W2 Was Here

Lindsay Lohan’s 2010 Mugshot In Croutons

Polish folks LARPing as Americans, some photographs of (by Maciej Margielski)

More phots here.

Incredibly well said.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang Issue 121: The Great Outdoors

cover by melanofly

~*~

Fine Wine, by spicy-wrenegade *

There Stands The Grass, by Togi Kayako (土宜草子)

Kindling, by Iron Eater *

Casting Pearls, by Greta Jia-Kang Cabrel

Landscape with Oak and Irritated Traveler, by shukyou *

Lakeshore Delights, by Rey Rider *

Big Girl Words, by Etienne Telling

I shelter you with my branches. I taste my fruit on your tongue., by Devin Ambrosia *

Summer Skin, by ChibiSaboten

This New Season, by Rowan York

On the Wall, by Shirozubon Saruko

*illustrated

—

The Fisherwoman’s Prize, by serenity_winner

~*~

Welcome to Shousetsu Bang*Bang International Park! Shousetsu Bang*Bang, better known by the acronym “SSBB”, is the world’s oldest (that we know of) international park dedicated entirely to the cultivation and preservation of original queer smut.

Since 2005, SSBB has gathered over 12 million words of endangered and threatened erotica, protecting them and making them accessible so that visitors from around the globe can continue to enjoy them for internet generations to come. We believe that a diverse ecosystem is a healthy ecosystem, and that a healthy ecosystem is one allowed to flourish wherever it feels most comfortable, which means you won’t find artificial divisions between biomes or rigid gatekeeping of ecotones here.

Instead, here in our pages, you’ll encounter majestic work-unsafe sights featuring a vibrant array of genders, bodies, identities, relationships, genitals, and kinks, all in their natural habitats. We encourage you to start at the beginning of the issue and follow the path as you venture through its contents, taking things as they come and letting yourself be surprised by what you might encounter. Of course, some guests may choose to curate their own experiences, and that’s fine too! What matters is the relationship you cultivate with what you find here.

Supported by an army of volunteers, SSBB has managed to keep its doors open and admission completely free for over two decades now. If you’d like to know what it takes to be an SSBB Rainbow Ranger, check out our upcoming themes and dates or visit our Discord to chat with other volunteers! We’re always looking for new recruits as we continue our living out our mission by giving writers and artists a space to share original works featuring queer love stories and happy endings!

And as you visit these beautiful lands, remember the SSBB hiker’s creed:

Take nothing but inspiration

Leave nothing but comments

Tell all your friends

—

😔

If you would like to join me on this long and patient llama hunt, I have prepared a crude map of the terrain so you can get your bearings. We are starting on the road right next to the neighbour's barn.

My first instinct was to resolve the situation through diplomacy. If the animals wanted to slightly broaden the grazing perimeter, well, okay; I could let them eat on the side of the road. Unfortunately, only Pirlouit supported this plan.

He kept trying to stop and eat, while the llamas had places to go.

So I followed them along the road for quite a while, patiently waiting to reach the wider stretch where I knew I could sprint ahead, overtake everyone and force them to turn around. Not yet a full victory but at least I'd feel like I was regaining some influence over events.

But Pampérigouste is familiar with my manoeuvres, and she turned around of her own initiative before we reached this spot, left the road, and led everyone into the woods for a bit (and almost managed to shake me off as I kept getting slowed down by brambles, being the only person in this situation who was wearing clothes); then she re-emerged on the road near the barn, and went into the neighbour's pasture. Which is quite vast, and goes all the way down to the torrent.

So naturally, Pampe went all the way down to the torrent—following a route of astonishingly unnecessary complexity and glancing back now and then to check that her followers had not lost faith.

The other animals clearly felt that once you've reached a vast and lush pasture, the logical next step is to stay and eat (while Pampe sees it as evidence that vaster and lusher pastures remain to be discovered.)

... that is, until we reached the torrent and I finally managed to turn everyone around, back in the direction of their pasture. At that exact moment, Pampe realised grazing was an urgent priority.

Once we finally reached the road, with Pampe bringing up the rear at an aggressively leisurely pace, I figured that if I got the rest of the herd back in their pasture, she would grudgingly follow.

I was wrong.

The other animals briefly hesitated (it was getting late; their pasture was right there; they don't like spending the night in unfamiliar places) before recommitting to Pampe.

We could have actually followed the road in this direction all the way back to my house, and therefore the other, upper gate to their pasture, bringing this expedition to a neat and peaceful conclusion. Pampe solved this problem by throwing herself into the woods.

At this stage I feel that my updated map will be more informative than human language.

(I made an attempt to restore coherence to our journey through the use of directional arrows.)

When we somehow ended up back in the neighbour's pasture after an exciting (not for me) chase through the woods, I admitted defeat, and texted my neighbour to let him know my animals would be spending the night in his pasture due to circumstances not meaningfully under my control, but I would be back on the case in the morning to get them home. Having met Pampe, he didn't ask any further questions.

I didn't really believe that the animals might magically return on their own during the night, but still I left the pasture gate open—but only the one near my house; the other gate by the neighbour's pasture remained closed because I just couldn't face the slope again.

And somehow, the next morning, when I opened my window, everyone was here.

I should add that my neighbour later found several tufts of llama wool caught on his fence in various places, allowing us to partially reconstruct the llamas' return journey (that's me in the background attempting to get a statement from his cow.)

I have therefore updated my map once more to illustrate (in green) the final stage of this expedition, based on physical evidence and on my partial understanding of Pampe's worldview.

A God I Can Handle, 2025

Realized I never posted my recipe for Zzoup on tumblr! It's up for free on my soup patreon, and if you like it you could possibly subscribe to get 100+ other soup recipes, and a new one every month!

