#op your colors are so soft and nice

[bi-writes]

Okay but MOB sitting on Simon's lap, cuddling as they watch some movie Simon picked out because it was his turn. At one point she gets up and he thinks she's just going to use the restroom, hands on her hips to help stabilize her. Only instead of leaving, she turns around and sits on her knees between his legs. She bats her eyes at him but otherwise just soaking in how pretty he is. He probably makes a joke, says he loves her and when he still doesn't move figures she just wants a moment and continues to watch the screen.

When she finally works herself up to it, she starts sliding her hands up and down his thighs and just the sensation and imagery alone has him hard and he can't bring himself to ask her to stop when it feels so nice. Eventually her hands wander up further and she begins to play with the button of his jeans. Still not stopping her, even as she unbuttons and zips them down to pull out his erection. When he finally looks down, she stops and stares innocently up at him.

As soon as his attention's somewhat back up on the screen, she repositions herself and licks a stripe up his dick to bring his head into her mouth to swirl around. He doesn't even last that long and she doesn't let him pull her off when he comes.

Or something like that...

mail-order bride (18+)

simon likes action movies. they're his favorite, by far. he likes to watch the over-the-top car races in the middle of metropolitan cities, he likes big, stupid explosions and when the protagonist has their enemy at the end of their gun and says something cheesy like "you're not going anywhere now."

he told you once that he likes the simplicity. the happy endings. the key recovered, a family saved, the epic conclusion of an explosive journey that always ends in the bad guy in handcuffs and the good guy on a beach sipping a mai tai, getting the girl, saving the world.

you think maybe he likes it because it dampens reality. you have seen the aftermath of an op gone wrong; in this way, simon can fantasize just a little. he can pretend that there is nothing wrong with the world for 90 minutes or so.

what's so wrong with that?

he's so pretty.

he ran errands for you today. came back from the store with a paper bag in his hands, setting it down on the counter and unpacking it. you were sat at the kitchen counter, the orange cat wrapped up completely in a burrito of a towel so you could cut her dagger-like claws without risk of retaliation. simon was watching carefully out of the corner of his eye, but as he unpacked the bag, you had all but melted in your chair.

a refill of your favorite makeup remover (you were going to run out tonight, guaranteed). vitamins (ya look right sick, baby, drink y'r juice). your favorite brand of pads (just tell me which ones, i'll get it right, promise). sour sweets (cherry-flavored, of course, sour because he likes the face you make when you pop them into your mouth). when the last box hit the counter, you had dropped the cat, much to her relief.

condoms. fucking condoms.

no, he's not pretty. simon is so fucking hot.

he doesn't budge when you get up to put the empty popcorn bowl into the sink. when you come back in the room, simon is still staring at the television, eyes trained on the spy on screen hopping between rooftops as they dodge bullets. you bite your lip watching him, unable to stop thinking about simon, simon, simon.

he's wearing nice jeans. straight jeans, but even the extra give doesn't matter when your husband is made of pure muscle and fat. you can see his stomach through his shirt since it's tucked in, white fabric showing off that nice pudge that you love laying your head on, your palm, knowing how solid and strong he most certainly is. nghghhhh, and his arms--big, bulging, tattooed, a perfect canvas for colorful markers or glitter or maybe your tongue.

it's subconscious, really. the carpet is soft under your knees as you kneel at his feet, lowering yourself so you can blink up at him big and wide as he keeps his eyes on the movie. he does notice you, however; his big hand slides down his thigh, and your eyes flutter a little when he passes it over your head then down your face, a pretty little pet between his legs.

"not supposed to be on y'r knees f'me, baby," simon mutters, but you can't answer because his thumb slips into your mouth. you wrap your lips around it absentmindedly, running your tongue over the thick pad of it. "tha's my job."

you sit up on your knees, leaning over him, and he gives you his attention finally, a twitch of a smile as he bends his neck a little and kisses you warmly. you steady yourself by putting your hands on his thighs, gripping the meat of them firm as you slip your tongue into his mouth and draw a low grunt from deep within his chest.

"always working for me, simon," you whisper between kisses. "always..."

fuck, the blood rushes to his cock almost immediately. he has such a soft spot for you. taking care of you, doing things for you, buying you what you need--it makes him so fucking hard thinking about fulfilling every need of yours. you deserve nothing but nice dreams, good meals, happy cats, a well-loved pussy, all the love his broken heart can give. he chubs up in his pants every time you ask him for something.

can you carry this for me, simon?

oh, i need some help with this, baby, just here...

can you get me more of this? i'm about to run out.

the zipper is stuck, simon...can you get me out of this?

ugh, you're his walking wet dream. and you're kneeling in between his legs, his sweet girl pouting up at him, and--oh, fuck--

your hands are soft under his shirt. you've untucked it just enough, your warm fingers sliding along the band of his jeans. he hisses a little, his body stiffening, and you smooth a thumb over his belt before kissing him again.

"you're so pretty, simon," you whisper, and he licks over your bottom lip in response, drawing a soft whine out of you. his thighs widen just a little when he hears the clink of his belt, feeling the waistband loosen as you draw it out from the loops and toss it onto the carpet behind you. "such a handsome man you are..."

"come off it," simon growls a little, and you giggle, freeing the button and slipping your hand down. his mouth falls open in a silent moan as you cup him with a hot hand, fingers sliding under his length to fondle his balls.

"mmm..." you follow his sputtering mouth, breathing him in. "actually, simon...i really, really wanna get on it..."

"wot a brat," simon murmurs, clicking his tongue. "can't be fuckin' patient--ahh!"

you pull him out of his jeans with a firm tug before sticking your tongue out and kneeling back down to lick a curious stripe up the underside of him. simon is pulsing, radiating heat and already leaking beads of stringy pre-cum, and as you suck the tip of him into your mouth, you realize just how thick your husband really is.

you've never seen him quite this naked, quite this up close. when he fucked your thighs, he had felt big, but his cock is truly making a space for itself in your mouth--

"ah!" you gasp as he fists your hair and pulls you off, leaning down to kiss you hard.

"baby--"

"i want it--" you whimper, using your hands, letting the spit from your mouth drip down his cock as your fingers spread it wide, pumping him softly. "simon, please! please! you always say...always say i can have whatever i want, please..."

when he lets your hair go, you dive. you suck him into your mouth, practically purring as you press him back into the couch and suck. he tastes like a man should, like a husband should, musk and a little sweat and just enough soap to have you a little light-headed. with the first bob of your head, simon shudders, a big hand cupping the back of your neck as he drops his chin to his chest to watch you. he uses his other hand to push your hair back, his mouth falling open a little as he watches your eyes roll back in your head as you try to fit more of him into your mouth.

your mouth squelches with every bob. spit gathers around the edges of your mouth, little globs dripping out as you slurp and flick your tongue over every vein and soft patch of skin. you're making a mess of him, all soft mouth and wiggly tongue and gentle moans that make him seize up.

it's not even a minute of your soft sucking, and simon is caught off guard by his own release. he wants to apologize, but you look so fucking pretty, coughing a little around his wet cock.

you don't stop then either.

some of it drips down around your hands, his own cum webbing between your fingers and getting onto the front of your shirt and staining his jeans, but you keep your mouth on him. you nuzzle the head of his cock against the inside of your cheek, pull off just enough to suck so softly on the tip of him.

"baby, fuck--" simon chokes, watching you through lidded, hazy eyes. "please, fuck--"

"i want it," you whisper, smoothing a wet hand down his length. he's getting hard all over again, and he nearly cums a second time when you let your eyes find his and pepper kisses from the tip of him all the way to the base. "don't i get w-whatever i want, simon? c-can't i...can't i have more?"

simon chuckles a little. he uses his thumb to swipe a glob of cum off your chin, bringing it up to his own mouth to suck off with a snort.

"you want more, baby?" simon asks, and you sit back up on your knees, pressing your forehead to his as he eyes your lips. they're a tad swollen, kiss-bitten and wet. "wot more do ya want, hmm? wot is it my wife wants so much, huh?"

you smile, wide, those big eyes sparkling. you give him another slow stroke with your hand, and he hisses, gritting his teeth as he watches your smile get just that much bigger.

"i want you to stop playing games with me, simon," you say softly. "you'll never win. so just give me what i deserve."

"wot you deserve?"

"don't i deserve you, simon?" you ask, and when he fails to answer, you swipe your thumb over his cock, drawing a cracked groan out of him. "you won't make me beg, will you, simon?"

"no," simon pants, leaning further into you, pressing his face to yours. "never. my wife doesn't beg for anythin'."

"you promise, simon?"

"my wife gets woteva she fuckin' asks for. olways."

[tteotlma]

Brewing Emotions

- tension and unspoken feelings finally come to a head.

Sam Winchester/Reader 2.1kw

a/n: i wrote this after finishing spn over the summer. can u tell i love tension.

tw: mild violence mention, mild sexual content (kissing), emotional distress

The drive back from Wheeling, Illinois to the Bunker was an excruciatingly silent drive. It seemed as though everyone was steeping in their misery, and it was gonna be hard to shake off.

A family of Djinn’s were plaguing the city with missing persons for the past three weeks, and by the time the three of you showed up – there was more bloodshed than expected. Turns out the Djinn were running this operation for way longer and tens of lives were lost.

The three of you tried to save the remaining five survivors but because they were so weak, not all of them could be saved. Much to Sam and Dean’s dismay, only two walked away.

Of course, you were devastated as well but having been a solo hunter far longer than teaming up with the boys – you learned the hard way that losses were inevitable.

You were also less emotionally constipated than the other two, so you knew the better way to feel better was to surround yourself with things that bring you joy. But tweedle dee and tweedle dum here like to sit and stew in silence.

You were able to get them to talk here and there for the first few hours but your efforts ultimately fell short and silence took over. Exhaustion took over and you just let the silence be. During the car ride, you stared at the back of Sam’s head trying to stop yourself from reaching out and touching him in some way. Especially running your hands through his hair. You didn’t know if it was because of your feelings for the man, or because the act of petting lowered stress levels but whenever you found yourself feeling troubled you always found your hands in the man's hair, and vice versa.

Sure the science article was about animals but – potato, potato.

Instead you just crossed your arms and tucked your hands into your armpits, closing your eyes to try and get some shut eye.

The first person to say something was Dean, when the car pulled up to the Bunker.

“I’m gonna wash up.” He huffed, as his leather jacket squeaked against the leather seat while shimmying out of the car.

Perfect, you and Sam could prepare a meal while Dean washes up. You were about to reach out to Sam when he sprung out of the car.

“Hey Sam-” you rushed, following his steps in unloading the car. “Why don’t we-”

“Actually, I’m feeling a little grimy so I’m just gonna wash up too.” He mumbled, lugging the duffel bag over his shoulder, and walking away.

“Oh, okay.” you whispered, trying not to sound dejected. You entered the bunker and everyone made a B-line for their bedrooms.

Throwing your backpack onto the ground, you started undressing wanting nothing more than to just step under hot water and let it burn the tension away from your shoulders.

—

By the time you were done, you were already feeling much better. Your pajamas felt softer and cleaner than the stale outfit you had been wearing for the past two days. Your hair no longer felt stringy and greasy, and your skin felt exfoliated. Now to top it all off with a nice warm cup of tea.

You startled, seeing Sam standing in the kitchen.

“I thought I wasn’t gonna see you until tomorrow.” You said, giving him a soft smile as you walked up to him.

“Uh, well we hadn’t eaten anything since that rest stop about seven hours back.” He returned the same smile, before beginning to chop vegetables. You nodded, placing a swift hand on his shoulder blade as you passed him, to let him know you were walking behind.

He cleared his throat, and a small smile spread on your lips.

“I’m making tea,” You started, “would you like some?” Opening the drawer in front of you, an array of colored boxes splayed out before you.

“Sure, I’ll just take a cup of whatever you’re having.”

You took the small red box out the drawer, placed it on the counter and opened the cabinet above you to get your mugs. You grabbed your favorite, and when you went to grab Sam’s you realized it wasn’t in the usual spot next to yours. Pushing around the mugs, all that could be heard was the ceramic clinking together.

“You need help there?” A small scoff escaped his mouth.

“Your mug isn’t here.” Ceramic still clinking, standing on your tippy toes to try and get a better look.

“That’s okay just grab any other one.” He said, throwing the chopped vegetables in a large bowl.

“But you like that mug,” He turned to look at you. “I swear I put it here when I did the dishes.”

“Maybe someone used it.” He obviously wasn’t convincing you that another cup could be used so he put down the knife with a chuckle and walked towards you.

You could feel his presence loom over you as he stood behind you – barely able to feel his warmth on your back. You tried not to move a muscle.

“Yeah look it’s right here,” He said, reaching into the only shelf you couldn’t reach, and behind a large bowl he pulled out a dark blue mug. He looks down at you as you turn to grab the mug.

“Well, that’s not where I put it.” you mumble, taking the mug from his hands.

Inspecting the mug, to make sure it’s clean you notice Sam falls silent. You look up at him and catch him looking at you – quite intently.

Heat rushes up the back of your neck, and you give him a little smile hoping to god this tension building up isn’t just your imagination.

“Are you okay?” You ask under your breath. Sam blinks and shakes his head clearing his throat.

“Uh, yeah, yes I am.” He spits out, and he steps away. The cool air swooping in and taking place where he previously stood. He goes back to chopping vegetables in silence. His kurt answer leaves you thrown off, so rather than respond you choose to join in the silence and fall into a sort of rhythm beside Sam as he preps the salad he’s been working on as you work on the tea you offered.

As Sam shakes the bowl to mix the dressing, you could feel his warmth and you wanted nothing more than to step closer, under the impression that maybe his warmth could take away these remaining forlorn feelings.

"How'd you like your tea?" you ask, steeping the leaves.

"Like I said, whatever you're having." He puts down the bowl and turns to look at you. You shift your eyes towards him, then away when you feel his gaze boring into you.

As you grab the honey and a spoon, you turn to get some oatmilk from the fridge. Suddenly, you realize Sam is no longer behind you but beside you, his chest at eye level. You startle and look up.

"You okay?" His eyes never leave your face.

"Yeah," is all he says, his gaze unwavering.

Shifting uncomfortably, you begin to look anywhere but at him. An unbearable longing aches within you to touch him—to feel the rough texture of his shirt beneath your trembling fingers, to inhale the faint scent of his cologne mingling with his skin's warmth. You yearn to be enveloped in his embrace, to feel his strong arms wrap around you, pulling you close until his steady heartbeat thrums against your chest. Every fiber of your being screams for that connection, that solace, that undeniable closeness.

Your hands clench and unclench at your sides as you look down, the weight of his gaze becoming too intense.

"What is it?" Your voice barely rises above a whisper, afraid to break whatever spell he might be under.

