julian_griffith

Secret Lover started in a very sexy way, to then move to a more romantic pace. Hands up: the major bonus of this drama is Chance, the actor playing Han Tuo, he is sexy as all, but at the same time, you want to cuddle him like a big teddy bear... his jealousy for Lu Jun Xi is big, but never to a level to hurt Jun Xi. The actors are both perfect for their role, and the chemistry is good, the kisses are both sexy and sweet. I love how Jun Xi is always smiling while kissing, and I also love how he is able to comfort Han Tuo just with a hug. If you want something good, with nothing of bad happening to your boys, this is the perfect pick. HEA. You can see it on GagaOOLala. Heat Level: 5/6.

Heat Level:

1/6: glances, caress, hugs, no kisses

2/6: kisses, closed mouth or camera angles

3/6: full kisses, clothes on

4/6: full kisses, some clothes off, hands above the waist, pants stay on

5/6: most clothes off, they have sex, but it’s masked, no sexy sounds

6/6: full nudity mostly hidden by camera angles, they have sex, sexy sounds

reviews_and_ramblings

Stay by My Side after the Rain was a really sweet drama, very romantic but also very chaste, there is basically little sexual interaction between Kanade and Mashiro, but this doesn't mean this is not a romance. The two men were high school best friends, but when Kanade realized his interested for Mashiro was more than friendship, he cut ties, little knowing the interest was mutual. As soon as they met again as adults, Mashiro pushes Kanade into the relationship, and from that moment on, Kanade and Mashiro together will face the trouble of being a gay couple: office, friends, families... all the aspects are faced. I liked this one, especially for the actors, they were really nice and good at expressing their feelings. HEA. You can watch it on GagaOOLala. Heat Level: 3/6.

Heat Level:

1/6: glances, caress, hugs, no kisses

2/6: kisses, closed mouth or camera angles

3/6: full kisses, clothes on

4/6: full kisses, some clothes off, hands above the waist, pants stay on

5/6: most clothes off, they have sex, but it’s masked, no sexy sounds

6/6: full nudity mostly hidden by camera angles, they have sex, sexy sounds

full_metal_ox posting in

little_details

The link will take you to a soundscape from a random forest against a scenic woodland wallpaper (chosen from Unsplash and not necessarily from the same forest), with the location and contributor identified in mouseprint at the bottom of the page.

https://www.tree.fm/

reviews_and_ramblings

Ahn Geum-hoo needs a butcher to provide fresh animal blood for his sickly brother’s medicine. While most of the butchers seem reluctant to provide him with what he needs, Nobody is willing to do Geum-hoo’s bidding. With striking features and a strong build, Nobody has quite a reputation amongst the village folk. Yet, Geum-hoo finds a way to tame this wild tiger. First, he gives him a name—Beom. Then, he invites him to a world that this nobody’s never experienced...

My Rate: 9 (www.lezhinus.com/en/comic/taming_tiger)

I have to start warning this is not exactly and happily ever after story, but more an happily until real life do not intrude... Said that, like almost all Brothers Without a Tomorrow's works, the graphic is excellent, the story is sexy but not vulgar, there is also a lot of angst, but also deep devotion between the main couple. I'm not really a fan of historical settings, but I wanted to give this one a chance since I really like Brothers Without a Tomorrow, and I was not disappointed.

reviews_and_ramblings

Life sure is ruff, especially when you’re Gyeon Heeseong. Abandoned by his pack of fellow dog shifters, he is forced to become a drug runner for a gambling ring. For his final job, he comes face to face with Savage Fang, the ruthless Wolf Den enforcer Yoon Chi-young. Everything goes (nearly) according to plan, but on his way back he is attacked and forced to return to his fearsome(?) true form…a little white cottonball of a puppy! After Chi-young finds Heeseong struggling on the streets, he takes him in, believing him to be nothing more than a stray. Will Heeseong be able to escape the ruthless, terrifying outpour of love Chi-young showers him with and escape his criminal past? Or will he be forever leashed to a life of kibble and kennels?

