Maddie and Trevor read Pipe-weed Dreams, by Zeebop

It's mid-afternoon, and we're both at home, on the bed. Trevor should probably be studying for his classes tomorrow. Instead, he's laying beneath me, his penis firmly lodged in my rectum--softening as it expels the last dribbles of cum. His left arm crosses beneath my breasts, holding me secure. The right hangs limply against my hip, having mere moments before fulfilled its purpose in rubbing my clit to completion. I'm barely conscious, riding a wave of blissed-out stupor, when Trevor murmurs in my ear, "Hey, how's your writing going, by the way?"

"What?" I say, wondering at the non sequitur. "Er, fine. But what prompted this?"

"I...guess I couldn't get it out of my head--the whole idea of people writing smut, and other people reviewing it critically. As if it's art or something. Who does that with porn? It's, like, extra layers of fucked-up."

"All sincere writing has a sliver of the author's soul in it," I sigh. "Some people appreciate that, no matter the subject."

He's silent for a moment. "Don't get me wrong. It's just the kind of fucked-up that I like. I was thinking...maybe we could do something similar? Review another person's story? I bet it'd be hot."

"Spice up the bedroom?" I wriggle my hips, wrenching his cock back and forth. "I don't think we're having much trouble in that department. Do you?"

"A little variety never hurt anyone. C'mon, what do you say?"

"Fine!" I shift onto my side--dislodging Trevor's cock in a small torrent of lube and cum--and reach for the tablet on the side table. "I pick the first story, though."

"Of course, Maddie."

I peruse for a while. "This one," I say, pointing to the listing. "I recognize the author, Zeebop. One of the more prolific writers on the site. And the story--Pipe-weed Dreams. It appears to be set in Tolkien's Middle Earth, but with cyberpunk."

"Hmm, not two things I ever would have put together."

"Exactly, which is why it intrigues me." I stare at the first chapter. "You know, I really got into Tolkien in middle school. Watched the films, read the books, even made it five chapters into The Silmarillion before I gave up. Though I did skip ahead to the Akallabêth. Thought it was fantastic--the slow degrading fall of a society into arrogance and hierarchy and hedonism. That resonated with me. Amazon should have adapted that instead of whatever crap was dribbling down their writers' chins."

Trevor rolls his eyes at me. "Yeah, you might have mentioned that before once or twice."

"Anyway, what's your background on all this?"

"Saw the films. Thought they were pretty good...I may not know as much about Middle Earth as you, but I think I know enough to intuit that cyberpunk is about as far as it's possible to get from Tolkien's tone and themes."

Now it's my turn to roll my eyes. "Did you forget this is a porn story, too? I think that ship has already sailed--and is halfway to Valinor by now. But maybe we shouldn't make too many assumptions before we've actually, you know, started reading the thing."

READING IN PROGRESS (BGM)

"Given our different levels of Tolkien familiarity, maybe I should do play-by-play while you do color commentary," Trevor suggests.

"Fine by me."

"So...it's two millennia after Lord of the Rings. This ranger woman, Rowana, is leaving the military after twenty years of service and driving into Mordor to settle down and farm a plot of land she's purchased."

"The technology is pure cyberpunk retro-near future, with these amusing mashed-up terms. 'Ironhills Pathfinder'. 'Great Eagle' instead of 'Desert Eagle'. Best of all, 'palantir-fiber-optic network'. Not sure how much thought was put into the exact inner workings of something like that. But for all the changes in technology, the land itself seems weirdly static. Like, Mordor is a desolate wasteland where no one dares to live, but also fertile enough to support a farm. That's a very specific level of desolation. Also, who even sold Rowana her farm in the first place? Who owns this wilderness? Gondor's apparently a thing, but do the heirs of Elessar still rule from the White City, even ceremonially? I just wonder why no one else has come in and settled this area in the decades and centuries before this; it's only a short car ride from the center of civilization in this setting. I mean, it made more sense when Sauron was around, and there were these massive 'fuck you' mountains in the way, and everyone had to travel everywhere on their own two feet, but now--"

"Whoa there, Maddie! Easy, girl! Nitpicking right out of the gate, are we? Does that kind of worldbuilding matter that much for the story?"

"When it's 'Tolkien cyberpunk', I should hope so! But you're right...I'm nitpicking. The author includes a lot of wonderful little details, like calling all humans capital-M 'Men' and referencing the disappearance of the elves. And maybe some of the questions I have will be answered in the fullness of time."

"One unsurprising detail about the world, given the cyberpunk setting, is the primacy of mega-corporations. And this is manifested immediately in the appearance of Azzie, a smuggled vat-grown orc who Rowana saves from slavery. They pretty much immediately become lovers, despite such different backgrounds and initially not even sharing a fluent language."

"It gets handwaved by that first night, when Azzie jacks directly into Rowana's brain. Basically a mutual empathy dump. Doesn't seem to have any actual adverse effects despite the implication it should based on Rowana's memories from the military."

"Bit of a housekeeping note," says Trevor. "There are these side chapters, optional--but actually not. The endnote says we should read them to get the whole story. And the right way to do it seems to be alternating back and forth. Weird organization."