He remains silent. Instead, he steps closer, fingers trailing lightly along the hem of your shirt. He moves even nearer until his chest is mere inches from your face. His hand circles around to your lower back, slowly pulling you in. The movement is so gradual you're barely sure you're moving at all. It's not until you feel Sam begin to lean in, his arm wrapping fully around your waist, that you realize he's been wanting to touch you just as badly as you've been wanting to touch him.

Your breath catches in your throat as Sam's arm tightens around you. Your already small world narrows even more to just the two of you—the warmth of his body, the sound of his breathing, the faint thrum of his heartbeat. You finally allow yourself to raise your hands, letting them rest tentatively on his chest. You slowly look up at him.

"I-I'm sorry, for brushing you off earlier," he says, a glint of remorse in his eyes.

Your hands move to hold his face, thumbs gently caressing his cheeks. "It's okay," you whisper, maintaining the intimate atmosphere between you. "You don't have to apologize."

You watch as Sam presses further into your hands, his eyes closing. A breath of relief leaves his lips, the tension in his shoulders visibly easing. The vulnerability in this moment strikes you, making your heart swell with affection.

Studying his face, your hands glide into his hair, gently pulling him close. As if by instinct, Sam buries his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply. His hands, initially at the middle of your back, slide down to your hips. He tries to bring you closer, but you're already pressed against him. Instead, your hips align more firmly with his as he holds you there.

The sound of your shaky breaths mingles with the scent of his cologne. The warmth of his body envelops you, and the gentle tickle of his breath against your neck sends shivers down your spine. Time seems to slow, each sensation heightened in this intimate embrace. It all feels like a dream—a long-awaited, exquisitely real dream.

Sam's fingers flex slightly at your hips, as if reassuring himself that you're truly there. You respond by carding your fingers through his hair, relishing the softness beneath your touch. The world outside fades away, leaving only this moment, this connection that you've both longed for.

Sam pulls away to look at you, his eyes searching your face. You lightly tug at the hair entwined in your fingers, a silent gesture of affection. Without a word, Sam begins to lean in. His lips brush against yours, feather-light and questioning. Your stillness is all the encouragement he needs.

Years of unspoken feelings finally come crashing down as Sam captures your lips in a proper kiss. He pulls you impossibly closer, one hand cradling the back of your head as if afraid you might slip away. His lips part slightly, and you seize the moment to nip gently at his bottom lip. Sam responds by deepening the kiss, and you meet him willingly, your mouths moving in perfect harmony.

A soft noise escapes him, echoed by your contented sigh. The kiss grows more passionate, your shared breaths becoming ragged. Sam's hands, which haven't left your body, slide down until his fingers find the bare skin at your hips. He kneads the flesh there, his touch both tender and desperate.

The intensity builds with each passing second. Sam's kisses grow more insistent, more passionate, mirroring the longing you both have harbored for so long. The forgotten tea steeps on the counter, the abandoned salad wilts - neither of you notices or cares. There's only this moment, this long-awaited connection, consuming you both entirely.

"Hey, did you guys make any—" Dean's words cut off abruptly as he entered the kitchen. "Well, alright Sammy!"

You and Sam spring apart, both flushed and breathing heavily. Dean stands in the doorway, his eyes wide with surprise before a knowing smirk spreads across his face.

"About damn time," he chuckles, shaking his head. "Don't let me interrupt. I'll just grab a beer and go."

As Dean rummages in the fridge, you and Sam exchange sheepish glances, a mix of embarrassment and barely contained laughter in your eyes. The spell of the moment is broken, but the warmth of it lingers.

Dean grabs his beer and heads out, but not before throwing a wink over his shoulder. "You might want to take this somewhere more private next time. And Y/n? Your tea's probably over-steeped by now." He chuckles.

As Dean's footsteps fade down the hall, you and Sam look at each other trying not to laugh, the tension dissipating. Sam reaches out, taking your hand in his.

"So," he says, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, "about that tea..."

You squeeze his hand, your heart light despite the interruption. "I think we might need to start over," you reply, unable to keep the grin off your face.

As you move to prepare fresh tea, Sam's arm wraps around your waist, unwilling to let you go just yet. You lean into him, savoring the closeness. The night may not have gone as planned, but it's ended better than you could have imagined.

—————

pls leave comments/feedback! i luv hearing ur thoughts!

[agustdiv1ne]

in no particular order, here are my favorite fics that i've read this year!! please show a lot of love to all of these wonderful authors <3 (also please heed their rules, esp for nsfw fics!!)

part of my 2023 wrap up!

@koqabear

um like. quite literally everything sol has posted this year. i am being so serious. check out their masterlist right NEOWWWW and read EVERYTHING

@blackhairedjjun

flowers of every color — i could rave about this series for like 10 hours straight, i'm not even kidding. it's sweet with the perfect amount of angst to really draw you in, i fell in love with every character more and more with each chapter <3 now where is my prince!jjunie :(

@tyunkus

amazon wishlist (m) — me when me when me when roommate!tyun offers to fuck me...god, i need this so bad

@jishyucks

gloves & dittany — OHHHHH how i love this fic...one of the best harry potter aus i have ever read, and with yeonjun?? slytherin!yeonjun!!!! ooooo you really got me good, op <3

bittersweet — *cowboy cat meme* DRUNK SOOOOOOOOOB i think this wins the award for being the cutest fic i read in the year of 2023

@beom-pyu

i can't swim, idiot! (m) — i will never not shut up about this fic...just faking married? with beomgyu?? with feelings involved??? yeah. Yeah <3

like the moon — merman!kai you will always be famous to me, one of my all-time favorites by far!!!!!

@toruro

answers (m) — this academic rival!taehyun fic had me screaming crying gnawing on my leg like wtf mika. how could you do this to me. i am dead now.

@hyukalyptus

something nice (m) — i went SOOOO insane over this fic like the dynamics were just. scrumptious. i love yeonkai i love this fic i love hp for writing this yes yes yes

like, never ever? (m) — ohhhh my god. this one really got me good,, dom best friend!beomgyu giving mc her first orgasm?? sign me tf up !!!!!!

@qqtxt

sway with me — i sent this in for their 1k event i just :')))) i love this so so so much!!!! dancing with yeonjun is my dream, so thank you for taking my request op!! <3

@hueareloved / @huenation

my love mine all mine (m) — the most tender and soft and SWEET nsfw fic i have ever read, so in love with this and sleepy lovesick jjunie AGHH brb rereading this

ditto — ohhhh how i love angst. amor's writing style is beautiful and it made this beomgyu fic that much more heart-wrenching <3

@huckleberrykai

laundry basket (m) — no bc this went CRAZYYY with the perv!mc thing, savored every single word of this kai fic tbh

comfy cozy (m) — CUTE AF. i am the biggest proponent of soft smut and berry writes it so well <3 i loveee soft yeonjun more than life itself

@aduh0308 / @banggyu0308

yeehaw (m) — OKAYYY cowboys!taejun fucking destroyed me like. i don't think i ever recovered from this

berry sorbet (m) — i need kai to be my soulmate rn wtf. cute n sweet and i loved it

@boba-beom

airport crush pt.2 (m) — the minute smiles told me she was working on airport crush pt.2 i passed away. nothing could have prepared me for this fic, it destroyed me in the best way...god, i need yeonjun so bad

trapped in your game (m) — i salivated. i quaked. i (s)creamed. best friend!yeonjun, please hmu </3

@napofamoon / @mazeinthemoon

you're the one love (m) — moonie ATE with this fallen angel!yeonjun fic!! i love sacrilege n this was just sooo hot

@tubatwo

workaholic — this made me giggle and kick my feet so hard...i love you cafe boss taehyun, pls marry me

@hyuk4ngel

honeymoon avenue — i. love. angst. and fay is exceptionally talented at writing it!! taehyun better watch out tho >:(

@mapofthemazeinthemirror / @afterbluehours

untitled (m) — this yeonbin x reader fic is SOOOO hot like. i screamed. i cried. i rolled around in a fetal position because it just made me so insane

@nightlyawnzz

duality (m) — OHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYY GODDDDDDD i think this is one of the hottest kai fics i have ever read in my entire life. i don't often see kai as a hard dom in fics so this opened my eyes (can't wait for the final part!!)

@scintillasofbeomgyu

you are in love — one of my jjunie comfort fics!!! sweet n soft and everything to me :')

@petrichor-han

twenty-three suns (m) — rain's writing style hits me straight in the gut, especially with this summer fling au with taehyun :') lovely yet heart-wrenching and AGHH i love this

@ncteez

untitled (m) — UMMM this camboy!yeonjun fic altered the trajectory of my entire life. i fucking die every time i read this, like it has to be laced with crack or something

menace (m) — this was batshit INSANE LIKEEEE gangster!yoongi fucked me up so bad (in the best way)

@yeonboy

never meet your heroes — ONE OF MY FAVS EVER. LIKE. COLLEGE AU WITH SOOBIN???? I AM SO OBSESSED YOU DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND

@ijhyo

how to get the girl — i ate this up SO hard. i just adore both the mc and beomgyu's characters in this, definitely another all-time favorite of mine

@cheolhub

head (m) — SAR YOU WERE INSANE FOR THIS. sub!soobin makes me so feral and this made my brainrot even worse UGHHH

@starbandit

backseat (m) — oh. oh yeah. now this is everything to me, best friend!yeonjun + car sex = a very very happy me

@tonicandjins

learning languages (m) — i don't often read donghyuck fics (or nct fics in general), but this one. oh, this one is beautiful. it made me cry, it made go through so many emotions i just. read this right now, you won't regret it

@heart2beom

cliche — i still vividly remember this first time that i read this, the dialogue is hilarious and it is just sweet n fluffy n AGHH i will forever adore this fic <3

and some more accounts with amazing fics!!!: @majestyjun @hyewka @taegimood @naomiarai @hyuk4sbf @fairyofshampgyu @enha-cafe @moonhoures @wolfytae-exe @dearlyjun @heartchoi @sook9i @tinietaehyun @minastras

a big thank you to all of these writers for sharing your works!! <3

[peachesofteal]

Heartbeat / Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of Heartbeat. Same pairing as Picture and I got you.

Simon Riley/female reader 3.9k words - part of the Sassy series - AO3 Warnings-Tags: 18+ Minors DNI, pregnant reader, pregnancy complications, Simon is soft for you, flashbacks, emotional hurt/comfort, medical inaccuracies, military inaccuracies, violence. You're slipping in and out.

“But not the thick crust kind. The thin kind, well done. Tell them-“ You heard the sound of a door being shut, and the little jingle of his keys.

“I know, Sass. I know.”

“that I want it with black spots top and bottom. And extra cheese! Last time they forgot it and-“

“Sass.”

“Yeah?”

“I got it.”

“Erm, right.” You hang up the phone with a sigh, rubbing a circle on top of your belly. All you can think about is that pizza right now. Gooey, cheesy pizza with a crispy crust. Your mouth practically waters and you cast a glance at the full laundry basket in the living room with a sigh. Tiny baby clothes aren’t going to fold themselves.

You yawn when you finish, little pants and shorts and onesies all categorized and stacked into piles across the coffee table, sorted by color and size so you’d know where to put them in the dresser. You grab two of the piles to bring upstairs, the idea of a nap sounding better and better as the minutes tick on, and you’re already thinking about how you can convince Simon to feed you the pizza while you lay in bed. A twist in your lower abdomen makes you wince mid stairs, and you groan. Being pregnant is for the birds. When you get to your room, you feel a twinge in your belly, this time stronger, and it nearly causes your knees to buckle. Alarm bells ring in the back of your mind. That didn’t feel normal. You try to take a deep breath but white-hot pain blooms across your body, the sharpness making you gasp, and you fumble for your phone, trying to get the screen unlocked while your body trembles.

“F-fuck.” You hiss against another surge of pain, leaning against the side of your bed for support, dropping the phone completely. It clatters to the ground a few feet away and your legs give out, your body falling to the floor with a thud.

The ceiling of your bedroom is the last thing you see before everything goes black.

Soap whistles. 

“Shew, Sass. You’re lookin’ pure dead brilliant.” Your skin goes hot across your nose.

“Shut up, Soap.” 

“You got a date or something?” 

“Or something.” It wasn’t a date, not really. Just a few drinks with another operator from this base. The 141 had been here for a month, between ops, and Price said you didn’t leave for Belize for another three weeks still. You were bored. You were tired of waiting around. 

“Who with?” Gaz pipes up from the corner and you roll your eyes. 

“It’s not a date. I’m just getting off base, having a couple of drinks, no big deal.” A blur of shadow catches your gaze behind Johnny, and you track it with your eyes until it steps into the light. Ghost. 

“You’re goin’ off base?” he asks, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

“She’s gotta a date, LT!” Soap practically shouts. Underneath his seemingly innocent smile, there’s a smirk of something hidden. Something he knows that you clearly don’t. You glare at him. 

“It’s not a date, I-“ 

“Did you get going off base cleared with Price?” Ghost tilts his head. Is his stance a little wider? You sigh in exasperation. 

“No. I didn’t think I had to considering we’re ‘consulting’ and this is not a state sanctioned op.” Johnny’s eyes dart between the two of you. Ghost says nothing, just studies you. His eyes travel from your feet to your mouth, and heat blossoms in the pit of your stomach. You turn on your heel and Soap yells to your back. 

“Have fun!” 

You’re sitting at a table, across from your ‘not date’, Johnathan. Very nice guy, communications specialist. He’s spent the last two weeks making small talk with you in an effort to get you here, off base, where he can try to lay it on. Which he is. Trying to lay it on, that is. Succeeding, you weren’t so sure. He was cool, you guessed. Talked a lot. 

“So, I forgot I don’t actually know what you’re doing at Humphrey’s?” You bite your tongue. He didn’t know because you never said. You tried to keep your affiliation with 141 off the radar when the lot of you were on a base. You’re about to launch into some drawn out, confusing explanation, but he makes a weird sound in his throat and looks over your shoulder. 

“Holy shit. Is that Simon Riley?” he practically whispers in awe. This. Cannot. Be. Happening.

You turn nonchalantly to see the giant man in the skull mask standing in the doorway, Soap and Gaz filing in behind him. 

“Yeah. Guess it is.” You’re going to kill all of them. 

“He’s infamous. Like a legend. I heard a rumor the 141 was here but didn’t believe it. Did you know he-“ 

“Aye lass!” You close your eyes. 

“Soap.” You grit out when he gets closer, smug grin plastered on his face. He’s had a few beers, you can tell by how relaxed his posture is. Ghost looms behind him like the god damn grim reaper. 

“Who’s your friend?” Johnathan stands immediately, extending his hand which Gaz takes readily, making introductions like this is some group social outing. Soap asks him what he does, and starts peppering him with questions, effectively stealing the entirety of his attention. Your ‘not date’ devolves into anything but a date in a matter of minutes. 