My Rate: 8 (www.lezhinus.com/en/comic/paws_claws)

Paws & Claws is quite innocent and cute for half episodes, and then it becomes quite sexy, but always with a cute undertone. Gyeon Heeseong is in his puppy form for most of the time, and indeed he is quite the cute puppy; Yoon Chi-young knows since the beginning that he is not a real puppy, but he respects Heeseong decision to stay in dog form and treat him like the lap dog he is. It's quite funny cause Heeseong believes he could be a fighting dog, but he is just a fluffy ball. When the sex enters the story, I almost smirked: the size of the genitals of these two males was quite unbelievable, but the sex was joyful and therefore you can just enjoy it. Even if there is a lot of sex (sometime even 2 or 3 episodes lenght), it didn't overcome the story. The story itself is quite dark, but the cuteness I said before well balance it.

delphi

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finch

There's nothing quite like reading fanfic that jumps up on your buttons and rolls around on them like my cat jumping up on my keyboard while I'm working.

Weekend one is not off to a great start, I'm gonna be honest. It's definitely now Autumn and the pressure change has my vertigo messing with me. At the moment I have tinnitus in both ears, but the right ear is the whooshing sound I usually get and my left ear is a high-pitched sound. The combination of tinnitus and audio processing disorder leads to the most ridiculous scenes in stores or restaurants or anywhere I have to talk to people because I'll be partway through an interaction and lose the ability to understand what the other person is saying.

The plan for this weekend has been cut down since bending over and other various weird movement is out, but at minimum we're planning on taking some stuff to goodwill tomorrow. This will happen. Bug went through her books some and for her that's huge. And we paid somebody with a truck to come take a few things too big for the car, so... Definitely some progress. Just not as much as I'd like.

I did also finish a fic last night but not anything I've been intending to work on, just something that took over my brain this week. Yay, that!

reviews_and_ramblings

Hisaya Yano has trouble with his roommate, Sono Odajima, at the boarding school. He breaks curfew and brings female students into the boy's dormitories. Sono is having intimate relations when Hisaya walks in and is left confused and aroused. Sono forcefully helps him deal with his erection. Made fun of for being "a serious model student", but in fact he finds himself in a jumble of romantic feelings that he can't tell anyone about, combined with his emotional trauma.

My Rate: 8 (www.ebookrenta.com/renta/sc/frm/item/146205/)

I have a little bit of mixed feeling about this one. I understand the attitude towards sex of Sono is a way to react to his juvenile trauma, but I really didn't like how he used his female friends as substitute of Yano. True, he was never claiming it was something more than sex, and on the other hand, he was always very attentive towards Yano, almost protective, so he wasn't a complete negative characters. Yano instead was really naive, maybe a little too much to be able to understand Sono's trauma and help him fix his trouble. But well, they are teenagers, and apparently their love is sincere. Sono wants also to be open and honest with Yano, so the future for them seems nice. Overall it was a good one.

reviews_and_ramblings

Who will win when a bad boy player and a princely narcissist go head-to-head in bed?!

Unassuming office worker by day, seductive playboy by night—Shinobu Urakawa is living his best double life until the stuck-up prince of sales Hikaru Omoteya invades Shinobu’s after-hours sanctuary. Shinobu keeps hoping the straight Hikaru will get tired of crashing a gay bar, but he keeps coming back! When Shinobu notices the looks Hikaru keeps sending his way, he decides to play dirty to reclaim his nightly refuge.

It doesn’t take much to get Hikaru into bed. He’s surprisingly responsive to Shinobu’s every touch, and Shinobu’s plan of loving and leaving hits a setback when he can’t get enough of his prissy coworker. As one night turns into many, Shinobu starts to wonder if this is still revenge or if now he’s getting into something much sweeter…

My Rate: 8 (amzn.to/46cyhDw)

I really like this one. Sure, it's quite hard to believe that with just a pair of glasses and bangs over your eyes, people will not regnize someone, but all in all it was a nice comedy, and well played too. Both Shinobu and Hiraku enters the relationship with all the wrong reasons, but it's clear that they are both really nice guys, unable to be mean. And therefore what started with a one night stands, it goes on into a real relationship, especially since Shinobu realizes that Hiraku's feelings are sincere. He arrives even to want to protect him, like a real knight in shining armour. The graphic was nice, the side characters of the twin twinks are a blast, so funny. There was no drama, just pure romantic comedy, between two men who are perfect together.

ceciliatan

I’m still riding the creative high and queer community solidarity feeling that came from reading at Writers With Drinks in Seattle. Charlie Jane Anders was an incandescent host, Charlie’s Queer Books put so many books into people’s hands, all the readers were fire!