"You look at the chapter dates, the side chapters came later," I point out. "But regardless...sure, we'll alternate."

"Not necessarily in this commentary though. Those chapters focus on other characters--a female bear changeling who's also a crooked cop that likes to fuck prostitutes, a couple of said prostitutes, one of whom is a dwarf hacker. Later, there's a completely different hacker in another city, a quadruple-amputee hobbit in a friends-with-benefits relationship with a trans man Man. But that's skipping ahead a bit. All of it does flesh out the world, though maybe not quite in the ways you were looking for. And they're immediately connected to the main story. For example, Daleman the cop indirectly helps Rowana by covering up the deaths of the traffickers who were transporting Azzie, one of whom she murdered."

"Connected, yes, but largely doing their own thing for now. I assume these storylines will converge towards the end."

"But back to our main couple. Rowana suffers from some acute PTSD. She has vivid memories of her last girlfriend, Aedre, a fellow ranger, getting disemboweled by an oliphaunt."

"Gotta stop you there, Trevor. Oliphaunts are a relevant combat factor in this world of high-powered firearms and artillery and drone strikes? This is like pitting Hannibal's army at Zama against Delta Force. The comparison is nonsensical!"

"The author does note that oliphaunts are incredibly resistant to bullets, practically tanks. And these orcs Rowana is fighting are insurgents. They have to make do with what they have."

"Sure, when I think 'guerilla tactics', the first thing I picture is a massive lumbering beast dozens of yards tall!"

"Also, it should be noted we don't actually see the oliphaunt in combat. Its killing of Aedre is portrayed more as an after-the-fact execution, almost ritualistic. Ultimately, the author wanted to create this arresting visual, and you have to admit that the whole thing is very striking."

"That's true," I concede with a grumble. "Rule of...not cool, exactly. Memorable, I guess."

"Let's see... At some point, Azzie mentions her formal name is Ash Nazg."

"'One ring', huh?" I say. "But she tells Rowana it means 'precious'. Is she lying? Or perhaps Sauron's ring is so central to the culture of Black Speech speakers that it's conflated with the general concept of worth. Or maybe I'm overthinking this, and it's just a Gollum reference."

"This all comes up when Rowana unearths a hollow chamber beneath the home they're building. What do you know? It contains a ring that renders the wearer invisible. Azzie immediately takes ownership."

"Hmm... Hmm...! I hope the author isn't going the way I think with this whole plot element, but I'll reserve judgment to the end."

"What do you make of the main couple's relationship so far?"

"It's very...frictionless. By the third or fourth chapter, they both seem in love with the other. At the very least, they're fucking like bonobos. Maybe this ring is meant to introduce a little tension at some point, but so far all the conflict has been external. Which isn't necessarily bad."

"Sure. The way they eviscerated those mercenaries who showed up to reclaim Azzie was pretty awesome."

"Rowana should have been killed though. That one guy had her dead to rights and no particular reason to try to question her. Bad henchman, bad! Definitely gives off the stench of plot armor." I sigh. "Rule of cool strikes again, I suppose."

"Indeed. The narrative needed him to explain where he'd come from and give Azzie a chance to show off her ring-aided badassitude."

"Yeah...what's next?"

"They adopt a kitten, and Rowana pressures Azzie to tell her more about the corporation that made her. I think this is a good stopping point. We're at the halfway point with twenty chapters--double that if you count the side chapters--and it's nearly suppertime. And I still haven't studied a single thing today."

"Poor baby. So many distractions..." I say, smiling, wriggling my bare ass once more.

"So Rowana and Azzie are about to deal with Azzie's past, and Looseleaf, the hobbit hacker, is closing in on the same thread from a different angle on the alternative path. We'll have to see where it goes next time and maybe learn some other things, like the nature of this ring they found and what's going to happen with the Morgul blade stolen from that museum. Er, assuming you're down for a next time?"

"I'm down," I say. "What about you?"

"Sure... Though, there is something else we need to talk about."

"Oh?"

"You know... The whole reason I suggested this in the first place."

"Right! The porn in this porn story! 'Cause you were hoping to get off."

"Eh...so what did you think?"

"There were certainly plenty of scenes. It all felt a bit...requisite, but disconnected from the plot. And I'm not really into girls, and Aubert felt like kind of a sad sack to me, so there wasn't much here to rustle my pussy. What about you?"

"Mostly the same. Lots of pretty disgusting images and smells are described. It'd take a very specific person--or at least a specific mood--to get titillated. Although..." He hesitates. "There was that one time. When Aubert was fucking Looseleaf, and she was teasing him with that dirty talk about...getting impregnated with his seed..."

"Trevor," I whisper. "I... Are you thinking...? Do you really want to--?"

"We can talk about it later, after we've wrapped this up," he says quietly. "But...anyway, the biggest turn-on for me was just seeing you be so passionate about something. That was...exhilarating..."

"I'm glad I could accommodate," I say, smiling. "Well, to sum up--Great story, well written, interesting worldbuilding, maybe not the platonic ideal of 'erotica'. I'm interested to see where it goes. I'm sure it'll be better than whatever Amazon's been coming up with."

"Goddammit, Maddie. You aren't going to let that go, are you?"

"Never!"