being delivered through the lens of channeling brute strength and fighting prowess specifically to protect the vulnerable.  

At the end of the day, though, it’s really just about guys bein’ dudes.

The production values on this are phenomenal and I have to commend CloverWorks for turning in yet another banger. The cast is deep and plenty talented (there’s a lot of Jujutsu Kaisen in there, and it should surprise nobody that the goofy, silver-haired leader of Bofurin is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura). The animation, shot composition, fight choreography, and lighting effects are all absolutely gorgeous, and it’s clear that they see this as a potential franchise. At least, I would certainly hope so, because what we actually got from the first season left me a little hungry. The tournament arc was juicy, and it went a lot longer toward introducing the ensemble cast than the two other action shows I just talked about, but it lasted about an episode too long for a 13-episode season, and the ending came at an awkward time. I was left wanting, but what I want is a second season, so I guess it did its job.

The issues with pacing and the weirdly-timed ending meant that Wind Breaker was a bit of a fence case for me between this section and the last, but my memories of watching it are almost uniformly positive, so into The Gems it goes. This show rocks. Dudes rock.

[cattimeswithjellie]

I do like the fact that in a session where there were three permadeaths, they were all so very different.

There was the useless, senseless accident that was Jimmy's death. Jimmy's death was unique because it was both preordained and fiercely denied. After three series with Jimmy the first permadeath, it's almost a game in itself to make it not happen again. People were willing to die to keep Jimmy from going out first. Bdubs, who was barely Jimmy's ally, literally begged Jimmy to kill him when Jimmy's timer ran into the single minutes. Scott jumped off a bridge to give Jimmy just a bit more time to live. Grian and Joel were on deck, ready to spoonfeed more life into Jimmy with their own deaths if they needed to, just to keep that canary chirping a little longer. But none of it mattered in the end, because Jimmy's foot slipped in a moment of excitement and he was too startled to pearl or bucket clutch or do anything to save himself. Gone in an instant for no reason and no chance to say goodbye.

There was Joel's death, a helpless, hopeless race against time and an implacable enemy. Joel made some serious tactical mistakes in his final episode. His gleeful killing alienated him from his allies, antagonizing the Clockers by killing Cleo, annoying the Nosy Neighbors by killing BigB. He griefed Scott's base with TNT twice, once tactically and once just because he wanted to blow stuff up. By the time he was down to the wire, there were lots of people who wanted him dead and barely anybody who wanted him alive. Even Grian, his Day One ally, eventually realized that trying to keep Joel alive was a losing proposition when Scott and Scar and Martyn and Cleo could siphon away Joel's time much faster than Grian could ever donate it. But even knowing that it was hopeless, even knowing that a _best case scenario_ would barely carry him into the next session, Joel fought desperately til his last second ticked away.

And then there was Skizz's death, premeditated and proud, carried out at the hands of a friend. Skizz had been dying from the very first day of the server. His Session One was absolutely atrocious, losing four hours right off the bat to back-to-back Bogey kills. No matter how well he played after that, no matter how many kills he got or plans he came up with, Skizz was never seriously in contention to win the game. And he knew that. He came up with alternate win conditions for himself. He set a goal to affirm every person on the server and he did. He set a goal to make the team he led a force to be reckoned with, and he did. And most importantly, he set a goal that somebody from TIES make it to the end of the game. By Session Seven, it was clear that Skizz wasn't going to be around to bring that goal to fruition himself. Time was not on his side, and his skill was just not there. Skizz is a clever redstoner and a good entertainer, but he's no PVPer and his bow skills are mediocre. Every time he tried to get a kill, he wound up losing more time. So when it came down to the wire, he didn't beg for his life or fight for more time, despite knowing his friends would give it to him. He called his team together and he gave them his new strategy. Someone from TIES needed to make it to the end, and it couldn't be him. But they could take his resources and his time forward with them, so long as he gave them up willingly. By sacrificing himself for his team, Skizz lost his last 20 minutes of life, but he put his team one step closer to that final goal.

There's probably only one session left, which means it's going to be choked with permadeaths that don't get focused or remarked on very much. Each one will be different though, each one will have its own flavor. In a series like Limited Life, the end is never in question, but the ending is unique to each player.