The story I read from, “Large Emotional Models,” is now live on the Sunday Morning Transport!

I’ve just spent the past five minutes trying to write a sentence describing the story, but the story is itself the best expression of the underlying ideas, so I keep throwing them away. The official description is “a story about fitting into one’s skin and the universe.”

I was motivated to write it when I was on my way to an academic conference, and I got ad-targeted on Instagram by a university in Europe offering positions to American academics fleeing the country. I started writing a story on the airplane to the conference, balling up all my feelings about the moment we are living through right now, with AI and LLMs and attacks on academia and science and the tidal wave of transphobia, and out came a story that is about Prince and David Bowie and grief?

It is their free story this month, so everyone can read it, but if you’d like to try getting a really great sf/f story from Sunday Morning Transport every week, here’s a signup link for friends and family to get two months free: https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/smt2024

Collage of photos from Writers with Drinks (photos by Jo Sisodia/Charlie’s Queer Books):
Collage of photos by Jo Sisodia/Charlie's Queer Books showing Cecilia Tan, a dark-haired author in dark glasses wearing black, at a lectern in a large church-like lecture hall full of people

Mirrored from Cecilia Tan.

reviews_and_ramblings

While his V-tuber persona, Mahiru, is bright and cheerful on screen, the real Mayo is gloomy and unconfident. Adored by his audience as Mahiru, he wishes he were confident enough to be seen and loved as his real self. Even his manager, Ogino, seems to see him more as Mahiru than Mayo sometimes... and when Ogino takes their relationship to a new level, Mayo worries that it's only because Ogino values "Mahiru" and wants him to continue on as his character.

Over the course of their sexual relationship, Mayo doubts Ogino's sincerity, but Ogino finally admits that he's always admired Mayo for who he really is. A sexy, sado-maso kink romance, incorporating the complexity of online persona and identity.

A 2025 Chill Chill Award winner!

My Rate: 7 (amzn.to/4ge6irm)

My Noons and Midnights Are for You was sexy but not vulgar. I really like the sweet and sexy Mayo, who is completely unaware he is a deadly weapon for Ogino's heart. Without wanting, Mayo completely conquers Ogino, and Ogino becomes everything for Mayo, manager, partner, caretaker... it's a highly mutual dependency relationship, but in no way this is sick, on the contrary it's a way for Mayo to balance is real persona, with his online imagine. Really nice graphic, I quite enjoyed also the sexy scene, cause they were explicit but not al all vulgar.

reviews_and_ramblings

The cool and capable Kou from Accounting, and Eito, the company's upbeat top salesman, star in a heart-throbbing story of mutual unrequited love!

Kou, who's really serious about his job and a bit feared by his colleagues, and Eito, who's being eyed for the next managerial position, are total opposites at first glance.
However, unbeknownst to their colleagues, the two are actually close buddies, and Eito stays over at Kou's place all the time.
Even though he's already come out as gay, Kou starts to feel restless as their relationship grows more intimate and vulnerable with each passing day.
Eito, on the other hand, feels conflicted since Kou's already told him that he's not his type, and that nothing could ever happen between them.

A slow-burn romance between two hardworking friends who both yearn for something more!

My Rate: 8 (www.ebookrenta.com/renta/sc/frm/item/147828/)

I really loved this one, the romance was nice and slow-burn, leading to an apex that was passionate without being explicit. I can see Eito and Kou's future life, a peaceful and comforting relationship, where both partners respect and support each other. I also liked that Kou's homosexuality, while not enphatized at work, it was dealt with a very natural way, so much that Kou is able to discuss it with his co-workers, and even realizing there are other gay men too in the office. It's what you are expecting in contemporary society, you don't have to do a huge coming out, but simply discuss it, like someone would discuss about their marriage or family. The graphic is nice too, but most of all, it's the sweetness of Eito that has conquered me.

reviews_and_ramblings

"I'm searching for the 'other half of my soul'."