“Sorry about your date, Sass.” Ghost’s voice rings out as you exit the bar, and you turn with a glare. 

“Are you?” He doesn’t say anything, just watches you from behind the mask until he’s pushing off the side of the building and heading back inside.  

The room is incredibly white. Sanitized. Your eyes flick back and forth, trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s loud, and there are people talking. The ceiling tiles are the ugly kind, small porous patterns bobbing and weaving above your face. More noise. A ripping sound. And then, another. Cool air. You think you hear Simon, above it all. Maybe. He sounds off kilter, unnerved. That’s odd. What’s happening? Somebody shines something bright in your face and you wince. Jesus. Blind a girl, why don’t you? You hear Simon, again. He’s saying your name, first and last. Not your call sign. You want to protest. Then he says your birthday. Your blood type. You try to turn your head, but you can’t. It’s stuck in something. You feel a pinch. Simon. You try to say his name, but another pinch in your arm steals your breath. You fade away.

Your lungs are screaming, tac vest compressing your chest as you sprint across the building before diving forward behind a half wall. 

“This was not the plan.” Gaz says from behind you, and you nod. You knew that. This was definitely not the plan. You were operating so far outside of the plan right now, and you still had not set your charges. 

“Look, take-“ shots pop and whiz by your head, forcing you lower. Your low position is a disadvantage against where these guys are sitting a floor above you, and you’ll both need to move in a matter of seconds. “Take this.” You shove the drive into his hand. “And meet Ghost and Soap at rendezvous.” He stares at you like you’ve lost it. You feel a little bit like that too, but it doesn’t matter. 

“I can’t leave you here!” more bullets fly between the two of you, and you lean forward to peek, firing off a few shots before turning back to him. 

“I am telling you to. I will be right behind you.” before he can argue, you press the button for your comm. “Gaz is enroute to rendezvous location, over.” 

“Roger. What’s your location?” Soap’s voice crackles across the radio but you ignore it, giving Gaz one more beseeching look before you start to crawl towards the other side of the room. “Sassy, location. Over.” Soap radios again. You duck around a corner, walking low in a crouch to make your way down the stairs and into the dimly lit hallway. When you don’t answer, you hear the radio click again, but nobody calls through. A few seconds pass, and then- 

“Sass report your location.” It’s Simon now, and you can practically hear the sound of his teeth grinding. You were breaking protocol. Smashing the plan to hell. Ignoring your superior. 

You were operating blind. 

When you come to the first set of joists, you set a charge, fingers flying over the wires until you were satisfied. Fifteen seconds, not too shabby. 

“Come in Sass.” He calls again, something different in his voice this time. A low vibrato, the echo of mounting desperation every time you don’t answer a call. Your eyes catch your next chokepoint, the long beam running along the first floor. You’re underneath it in a beat, but the charge is giving you an issue, forcing you to close your eyes and take long, slow breaths to steady your hands. Too long, it’s too long, those guys could be on top of you any second, this is taking too long, it’s- “Sass. Report your location. Now.” You take another deep breath, counting in and out until your hands still and the wires cooperate. “Report your location Sergeant, that is an order.” You rip the comm from your ear and toss your radio to the ground. The pit in your stomach widens, threatening to suck you in whole. Simon never calls you by rank. 

You’re blinking and staring at different ceiling tiles now. These are a softer color, like a beige. You think. Everything is fuzzy. You blink again, but this time your eyes stay shut. You try to force them open but it’s too hard, and you huff in frustration. Wherever you are, it smells like disinfectant and bad mess hall food. You wrinkle your nose. Simon laughs quietly in that gentle, throaty way that you only get hear every now and then. Simon?! You really want to open your eyes. Really, really bad. You try, and then try again but can’t, so you try to speak instead. A hand smooths over the crown of your head, and you swear you feel the press of a mouth against your cheek. None of it matters though because you slip back under in a heartbeat.

“Don’t use my name right now.” Simon is yelling at you. He steps closer, close enough that you can see the cracks in the paint around his eyes. “You had no idea what you were doing out there!” He roars, thrusting a finger in your face. “You were operating blind, like a fucking idiot.” Your mouth falls open in shock. “Are you a bloody idiot, Sass?” His raised voice has captured Soaps attention, who drifts closer to where the two of you stand. You glance at him. “I asked you a question.” Ghost snaps, and you feel like melting in the ground. Soap steps between you both, hand out towards Ghost like he’s trying to catch a wild animal. 

“Take it easy, LT.” 

“-from her too, because I don’t want ya to end up with my ugly mug.” It’s Simon, and you can feel the vibrations of his words through your skin, but you can’t see. Everything is dark. “Hopefully, you’ll get her smarts. She’s really smart. Smarter than me. Good with words, and puzzles. Everything.” You want to protest, but your mouth feels like cement, and you can’t even get your eyes open. “You got real lucky, havin’ her as your mom. I’m not gonna be… as good as she is. At this.” The sound of his voice fades and you frantically try to hold onto it before you fall into the inky black of sleep.

He’s watching you pace back and forth, your fingers tapping a staccato rhythm across your belly. You don’t need to look at his face to know he’s clocking your every step. You can feel weight of his eyes, the searing heat of his gaze working its way under the collar of your shirt. 

“I don’t want you here. You can’t just… keep showing up and sitting in my driveway. That’s called stalking.” 

“The other night-“ 

“Was a fluke. I’m fine. I had a moment of weakness but I’m fine.” He doesn’t say anything, just tracks you from where he sits on a tiny kitchen chair. They’re really normal sized, but he dwarfs the one he’s in, jean clad thighs spread wide, arms crossed in front of his chest. 

“Sass-“

“Don’t ‘Sass’ me. Just-“ He stands and your words die in your throat. You turn on your heel mid pace, eager to escape whatever it is he’s about to lob at your armor, whatever weapon he’s wielding that will undoubtedly breakdown your defenses. 

“Sass.” He cuts you off, hands folding over your arms, holding you still. You immediately look at your feet. You’ll break if you look up at his face, and he knows it. “Look at me.” Rage flickers in your blood. 

“No.” You step away, slipping out of his grip. “Fuck. You. You don’t get to just waltz in here, after everything, and pretend it’s all okay because you said you’re sorry. Because you have some self-awareness all of the sudden.” 

“I don’t think everything’s okay, and I regret what happened. I-“ 

“You… You’re such a dick. You pushed me away!” Your voice warbles a little and you swallow it down. “And then you did worse, and I’m so… I’m so fucking angry with you. You were supposed to have my back.” 

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. Your job didn’t get messed with. Your boss and… your… me, didn’t make a backhanded deal to get rid of you! I trusted you. I-“ 

“I know.” 

“STOP saying that.” You’re really yelling now, words flying out of you with no filter, anger taking control of your mouth. “You don’t know shit, Simon Riley. You only know about yourself, you don’t care about me, or this baby, you’re just here to alleviate some weird guilt.” A shadow flickers across his face, and the baby jams his foot into your left ribs, making you wince. Simon takes a half step forward and reaches out towards you, muscles tense. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.” You grit your teeth and shake your head. “Your son likes to play soccer with my organs.” You tap your foot impatiently, rubbing your hand in a circle. You usually hum, but you won’t in front of him. Something about it feels too intimate.

This time, when you blink, everything feels a lot clearer. You can tell there’s a tube in your nose, and something, a few things probably, are taped to both of your arms. The lights are bright, and they feel like they’re shining up under your eyelids into your skull. Someone makes a pitiful noise, a half whimper, half groan. No, not someone. You. You blink more rapidly, trying to clear your vision, and turn your head from side to side. Where… where are you? What’s happening? 

“Sass.” It is Simon. Simon’s here. You try to speak but the only thing that comes out of your mouth sounds like garbled nonsense. “Shhh, sweet girl. It’s alright. You’re okay.” Thick fingers stroke across your cheek. Where are you? What’s happening? What’s- 

The pain. The baby. 

Your hands press across your body, eyes wide with panic. The baby, the baby, what happened? Simon’s big hand envelopes yours. You wet your lips with your tongue.

“Baby.” You croak, but it doesn’t really sound like baby, it sounds more like abby, or bubby, or something. Why is your tongue so heavy? Why is your throat so dry? You focus on your bump, trying to feel for your son’s movement or kicking. Your chest suddenly feels tight, and the beeping sound in the background gets steadily faster.

“Hey, hey. Everything’s okay. You’re okay.” You watch him look up over your bed, eyes fixing on something you can’t see before coming back to you. “I need you to calm down. Take a deep breath. Just try.” You do, feeling your chest expand a little further and he rubs his palm in a soothing circle against your belly. “Good girl. Another one.” You get a deeper breath in this time, and his eyes crinkle, just a little, so that you can tell he’s smiling behind the mask. “That’s it. Just relax for me, alright?” You hear the click of a door, and a woman’s voice. She approaches you from the other side of the bed, speaking in low tones to Simon, who doesn’t take his eyes off you. When you glance over at her, she gives you a warm smile.

“There she is!” She says as she presses some buttons on the machines next to your bed. You hear the scrape of a chair and feel the sudden lack of Simon’s presence. You try to call his name, but it doesn’t come out right. A big hand bleeds warmth onto yours.

“I’m right here.” He’s sitting now, head just about eye level with you. Oh. You want to ask him what’s going on, what happened, but your eye lids tug low, and you yawn. “Go back to sleep, Sass. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” You raise an eyebrow. 

“It’s just shepherd’s pie.” 

“Better than a ration pack.” You snort, stabbing the last piece on your plate with your fork. 

“It’s not that hard.” You sigh, leaning backwards. Simon finishes too, and then reaches across the table for your dishes. “I got it.” You say, hand flying forward to stop him. Your fingers brush across the skin of his wrist and you shiver involuntarily. 

“You cooked. Let me.” He rolls up his sleeves, bending forward so he can reach into the sink. He’s washing dishes in your kitchen, the realization settling into your brain as his arms dip below soapy water with a sponge. It’s so… domestic. You feel like you’re in a daydream. You pull yourself onto your feet and say his name over clink and clatter of Ikea plates and the running water, his broad back flexing when he turns to look at you. He wipes his hands on the dish towel. 

“Sass? What is it?” He leans down to catch your eye, brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.” You whisper, and watch his face, every quiver, every twitch of every muscle, everything you’ve never seen before. You wonder if the baby will have his nose. Maybe they’ll have the sandy blonde hair too, or the deep brown eyes. “Simon.” You say his name, and he frowns, probably thinking you’re about to try to throw him out, again. “I want… I want to trust you. I want to believe you, but this-”

“Give me a chance.” 

“How? You… you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t pregnant.” His mouth abruptly closes, and he stares at you for a few long seconds before speaking. 

“I think… I would be. That somehow, I would’ve found you again, pregnant, or not.” You take a deep breath. 

“Why did you do it? Why did you shut me out? Why did you have Price get rid of me?” He’s silent for a long time, eyes trained on the ground before he reaches out to take your hand. When he looks at you again, you see it. The fear. The pain. The trauma, rippling across his face clear as day. When he speaks, his voice breaks.

“I was scared.” 

The next time you wake up, Simon’s face is squished next to your ribs. He’s wearing the black hoodie, with the hood up over his head, and the civilian face mask. You clear your throat, grasping for the cup of water sitting just out of your reach, and he’s awake and lifting the straw to your lips before you can even blink.

“Hey.” Your voice sounds a little better. He doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at you for a while. It feels like forever until-

“Bloody hell, Sass.” He slumps forward in the chair, sliding the mask down his face and pressing your palm to his lips. You smile at him, but the stupid tube across your nose tickles, and you reach to yank it free. “No.” He grabs your hand and brings it down by your side. “Leave it be.”

“Simon, what-“ You’re cut off when there’s a knock at the door. Your OB stands on the other side when it opens, her face carefully blank.

You’re sitting across from Ghost, listening to Gaz and Johnny ramble on and on about an op that went south last year, too many things going wrong in one day. 

“It wasn’t the worse we’d been through though, huh LT?” Johnny laughed, ribbing the larger man with his elbow before catching a death glare. You smirked. 

“What about you?” Gaz piped up, raising an eyebrow in your direction. You took a sip of your beer, slowly. These guys didn’t know too much about you, and you didn’t like to divulge too much. Getting too personal with them would be a mistake, you know it. 

“I made a mistake with an IED once. It was on a teenager, thought I had it. Two power sources.” You didn’t say anything else. You didn’t have to. The look Soap gave Gaz was enough.  

“You lose ‘em?” Ghost breaks the silence. 

“And a few others.” Nobody says anything. Ghost nods, eyes never leaving yours. He knows. Better than anyone. 

It’s placental abruption. Minor, or as close to minor as you can come without having to deliver, spurred on by your high blood pressure and previous abdominal trauma, risk factors both you and her have discussed at length. A pang of guilt stabs into your heart. You’ve been shot. Stabbed. Blown up. Worked a burn pit. Inhaled a million different chemicals. You knew this, and still decided to keep the baby. It was hard not to feel the weight of your decision. What if it had been worse? 

She gives you a sympathetic look as she explains, and Simon traces his thumb across your knuckles in the same pattern, repeatedly. You nod robotically as you listen, fingers curled in his.

“So, I want to send you home, but you’ll need to be on bedrest. Ideally, we would like to get you to thirty-four weeks.” Six weeks of bedrest. You stifled a groan. Simon is going to be insufferable. You sneak a look at him. He’s watching and listening like a hawk while she talks about activities you can and cannot do, things you should watch out for, the importance of keeping your stress level non-existent. Once she’s done, she promises she’s going to get you out of here as soon as she can and leaves the two of you alone again.

“I wanna go home.” You whine, scratching at your arm where the IV port is while beating back a yawn that’s creeping up your throat. He looks down at you and your heart breaks. He’s afraid. You squeeze his hand and try to comfort him, even though there's not much you can give. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I know. And I’m gonna take you home as soon as they let me.” He combs some hair away from your face with his fingers, careful not to get them caught in the tangles. “Just rest for now, okay?”

“Okay.” You mumble, already feeling the pull of exhaustion again. An errant thought enters your mind before you fade away. “Hey. Did you get extra cheese?” He laughs, and you slip peacefully into the warm embrace of sleep. 

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed reactions, the bench, and the gems

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it! part 1 can be found here.

And we're back for part 2! Here's all the new stuff I finished this season, and one more I'll get back to later. As with before, these are sorted alphabetically within each category and are not ranked as of yet.

Also as before, the OP for each series is linked in the title. Check them all out if the header images aren't giving you the right feel for each show, but also check them out because most of them were actually pretty damn good this season.

[Solo Leveling OP voice] LET'S GET IT!

