#pbr&b

[magrit-alessa]

My weekly chart (02 Oct 2023 - 08 Oct 2023)

That what I like. That what surrounds me. That what creates my mood.

*Created by my preferences only*

Аll 10 chart positions in 4 minutes here -> https://youtu.be/0g5D7_33DIs

10. TORRES - Collect

9. Mike Shinoda - Already Over

8. Majid Jordan - Hands Tied

7. Emeli Sandé - Buttercup

6. Lachie Gill - Happy It's Ending

5. SUKURA - A Place To Belong

4. Charlotte Cardin - Someone I Could Love

3. Paramore - Sanity (Demo)

2. U2U - Погляд і доторки

1. BAD OMENS - THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND

If you want to support channel:

If someone wants to help or support Ukraine:

[aricastmblr]

bts_bighit X 5Nov.2023 [공지] 정국 ‘Standing Next to You : The Remixes’ 발매 안내 (+ENG/JPN/CHN)

정국 #JungKook #StandingNextToYou

JungKook Remixes - ‘Standing Next to You : The Remixes’

Hola. Esto es BIGHIT MUSIC.

Gracias por tu amor hacia el álbum en solitario de Jung Kook "GOLDEN".

Estamos emocionados de anunciar el lanzamiento del álbum de remixes "Standing Next to You: The Remixes" de la canción principal, "Standing Next to You".

"Standing Next to You: The Remixes" incluye un total de 8 pistas, incluyendo la original, cada una con su encanto único.

Standing Next to You

Standing Next to You - Instrumental

Standing Next to You - Remix de Slow Jam

Standing Next to You - Remix de PBR&B

Standing Next to You - Remix de Latin Trap

Standing Next to You - Remix de Holiday

Standing Next to You - Remix de Future Funk

Standing Next to You - Versión de Banda

Te recomendamos disfrutar del álbum de remixes, que presenta pistas en varios géneros, según tus preferencias.

Por favor, continúa apoyando y amando los próximos proyectos en solitario de Jung Kook.

Fecha de lanzamiento: 2 PM, lunes 6 de noviembre de 2023 (KST) Gracias.

[pupviolence]

whoever invented pbr made it for emo losers like me bc god it is so much easier to mosh when im 2 tall boys in

[heylittleriotact]

It-was-WIP-Wednesday-but-now-it's-Thursday

Thank you for the tags, @pseudospaceship @razildor and @emmg - I've been dawdling around some writer's block and the inability to make up my mind about whose POV certain parts of this chapter of i heard people are dying to get in here should be in.

Basically, Rook and Emmrich have ditched the Wintersend dinner in favour of a live music venue and all that comes with it.

Enjoy.

(Tagging anyone who wants to and hasn't yet because most of you have WIP-ed your Wednesdays already)

Like all decent mid-sized music venues in a city of Nevarra’s size, the Night-Owl was located in a basement at the bottom of a narrow stairwell that served as the only means of egress from the place, effectively making the dark windowless room a fire-trap.

Was he uncomfortable with that knowledge? Yes: the idea of being trapped underground, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other likewise trapped people - slowly suffocating, overheating, crushing - in the event of an emergency was a literal nightmare for him.

Was he going to do what he’d done since his late teens when he started attending such places and simply drink until any anxiety and fear was a drowned out voice floundering helplessly against a churning sea of inebriation? Certainly.

It was nearly Wintersend after all: no better time to cut loose and indulge, right?

Rook seemed to be of a similar mind, because as soon as the door girl plucked the cash from Emmrich’s fingers for cover and branded them with a stamp on the inside of their wrists, she beelined for the bar, half-dragging him through the packed space that smelled of flat beer, pot, body odour, and the nebulous but unmistakable aroma that was unique to fog machines.

The bar wasn’t well-lit, but from what he could see from the glow of the three televisions behind the bar and the dim pot-lights set into the black ceiling tiles, he and Rook were exceptionally overdressed in their cocktail attire: punks, skids, skins, creeps, and weirdos milled about. Some leaned against the bar, slugging back tall cans of PBR and talking loudly over the music being played over the sound system. Some lurked in front of the stage waiting for the band to start.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am - I’m afraid you don’t meet the dress code for the evening and you’ll have to leave: this is a high-class place.”

Emmrich‘s hand had settled on Rook’s waist while they waited for the bartender to acknowledge them, and he reflexively held on a little tighter at the sound of the stern but apologetic voice.