[tinydefector]

Klik Away pt 2

Did I just binge write this before bed yes I did, becuase I may slowly Turning into a prowl simp.

Prowl x human reader

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: forced proximity, swearing.

Prowl masterlist

Chapter1 chapter3

Chapter4

Request and ask open, read pinned post

___________

 Small eyes slowly flicker open in the large, minimalists room. The deep purr resonating from prowls chassis in low rumbles that shutters their whole body. They gaze meets with Prowl's chassis, slowly look around in the quiet room only to shout as the flyt chirps beside their head, leaning down to get a look at them. It makes the human panic and try to bolt from Prowl's side. 

Prowl onlines with an irritated rumble as the human bolted upright shrieking, panicked flailing waking him at the uncontrolled movement. Optics flashing in annoyance, Prowl sat up quickly to swat the flyt away with a massive servo.

"Cease that infuriating racket," he snarled, engine growling. Green buzzed around them, chittering unhelpfully, making thrilling noises as the flyt knocks things off a bench before landing up on one of the window ledges where Green makes a Shrieking noise. Prowl swatted at the flyt. "Silence, you insufferable pest! i'm rechargeing, now cease your squawking."

His field pulsed in agitation, systems still booting up as he comes around to consciousness fully. Prowl glared down at the thrashing human, servo unyielding despite fragile construction. 

"Settle," he ordered gruffly. Recharge-added processor lacked patience for hysterics this early in the cycle. As Green finally subsided, Prowl watches the human, his optics focus in on their breathing. 

"What is that thing?" they whisper while pressing closer to his hull, back pressed against him as they pull the cloth closer, their eyes linger on the flyt that glares down at them. 

Prowl cycled an irritated ventilation at the pathetic display, engine rumbling low. "That 'thing' is my pet, Green," he replied curtly, optics lingering on the flyt as he grumbles in annoyance. His optics move from Green to meet the trembling organic pressed against his plating. 

"She is not harmful, merely curious." Why did he allow the human to curl closer, relying on his frame for security against a mere flyt, Yet...he found no compelling reason to move, systems adjusting to the softer form pressed against him, Prowl found that he didn't quite mind it but would never admit that. 

Green lets out another collection of nosies, but gentler this time. Prowl shot the flyt a glare. “Green Out” he snaps and the flyt does as he's told. Prowl's engine idled in a deepened rumble. 

"It's not going to eat me?" They ask slightly worried, over the flyt. Prowl rumbles in slight amusement. A reluctant chuckle rumbled from Prowl's engine housing at the absurd suggestion. "No she won't, she enjoys her food enough" he clarified, a hint of condescension entering his tone. 

“She mainly eats skitter or larger bugs she's no threat. Less you irritate me" His field pulsed contently. armor clamping unconsciously protectively around the tiny form. Green flys back over, alighting delicately on Prowl's extended arm to chirp inquisitively at the human.

Prowl made a derisive noise. "Yes I know they are in your spot, you will have to deal with it" he rumbles softly to his pet who seems rather disgruntled over her spot being taken. 

It seemed Cybertronians cared for little aliens. Yet this one relied on him, and Prowl had Green for a while now. His engine rumbled ponderously as Green nuzzled tiny plating.

Green takes off again scuttling thought the apartment knocking over something else which makes Prowl growl out at her again. 

The two lay there stifle beside each other before Prowl decides it's time to get up. His joints creak and pop as he moves off the berth. Leaving the human there curled up as he goes about the apartment.

Prowl's joints ache in protest as he rose from the berth.

The human remained curled amid his mesh cloth, Leaving them be, Prowl proceeded through his habitual morning defrag and systems checks, Green buzzing around him before she returns to his berth. 

The flyt chips and goos at the human in her spot before she decides they would make a rather comfortable pillow. Curling around them, her wings flutter out as she settles against them. 

Small hands come up to scratch the dragon like pet, a small smile crosses their lips as they begin patting her like she was an oversized dog. “Who's a good girl, yes you are you are” they coo at Green as she preens in delight at the attention given to her. 