Masataka, who enjoys a self-indulgent university life, is invited by his professor to a reading circle where he meets his junior in the same philosophy program, Eito. Eito's known in their department for his good looks and how insanely serious he is, plus he's gay but doesn't care what other people think of him. Masataka approaches him out of curiosity, but then...?!

My Rate: 7

I really like the story between Masataka and Eito, they are both very interesting characters. I like the coolness of Eito, whose harsh words are completely the opposite of the tenderness he displays with his gestures. And I like how Masataka is endearing himself to Eito without even really trying. The setting is probably not original, but the best of the story is all in the characters. And of course the graphic is really good too.

delphi

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anne

I've been fandoms-in-law with kpop for decades, but KPop Demon Hunters pushed me over the edge into the rabbit hole. So far my kpop buds have told me about EXO, Stray Kids, Ateez, and Mamamoo. Other suggestions very welcome--Athénaïs, I'm looking at you, obviously!

My current favorite subgenre is "Youtube vocal coaches losing their everlovin minds about Ejae belting an A5 and ad-libbing a D6."

technical singing wonk alert: those are notes that opera singers hit, except for the belted A5, which is...I'm not sure even Mariah Carey ever did that. D6 is one step higher than you hear in Allegri's Miserere. tl;dr Ejae should have been a household name a long time ago and I hope she gets a recording contract if she wants one.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: How It's Done

delphi

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finch

Over on the 32-bit cafe board, Eladnarra linked to a recent post of hers about disability in the recent blog post thread, and two other community members chimed in about their wives' experiences as breast cancer survivors, and I started thinking. My thoughts got a little overgrown for a reply on a message board, so I thought I'd write a post instead.

( cw for medical discussion, unsurprisingly )

I don't have a conclusion. Just... I was thinking about it.

Profile

julian_griffith

Julian Griffith: Historical QUILTBAG Romantic Fiction

August 2013

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Page Summary

reviews_and_ramblings - Secret Lover (2025)
reviews_and_ramblings - Stay by My Side after the Rain (2025)
full_metal_ox in little_details - Resource: tree.fm, an audio library of global forest sounds.
reviews_and_ramblings - Taming the Tiger by Brothers Without a Tomorrow
reviews_and_ramblings - Paws & Claws by llju, Duhaem and Marin Code
delphi - Six Sentence Sunday
finch - first weekend
reviews_and_ramblings - Pittosporum by Shino Mikami
reviews_and_ramblings - Ask And You Will Receive by Niyama
ceciliatan - New story at Sunday Morning Transport! *rocket emoji*
reviews_and_ramblings - My Noons and Midnights Are for You by Luria
reviews_and_ramblings - You Should Be the One to Come Kiss Me by Yamayade
reviews_and_ramblings - Noumi-senpai no Benmei by Koala Oomugi
delphi - Six Sentence Sunday
anne - help I fell in
delphi - REC: Untitled Kyouji Portrait by yas (Let's Go Karaoke!, Narita Kyouji)
finch - on survivng

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Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

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Page generated Sep. 18th, 2025 11:35 pm

julian_griffith

Reading

Secret Lover (2025)

Stay by My Side after the Rain (2025)

Resource: tree.fm, an audio library of global forest sounds.

Taming the Tiger by Brothers Without a Tomorrow

Paws & Claws by llju, Duhaem and Marin Code

Six Sentence Sunday

first weekend

Pittosporum by Shino Mikami

Ask And You Will Receive by Niyama

New story at Sunday Morning Transport! rocket emoji

My Noons and Midnights Are for You by Luria

You Should Be the One to Come Kiss Me by Yamayade

Noumi-senpai no Benmei by Koala Oomugi

Six Sentence Sunday

help I fell in

REC: Untitled Kyouji Portrait by yas (Let's Go Karaoke!, Narita Kyouji)

on survivng

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August 2013

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