Rook turned in his arm and she grinned broadly at the sight of the handsome and broadly built man next to her who shook his long wavy black hair, grinning smarmily. He held a pint glass filled with something hazy, and wore a purple and green plaid button down over a t-shirt that had ‘MOGWAI’ printed across the chest.

“Yeah, I’ll leave - if you can manage to get me back up the stairs, asshole” Rook scoffed.

“Done it before,” her friend shrugged. “And you were dead weight too - that was the Fireball and tequila night.” He wagged a finger at her, and despite not knowing this person, Emmrich thought his voice sounded familiar. There was a charismatic and playful quality about him that was instantly endearing.

“On the topic of the dead—” his head shifted and he looked at Emmrich. “You’re ‘The Guy’ aren’t you? Emmrich, right?” His eyebrows raised and lowered twice, and he held out his hand. “Leon de Fiorino - best known around town as Leon The Loon on B-96.9’s late night show: Mom always said I had a face for radio, so I like to think I’m making her proud.” His grin widened.

Ah of course - this was the infamous Leon: Rook had shared many a tale of misadventure with featuring her old roommate. He hosted a late night radio show every Sunday spotlighting local alternative artists - of course he’d be here.

Rook had pulled out of his grasp and was standing on the brass bar rail, making her a few inches taller so she could lean in for the pretty bartender with a pixie cut to hear her.

“What do you want?” She hollered over her shoulder at him.

“I’ll have what you’re having, darling!”

“Three jaegers and two PBRs, please!”

Oh it was going to be that sort of night, then - Emmrich could already feel his head throbbing in advance of the hangover that was in his near future.

He returned his attention to Leon. “A pleasure to meet you, Leon - I’ve heard so much about you!”

“And you still want to date her?!” Leon tossed his head back and laughed loudly. “Just fucking with you, man - but if you’re ever looking for an embarrassing story about Rook, I lived with her for two years: I could write a book!”

“So could I but about you! Do you want this shot or not? Keep talking and I’ll do ‘em both!” Rook reached into her jacket for her wallet and Emmrich put his hand over hers.

“I’ll buy, darling,” he said, quietly enough so that only she could hear him.

“Don’t be silly,” she retorted, eyes reflecting the dim bar lighting prettily. “You can get the next round.”

If he had it his way, Rook wouldn’t pay for a single thing out of her pocket ever again, but he understood that letting her do things - small kindnesses like a round of drinks - meant something to her.

“Of course, dear.”

Smiling, she counted out the cash for the drinks and handed it to the bartender, pocketing some of the change and dumping the rest in the tip jar before sliding down from the rail, her heels clicking against the hard concrete.

“We just found out our funeral home has been bought out by a pair of raging sociopaths and will be run by a dumbass whose spine has the structural integrity of overcooked spaghetti!” She told Leon, picking up a shot and handing it to him, then handing one to Emmrich before she picked up her own. “So: fucking cheers!”

She cozied back against Emmrich and lifted her shot glass.

“Fucking yikes, bud!” Leon concurred, and all three touched their glasses together before tipping them back.

Oh it was bad. It was foul. It was concentrated evil.

It tasted like cough syrup and regret - how it left his throat feeling sticky was a marvel: a trait of a concoction that could only be dreamed up by a sadistic madman.

The cloying, herbal taste of the jaeger dragged Emmrich instantly back to the hazy, sloppy nights of a younger man, and a wave of nausea punched him square in the gut: a fist with a message tattooed on brutal knuckles that said ‘you are too old for this, old man.’

The cheap beer that he chased it with did little to take the edge off: foaming and bubbling all the way down to his stomach where it mingled with the jaeger and made the acute nausea even worse.

Perhaps he’d vomit right here at the bar, ruining Rook’s costly new shoes - and any chances he had of making their relationship last beyond the night.

He swallowed the mouthful of ominous saliva that had flooded his mouth and forced his constitution to heel: he could do this - ‘rally’ as the youth called it these days.