His hab suite gleamed pristine as ever despite this unwelcome guest marring perfection. Prowl did not understand the strange fluctuations plaguing his routines since acquiring the human.

Prowl moves into what could be called a kitchen, grabbing a cube of energon, he tops up Green's food which has the flyt scurring out for fresh food. 

He makes his way over to his data pad as he starts typing away on more reports when his optics catch a glimpse of them, they are standing in the hallway, how they got there he has no clue, but he watches them as they look around curiously. The mesh cloth is wrapped around them, bare feet pad across the metal floor. 

Prowl's fingers froze in mid-report, sensors drawn inexplicably to movement in his hab suite entrance. "Do not touch anything in my hab," he called out evenly, they turned toward him with large eyes, an alien visage stirring strange sensations in Prowl's processors. 

" without asking," he continued, tone measured where before frustration leaked through. "Your tiny servos could damage equipment, and I will not suffer disruption." His words held no heat, merely statements of fact. 

“you think i can damage stuff, you have a mini dragon who throws things” they shoot back. Prowl shoots them a glare before continuing his reports. 

Illogical. Alien. Intrusive little thing. 

They do as they are told not touching anything, they pull the cloth they had now claimed as their blanket around their form more as they slowly make their way towards him. "Can you lift me onto the table?" The ask softly.

Prowl stared down at the tiny human swathed in fibre mesh, the polishing cloth he had left on the table. “Very well," he agreed after a klik, modulating his field to soothe as massive servos carefully encircled them. Their fearlessness intrigued Prowl to no end as he lifted and deposited it gently atop his workspace.

"Remain still. I would not endanger you through haste or inattention," Prowl rumbled, settling back into analysis of security updates while one digit lazily spun circles around the tiny human, as captivated by its presence as it was by observing him.

Green makes her way over to the human flooping down on them as she cuddles into them, it nearly makes Prowl jealous seeing his pet taking to the human. “Traitor” he mumbles under his breath. 

They sit there watching him type away despite not knowing anything on the data pad. "What are you doing?" They ask this time, their hands scratch over Green's scales as the flyt rolls around enjoying the scratches. 

Prowl cycled a ventilation, reining in irritation at the interruption as he explained patiently, "I am reviewing security protocols and updating patrol schedules in the wake of recent events" He spoke more slowly than normal, modulating semantics for organic linguistic comprehension. "My task is to track down the traffickers, you werent the only illicit ‘goods’ they were smuggling and trying to sell, so now i need to review records" Prowl continued, turning the datapad to display glyphs, colors and schematics meaningless to the tiny being. 

"Can you understand any of this." His tone held not unkindness, the human shakes their head. Still, patience remained, digits type as Prowl sorts throught files, enjoying strange sensations of teaching another. For now, differences faded behind growing fascination with all things alien.

They shoot him a look. "So your like an alien space robo cop or something?" They ask as they continue watching him.

A surprised chuckle rumbled in Prowl's chassis at the creative interpretation. "In essence, yes," he replied, doorwings twitching amusement that such a primitive mind could comprehend his function, however crudely. 

"I spearhead security and enforcement for this district." His optics gleamed fondly down at both the human and Green. "In your terms, I suppose 'space robo cop' adequately translates my designation, despite lacking nuance." Amusement continued lacing his rumble, bemused by bizarre scenarios that brought an alien under his guard. 

 "So that's why your such a stuck up prick when grumpy, you need to drink some coffee" they giggle and it earns them a glare from him, he can tell they are trying to make him bite back but he's not going to fall for the bait this time.

Prowl cycled an irritated ventilation at the organic's impudent remarks, frame bristling with restrained offence. His engine revved a growl on the verge of rebuking tongue before biting it back harshly.

"Watch it petro-rabbit," he retorted icily, digits flicking them lightly. reflexively before easing at the tiny form's lack of fear. He pulls them closer to his chassis so he knows where they are, Green follows suit wanting cuddles from the human. 

"I require no 'coffee' to perform my duties with utmost skill and precision," Prowl continued, modulating the field carefully despite provoked ire. “christ Copbot chill out it was a joke” they state before settling back into watching him work. 