Mixed Bags:

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Your standard, quasi-harem “easily flustered Regular Guy wins over hot girls just by being really nice” shonen romcom. I really don’t have much to say about this one other than if you’ve seen My Dress-Up Darling, you’ve basically seen this already. The only thing that really sets it apart is the setting.

Tsubasa (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, in a FAR cry from his turn as Mahito in Jujutsu Kaisen) is a straight-laced Tokyoite whose family situation lands him in a small city in the frozen boonies of Hokkaido. While looking for the bus to his new house, he runs into a gyaru in the snowy wild, the underdressed, hilariously-proportioned Minami, and they hit it off. It turns out they go to the same school, there are other cute girls there who take a shine to him as well, it’s nothing new.

I ultimately don’t have much to say about Hokkaido Gals, but I do have a soft spot for series like this, and after reading ahead in the manga I felt obligated to see it through. This is all junk food, but it’s all stuff you’ve seen done better in other series. I also have a soft spot for gyaru in anime and manga, and while I do like Minami just fine, she isn’t Marin Kitagawa or Rumiko Manbagi. I don’t really have it in me to recommend this show to many, though, at least not until another season rolls around, if that ever happens. The manga genuinely does get a lot better as it goes on, but the really worthwhile stuff may not happen until a third season, and I just don’t see that happening. 

The manga has issues that the anime isn’t willing or able to solve, chief of which being the visuals. The art style of the manga is wildly inconsistent, and getting a mediocre animation team on this didn’t help matters at all. While the colors often pop nicely against the pretty, snowy backdrops, nobody looks all that great overall. The characters are recognizable, but they just plain don’t look great a lot of the time, nor do they look consistent from one cut to the next; I said that Minami’s proportions are hilarious, but just as hilarious is how wildly they vacillate from one scene to the next for the sake of trying to titillate the viewer.

My biggest takeaway from both the manga and anime was everything I learned about Hokkaido in the process, and if the series is taking subsidies from the island’s tourism bureau, then it’s a job well done. I want some goddamn jingisukan now. The OP is a great time, though. I’m shocked it took over a decade for us to get a proper “Uptown Funk” knockoff in an anime.

Metallic Rouge

I’ll be upfront in saying that this was my biggest disappointment of the season by far. This show had so much going for it, and what we got was… ugh.

There was an unbelievable amount of promise from the outset: This was Studio Bones’ commemorative 25th anniversary production, and coming from the studio that gave us all-timer adaptations like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100, not to mention later works from Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe (including the Cowboy Bebop movie), you can’t fault anyone for having high expectations. It looked to be a fitting production as well: Watanabe’s influence shines through immediately in the gorgeous, lived-in cyberpunk off-world locales and racially diverse cast. Action takes the form of dope robo-tokusatsu transformation fisticuffs, and it’s entirely in 2D animation to boot. The first couple of episodes were killer, too; everything looked and sounded amazing, and there were just enough plot threads teased out that I just had to see how they’d unravel.

It brings me no joy, then, to say that Metallic Rouge collapses into a jumbled mess. I don’t even want to bother talking about what happens in the show because I don’t fucking care anymore. There are few media experiences more sobering than to have it dawn on you over a span of several weeks that “oh… this isn’t actually all that good, is it?” Episode after episode piles on with sloppy lore, weak worldbuilding, warring factions whose names you immediately forget, pointless double-crosses, and the most predictable twist you’ve ever seen. For a while I was willing to accept the fact that I didn’t know what was going on half the time and expected things to become clearer, but now I’m not entirely sure the writers knew either. The stakes apparently kept rising and everything just kept getting more claustrophobic. I’m glad it’s over, if only because if I had to hear “Clair de Lune” one more fucking time, I was going to go ballistic. 

There are several attempts at emotional beats, as the story is rife with tragedy and sacrifice, and every single one lands with a wet thud. Nobody gets enough time, motivation, or characterization for any of these things to feel like they actually matter, and that’s especially a shame because the finale might have been able to stick the landing if the previous episodes were less dense and better paced. Emphasis on “almost,” though, because just before the season ends, we get the absolute most pointless fakeout I’ve seen since The Rise of Skywalker, which is the lowest point of comparison you can make for any work of sci-fi.

This is especially frustrating because on paper, there is so much to like here. Rouge and Naomi are likable-enough deuteragonists with a fun dynamic, and they’d make easy yuri bait in a better show. The characters are all pretty and uniquely designed across the board, and the overall aesthetic, almost a pastiche of late-90’s anime futurism, is undeniable. The toku suit designs are neat and several of the action scenes are gorgeous. The score and soundtrack are outstanding (except for the aforementioned Debussy indulgence). I have few complaints about how the show looks and sounds; the style is great! All of my issues lie with the substance.

Metallic Rouge may have had all the ingredients, but it just needed more time to cook; whether that would have been by doubling the episode count or by more carefully planning the pacing and trimming some of the fat from the lore, I’m still not sure. Probably both. It probably needed better writers, too. Maybe it just isn’t as smart as it acts and there was no way to satisfyingly resolve the clumsy civil rights allegories that bring it uncomfortably close to the likes of Detroit: Become Human. So all of the above, I guess. I tend to adore stories that involve artificially-intelligent beings developing their own wills and emotions and learning to cut their own strings (the likes of Blade Runner, Nier Automata, even a couple of character arcs in the Persona series), but this ain’t it. I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just disappointed.

If there are two positives that will stick with me, though, they would be the absolute banger of an OP and, of course, Naomi Orthmann herself (pictured above, left). Outstanding character design. I’m mildly obsessed. She deserved a better show.

The Unwanted Undead Adventurer

This one isn’t even worth talking about, so here’s a brief synopsis, then I’ll add some commentary, and then we’ll all move on with our lives. 

Rentt, a beloved but mediocre adventurer in a fantasy town, gets lost in the mysterious labyrinth that all adventurers explore for personal gain, gets waxed by a dragon, and awakens as a shitty-looking CGI skeleton. He notices, though, that he’s able to level up better as a skeleton than he did as a human, and with the more monsters he defeats, the more he evolves into something closer to human. The rest isn’t really worth discussing.

If I’m being honest, I should’ve dropped this show much sooner. It looks kinda lousy most of the time, the plot (inasmuch as there even is one) is boring, character designs are forgettable (except for Rentt’s closest ally, Lorraine, holy hell) and it seems wholly uninterested in actually building its own setting. If it returns for a second season, I won’t be there, nor will I feel like I’m missing anything. Each episode felt like a chore to watch. I probably only saw it through because 1) I liked looking at Lorraine, I know what I’m about, and 2) I didn’t want to lump it in with the shows I did drop. The Unwanted Undead Adventurer isn’t as patently upsetting or frustrating as those three, but it just plain isn’t a very good show.

The Witch and the Beast

This show could have been so much more. I was drawn in by the gorgeous character designs and intriguing blend of Victorian gothic aesthetics and architecture with modern infrastructure, and very quickly disappointed by just about everything else. The first episode is an exceptional proof of concept, and almost everything that follows is an upsetting showcase of what could have been.

The story centers around Ashaf, a languid, chain-smoking agent of the governing church with a big-ass coffin strapped to his back, and his partner Guideau, a snarling hyena in a young woman’s body, as they investigate abuses of magic across the continent in search of nefarious witches. Guideau in particular has a bone to pick with witches, as the body they presently inhabit is the result of a witch’s curse, and they remain in furious pursuit of the one who cursed them. The curse can be temporarily undone by a kiss with a witch, allowing Guideau’s true body, a hulking brute confined to the coffin, to escape and wreak havoc. Meaning that on a few occasions we get a girl-on-girl kiss followed by a big dude wrecking shit. There’s also other investigations of serial killings, necromancy, and a cursed sword, and here’s hoping you like those, because the coffin breaks are few and far between.

This wasn’t great! By the third episode I had the sneaking suspicion that the animation talent on hand just wasn’t enough to support the aesthetic. While the character designs are exceptional, almost everyone looks awful in any shot that isn’t completely focused on them. This is especially true of Guideau, who looks so inconsistently off-model from one shot to the next that I’m still not entirely sure what they’re supposed to look like, and that’s kind of unforgivable when we’re talking about a main character. Everything looks too dim and too shiny at the same time, and action scenes look like shit more often than they look interesting. I can see so many flickers of something excellent (or at least really good-looking) in Witch and the Beast, and everything else that keeps those flickers from actually igniting makes it so much more frustrating to watch. Maybe just read the manga instead; the panels I've seen from it were uniformly gorgeous.

Actually, yeah, you should probably just read the manga, because for a season of anime, the pacing is atrocious too. It’s clearly trying to angle for a monster-of-the-week format, but each of these mini-arcs is a little too dense for a single episode, so multiple episodes are dedicated to these one-off curiosities, most of which do nothing to advance the plot or show off what the show does best. And if one of them isn’t particularly interesting, you’re saddled with it for the next two weeks like you've been stuck munching on a mealy apple. And I know you can only adapt so much in a 12-episode season, but the decision to end the season on a flashback arc and a lore dump was baffling. That’s not world-building, that’s lazy, and it made the show’s existing pacing issues feel that much more inane.

I feel like I was sold a false bill of goods. I can only imagine how the mangaka feels about this. Dull and uninspiring all around. What a waste.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Isekai, unassuming high school boy gains a unique power, impending war with the Demon Lord, yadda yadda yadda. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic isn’t anything new or special by any means, nor is it particularly well-animated or -paced, but at its best it’s silly and charming enough that it made a nice, brainless palate cleanser on Fridays.

Usato, your standard quiet high schooler, ends up walking home on a rainy evening with the popular, attractive student council president and VP, when an isekai portal happens. It turns out that it was just the seito-kai that was invited along for the ride (and President Suzune, as it turns out, is fucking psyched to get to be in an isekai), and Usato got caught along with them. When tested for magical aptitude, Suzune and VP Kazuki hit the jackpot with electric and light affinities, respectively, but things go awry when Usato’s reading turns up with healing magic. Terror strikes the palace as the intimidating dommy-mommy Captain Rose barges in to spirit Usato away from his new friends and into her squadron of goons to train him as a combat medic.

As character comedy goes, this one is actually pretty solid at times. Shogo Sakata is plenty of fun as the put-upon, lippy Usato (a much louder role than Chainsaw Man’s Aki Hayakawa), and Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusanagi herself!) is a blast as the terrifying Rose, an uncompromising slave driver of a drill sergeant with a secret soft side. The dynamic between them is great, too; Usato is over Rose’s shit from the beginning and isn’t afraid to talk back to her, but before you know it, this transforms into friendly banter as Rose clearly takes a shine to Usato and knows he can handle any punishment she doles out. Suzune’s also a bunch of fun now that she’s broken away from having to be the competent, popular girl at school and gets to fully lean into being a complete dork.

Wrong Way also works decently as an isekai, because it makes an effort to stay rooted in high fantasy rather than fall back on JRPG mechanics, meaning there are no stat screens! It also avoids the trappings of wish-fulfillment isekai series by having Usato start out as a regular-ass guy; he’s not a Kirito type, just someone Rose sees as a rough gem in need of cutting. There are no cheat skills or OP weapons or anything, just a kid training every day to get stronger so he can protect the people close to him, and that’s the kind of anime protagonist you should want to be.

For better and for worse, I get serious mid-00s vibes from this one; watch the OP if you don’t believe me. Some of the colors pop uncannily in that early-digipaint-era way, and the animation is pretty middling; the most fluid animation we see is whenever Suzune is acting like a creep. Much like those mid-00s anime, though, Wrong Way may have benefited from being weekly (or twice as long) rather than seasonal. There’s a ton of planting with very little payoff, and it doesn’t feel like the actual scope of the story has even been addressed yet. We don’t even learn why the series has the name it does until someone literally says it aloud in the 11th episode. I may have to reevaluate this season after a possible second, if we ever get one, because this doesn’t stand too well on its own.

Of the anime in this “mixed bags” segment, I’d say I enjoyed Wrong Way the most, but it still had enough problems for me to keep it here. It’s not a particularly bad anime, but it’s not especially good either. I guess we can slot it into what Hazel refers to as “good mid.”

On Hold: 

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (three episodes watched)

Man, what a title. That was the main draw for this BL series, which on paper is basically a gay version of the Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want. 

Adachi (a surname that will always make me laugh thanks to Persona 4), a gloomy salaryman, has hit the big 3-0 without getting any, and now he can somehow read anyone’s thoughts just by making physical contact with them. Just as he laments that this is his life now, he accidentally bumps into his handsome, popular coworker, Kurosawa, whom he learns has been harboring a massive crush on Adachi this whole time. Well dang, what now? Kurosawa’s a really nice, thoughtful dude, but Adachi’s never even thought about being with a man before! And isn’t there something wrong with already knowing this secret? How can he even go into the office and look Kurosawa in those big, handsome eyes… every single day…

What I’ve seen so far has been pretty solid, if not particularly well animated. The visuals are really my only gripe here; I just put it off for way too long and didn’t have it in me to finish it on time to actually get this thing written and published. Yaoi isn’t my forte, which feels like a shortcoming on my end as a fledgling bisexual, and I’ve already remarked on the solid LGBT representation this past season, so I do plan on hopping back on this one.

I gotta say, the co-leading voice actors put in serious work this season. Adachi is voiced by Chiaki Kobayashi, who continued his role as Stark in Frieren, returned to Mashle as Mash Burnedead, and contributed to Metallic Rouge’s cluttered cast as Noid. Kurosawa’s seiyuu, Ryota Suzuki (of whom I’ll always be a fan for his masterful turn as Yu Ishigami in Kaguya-sama), also held down leading roles in Bang Brave Bang Bravern and The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. They’ve been great in the few episodes of Cherry Magic! that I’ve seen so far, and they’ll be a huge part of what brings me back.

The Gems:

Bang Brave Bang Bravern

I feel like the mark of a perfectly audacious piece of media is in the moments where I find myself incredulously shouting “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING” at the screen, and Bravern made me do that at least once per episode. I have so many things to say about what makes this show great but all of it can be summed up as “it fucks so goddamn hard.”

A joint military exercise in Hawaii between Japanese and American mech pilots goes south as a sudden invasion by metalloid aliens portends certain doom for humanity. Just in the nick of time, though, a bombastic, autonomous mech named Bravern arrives from space and insists that ace pilot Isami Ao take his reins. Isami reluctantly agrees, and to his consternation, Bravern goes full tokusatsu on everyone’s asses, complete with fully-diegetic theme music, and keeps the threat at bay. With Bravern continuing to pester him to act as a pilot, Isami is forced to take up the mantle of a reluctant hero as everyone rallies around Bravern to save Earth. Tagging along is blond-haired, blue-eyed American pilot Lewis Smith, who gets to live out all of his Top Gun fantasies, right down to the latent homosexuality.