[ashwwa]

2023 OCT.001 (sims4)

typeA,B,C | 10 swatches

EARLY ACCESS

mesh&texture by ASHwwa

inspired by here raspberrymazohyst

2023 OCT.001 (blender)

2K PBR

thank u my talent fd >3<!!!!!!!!!!@asansan3

[moon-and2saturn]

Bad Reputation

s.f.k. x reader

chapter two

Word Count: 7.4k

Chapter Warnings: swearing, drinking, smoking (marijuana), flirting, a little bit of arguing, lots of sexual tension, slow burnnnn so no smut... yet ;)

A/N: Hi guys! Welcome to chapter two! I'm excited to continue this little story for you all. I hope you don't hate me too much for the slow burn ;) Things will really start to heat up once tour starts up, so stay tuned hehe. See ya soon

Listen to the playlist here :)

chapter one

•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈••✦ ♡ ✦••┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈•

You step off the stage after another successful gig and quickly retreat to the dressing room for a moment to freshen up before heading out for a few drinks. Unfortunately for you, tonight’s celebrations, along with every celebration from now on, will be quite different due to the required presence of a certain bassist. Jodie thought it would be a good idea for Sam to attend all your gigs, to make your relationship more believable as you started “launching” it to the public. 

You were reluctant at first, but at the end of the day, it didn’t feel like that big of a deal. You didn’t have to be glued to his side the entire night or anything, or at least you hoped not. Nonetheless, you knew he was waiting out there for you, and you knew that he had come alone, which made it even worse. At least if Danny or someone had come along, you’d have some sort of buffer, but no– it was just the two of you. Lucy wasn’t even on shift tonight either, having taken the weekend off to go home and visit her family. 

It’s only been just over a week since you agreed to this deal with Sam, and it was already exhausting you. You honestly haven’t even spoken to him since that day, since both of you have been swamped with rehearsals, but Jodie reached out and let you know that he’d be there. You were hoping that he had forgotten, but when you saw him in his usual corner booth during your set, you realized you had gotten your hopes up too high. 

“Whatever! I’m strong, and I’m confident, and I don’t care,” you say to yourself in the mirror as you touch up your makeup briefly. The pep talk wasn’t really working though. “What’s there to be afraid of, anyway? He’s just a guy!”

“I’m a man, for the record,” you hear a smug voice say from behind you. God-fucking-damnit. “A damn good-looking one, at that.”

“Samuel, what are you doing back here? I was coming out any second now, you couldn’t wait?” you say, scoffing to yourself as you put your makeup back in your bag and turn to him. 

You’re actually surprised to see that he dressed rather nicely tonight. He’s wearing a pair of black jeans, paired with a red button-up with the sleeves rolled up. He had the top two buttons undone, but that was the most of it– not nearly as low-cut as Jake would do. 

“What, your boyfriend isn’t allowed to come see you after a show?” he asks sarcastically, leaning against the doorframe. 

“You’re not my boyfriend, Sam– not actually. Nobody’s watching us back here,” you scowl, slinging your tote over your shoulder and walking to the door. You walk right past him and b-line it toward the bar. 

“Seeing us come out together will help us look more like a couple, obviously,” he says smugly. “Come on, Y/N, I thought you had some wits about you.” You stop in your tracks and turn over your shoulder to glare at him. You take a deep breath before feeling calm enough to reply.

“Fine, whatever. Let’s just go,” you mutter, turning to walk toward the bar again. That was the closest that you could ever get to telling him he was right. You didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but you suppose that it wouldn’t be bad for your image if you walked out together. 

“Seb, double rum and coke, please,” you say, trying to brush off your frustration by faking a smile. Sebastian nods and then his eyes drift behind you for a moment. You nearly forgot, honestly. “Oh, and uh– whatever he wants, I guess,” you add, nodding to the tall “man” behind you. 

“PBR,” Sam says behind you, and Seb turns to grab a can from the fridge and open it for him. He places both of your drinks on the counter with a sympathetic smile and then adds it to your tab. 

Without saying anything else, you just turn to retreat to the corner booth, sliding in first. As you situate yourself, you’re startled by Sam sliding in to sit next to you on the same side of the booth.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask accusingly. Sam rolls his eyes, taking a swig of his beer before turning his body toward you, his long legs stretched out underneath the table. 

“Sweetheart, no one is gonna believe we’re together if we sit as far away from each other as possible,” he answers bluntly. “You have to at least look like you like me and enjoy my presence.”

“It’s harder than you think,” you mumble under your breath, looking down at the drink in your hand atop the table. “But fine.”

“Second time I’m right tonight, y’know. Do I get a prize?” he says with a smirk. You find yourself stifling a laugh, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’s funny.

“Is the company of a talented pianist not enough?” you say, your lips turning upward slightly into a smile, subtle but still there. A chuckle leaves his mouth, which surprises you. You never expected him to laugh at your jokes before. 

“I suppose it is, you’re one lucky lady, Y/N,” he says smugly. Damnit. 

“Careful, Samuel. For a moment there, I almost thought you were complimenting me,” you warn with a smirk, taking a sip of your drink. Another laugh erupts from the man sitting next to you.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re just dying for that, aren’t you?” he says, his tone bordering on teasing. 