Prowl is rather content right in that moment, perhaps.. just perhaps he would let the human stick around, only because Green liked their company. 

[nonexistent-morals]

canon Madara meets fanon madatobi.

Madara wins (he absorbs Kaguya or sth or imagine she doesn't exist) and he made infite tsukuyomi possible.

He's the only one left in the world. Bored king decides to be nosy so uses his rinnegan to peek into other dimensions (because that's a thing he can do because alien ninja magic). If he'd made different choices, walked different routes, the what ifs.

He finds one where he's the shodai Hokage and he's making out with Tobirama on his lap. why?? Him??

He changes places with fanon Madara for reasons.

This took a bit to get written out, but i hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

The thing about being a god in a world of dreams is that eventually you get tired of your own. And for Madara, life at this point after the war has been won, and all things are said and done, after he's had his dream, he's bored. Bored and alone, so like all gods do when Boredom strikes, he's decided to just have a little peak at the other perfect worlds.

First he dipped into hashirama's dream, easily taking the place of the false madara in it, and they had their usual dance on the training fields, and then they went to lunch with his family (mito, tobirama, hashirama's children and izuna). Its funny how hashirama's perfect world has his little brother alive and well, but i suppose thats exactly like hashirama, alway kind and thoughtful.

But even so with how nice a dream it is, there's one thing that with absolute certainty that bothers madara. Senju tobirama, ever observant even in his brothers dream, except its not just his brothers dream, but both of theirs. Tobirama's and hashirama's dreams are connected as are really anyone from founding of the village who are here now. Its a jarring realization.

Madara leaves after the lunch letting false madara go back to his dream life, not because he wants to, but because tobirama had been giving him this look of suspicion when his brother wasn't paying attention . Somehow how he's missing something about tobirama's part of the dream, and clearly its enough to make him scrutinize his actions.

So now madara is watching his false self parade around hokage tower, doing paperwork, giving orders, and currently walking into the white haired senjus office. It makes him wonder if this part of the dream is hashirama wanting them to get along or tobirama scheming.

Madara's not really paying any attention to their conversation, he's to busy looking at tobirama's body language, which is far to relaxed for any of their original interactions in real life, and his facial expressions are also more easy to read. It really is fascinating in a morbid sort of way, it makes him feel uneasy.

By this time fake Madara is sitting on the edge of tobirama's desk, tobirama is looking up at him with a very small amused smile, and this time he decides to listen to what he says.

“really madara, at work, in the middle of the day when we have a meeting in 30 minutes?” tobirama says it in fond tone, madara didn't know the senju demon was even capable of sounding like that.

“You and i both know that 30 minutes is more than enough time, especially from someone as competent as you.” Its odd hearing his own voice coming from another person, even if hes not real.

At this response tobirama rolls his eyes at him, soft smile still on his lips, looking so very pleased with himself and pulls the fake madara in to him by his waist, and Madara can only watch as tobirama begins unfastening his pants, and its at this point he decides to leave the dream. Madara is left with so many more questions than answers.

[alwaysonf1]

lewis is doing what?

Pairing: Charles LeClerc x Hamilton!OC

Genre: Slice of Life; Fluff

Word Count: 3k

Warning: Changes in the timeline for the sake of the story.

Rating: PG-13

Author's Note: This is my first F1 fic, which makes me nervous so why not start with a series.

Many Drive to Survive haters like to pretend everything that comes from the show and what it’s about are beneath them. That they couldn’t possibly care, and that the only important thing is the race on Sunday. And yet the day after the latest season drops you can find them amongst the chaos trying to figure out what the hell were all those hints about a new form of content that F1 plans to release. 

Interwoven with the usual storylines and mild dramatics there was a lot of talk about how drivers show their families the support they’re given. How they show up for them in their careers and bits of their lives. It was weird at first, but then it sent off alarm bells when an almost fourth wall breaking moment happened where the Netflix team was blatantly dismissed. 

“I think we have this one Netflix, but thanks for the help.” Those were the exact words spoken by the head of marketing as she closed the door to a room where you get a glimpse of team paraphernalia but see no faces. 