That last point isn’t a projection or anything: This show is legitimately gay as hell, and it rules. Bravern’s feelings towards Isami feel far more romantic than what you’d expect from a literal robot, and his description of how it felt to have Isami pilot him for the first time, as relayed to a grim-faced military council, is riddled with hilarious innuendo. Isami struggles not only with shouldering the burden of needing to be a hero to all of humanity, but also being beset on both sides by a loud, insistent mecha and a dewy-eyed gaijin, both of whom very well seem to want to get in his pants. Intricate rituals punctuate Isami and Lewis’ angsty relationship as these broad-shouldered, muscular men grow ever closer. It’s also worth reiterating that Isami is voiced by Ryota Suzuki, who also voiced Kurosawa in Cherry Magic!, and that may not have even been his gayest role this season. I’m not super well-versed in mecha as a genre, but I do know that there’s a lot of Warrior’s Bond-type stuff in these series, and Bravern lays it on thick. And hard.

This show looks killer, by the way. CGI implementation in 2D anime is still a touchy subject, but Bravern features some of the best I’ve ever seen. Simple cel-shading goes a long way to the point where, outside of some uncanny motion, Bravern himself feels perfectly blended into the hand-drawn animation. Mecha designs range from realistic military-style tech to otherworldly sentient robots, and battle sequences run the same gamut as the stakes rise. As goofy as all of the above may sound, it’s committed to being a grandiose, big-time mecha showcase.

This is as good as camp gets in anime; Bravern does for the mecha genre what Akiba Maid War did for yakuza film pastiche (I have also heard positive comparisons to Samurai Flamenco, which I’ll have to get on ASAP). It’s an excellent mecha show in its own right, and wildly hilarious to boot. Bravern himself is very genre-savvy and seemingly a bit of an otaku himself; he loves acting like a mecha hero, to everyone else’s chagrin. Several of the villains (also mechanical beings, voiced by an all-star seiyuu roster that includes Kenjiro Tsuda, the aforementioned Atsuko Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya) are total dorks themselves. A CIA interrogator tries to waterboard a mecha at one point. Bravern is a deeply silly show, but its heart is planted as firmly on its sleeve as its tongue is in its cheek: For as wacky as it can get, the story still unfolds with a straight face and excellent emotional beats. 

This show also has the most unskippable ED of any anime since Chainsaw Man dropped a new one every week. I will not say what happens. You cannot predict what it is. Just watch it. One of the top YouTube comments on that video says “When I saw this ending after episode 2, I thought I was going crazy.” That’s a ringing endorsement.

Chained Soldier

On the heels of 100 Girlfriends completely rewiring my brain, I was raring for some more good old-fashioned anime trash. I was told that there would be plenty this season, but you can consult the “dropped” section to see how well that worked out for me. Chained Soldier came with some significant hype, and soon enough into the first episode I realized that I’d actually skimmed through this manga before (don’t ask why), so I was on board immediately. Now here’s some nice trashy fun.

The world is in peril thanks to creatures called Shuuki that can advance on our world via portals from another dimension. Women primarily lead the charge against these monsters, as this dimension produces a special fruit that can lend them (and not men) otherworldly powers to help them in the fight. Yuuki, a perfectly normal young man, ends up in grave danger as he stumbles into a portal, where he is saved by the beautiful Kyouka, a commander who is able to subjugate Shuuki at will and use them to fight others. In a bind, she asks Yuuki if she can subjugate him, which he agrees to by licking her finger and transforming into a monster himself, at her beck and call. Because of his utility in battle, Yuuki is enlisted into her squad of baddies (and also an 11-year-old), living in their home as a caretaker and answering directly to Kyouka as her “slave.”

I know. Hear me out.

I put “slave” in scare quotes because Chained Soldier fortunately isn’t going full Shield Hero on us; this arrangement has a give-and-take baked in. See, every time Yuuki completes his service, Kyouka (or whomever else takes advantage of this anomaly) is compelled to carry out whatever suitable “reward” springs from his unconscious, and this is where the ecchi kicks in. Sometimes it’s a kiss, and sometimes it’s something a little more; the reward corresponds to the length and intensity of Yuuki’s contributions to battle, so the heat can turn up in the form of, say, clothed face-sitting, a good scrubbing in the bath, or some nice, casual CBT. All of this is to say that “slave” is a bit of a buzzword here: It’s more of a dom/sub situationship with a lot of extra steps.

Yes, just about everything that isn’t an action setup is full-on harem trash, and Chained Soldier lays it on thick, right down to full-on nudity. Nothing about this show resembles high art, but I can’t help but admire such a high level of commitment to its aesthetic, including the sleaze. It fully commits to the bit and doesn’t even bother lampshading its own trashiness. Chained Soldier knows what it’s about, and I respect that. It also has the good sense not to sexualize the youngest girl, which is a point in its favor that I can’t award a couple other shows previously discussed.

And while this show is plenty fun, the action sequences often excellent, and the character designs usually delightful, there’s not actually a whole lot going on here. As I said with Mashle, I know that battle manga like this can take a minute to really get cooking, and as I said with Witch and the Beast, 12 episodes may not always be a sufficient runtime to adapt enough to break ground, but the debut season feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. That being said, Chained Soldier’s manga has a very effusive audience, and its praises don’t seem to entirely be about the boobs and butts, so I’ll wait patiently for the second season. I think it’s earned that much.

Delicious in Dungeon

This is the one I’m having the hardest time writing about because it so confidently and so completely speaks for itself that anything I could add would feel like scattering sawdust at the beach. Dungeon Meshi (I refuse to call it by its official English title) is a widely beloved manga among those who’ve read it, and for Studio Trigger to do an honest-to-goodness manga adaptation for the first time might as well be front page news among anime fans. 

The story follows Laios, the deeply weird human hero, as he delves back into a bizarre and mysterious dungeon to rescue his sister Falin from the belly of a dragon, along with his misfit party: The neurotic half-elven mage Marcille, the temperamental halfling rogue Chilchuck, and the dwarven warrior-slash-chef Senshi. The party is frequently low on supplies, so to survive the trip they’ll need to subsist on the most abundant resource in the dungeon: Monsters. Senshi’s aptitude in the kitchen helps ensure that everything is edible and sufficiently tasty, regardless of how nasty the monster it came from may have been. With monster obstructions out of the way and their bellies filled, our party delves deeper into the dungeon as the mysteries deepen in kind.

I love the character dynamics in this so goddamn much. Marcille and Chilchuck are frequently put off by the dubious monster food presented to them, but their consternation is worsened by the fact that Laios’ fascination with the monsters it came from annoys the shit out of them. I referred to him as “deeply weird,” but that doesn’t begin to describe his absolute galaxy brain, and I mean it as a term of endearment. Laios is deeply knowledgeable and curious about the fauna in the dungeon, and not just how they taste: He is vocally curious about how certain monster attacks may feel, sings along with siren songs, and even keeps a hardcover bestiary inside his breastplate. He’s one of those people you turn to if you have a question on a hyperspecific subject, but you have to be careful how you ask it or else you’re trapped for the next two hours. And I love him for it.

Even putting the comedy aside, there is a fascinating human element at play in Dungeon Meshi, and I can tell that that surface has barely even been scratched yet. Marcille is just as dogged in her pursuit of saving Falin as Laios is, maybe even moreso (remember what I keep saying about LGBT representation this season?). Chilchuck continues to convince himself that he’s only in the job for his own personal gain, but you can see that mask slipping. And I still wanna know what Senshi’s deal is. Even with the five major players I listed, there’s an increasingly deep roster surrounding them—showcasing a broad spectrum of races and ethnicities, both real and fantastical—each with their own histories and motivations, and I cannot wait to see how they play out and interact with one another. There seem to be much deeper themes at play here as well as we learn more about perceptions and grudges between differing races, oppositional magics, clashing ideologies, and the monetary incentives that drive both the dungeon’s exploration and its very existence. I’m here for it.

I’ve been holding off on reading the manga until the season is up in June (though I could crack any day), but I know a loving adaptation when I see one. Not that Trigger ever slacks off in the animation department, but they absolutely brought their A-game here. Everyone looks bouncy and cartoony in the way only Trigger can pull off while still looking as close as possible to Ryoko Kui’s source material (as far as I can tell). As with Frieren, the action sequences aren’t frequent, nor are they entirely what the show is about, but they look incredible every single time. And the food, of course, looks incredible, no matter how weird. This is practically a cooking anime and a fantasy dungeon anime at the same time, and both aspects are visually on point at all times.

I’m obviously speaking from my own bubble as one of the six people who still use Tumblr in 2024, but I rarely see new anime make a splash like this on social media every single week, and the ones that I do are usually the monster shonen hits like Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen. Dungeon Meshi deserves the exposure and success it’s attained, and I’m excited to see it continue. I’d easily slot this right up there with Bravern as one of the best new anime of the season.

A Sign of Affection

I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shonen slice-of-life romances in the past year and change, so a nice fluffy shoujo like this was an excellent palate cleanser. There were a hell of a lot of Big Action Setpieces and panicky teens and grim dungeon crawlers this season, and at the end of the week I wanted to unwind with a bunch of pretty twenty-somethings falling in love with each other.

The show centers on Yuki, a young woman living with congenital hearing loss, making do at a public college after growing up at a school for the deaf. Though she’s able to get by with LINE messages and lip reading, she’s unprepared when a foreigner asks for help, but she’s saved by a handsome and mysterious young man named Itsuomi. He’s able to help out, and takes an interest in her when he realizes his fellow undergrad is deaf, and Yuki takes an interest in kind because he’s really goddamn hot. It turns out that he’s a polyglot and an avid world-traveler, but sign language is not in his purview. This mutual interest sparks the concern of her childhood friend, Oushi, one of the few people in her life who already use sign language, who wants to be sure that nothing untoward is happening. And it isn’t, because this is just a really lovely, low-stakes romance story.

This is pure, unfiltered shoujo at its best. Yuki’s internal monologue is peppered with flowery prose, and everything and everyone looks soft and beautiful. Fashionable, doe-eyed women and pillowy-lipped ikemen abound (seriously, holy shit, the lips on these boys) as the scope widens and the main love interests’ friends explore their own possible love stories. Itsuomi is very much of the “mysterious boy” archetype you’ll find in romance stories in this demographic, but he’s not hiding any sort of dark past like you’d typically expect; he’s just an interesting guy who keeps his personal life close to the vest. He’s a self-appointed world citizen who loves learning about how people of all cultures live their lives, and in Yuki he sees someone within his home turf who happens to live in her own world entirely. And it’s easy to see his forward behavior with Yuki as infantilizing at first (Oushi sure does, and I’ll get back to him in a second), but as they grow closer Itsuomi quickly becomes much more considerate of her boundaries and learns to accommodate her as he studies sign language and gestures that help ensure her comfort. This is a story about Yuki’s horizons broadening just as much as it is about Itsuomi wanting to be let into Yuki’s narrow world, and that sort of synergy makes for some exceptional romance.

A Sign of Affection deserves some credit for refusing to shy away from Yuki’s disability and making a point of depicting her world as one that does little to accommodate her. Very few people in her daily life ever bothered to learn sign language, she relies on a friend to take notes during lectures, and work is hard to come by. It’s an honest depiction that makes an effort not to be exploitative, which is a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but there’s some interesting meta-commentary in there: The only major conflict in the story stems from Oushi’s jealousy, and his reservations about Itsuomi possibly “taking advantage of” Yuki almost feel like he believes that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for her just because he’s done the bare minimum to accommodate her. He thinks he’s coming from a good place, but he winds up accidentally infantilizing her in exactly the way he thinks Itsuomi might. That’s a particularly interesting bit of irony!

I’ve seen enough shonen-oriented romcoms where an unassuming Regular Guy gets flustered as a way-too-casual girl pushes his buttons (hell, I’ve already reviewed two of those this season), so it’s nice to see the formula flipped for a shoujo as Yuki and her best friend Rin blush and squee over Itsuomi and his coworker Kyouya, respectively. A Sign of Affection isn’t afraid to get a little silly with it, either; plenty of these moments are punctuated by characters’ faces going low-detail or full chibi, and they are cute as shit every single time.

This one was just cozy as hell. If you’re into this sort of thing, swaddle yourself in it and bask.

Solo Leveling

I let this one collect dust after the third episode and didn’t pick it back up until the season was almost up, and honestly, I was kinda dreading it: The trailers didn’t look too promising, the show was slow to start, and it looked like yet another derivative JRPG-style dungeon crawler that managed to get popular. Turns out, nah, this show actually kinda fucks and the web novel series and webtoon it’s based on are popular for a reason. The story is nothing special, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a perfectly serviceable turn-your-brain-off action spectacle with a bit more lying beneath the surface.

In a modern-day South Korea where portals to mysterious dungeons open up and threaten the populace, those who can brave the dungeons, known as hunters, are an invaluable human resource. Once someone is assigned a grade as a hunter, they have that grade for life, barring some rare occurrences. Sung Jinwoo is at the lowest rung on that ladder as an E-rank, incapable of improvement, assigned the epithet “the weakest hunter of all mankind.” He mostly shows up to portal raids as a warm body to fill a quota, and one such job goes haywire as most of the raid party, Jinwoo included, is brutally slaughtered in an arcane secondary dungeon within a portal. He somehow wakes up in a hospital, unharmed, and able to access a digital menu before his eyes that exhorts him to do the One Punch Man workout every day, lest he incur punishment. He gets hilariously chadly in the span of a few days in the hospital, including an inexplicable haircut, and finds access to dungeons only he can enter and levels up within this new system.

This one gets off to a slow start and may have benefited from a longer premiere like Oshi no Ko or Frieren, but once the table is fully set, Solo Leveling really starts to cook. Jinwoo’s titular leveling process is a blast from one fight to the next, and as he moves to work in the dungeons that other hunters can access, it turns out he’s been training with the weights on. He’s suddenly fighting way above his pay grade, and after staving off attacks from hunters taking advantage of portals for nefarious ends, he is recruited by an ambitious corporate scion to make some real coin and establish an independent association of hunters.

While it can feel like there’s a whole bunch of table-setting between portal sequences, it’s some smart worldbuilding on Solo Leveling’s end to establish how portal hunting became a central pillar of this society, and doubly so how political and capitalist interests can leave a wide berth for corruption and bad actors. If there’s money to be made in hunting, of course people will find ways to make even more at the expense of others, both at the corporate and individual levels. There’s a lot of talk in there about “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” and that… makes me nervous.

