#8.10.24

by @kroas-adtam

No special occasion

Lingerie

Cardinal Copia x female reader

Smut 18+

He arrives at his apartment. He kicks off his shoes, throws away his keys. He turns on the light. and stops in his tracks as he sees you standing there in front of him. in your sexy black and lacy lingerie. wearing your high heels and stockings, smiling at him. "Hey babe...your home!". You could see his cheeks turning red like the cassock he was wearing, you loved it when he got a little flustered. "Oh my," Copia said, his eyes wide as he took in the sight of you. "You look absolutely gorgeous, my dear." He couldn't help but let his eyes wander over your curves, appreciating the way the black lace accentuated your figure. "I have to say, I didn't expect to come home to such a delightful surprise." He approached you slowly, a smile playing on his lips.....

Feeling such a difficult-to-succinctly-describe set of emotions with this. I've been into Love Live for nearly 8 years at this point. It's been a series of ups and downs, can't deny there have been times where my passion for the franchise has wavered, but I hold the franchise as a whole very near and dear to my heart. When I got into Love Live, School Idol Project was already past-tense, Sunshine was awaiting its second season, and the "spinoff" series then known as Perfect Dream Project was in its infancy, but very much still existed.

Superstar, then, was the first part of the project that I got to experience in real-time as it was brand new - to look at that first street visual and pick out which girls had enough of a character design to be part of the group, to hope for some such group names to win and other group names to definitely lose, just to completely invest myself in, really. It was exciting seeing the next main series in the franchise begin, you know? All of this plays out, I latch onto Chisato, I eagerly anticipate their songs and their music videos and most especially their TV anime. And hey, that first season was great! Quintessentially Love Live distilled down to a pretty perfect execution, the only real problem being a surprising lack of ambition and not exploring its cast as thoroughly as it should've. I genuinely appreciate the 5 girl structure - previous groups have definitely had more and less fleshed out girls as some are relegated to gimmick character traits. 5 felt like a refreshing take that would give each girl further time to shine.

And then yeah, we know where the story goes. Season 2 comes out, and I just find it such a painfully mixed bag of a season. The exact fear was realised - it's not just that there are 4 new girls, it's that 2 of them are insanely hardcore gimmick characters, 1 of them is basically a sidegig for one of the gimmick characters, and then Kinako is fine actually. And it doesn't stop there, because new antagonist force Wien Margarete is here too, to just yell and be stubborn and only ever interact with Kanon. The entire season moves at a snail's pace because basically nothing happens except when Kanon and Margarete are on screen together, but that's a minority of the runtime because we need to see Natsumi try to go viral. It was a painful watch, and in a very real way shot down my hopes of Superstar really being all that good when I genuinely don't like nearly half the cast by volume now.

That was all over 2 years ago by now. There's been a lot of Love Live since then, although the only truly long-form thing was Genjitsu no Yohane, which was like ultra spinoffy such that like what do you want me to say lol. I don't feel like I've engaged with actual serious Love Live in a long time, the wait's been that long. Let alone Superstar, which is the branch of the franchise that's... not quite sure what word to use here. Most relevant? Most interesting? Least predictable? Like it's not the one that's my favourite but I suppose it's the one that feels like it holds all the future potential, or something. Anyway. I don't even know how to reflect on those 2 years anymore. I didn't like seeing people call Superstar shit now or automatically hate the new characters but also I didn't exactly like season 2 and you could axe the entire new cast and I'd be happier for it. I didn't like s3 pessimism but also I wasn't exactly eager for it either. I wanted to, and still want to like Superstar.

And all of that brings us to today. Episode watched, SubsPlease used because I wanted webvideo instead of a TV rip. The OP was genuinely beautiful, I'm really glad I'll get to hear it every week. The ED was comparitively lacking, I'll admit. We've still got Liella no Uta each time though which is always fun. Still looks fantastic, still sounds really nice. No new songs this episode aside from OP and ED but I mean it's Love Live like I'm expecting good shit.