Every social platform that you can find an F1 fan on has it trending and the conversations (and screams into the void) are fast paced. But Twitter is where the real unhinged and brain cell losing behavior is happening. 

And the most accurate guessing.

Almost everyone within the community is discussing what that snippet could mean. Is it the end of DTS as they know it? The end of it completely? Are F1 and Netflix severing ties? Will F1 be taking over? Is this some little game they're playing with their viewers to keep them tuned in? Is it something completely different? What the actual fuck is going on?

In the middle of those questions are those who think themselves a genius or are delusional enough that they can’t help but form some wild ideas of what’s to come.

Someone must be retiring. Multiple people are retiring. There’s going to be a reality show ala Keeping Up with the Verstappens, where everyone learns that Max’s little trauma dumpy memories with Jos are just the surface level of how insane that man is. Someone is getting married. Someone is getting married to another driver. A nepo baby is going to become the “voice of the fandom” and host a show about the drivers during race weekends and it’s going to be all the wrong things. A dating show for all the singles. A behind the scenes at the lives of drivers and their families, but like Family Feud. And the penultimate dude bro dream of them getting to spend the season hanging out with drivers and get confirmation that their toxic thoughts that alienate most of the fan base is true.

After about twenty-four hours it all dies down. Everyone is still wondering, but they don’t feel like they’re losing their minds while they try to be the one who can say they were right when they news drops.

As if timed, the second that F1 drops in trends the F1 admin drops a graphic with the faces of six people who are clearly positioned like the thinking face emoji on every platform that they use. In the captions it says: Week in the Life - Sibling Edition.

If Twitter was home to the first wave of screaming, it belongs to Tumblr the second go round. Everyone is so excited for the content that someone must have thrown up from how aggressively happy they feel. Everyone is talking about who they want it to be and what content they’d love to see from which sibling. Those who make gifs are especially excited to get everything they can, though they won’t be outdone by those whose brains and fingers will be entities on their own once they get hold of a singular moment that will inspire the fic of everyone’s dreams.

Those who always have something negative to say are there as usual, but they aren’t as loud or upset as they often are. Being nosy doesn’t stop just because you want to pretend that you only care about the race, as if someone doesn’t have a file of screenshots from all the times, they’ve attacked the character of a driver for something not race related at all.

The reaction to this is the kind that instills faith in what is being done. The kind of thing that tells all the upper management who didn’t like it that it was a good idea, but also puts a certain bit of weight on the content team. They need this to deliver. Need to keep the hype, especially since the first episode doesn’t drop until the start of December and they’ve already recorded half the series so a failure could stop the rest.

So once the Singapore GP ends, Daniel Ricciardo’s face is no longer gray. You get to see that goofy smile and wink. You’d think they told everyone he was getting a permanent seat with a three year contract with the reception to it.

It’s Charles Leclerc for Japan. 

Lance Stroll for Qatar.

Carlos Sainz for COTA.

Alex Albon for Mexico.

And coming off his first P1 of the season, Lewis Hamilton for Brazil.

For the next week or so if a tweet isn’t about excitement, disdain, or shock in regard to this new F1 exclusive content, it has a certain main character at its center.

[alien-til-i-stage]

🍥 Nadohan Intimacy Levels 🍥

Airin 🌑 ( @apriciticreveries ) - 45%

"Airin's a pretty cool person, and they're always so sweet when I'm around them. I don't spend as muchhh time with them as I really want though, haha. However if they ever wanna chat when I'm not busy, I wouldn't be able to refuse that!"

Akane 🍓 ( @aakaneeee ) - 40%

"To be honest, while I know them, I don't know them too well as a person. I always see them around ANAKT GARDEN but I never get the courage to say something, haha. From what I do know from them, they are really admirable!"

Aoki 🌀 ( @bluemoonscape ) - 87%

"Ugh, Aoki? God don't even get me STARTED on him. He's so annoying! He's also! Such a showoff! Like yeah we get it you're sooooo awesome or whatever. You're like sooooo talented and admirable, yada yada. I don't get why so much fuss over him sometimes. Hey, he's not gonna see the score right?"