Those are terms that can be used to justify immoral actions in the name of money, sure, but Jinwoo also uses them to justify his own process. To what end is he constantly improving himself? Sure, he's doing what he can to provide for his younger sister and their ailing mother, but I see less and less humanity in him as this goes on. There are constant hints at something far more sinister at play than just a dude getting stronger for himself, not the least of which being “the system,” the UI that implores him to keep taking on these “quests.” Something, or someone, seems to be guiding him. Whenever another hunter turns on Jinwoo, of course his self-defense instincts kick in, but system pop-ups instruct him to defeat X number of hostiles like it’s a normal video game scenario. There’s something eerily depersonalized about these encounters, despite them being full-on mortal combat, that gives me serious Ender’s Game vibes. Consider me intrigued.

I’d heard that the Solo Leveling manhwa’s main draw was its visuals, and though I had my doubts early on, I'm sold now. This is a pretty solid presentation! Hiroyuki Sawano turned in yet another banger soundtrack to punctuate all the action setpieces, helping to stitch together a fairly complete tapestry. Said setpieces are exhilarating and almost impressively bloody, and while the animation is nothing impressive in the day-to-day, it goes absolutely batshit when the gloves come off. Movement is inhumanly fluid and the visuals can go into the same loose, psychedelic territories we’ve seen in the likes of Mob Psycho and the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. If this is the new meta for shonen action, I’m not complaining.

By all rights, this is a pretty decent show, but if I’m being honest, this one just hasn’t stuck with me much. And that’s fine! Sometimes I just wanna see some nutty action stuff and move on with my day. Solo Leveling hits that spot perfectly, and I'll be right back there when it returns for its next season.

‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess

I was surprised to learn that the gag manga this is based on, with such a seemingly simple premise, has been running for well over 200 chapters and counting. As the anime progressed, I was far more pleasantly surprised to learn that it actually works.

In a standard anime fantasy world where the forces of good are fighting the demonic Hellhorde, an unnamed warrior princess and her talking enchanted sword are taken prisoner and subjected to torture as they’re squeezed for intel. Said “torture,” as the title’s scare quotes would suggest, is mildly unconventional, as the demon baddie inquisitor, aptly named Torture Tortura, attempts to ply the princess by presenting her with tantalizingly delicious-looking food that she can only partake in if she coughs up some info. Naturally, the princess caves every single time, but her intel is often inane and useless, so the “torture” continues. It’s not all food, though: The princess is soon held out of arm’s reach of adorable baby animals by a gyaru beastgirl, pampered into submission by a spa-loving giantess, and is faced with a tsundere vampire faildaughter, who… tries. 

And you’d think that would be it; the joke wears thin and you move onto something else. Before you realize it, though, something’s changed: The princess and her captors are quickly becoming friends. The premise almost feels perfunctory: These inquisitors are actual people just doing their jobs, and whatever happens after the princess’ myriad confessions is fair game. There’s no malice or animosity, even during the “torture” sessions themselves: Everyone will have a blast and grow closer as friends, and then the princess will voluntarily go back to her bedless cell. It’s like Sam and Ralph after they clock out, except they’re almost always off the clock. Everyone is genuinely looking out for each other in all directions, and the only thing that keeps the torture going is the need for a status quo to return to, even as it grows more elastic. If anything, Time for "Torture" is a good example of committing to the bit without having to necessarily rely on it.

The real irony in all of this is that it becomes increasingly apparent that the princess is having her needs met in captivity far better than she ever did back home. In her proud proclamations about how she’ll never cave to the temptations before her (shortly before she does just that), the princess often talks about her upbringing and her time as the head of an imperial legion, but these stories often betray her lack of friendship or any of the little things that make life worth living. Her life as royalty was one of isolation and deprivation, to the point where she finds more freedom and fulfillment as a prisoner. She truly lives in a society.

Hellholm, on the other hand, has a surprisingly healthy approach to things like work-life balance, food, and leisure, and its most valuable prisoner is no exception. The Hell-Lord himself is a surprising exemplar of this; for as much as he looks and talks like your standard terrifying JRPG demon king, he’s a surprisingly good dude! He looks after his family, employees, and even the captive princess as if they are all one and the same; he exhibits strong principles and an aversion to conflict, sees to his employees' needs and wants alike, and is a supportive, loving father to his unbelievably precious little daughter (who also serves as a “torturer,” to the princess’ delight). He’s also a big time anime dork, and even bonds with a knight attempting to rescue the princess over their shared otakudom before sending him off peacefully. As “villains” go, he’s top tier.

Time for "Torture" is nothing groundbreaking by any stretch, but it’s a cute, silly time and it plays with anime fantasy tropes in the same way a six-month-old German shepherd “plays” with a cheap stuffed toy. How long the premise holds up is entirely up to you, but I had a lot of fun with it. I have no idea how this ended up being one of the better shows this season, but I guess it just scratched the right itch for me.

[lets-try-some-writing]

reading all your amazing OP and BB HCs of Bee growing up, now makes me wonder if Bee ever went through a rebellious teen phase in smaller ways [Love your writing, keep it up always dear]

He absolutely did have a rebellious phase and Optimus laughs and laments it.

━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙

Being at war does not change the fact that sparklings grow up. Bumblebee was raised during war, all he knew was wartime code and contract. Despite that, wartime habit did not stop the inevitable for all young mecha beginning to edge into adulthood. Bumblebee couldn't remain a sparkling forever, and eventually, he reached his rebellious phase.

Bumblebee began to have a bit of an attitude. Being at war made it so that his attitude wasn't anything too terrible, but he took to treating those above him in rank more flippantly. No one particularly minded considering Autobot high command all but raised him, but it was odd nonetheless. Bee marching in and using base glyphs to refer to individuals was new, and it did leave Ultra Magnus disappointed beyond words, but it was nothing to be concerned about. Optimus found it more than a little amusing to be called "Sire" outright. Bumblebee stopped doing that once he was old enough to comprehend that they were at war. So he genuinely found it to be a nice callback to better days even if the others in the room weren't the most fond of being called "Uncle", "Grandpa", or most notoriously, "Old cogger".

Then Bumblebee moved onto talking back. It took most of high command by surprise considering Bee had always been very obedient and soft spoken when he was young. However when Optimus came back from the battlefield and went to visit his ward, Bumblebee was lounging around and more bitter than not when asked to go on watch. The first time he snapped back at Optimus, the Prime was shocked enough that all he did was kneel down and ask what was wrong. Not even Bumblebee really knew. Ratchet however didn't take any slag. The moment Bumblebee called him an old bag of bolts, Bee found himself with cleanup duty for the next stellar cycle. Prowl similarly did not put up with being called "Robo-cop" and promptly landed Bee a position mopping the hall for a few deca-cycles.

The rebelliousness only amped up when Bumblebee went out with a few other younger bots on patrol and came back with engravings all over him, absolutely none of which were appropriate for the army. Evidently he went into neutral territory with his group and decided it would be a great idea to get engravings done for fun. The other younglings weren't much better off looking. Bumblebee and his companions were greeted by a power washer and very disappointed looked from most of high command. To his credit, Bumblebee did not attempt getting engravings from strangers again. His blacking was marked in smudged colors and plating deep grooves that took almost a vorn to fully fade. Ironhide mocked him for his decision on the daily. Sometimes mockery is just the best way to get a point across.

There was a singular time when Bumblebee decided to act like an adult and steal some high grade to try. He'd seen the elder bots indulging occasionally and wanted to know what all the fuss was about. It didn't help that at the time, Bumblebee was still bitter over the whole engraving incident. As such, he felt only a marginal degree of guilt when he took a bottle from Ratchet's personal stash and smuggled it away to his hab. But of course, not having ever been involved with high grade before, Bumblebee didn't know when to stop. He was found sloshed beyond words the next cycle, and no one could even be mad at him. Ratchet laughed until he fell over and Optimus did his best to not let his strangled laughter reach his ward as he moved to drag Bumblebee out. Bee was not at all happy to be put on messenger duty while drunk. But it was his punishment and all of high command laughed themselves half to death watching him stumble along with piles of datapads. Bee was angry about the whole thing for a while, but he got over it fairly quickly once a few stories of the other's first attempts at drinking were shared with him.

Bumblebee was not as rebellious as anyone expected, and so a rather large number of the mecha involved with Autobot high command were waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it did, they were both prepared and panicked. Bumblebee, in his infinite wisdom, thought it would be a great idea to try and backtalk. He had a rather bitter argument with Optimus over being asked to do his job as a soldier. The argument resulted in Optimus actually getting mad at him for the first time and giving him a punishment that Bumblebee didn't expect to hurt so much.

"Bumblebee, I have asked you to go do your patrol three times now. I will not be asking again."

"I didn't ask to be brought into the army! Why should I have to go out and fight?!"

"Because you are an Autobot. You consume fuel that is provided, you recharge in a berth that is secured by us, and your education has been given by fellow Autobots. It is not much to ask for you to stand guard for a few groons."

"That's a bunch of slag! I could have raised myself! I never NEEDED YOU!"

"Bumblebee-"

"If you had just left me where you found me, I would have joined the neutrals and never been part of this stupid war that YOU WON'T END ALREADY BECAUSE OF YOUR RIDICULOUS EMPATHY TOWARD MEGATRON!"

"Enough. You are done."

"Wait, I didn't mean that-"

"What is done is done. If you do not believe you need a Caretaker, then so be it. For the next stellar cycle, you are not my ward. I am your superior officer and you will treat me as such."

"Sire, I'm sorry-"

"You will refer to me as your Commander starting now. I expect you to follow orders soldier."

Optimus left with a sour expression that none in high command had seen him bear since he became Prime. Bumblebee for his part went to Ratchet and cried. The medic was consoling in his own gruff way, but all of high command could do nothing as Optimus kept his distance, trying to make his point. The punishment ended early when Ratchet and Jazz cornered Optimus and gestured over to his crying ward and pointed out that his punishment was a bit extreme and reeked of functionalism.

Things were a little tense afterwards, but everything worked out in the end. Bumblebee got over his rebellious phase once the war amped up and he lost his voice. Part of high command missed his little quips after the loss of his voice, but in the end, it was likely for the best that his desire to act out of line came to a close suddenly. In the army there is no room for disobedience.

[tommos]

28 op drop review 🤍

okay so disclaimer, i'm not a review blog or anything so don't expect an insane review from me here but i'm a silly louie who wants to talk about 28 op hehe

contains quite a bit of images so i'll put an under the cut to not clog ur dash!

so i ordered two items from the shop, i got the green cap and the ecru track jacket in size medium. the cap was $45 and the jacket was $110 with tax i think i paid around $190 with shipping (i'm not proud of spending this much lmao but i got paid the day before so it worked out for me in this case, but for future drops i won't be spending this much most likely)

the green cap

so first off, the QUALLLLITTTYYYY!!!!! this hat feels VELVET SMOOTH. it's so soft. like i love it so much already omg? the embroidery on the front is a light green color which complements the dark forest of the hat itself as well. the embroidery looks a little tilted but it's not very noticable.

here is a photo of the tag from the inside with the 18 logo

and another plus of the hat is that the back of it is a metal clasp and not a thin metal piece or anything, its seamless and i really like that!

the texture of this hat feels really great from a neurodivergent pov as well because normally hats like this give me bad headaches and feel weird on my head from the texture and pressure of it on my head but this hat is super soft and the bill of the front doesnt push hard at all into my head so thats another win

2. the ecru track jacket

here she is... in all her glory. honestly first impressions is that its really high quality feeling, like the stitching is even and the material of the jacket (both cloth and track material) are both really soft which i don't normally expect from a track jacket? if that makes any sense? the stretch around the wrists and the bottom of the jacket are not too tight. the length of the jacket is not too long too, it stops right at where my hip bones are and i am 5'7 and got a medium, so i'd say it runs true to size which is nice as well since i'm wary of things i can't try on in person.

the triangle logo and the sewn on 28 patch there are two side pockets that are very very long, which gives plenty of room for comfort and they also have zippers so you won't lose your phone or anything you put in there

here is a close up on the material as well and the double zipper the jacket has

and here is a close up of the tag on the inside!! note the little 'LT' inside

overall the jacket and the hat are both really nice and i recommend them both if you're on the fence at all about them!!! they're super comfortable and eeee i love them thank you louis

[jessysapphireblue]

One Piece Advent Calender Door 24

Door 24: Christmas Eve

Morning dawned at the Cabin, everyone awake, some still sleepy but the others mostly awake. “So is it Christmas?”, asked Chopper. “No, tomorrow. Today is Christmas eve. The day before the actual feast”, explained Robin. “Perhaps we should go to the Sunny. I fetch us some nice warm breakfast there”, admitted Sanji.

“One ham sandwich for me”, Luffy raised his arm happily sanji and Nami smirking with his back to him before they walked out. Nami brought the key back and you all went to town.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!”, Usopp screamed as he saw the sheer mass op people. “Christmas Eve. Today the last things are gonna be bought, stuff picked up and then they all go home, spending time with their friends and family”, you admitted with a soft smile. “Christmas is crazy”, admitted Zoro with a loud yawn. “Just like us, so it´s perfect”, you admitted and Jinbe, Brook and Luffy laughed.

Once back on the Sunny, you helped Sanji prepare breakfast before you all st down. “Now, dig in”, the cook said as ”...where is the meat?”, asked Luffy. “Today is no meat”, said Nami. ”...what do you mean?” “As we stated yesterday today gives no meat. At all”, smirked Sanji. The color from Luffy drained as he collapsed on the table, sliding off his chair to the ground. “A bit drastic, don´t you think?”, admitted Usopp.

“my meat...I want my precious meat” “Tomorrow”, said Sanji. “So what will we eat tonight?”, asked Zoro. “Fish”, you smiled and Usopp looked happy. “Fish, really?!” “Yes” “With a super burger!” “Also no burger. Contains meat”, said Nami and the Cyborg was all stiff. “Like nothing at all?!” “Nothing at all”

Nami and Sanji clearly enjoyed the torture of the crew. “What about dessert?”, asked Chopper. “Well, I´ve never seen or heard of a dessert with meat so-” The doctor breathed out, which made you chuckle. “Luffy, come on and eat”, you said. “MA MEAT!”, he began to whine. “Yohohoho, Luffy-san is depressed” “You survive one day without meat”, admitted Sanji. “Je, pls. Meat”, Luffy robbed to you, his head now in your lap, looking so broken at you.

You inhaled and looked forward, contine to eat. “JE! Look at me! Don´t you care if I die!? I thought you love me!!!” “I do, hun”, you looked at him and were meet with THE MOST KICKED PUPPY EYES. “NO!”, Nami used her staff to smack Luffy from your lap.

At the end, he ate the stuff, still sad about his non meat. You helped Sanji in the kitchen, preparing most of the stuff for tomorrow, as well for tonight. While everyone got something else to do, Luffy rested on your bed, along with Soma, Looking at your wish list. “No meat...I won´t survive today” Your dragon nudged him, giving him a few licks on his cheek that made him smile. “Thanks!”, he beamed. ”...So HUNGRY!!!!”, he whined out, holding his growling stomach. looking at him, Soma took off.