“For you to compliment me? Please. I don’t need you for that when I can easily find it elsewhere,” you bite back. 

“Well, I don’t see any takers,” he remarks, looking around the room sarcastically. “Seems like you’re stuck with just me. Good luck getting any attention now, with me around.” You don’t even grace him with a reply after that one, just taking a long sip of your drink before putting it down on the table and turning your attention to the next act on stage. 

He lets the silence stay, looking to the stage as well as his arm extends to sit behind you atop the back of the booth. As his arm moves behind you, you’re met with a quick waft of his cologne, smelling strongly of spearmint and pine. You’d be kidding yourself if you didn’t admit that the scent almost sent your eyes rolling in the back of your head, intoxicating you. But you quickly shake it off. 

“So… you guys will be going back on tour soon, yeah?” you ask, trying to fill the silence and save yourself from feeling awkward. He turns toward you, keeping his arm behind you as his fingers graze your bare shoulder. 

“Yeah! We’re heading back out in a few weeks, we’re still trying to get more studio time in so that we can finally start the masters on our next project,” he answers proudly. You knew he was passionate about the music, it was something you respected about him.

“That’s great. From what I heard in the studio the other day, you guys have something really amazing going on there. I really liked the blues roots in some of them, I caught it almost immediately,” you say with a soft smile. Maybe talking to him wasn’t as bad as you might’ve thought. 

“See, thank you! Josh hates those bits– says they’re sonically boring. I completely disagree, obviously,” he says, a smile growing across his face. Despite hating to admit it, the two of you had aligning interests when it came to music, that much was clear. 

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! My favorite part was your transition from E major to C sharp minor, in that second song you guys played. It was so satisfying, that’s one of the best key changes in my opinion,” you say, starting to rant but catching yourself. You start to apologize for rambling but the smile on his face tells you that you don’t need to. 

“I’m glad you caught that, no one else ever pays attention to stuff like that. I swear sometimes it feels like I’m all alone there, their minds just don’t work the same as mine,” he says, his smile widening as his thumb rubs softly on your shoulder. 

“Well, I understand. It’s not exactly the same, but Lucy never gets it when I ramble on about music theory. As a writer, music is like a whole other language to her. I’ve never had anyone to really talk to about music before,” you admit with a shrug, looking over at him.

“Maybe we’ve found that in each other, then,” he says quietly, running his tongue along his bottom lip as your eyes watch carefully. You nod slowly, not sure what else to say. You’re not sure when you let yourself get so distracted, but you couldn’t help it. The proximity made your mind so foggy that you couldn’t think about much else. 

All of a sudden, your attention is pulled away from your phone buzzing on the table. You pick it up to read the text you just received, which you see is from Jodie. 

Jodie: Fans have already spotted you both out at the club! Some pics are already circling Twitter, look! 

She attached screenshots of some tweets that have already been posted, questioning who you are and what you’re doing with Sam. The pictures show the two of you sitting close together, Sam’s arm wrapped around you as the two of you are smiling and laughing.

OMG, who is that with Sam???

He has his arm around her, look!

God, I’m so jealous.

They’re sitting awfully close to be just friends!

You have to admit that the two of you did look good together. You managed to make it seem casual and natural, which was good. To have the fans already buzzing about it was a good sign. After you finish reading the tweets, you hand your phone to Sam so that he can take a look.

“I swear, our fans know no boundaries. Who just takes a picture of someone who’s out minding their own business? Pisses me off,” he scoffs, handing you your phone back as he shakes his head, looking around to see if he can catch anyone looking. 

“I know. But at least we have their attention, right? The seeds have certainly been planted. Now we just need to figure out some sort of hard launch,” you answer optimistically, hoping that he’s not too angry. He doesn’t seem to be, since his smile still hasn’t completely faded just yet. 

“We look kinda good together there, don’t you think?” you joke, pulling up the picture again. You hear him laugh next to you, shaking his head as he looks down at your phone over your shoulder. 

“Yeah, I guess we do,” he admits softly. You almost didn’t realize how close he had gotten, to the point where you could feel his warm breath against your ear. You try not to think about the it too much, with the fear of blush creeping over your cheeks. 

“Wanna really give them something to post about?” he whispers with a smirk, his voice against the shell of your ear sending shivers down your spine. Leave it to Sam to ruin the moment with relentless flirting once again. You turn your head to face him and realize that he’s much closer than you originally thought. Your nose brushes against his as your eyes lock. You clear your throat, trying to seem unaffected.