August 🐟 ( @junebluues ) - 55%

"I know he's a hot topic right now because of how funny his joke is what not but... He scares me a little bit... He gives me the vibes... Of a cult leader or something... Like as if he could and would turn everyone into puppets for his goal or whatever... Nice guy though, he is funny and interesting! Aside from the weird vibes..."

Daian 🍵 ( @apple8ees ) - 79%

"He's such a guy! Ok wow that sounded. Rude of me. He's a very friendly guy and overall really nice to be around. I don't think there's ever been a bad moment between us haha. Though I will say, I feel a little guilty sometimes. I don't think he... Knows... About... You know... But it's not my job to tell him... It's not..."

Ish 🍰 ( @chevalperd ) - 86%

"Oh! Ish! She's such a sweetheart! She can be quite a handful for the aliens though at times, but it's so hard to be mad at her over it sometimes haha. However, I won't lie, there are moments where. I feel really guilty, about her. Oh about what you asked? Um, nothing... Too important... I guess. Aside from that, Ish truly is someone you can't help but love. She's a good kid. I wish her nothing but the best."

June 🎭 - 55%

"While I know we have interacted before, at season 9 of ALIEN STAGE on set, our relationship isn't too personal you know? Outside of those few times, we never spoke properly. He's such a talented person though, but I'm sure you know that as, again, he did win a whole season, hehe. It's hard not being impressed!"

Kay 🪦 ( @imperfectnothing ) - 82%

"Kay? He's one of my close friends! In fact I think he was one of the first people at ANAKT that I truly knew first. Not to say I don't know others, but he was easily recognizable with his white hair haha. Hard to not memorize him. I won't lie though, there's something odd about him sometimes, but I don't understand it... Maybe it's just how he is! I quite envy his relationship with Daian. He's such a... Good brother... Ha."

Kel 🥂 ( @ninewhordows ) - 36%

"Kel... Hm... I haven't spoken to them in... I don't actually remember! Kel is usually alone and just sticks to themselves a lot. Which I don't get... I'd shrivel up and die if I had to be alone! It makes me worry about Kel sometimes, but also I don't know if it's really my place to do so, you know? Though I do get really curious about what's going on in their mind. Ha, that's just my nosiness seeping in, hehe."

Mercury 🪐 ( @soulful_roses ) - 15%

"Ugh... Mercury... I've tried to be cool with them but... It's hard to. I'm sure you're aware, we uh, used to date. For reasons, I won't talk about, but I still don't like Mercury. I can NOT stand her ass anymore! I used to care or like him but since then it's been just, AHHHH. You know? Ugh whatever, I don't like Mercury."

Neli 🏵️ ( @fried-clown-shrimp ) - 78%

"Neli! Oh she's such a dear... She's so sweet... And so young too... I can't help but feel like, she's eerily similar to myself, haha. I feel bad you know, I only started talking to her because Minski told me to, but since we've been talking, I've grown to really care for her. However, I can't forget what I'm told to do. I... I really hope... She can forgive me if I cause something to happen to her... Or our relationship..."

Para ☀️ ( @solei-eclipse ) - 55%

"Oh Para! Oh they're so cool... I'm way too shy to ever actually speak to them, but I do really admire them. I think I've only ever talked to them once or twice, but even then, that's enough for me to call Para a friend if they wanted!"

Plip 🍥 ( @awaggaa ) - 97%

"Plip... Yes them... Hehe. Um I mean uh, yes Plip. Plip is one of my very highly respected... Friends... And I have very... Professional... Feelings towards them... Yes."

Toon 🌹 ( @nottoonedin ) - 69%

Star ✨ ( @starry-skiez ) - 90

"Star is one my of favorite people at ANAKT. He's such a kind and loving person... It's hard not to love him, haha. I really do admire him, like a lot! I honestly can't find a single thing negative about him, heh. Although sometimes he acts a bit strangely, like he says stuff I thought he would never say, you know? But I think he's just tired or whatever when that happens."

"She's one of my favorite idols of all time... Ignore that we're in the same class hehe. She's so cool and so admirable... I make sure to buy any piece of merch she releases and anything I can get my shoes on in general..."