You soon came with a big bowl into your room, his stomach sounded like it was dieing. “I heard you´re hungry” “YES! I demand my meat!” He said and you sat next to his legs. “Well, I have no meat but food” Directly he sat up and looked at the bowl. “What is this?” “toasted bread cubes with butter. You can have all if you want” “JE!”, hugging your waist, you laughed. “You still love me!” “Of course I do. I always do. So, you want-” It was taken from your grasp and Luffy began to munch on them, a content smile on his lips.

Evening soon arrived and the table was fully decked with stuff, from fish to mashed potatoes, cabbage and different little things to snack on. And as Sanji sat down, all began to take food, eating and smiling, and even Soma ate with you. “This feels like a real family gathering”, admitted Franky. “Yes, it does”, you smiled and saw how Luffy ate so much, you were sure he would burst. “The fish is nice”, smiled Usopp happily. “I like the peaches!”, beamed Chopper. “All this stuff is nice!”, smiled Franky.

It was just after dinner, the sun long gone and all of you went outside, faint music was heard from the town, and you all just admired the scenery, snowflakes softly falling around the ship. “What is that?”, asked Zoro and motioned with his head under the tree. “Why, chistmas presents” “PRESENTS?!”, Luffy, Chopper and Usopp leaped to them. “TOMORROW!” Nami and Sanji kicked them hardly while the rest laughed. “So...can I have meat?”, Luffy asked you, arms around your waist and you sighed with a smile. “Ha~ Fine. I make you something” He beamed brightly, tugging you away from the others.

[dont-hug-me-im-a-talking-thing]

Your art style is so just. Nice. The soft coloring, the nice lines, the fun shaped text boxes, the way you managed to make Warren look nice while still keeping his design. Its just so nice. Very cool blog, op :)

Mun Leafbug: Thank you so so much!!! You guys have no idea how glad I am that people enjoy my traditional art! (And I promise: I read all your tags!! They just make my day!)

I hate to say this, but this concludes the Halloween event! Thank you all for the fun asks, and I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! Treat yourself to some candy (but don’t let your teeth turn grey)!

[fluffypichu876]

SUNBRO FOR THE CHARACTER ASK

SUNBRO MY BELOVED!!!!!!! oh god i sure took my time to answer this one xD sorry for my terrible time management, dear mutual!

* favorite thing about him: he's the most friend-shaped man in the entirety of the not so friend-shaped land of lordran! he's so nice and kind and chill to talk to!

also, he's pretty much the face of the summon system, which is one of my favorite takes on co-op in video games. seeing that golden summon sign and immediately going "SOLAIRE MY BRO!" is the best :DDD (from now on that boss stands no chance lol)

* least favorite thing about him: THE WHOLE SUNLIGHT MAGGOT THING IS THE WORST. nothing feels worse than being forced to kill your truest companion :(

* favorite line: all of lines are memorable, but my personal favorite is:

"but i am a warrior of sunlight! spot my summon signature easily by its brilliant aura. if you miss it, you must be blind! hah hah hah!"

the laughter in the end is just so wholesome xDD

* brOTP: me and him, of course! 😎😎😎

xDDD jokes aside, sadly npcs don't interact much between themselves (and when they do it's offscreen), and solaire is one of the friendliest towards the chosen undead (the player) so their bro vibes feels the most natural for me.

* OTP: again, the npcs barely interact, so pretty much any ship could work? i dunno xD

* nOTP: just any problematic ships, really.

* random headcanon: i loved every post i saw of solaire being friends with lautrec, much to the latter's dismay xDDDD so i share that headcanon too now! (and in-game the few lautrec summon signs are always besides solaire's and i find that super funny)

* favorite picture: this fanart is so good! i love the colors and it has such a soft feeling to it. it encompasses solaire's friendliness really well! (also that painted sun lol)

[olympiansally]

Hi Lu ! I came here from the uquiz you made about the color of love and just to say, I was completly baffled by the results. It was like a kick in the stomach, but a good one I know ? I felt Seen. I answered the 12th question but to summarize shortly : did the test when had Boyfriend, got soft fresh green , broke up cause I'm on the aromantic spectrum and really good at fucking things up, redo the test like months after, got dark stormy blue. Never felt better reading it. Thank you so much for that.

Also, good luck for the top surgery fellow trans folk, if everything work according to plan I'll get mine mid-august ! 🏳️‍⚧️

Hope you have a wonderful day

✨this is the quiz anon is talking about ✨

Hi!!

This is so nice to hear! I’m really happy the results gave you nice vibes at different times of your life AND I’m really happy to know you’re taking the quiz through life with you <3

This quiz always brings me some of the sweetest feedback ever, thank you so much for sharing your experience with it!!

And also thank you for the well wishes! The top surgery has happened already (insert celebrations and such lmao) and I am currently struggling with my post op, but all is well if a little painful lmao I hope everything works out wonderfully for yours! Feel free to stop by if you ever want to talk about it btw, I know I deeply craved ppl to share and compared experiences with regarding this so know that I’m always here :)

Have a wonderful day yourself!!

[byebyebyeuterus]

Recovery Shopping

I went on a little Amazon shopping spree yesterday to get all the items I need for a (hopefully) successful recovery. And as someone who loves to shop - it was a nice little break from all the worrying I've been doing about this surgery.

Ever since I've found out that I was going to have this operation, I have been all over the internet to get tips, advice, and ideas on what sort of items I might need post-op in order to have a successful recovery. I think I got myself a pretty good haul. I don't know how much of this stuff I will actually use, but I figured I'd rather be over-prepared. So, here's what we have. (incase you, reading this, might be going through the same thing):

a grabber - to reach things that might be hard to get, things that fall on the floor, etc.

a bedside cart - tall enough so that I can just reach over and grab whatever is on the cart (cell phone, book, meds, etc.)

a pack of men's pajama pants - large enough so that the waist band will not be rubbing up against or sitting on top of my incisions.

a couple of nightgowns - in the event that pants just aren't working

GRANNY PANTIES - again, so that the band comes up/over my incisions. At least they come in cute colors?

grippy socks - I ordered like 10 pairs of these. I'm clumsy enough as it is. We don't need any falls or other potential accidents while I'm recovering.

a squishmallow - I had no idea what this was... but I cannot tell you how many hysterectomy recovery lists had this item. But, it's just a really cute, really soft, stuffed animal/pillow. Apparently it's great to hold up against your stomach during car rides (so that the seatbelt isn't directly on your stomach/stitches). It also helps I guess to be able to hold this against my stomach if I laugh or cough. And honestly, it's just cute to look at. I got a sloth. 😆

body wipes - pretty self explanatory. for those days where a shower seems like too much work.

peppermint tea - to help with nausea.

ginger candies - to help with nausea.

a weighted heated blanket - I actually ordered this on black friday and it might be one of the best purchases I ever made just in general. So cozy. Anyways, the heat and weight will help with pain, in addition to the ice packs I already have.

Miralax and Gas-X - I wasn't prepared for this. But apparently this surgery can cause a lot of problems with bowel movements. It seems women either struggle with this, or have no problems at all... one extreme or the other. yikes.

On top of this, I've had a few friends give me some supplies too. 🥰 I got a nice care package from Michigan with some Faygo, Tim Horton's Coffee, chocolates, a book to read, some puzzle books, and a card game. It totally made my day and brought me to tears when it arrived. I also had a friend give me a stuffed animal filled with lavender and other good smelling things that I can throw in the microwave - it acts as a nice, soothing heating pad. It's already been used a lot to help with the pain I've been having for the past few weeks.

Anyways, while I'm still pretty nervous/worried about the operation itself, I think I'm pretty well prepared for everything that comes after. I even have a lonnnnng list of movies and TV shows to watch as well as a number of books to read.

[lou-struck]

Honey, I Shrunk The Devildom! (Part 3)

Obey Me! Datables (minus Luke x MC!)

Featuring: Simeon, Solomon, Diavolo, and Barbatos

~Another magic troupe lol, here’s how I think the Obey Me men would respond to being magically shrunk down.

Part: 1, 2

Warnings: None

(I want to do this series with BNHA guys too! let me know what you think.)

Simeon~ 

There is a certain mushroom that is native to the Devildom that most demons know to steer clear of. It’s not poisonous or anything like that. In fact, it’s actually quite lovely when prepared properly. But if one were to accidentally step on one as it's maturing, it releases a magical cloud of pollen with peculiar properties.

Our Sweet Angel was walking through the gardens of Purgatory hall and accidentally trod across the tiny purple mushroom. It releases a soft pink cloud of pollen that shrunk the angel to the size of a popsicle stick. As he looks up at the towering world around him, he realizes that he has fallen victims to the plant's natural protection from predators. With a sigh, he waits by his fallen bookbag until someone is able to assist him.

When he sees you are the one to come to his aid he feels an overwhelming sense of relief. A soft blush coats his cheeks as you carefully lift him up to your ear so that he may speak properly.

"Mc I believe I may have ignored our lesson in Devildom Botany the other day," he says "Would you mind staying with me until this little spell wears off?"

When you agree he gets comfortable on your shoulder admiring the interesting view that his new height is giving him, he enjoys looking down at your homework assignments and guiding you to the correct answers when you are having trouble.

"It's not every day a human ends up with an actual angel on their shoulder." he laughs scanning the next problem. “This may be a good experience for both of us.”

Barbatos~

The Palace has no shortage of hidden traps and magical surprises around every corner. Barbatos has become quite adept at uncovering some of the more dated additions but every once in a while he stumbles across a particularly well-hidden one. This trap was underneath a carpet that he removed for cleaning. The engraved runes glow a menacing green color and shrink the butler down to a miniature size.

He looks around the much larger room and is surprised at all the little messes and uncleaned corners that his new size has revealed to him. Insecurity plagues the demon as he wonders what else he has missed over the years as he hangs his head in shame.

You end up being the one to find him in this moment of sadness and tell him that you can help him with whatever he needs you to do.

Gratefully he accepts your offer to help and has you fetch some special tools for the job. The cleaning supplies is enchanted to magically adjust to the desired size of it's user. When he touches it it shrinks down to a size smaller than him so he can deep clean those hard-to-reach corners.

Once he gets going you are amazed to see how fast he moves despite his size.

"When he finishes with one shelf he looks up at you happily. "Excuse me MC, would you mind carrying me up to the next level? I can't quite reach it."

You of course help him out as he thanks you repeatedly promising to take you out for a very nice meal when he is fully grown again.

Diavolo~

The Prince is one of the only creatures in all three realms who has access to the Crown jewels of the Devildom. These trinkets and gems contain mysterious powers That has been preserved by generations before.

Some items may just be well-crafted and completely harmless, but it’s almost a sort of gamble for him as he looks through the trove of treasures trying to find a gift for you to wear.

Although he thinks you would look absolutely endearing in any of the items on display, he knows that the wage of some of the gems may be too much for you.

He ops instead for a smaller necklace that sparkles with the light of a dying star., But as he reaches out to touch it he ends up brushing a ruby red pendant next to it.

He shrinks in stature tremendously and for the first time in his life, the prince of the Devildom feels small...

Although he initially wondered how he would manage to get through his evening with you when he is only a few inches in height, he began warming up to the idea of having someone else be the center of attention for a change.

With this, he brings you into his little scheme to make the most of this less-than-ideal situation. It sounds dramatic and all too entertaining so you of course accept his request to conceal his presence.

With the Little Prince hiding on your shoulder, Diavolo was able to navigate the party in secret listening in on anything that his officials are speaking of when they believe him not to be in the room.

What he hears shocks him as he overhears tales of corruption among some of his most trusted officials.

Halfway through the party he reverts back to his original size and declares that there are to be some major changes happening in his Kingdom.

Solomon~

The sorcerer knows that there are so many demons in the Devildom that would want nothing more than to sink their teeth into him. He is unliked by many and untrusted by more than that.

His experiences have made him very knowledgeable about what he can do to avoid certain situations that would leave him vulnerable. Being an immortal human has led him to believe that he must deal with any kind of hardship by himself, only involving others if it involves bartering or deception.

So when he accidentally misread a spell and caused both his power and his size to deplete, he felt what he hasn’t felt in a long time, vulnerability.

His breathing comes out in ragged gasps as he hears slithering on the other side of the walls. He could try to wait it out, but as of right now he’s fair game to whatever picks up his scent first. but then a rave of hope shine through the dark and hallways of RAD. 

It’s you. The turbulence of emotions coursing through his tiny body cause his knees to buckle as you rush over to his aid, placing him gently in the safety of you palms.

He’s quiet as you take care of him only speaking to give you direction or advice on what to do next to change him back to normal.

He may not have a set plan, but for the first time in a very long time Solomon feels comforted in knowing that someone else is looking after him. 

Someone else cares what happens to him…

[library-of-ohara]

Welcome!

Welcome to ‘The Writer Shuffle’ where some members of the One Piece writing community have come together for a special project for the month of April! Starting from April 1st you can send in any request you’d like to the blog and your request will be picked up by one of the many talented writers taking part!

How does this work? Send in your requests as normal to this blog and not the writer’s own blog. Don’t worry about any of our rules because someone is bound to pick up the request. It’s just still ‘reader insert’ only content.

You can’t request a certain writer it’ll be completely at random who takes on your request and posts it! To avoid spamming the page it’ll be set up on a queue.

Please be kind, polite and stick around for the fun.

We take N/SFW, headcannons, SFW and most things!

CLOSED: Masterlist One Masterlist Two

Introducing our writers....

Franky [@cyborg-franky] the idiot who likes WBP way too much, sends you on dates with fictional disaster messes. Thought this would be a fun little event and got some friends along for the ride. I look forward to working as part of an amazing team <3

Sunny❦ [@missallsundaes] Hiii, happy to be part of the team and a guest writer here, I'm looking forward to doing some prompts for y'all! You may know me as Rosinante obsessed writer and artist. My favorite characters to write for are Sanji, Buggy, and Usopp! ♡

Bee [@secretsnailor] 'Sup! I'm a slow + long-winded author but I hope to at least do something fun here! Really excited to be working on this project with everyone and see how it all shakes out. I'm looking forward to trying new things I wouldn't normally do in this as an excuse to stretch my wings.<3 (Unless I get utterly distracted by a good WBP prompt because I love them). Let's have a fun time together!

Ares [@lawscorazon] the patron saint of law content and good music taste. it’s a pleasure to be here! i’m honored to be included amongst such an amazing team of writers. i look forward to writing for y’all. ❦ Didi [@usopp-writes] the older sister, who loves to distract herself from life, by writing for people that shares a passion for One Piece with her. I hope you'll like the craziness I can come up with and enjoy the stories this fun group of writers will make for you.