"The colour: old blood on snow. The taste: paprika, mushrooms, irony. The recipe: winewound chanterelles, exile's rose, paprika, pork stock, lament-onions, hanged men's tears, and some salt."

by Shirozubon Saruko

Somehow, the one thing Sën hadn’t been prepared for was that it might be pretty.

It was, though. Even going on ten years of his life spent pulling raw ores and gems out of the earth, it was one of the prettiest things he’d ever seen. He couldn’t help holding up his lantern toward the side of the lift as it descended, lighting up the slightly swaying scroll of each crag and crenellation of the Wall as they went past. They each caught the glow as brightly as a ripple in water, like the gleam off a lake in sunlight. Or the best he remembered what that looked like, anyway. The stone of the Wall itself was pure black, but so glossy and smooth it gave back just as much light as it took.

There was plenty of time to watch it go by. The lift moved by hand-crank, one at the top and one at the bottom, and even the two burly dwarves sweating and grunting to turn it now together could only make it go so fast. More of the weight had to be chain than lift, Sën figured. The sheer drop of it went down further than their lantern-lights had been able to reach from the top ledge, and probably much further beyond.

“This is your first time, eh?”

He glanced over, startled, to find the soldier next to him looking over at him. It was just the two of them right now, that being all the lift would bear at a time, but Sën hadn’t been expecting a chat. Or really that any of the soldiers would much bother acknowledging him at all, if he was being honest.

No point in being rude himself, though. “Aye,” he allowed, and hitched up his pack a bit on his aching shoulders. “Do I come off that green?”

The soldier surprised him again by laughing, easy and friendly. A strip of weathered skin around his eyes was about all that showed between his helmet and beard, but it crinkled at the corners in a pleasantly well-worn way. “Only in that you’re not sick of looking at it yet,” he said, and nodded smiling to the wall behind Sën’s shoulder. “We’ll fix that soon enough.” He nodded again to Sën’s tentative smile back. “Name’s Thallr. Been coming down here since the scouts first found it, just about.”

Sën’s eyes widened a bit. “Really. How many tours is that, then?”

“Oh, not quite a dozen,” Thallr said, dismissively, as though that were somehow not much. “No one regiment can come more than one moon out of every three. Regulations.”

That could’ve lured Sën into asking more, in spite of himself, but it was just then their descent slowed down and turned increasingly shuddery. He had to brace with his no-lantern hand on a strut of the lift to keep from stumbling. By the time he looked up, he could see dimly that a stone floor was rising up to meet the bottom of the lift’s entry doorway, and a moment or two later they at last came to a jolting stop.

The soldier motioned him out first, and followed — and then when they were out and the lift on its way up again, surprised him one more time by stopping to offer a hand. “Didn’t catch your name,” he said, kindly enough, for all it jolted Sën guiltily with realization.

“Ah, beg your pardon. I’m Sën.” He took the offered hand for them to clasp forearms. Thallr’s was huge and boulder-solid in his hand, under the chain and leathers.

“Welcome to the Wall, then, Sën,” Thallr said, catching his eyes with a smile. But though he held the gaze, the smile faded after a moment, into an oddly intent seriousness Sën didn’t yet in that moment understand. “And good luck to you.”

-

GUESS WHO'S BACK IN SSBB

IF YOU GUESSED MY WIFE

by shukyou

If he saw one fucking bug, he was going to kill himself. One single fucking bug. An ant. Ants were bugs. Weren’t they? Fuck. He was regretting every decision he’d ever made. Everything was moving. The ground was wet. The mud was staining his shoes. Everything was wet. Why was it fucking wet? Why did everything even vaguely connected to the Sylvan Kingdom have to be wet and dirty and slimy and full of goddamn fucking bugs—

The guard wasn’t there one moment and was the next. She appeared as a breeze blew through the branches, shifting all the patterns of shadow and sunlight. Zil, with great dignity, did not shriek with alarm. He hated nature so fucking much. He waited for the guard to give some kind of greeting, or perhaps a warning, but her leaf-green face was impassive. By the Howling fucking Stars, she was going to make him say it. He took a deep breath. “Zilarioth Full-Cloudborn, of the First Fayn of the High Elves of Brightglade, Bloodbound to the Crystal Throne, Heir to the Waning Crescent of–“

“I know who you are,” the guard said, sounding unimpressed.

Well, thank fuck for that; she’d just saved them at least five minutes of formalities. “Fine. You-know-who-I-am requests an audience with your Prince Liliune.” Zil folded his arms across his chest, trying to look imposing in his bespoke suit, which was admittedly difficult to do while barely coming up to the guard’s shoulder and also being on high alert in case a fucking bug decided to land on him. “Unless you want me to read you his résumé first.”

The skeptical look on the guard’s face didn’t go anywhere. What, was she upset because she’d been set to guard the last remaining wooded wilds of the Bay Area? She should be grateful she was meeting him. It was probably enrichment for her. It’d keep her brain from turning back into a tree trunk, not that it seemed to have progressed far in the first place. Good help was hard enough to find on a mortal timeline; on an immortal one, practically impossible.

The guard took in a deep breath. For a moment, Zil was afraid she was going to ask him to wait there, and he was wavering on pitching an absolute fit or just turning around and leaving the way he’d come in, fuck everything. But no, as she exhaled, she stood aside. Behind her was a well-worn path that hadn’t been there before. At least she’d had the sense not to let her foolish stubbornness go on too long. He wished this ancient magical territory had an app. He’d give her two stars.

Zil spared a single haughty nod of acknowledgment as he walked past her and into the Green. He hadn’t let a single wrinkle of worry show on his face this whole time, and he wasn’t about to start now. Unless there was a bug. Then all bets were off.

-