Vant 📜 ( @ivanttakethis ) - 70

"Vant is a very dear friend to me! They are a very interesting person, however my owner, Minski, doesn't really want me around them too much. It's because of their bad medical health and such, but I always try to stay safe around them! They have a lot of talent and skill! It makes me want to try to do better!"

Zen 🌸 ( @verdantlights ) - 77

"Zen... Haha I like to think we have a pretty fun dynamic. Um, since Zen isn't here, I'll put the bit aside, but. They really do mean a lot to me, you know? I uh, he reminds me a lot, like someone else... Who I miss dearly. They've also been a constant in my life, with everyone changing so much and all getting new relationships with others, I can at least rely on Zen to not change. Right?"

Andri - 1%

"I don't want to talk about them right now."

[satureja13]

One night (or whatever time of the 'day' it was in the vastness of space surrounding them) Jack heard a rustle behind the panels! Jack: "Kiyoshi - wake up! Did you hear this?" Kiyoshi, who was sleeping way too comfortable with his mate tugged tight in his arms, pulled Jack even closer to him: "Mhh... hm? what?" Jack: "There was something rustling behind the panels! Maybe it's an alien creature coming after us!" They scrambled out of bed. Poor Kiyoshi still half asleep.

Kiyoshi: "Maybe we have an engine damage? This is an old ship. I hope we won't have a breakdown out here ö.ö " But Jack was sure: "It sounded like an alien creature." With all the weird theories Jack's world consists of, Kiyoshi didn't even bother to ask Jack when he ever actually heard an alien creature rustle to recognize the noises they're making...

They shoved their bed aside and opened the panel. Kiyoshi had a hard time convincing Jack to stay behind - and safe. But eventually he obeyed. Even though he's a werewolf (and the Super Soldier after all!) he's not invincible. And a stern and commanding Kiyoshi is undiniably hot!

And really, there was an open vent hole - leading into a narrow shaft! Too narrow for them to enter... (luckily ö.Ö')

They closed the hatch and secured it, then moved the panel back in place. Jack: "What are we supposed to do now? We should check the others' quarters to make sure they're safe!" Kiyoshi: "Don't you think maybe the Little Ones crawled in there, nosy as they are? To spy on us?" Skully chuckled from his perch on the sideboard: "They might be nosy but they are far from being that subtle! If they'd want to watch you, they'd barrel right in hahaHA!" Kiyoshi: "Where he's right he's right."

Jack: "But see! If it's not them, it is an alien creature - and it's coming after us then!" Kiyoshi: "Jack. We are the aliens out here... Did you ever think about that? Let's sleep. Your shift starts soon. We'll figure something out, hm? I'll message the others so they can check themselves." Jack: "You drop stuff like that and think I can sleep?"

Kiyoshi: "I'll hold you and watch over you." Jack: "Tch. Well, it's reassuring that you are on the side with the hatch. It'll eat you first." Kiyoshi: "I'd be not so certain about that. You are tastier :3 " Jack poked Kiyoshi in his side but snuggled closer nonetheless.

Soon after, Jack fell sound asleep. Because he did feel safe in Kiyoshi's arms. Aliens in the ventilation shafts or not... While Kiyoshi wished he could taste Jack just once again. And maybe he put a chaste kiss on Jack's forehead. That must do.

And Skully hummed 'I'm not in Love' by 10cc.

'I like to see you, but then again That doesn't mean you mean that much to me So if I call you, don't make a fuss Don't tell your friends about the two of us

Be quiet, big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry Big boys don't cry…

I keep your picture upon the wall It hides a nasty stain that's lying there So don't you ask me to give it back I know you know it doesn't mean that much to me

I'm not in love, no, no (It's because) Ooh, you'll wait a long time for me

I'm not in love, so don't forget it It's just a silly phase I'm going through And just because I call you up Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made, ooh

I'm not in Love - 10cc

If this isn't the perfect song for the two of them then I don't know which :3 It's also from Awesome Mix No 1 (OST of Guardians of the Galaxy 1)

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29