Maxx [@sugxrslushy] just here trying my best, I love to write all things fluffy and soft! also ceo of loving one piece women lol. very excited to be sharing this with such lovely writers <3 and excited to meet all of you!!

Ann [@fire-fist-ann] I am The feral caffeinated one of the group . I enjoy to write for others in my free time when I'm not working and just getting to make new friends and making people smile. I hope we all can get along and become friends and share our love for one piece.

Lev [@dxvilmanlev] hello! I’m excited to be apart of this team! If you know me you know I love Zoro<3 and the color green lol, I look forward to writing some fun things for y’all!<3

Lemon [@eustasssimp] i am happy to be here with these lovely people + am happy to see what fun writing opportunities this brings! my op favorites are Kid, Thatch, Franky, Barto + i like writing just about any character<3

Eve [@smoleeveewrites] Hey all! Nice to meet everyone it's your local ASL + Robin simp and I'm happy to be here with everyone! Hopefully this is a new opportunity to write more for other characters (since I always write Ace and Sabo lol). Can't wait to have loads of fun

Lale [@childofblackmaria] the dilf slayer has entered the chat! very excited to be part of this project with all those talents and also very looking forward to having lots of fun with your requests! i love coming up with fun scenarios and calling old men baby girls. my favs are Rayleigh, Smoker & Roger but i enjoy writing for other chars, too. let’s have a fun time together <3 Star [@ztarvokwrites] hi hi! it be me! star!! your favorite galdino simp! i'm so so so SO excited to be here with everyone involved! doesn't it seem like fun? :D anywho, my fave characters are; galdino/mr 3 (obv), usopp, helmeppo, chopper and buggy!! i can't wait to write for you guys!!

Meli [@kaizokuwritings] your content provider for underrated characters! i'm looking forward to participating in this great blog with my artist friends! i love a lot of characters but my favorites are Mihawk, Smoker, Gaban and King. i hope i can bring you some happiness with my writing!

[kaizokuwritings]

ASS, TITS OR THIGHS ? ft. op boys

𖧵 characters: too much lmao, and unusual characters

𖧵 warnings: smut, female reader, includes all body types (i hope and tried, sorry if this turns out to be wrong), not enough proofreading.

𝐀𝐒𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒

law, thatch, kid, shanks, buggy, denjiro, who's who, doflamingo, crocodile, king, vergo, sengoku, hawkins, sakazuki, rayleigh.

he likes to have a hand on it all the time, grabbing it in a falsely disinterested way and even in public. he finds this part of the body extremely attractive and often squints at it as you walk by, admiring the shape of your buttocks, and how it gives a nice touch to your shape. he doesn't hesitate, in a private setting, to slap your ass, and see a red mark on one of your cheeks when he undresses you. he also takes a lot of pleasure, when he fingers you, to see your ass shaking by the assault of his fingers, and he often gets a hard-on very easily when he sees your juice splashing his hand. he's like hypnotized, like a madman when he slams his hips against your ass, admiring how it undulates under his strokes, how easily it bounces. as much as he likes to slam his hips against your ass, he also enjoys placing kisses on it, as if to apologize for being too hard sometimes. during more relaxed moments, he lies on your ass, falling asleep on it as if it were a luxury pillow (and it is).

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒

killer, mihawk, sanji, benn, gaban, rosinante, marco, newgate, katakuri, kuzan, borsalino, ace, vista, momonga, drake, zoro, lucci, issho.

for him, it's the most intimate part of your body. no matter how thick or thin your thighs are, he likes to run his hands over them, whether it's putting a hand on your thigh under the table, or squeezing your flesh while he devours you with his mouth. he finds the shape of your thighs bewitching, like the entrance to your intimacy. if you wear beautiful lingerie and specifically here beautiful garters, then you just drive him crazy. the way the lace hugs your curves and makes you even more desirable than usual turns his head and makes him even more crazy about you. as he gradually moves down to your entrance, he loves to place kisses on your thighs, even hickeys (or little bites for the more possessive). he enjoys watching the chills spread over your skin as he places his warm hands on the skin of your thighs, and he loves to feel your thighs close around him as he sucks and licks your wet pussy. the way your thighs tighten, and spasm around him are great proof that he's doing a good job and encourages him to accentuate his sucking on your clit and lick your juices. he doesn't care if you choke him with your legs, it forces him to dip his tongue even more into your inviting walls.

𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒

shanks, marco, thatch, mihawk, doflamingo, sanji, zoro, kuzan, law, denjiro, kaku, bartolomeo, smoker, paulie, benn

this man could spend hours looking at your breasts and never get tired of it. in fact, it's the first thing he does when he gets up in the morning: stare at your breasts, and appreciate them no matter how big or small they are, whether they're well up or down. he finds the flesh so soft and sensitive that it fascinates him. he loves it when you wear beautiful lingerie (in his favorite color of course) and he loves it even more when you take it off and see your breasts jump out at him. he takes them in his hands, enjoying the texture of your nipples under his fingers and how it makes you so sensitive, so excited. he happily runs his tongue around your nipple while his other hand is busy titillating its twin. your moans are always the icing on the cake as he devours your breasts. he likes to grind his cock between the soft flesh of your boobs, and often uses them when he's close to finishing and doesn't want to fill you up. he always falls asleep with at least one hand on one of your breasts and often wakes up with his head on it or at least in his sights when he wakes up. and of course, he often leaves a hickey or two on your breasts, proof of his frequent visits to that area of your body.

tag list 🌶 : @decayz @pirate-shrimpi @chloe-nanami @doctorgerth @ochizokulevy @undercoverweeeb @macdonaldsmanager

[ronearoundblindly]

Hello! I’ve never done an “ask” before, but since you’re one of my fave writers I thought I’d give it a go. I love the way you write Your soft Steve. I especially love how cerebral he is; even if he’s not sure how to open up and express himself easily (even to reader), you show us how thoughtful and self-aware he is. So my ask is having him go against type a bit. Have him get a visceral reaction like jealousy, wherein he just ACTS out of a primal urge (like the latest Dignity of his choice where he is at the mercy of his basic instincts). Jealous Steve would be hot. Or angry Steve (like if some guy was hitting on reader aggressively). I know you’re working on a lot of great other stories, but if this idea sparks an interest I’d love to see what you would do with it! ❤️

So IRL, I loathe jealousy but damn if it isn't some of the sexiest. shit. ever. in-fic.

Message Received, over 1.5k b/c there must be plotty plot

Summary: At a diplomatic event, Steve realizes he doesn't like when you have more fun at the function than he does.

Warnings for macho-shit, general possessiveness, but I'll be honest, I still wrote it kinda soft in comparison to other jelly!Steve's I've read. I am incapable of much 'dark' behavior. Also zero editing.

dividers by @firefly-graphics

You wouldn’t categorize these fancy receptions as ‘fun.’ Often times they are long and boring. The worst ones are arduous, ones where you have to hold your tongue and be spoken down to by others, ones where you are Steve’s trophy and assumed to have no opinions of your own.

This is one of the best ones.

Nova Corps has sent a delegation to Earth for some negotiations for support and supplies. The people are fascinating, funny, and intelligent. The absolute best part is that one young-ish man (compared to the others who look 60+ by human standards and you aren’t sure what the equivalent is for them frankly) is knowingly talking to you about your interests. He’s aware of Earth’s current scientific understanding and its limitations. He knows you are studied and, in fact, the lead of your lab at AvIn. He’s just nice about it.

My god, you never get nice people at these things. It’s so freeing.

His name is a variant of Michael, and he says you’re welcome to use that instead of a convoluted native tongue. Michael has blue skin but appears extremely similar to human. There’s pink- and orange-skinned members of the delegation as well. You want to know, scientifically but also as respectfully as possible, what the differences are. Various facial and body features show across them, but none are consistently isolated by color. It’s fascinating.

Michael is so excited that you are fascinated, too.

Steve’s going through the motions. These functions are a chore—but not always—and he has a purpose for being here—but it’s complete now—so he keeps listening to the Nova Prime while she speaks of logistical concerns for the partnership with Earth and yada yada…

Man, Steve is not usually this over these events so early in the evening. It’s probably due to this being the party at the end of five whole days. Ceremony after meeting after photo-op after ceremony after meeting.

His eyes roam around the room for you. If you seem sufficiently ‘done’ as well, he’s ready to make excuses and head home.

But you’re not. You are not ‘done’ at all.

That’s your engrossed face.

That’s your flattered face.

Steve purses his lips and realizes he stopped listening to the Prime.

“I’m so sorry, but do you know who that is over with the woman in—“

“Oh, yes, he was so delighted when we knew your wife would be here.”

Steve wants to be delighted, too, but his jaw simply tightens instead. Nova Prime tells him a name that Steve outright does not know how to repeat before—

“Call him Michael, here. It’s no bother. He’s quite used to it, but his specialty is very similar to hers. He can talk for hours and hours since it is rare he finds a kindred spirit who understands the particulars,” she goes on.

Steve watches as your face lights up and your hand lightly drags down Michael’s arm. That’s fine. You’re talking. You’re animated and using those hand gestures that signify microscopic particles interacting in a way that Steve’s never really gotten a grasp on, and then you lift your hand to your ear and scrunch your nose, struggling to hear Michael’s answer.

That man leans forward, and it’d be fine if he just steadied himself with a touch to your arm. That’d be normal. Acceptable, but no. Michael puts his hand to your neck when he replies very close to your ear.

Steve may as well have swallowed the shield. A lump the size of Mount Rushmore is lodged in his chest. Maybe it’s heartburn from the fancy and foreign food being served for days on end. Maybe Steve needs more water. Maybe Michael needs to take a step back before—

“They seem to be getting along nicely,” the Prime says, smiling.

Tony steps into Steve’s view of your conversation and makes his way toward them.

“All-in-all, I think we’ve had a success, yes?”

“Nova Corp will never forget the generosity of Earth, Mr. Stark.”

A customary bow is exchanged, though Steve knows Tony joked about going in for a hug with the tall blond that is Nova’s Prime, and at some point, Steve cared whether Tony made an interstellar incident out of coping a feel. Not now. Steve has no care for anything Stark does because where did you go?

“Excuse me,” he hurries out after taking a step around Tony.

Steve meanders over to where you were talking with Michael a few seconds ago, grateful for his height so that he can scan the room the whole journey, but he can’t see you or the color of your dress or the blue of Michael’s skin anywhere.

He’s getting hot, and Steve has absolutely no reason to be sweating even in his three-piece suit. The serum makes it so he doesn’t break a sweat or increase his heart rate until the average person would go into cardiac arrest, and seriously, where are you?

He doesn’t want to stop people he knows in their mingling to ask ‘have you seen my wife’ over and over. For some reason that smacks of a desperation that wiggles the lump thumping against Steve’s sternum with every stride around the room.

And then Steve hears your laugh. You’re at the edge of the large ballroom. No. You’re in a hallway off the ballroom. A much quieter hallway that Steve is not at all happy to find is not better lit than the sultry event space.

There’s Michael with his forearm stretched across yours and your hands clasped at each other’s elbows.

“I can feel it,” you giggle again. “That’s amazing.”

Steve thunders down the few feet of hall to get to you, sliding a hand—the full expanse of his broad hand—across your back, between your shoulder blades, where he knows you are sensitive, and threads his fingers to land beneath the strap of your gown for the occasion. He’s delighted to get a small but visible shiver out of you, and your arm unlatches from the boy’s.

“What’s amazing, my beloved Keeper?” He’s sure to cast each syllable in bronze and hurl it in Michael’s direction specifically. Blue Boy knows what it means. Steve’s sure of it, but the bemused smirk never falters.

“Sweetheart,” you chirp, no hint of concern, only your excitement. “His species—that’s appropriate to say, yes?—“ Michael nods politely “—they can control a certain amount of electrical output from their brains in order to reinforce any part of their anatomy.”

Steve’s not an expert, but he’s fairly confident there’s a hard-on joke in there somewhere. You don’t seem to notice. You’re still trying to explain when Michael cuts you off.

“Basically, my bones can’t be broken,” Blue Boy concludes with a bright white smile.

Yeah, but are your teeth safe, Steve wonders.

His hand unhooks from your dress only to land possessively at the swell of your hip. This is the closest thing Steve ever does to actually touching your ass in public, and he gets a shy glancing down from you in return. He even pushes you against his hip which leads to the equivalent pressure of a grope.

You stand up ramrod straight and clear your throat.

“That’s a bold claim. Can’t,” Steve starts. “Maybe it’s a language barrier, but are you saying it’s impossible?”

Blue Boy smiles. “Mr. Rogers, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” and he bows as is customary.

You won’t, Steve almost says but catches himself. “It’s Captain Rogers.” He does not move his hand from your hip but sticks out his other with steel blue eyes fixed on Michael. “And this is traditional here.”

The boy doesn’t hesitate to take Steve’s hand, which is irritating enough, but then Steve grips—and he grips fucking hard—for a very long few seconds.

“This is Michael,” you offer politely, unknowingly, thoughtfully while a minuscule game of chicken is played two feet below your nose, “since we can’t pronounce the native tongue, or at least, I can’t.”

“Pleasure—“ Steve grips “—to meet you—“ he finally feels a small snap beneath his thumb and Blue Boy’s eye twitches while the white of his smile fades “—Michael.”

To his credit, the boy doesn’t make any other show of pain, but he does let the hand fall limp by his side while his face settles back to neutral.

“Captain,” he huffs before nodding at you, “Mrs. Rogers, excuse me. I must be returning to my people.”

Michael leaves without another bow. Steve is very pleased to have broken Michael’s…sense of custom as he turns to you.

“Sweetheart,” Steve breathes, taking your chin in his hand softly, “shall we go?”

You seem surprised. “Already? I thought you’d need to schmooze for at least another—“ but his lips cut you off.

It’s not as heavy-handed as he could be, but Steve pins your hips against him while his tongue dives past your perfect lipstick. He kinda wants to smear it. He really hopes it gets all over him.

“I want—” Steve releases your mouth “—to take you—“ and he spends a little too long dragging his lips across your jaw before finishing breathily in your ear “—home.”

That’s it, he thinks. Melt in my arms, to my touch, at my words.

He relishes every second you need to compose your response.

“Yeah,” you pant, aimlessly unfocused at the ceiling before looking at him again. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Weeeeeeeeellll, I hope you enjoyed that because 🥵 I got myself again. Hope it made sense because I'm too distracted by Steebness to be coherent. And fuck it. This is within the Fools-verse so I'mma tag the list. (It's not because I'm proud of the hng at all. No way. Nuh-uh.)

@im-a-slut-for-fluff @fangirl-swagg @georgeweaslysgirl @austynparksandpizza @bucky-fricking-barnes-reads @fallinallinmendes

Thank you for the ask! Always welcome and keep them coming!