“As much as I’m sure you’d love that, I don’t think we need to rush all of that so soon,” you say softly, a twinge of sarcasm dripping from your voice. You watch as his smirk widens. 

“Fine, you can be boring,” he says smugly, leaning back against the seat. “But I at least want to give them something interesting to talk about. Who cares if we’re just sitting and talking? Everyone does that, we could at least do something a little creative.” It truly was a performance after all. You just hum as a reply, not wanting to perpetuate the argument any further. 

“Here,” he speaks again as his other hand moves to grasp your thigh, pulling your legs to rest slightly on his lap. His hand still lingers on your thigh, grasping firmly on your thigh right below the hem of your leather skirt. 

“What’re you doing?” you say, in almost a whisper. His boldness has taken you aback, and you hesitate to fight back in that moment. The feeling of his large, callused hand on your skin clouded your brain so much that you almost thought you might like it. 

“Giving them a show,” he smirks, turning to make sure people are looking before turning back to look at you. You couldn’t hide the flush of your cheeks now even if you wanted to. It didn’t take long for him to notice. “Am I getting you all hot and bothered, sweetheart? Is that it?” he asks with a smug grin, his hand moving an inch up your thigh as the other ghosts over your bare shoulder again. 

“Pshh– what? No. No. That’s ridiculous,” you answer, obviously flustered. 

“Just admit that you like it,” he says, leaning down to close more space between you. “Your secret’s safe with me.” Yeah, right. He’d never let you live it down if you even gave an inkling that you were enjoying this. You’d never give him that satisfaction. You clear your throat, inching away from him. 

“Wanna get another round?” you ask, trying to change the subject, but he doesn’t budge. 

“Answer my question,” he says assertively, his fingers playing with the hem of your skirt teasingly. You breathe out a deep breath, but keep your eyes on his. He’s searching them, waiting for any hint of you giving in, but finds nothing. 

“What would you do if my answer was yes? What then?” you ask, your voice breathy and quiet. His lips quirk slightly as he looks down at you. 

“You don’t have to play these games to get my attention, y’know. You already have it,” he whispers, his nose brushing past yours. That’s it, you can’t do this anymore. 

“Okay, I need a smoke. Let me out?” you ask, still backing away slowly with the hopes that he’d stand up and let you out of the booth. An annoyed sigh leaves his mouth as he complies, getting up from his seat. 

“I’m coming with you,” he says, clearly not asking. You just roll your eyes and nod, walking out to the front of the club. Leaning against the front of the building, you reach into your tote and pull out your lighter and the blunt that you had rolled earlier that day. Given the stress from the evening, you thanked your earlier self for thinking of it. 

Placing it between your lips, you quickly light it, taking a drag before lowering it to your side. You take a moment to look over at Sam, who’s looking down at you as he leans his side against the wall. Feeling like you were being slightly greedy, you decide to offer him a hit, which he gladly accepts. 

“Didn’t take you for the stoner type,” he says casually, taking another hit before passing it back to you. 

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Sam,” you answer, raising an eyebrow at him as you take a long drag. You watch as his eyes flicker to your lips for a moment there. You knew what he was thinking. If you were crossed enough, you thought you honestly might let him. But not just yet.

“I’m starting to see that… I guess if I want to know anything about you, I’ll have to work for it, yeah?” he says with a shrug. That was exactly what you were going to say next– that he had to work for it. You hated that he could read you like that. Maybe you were more predictable than you thought. 

“I suppose so. You should stop while you’re ahead though, I won’t give in that easily,” you tease, taking another hit as you look up at him, trying to read his expression. The weed is already mixing perfectly with the liquor in your system. Your head felt lighter already. 

“I’m not afraid of you, sweetheart. And I don’t go down without a fight,” he says with a smirk, leaning toward you slightly. He towered over you, which felt slightly intimidating. You couldn’t really read him well, either, which made it even more difficult. 

“What do you wanna know?” you ask, taking a hit and blowing it out of the side of your mouth. 

“Where are you from?” he asks, taking the blunt in his fingers as you pass it. 

“Here,” you answer bluntly, watching his lips purse as he takes a drag. It was way hotter than you expected it to be. “Well, not here exactly. I grew up in a town like, thirty minutes away. But I’ve been coming to Nashville all my life.”

“I see,” he says, a small smile on his face. You didn’t ask him where he was from– you already knew the answer, and he knew that. “Did you always know that you wanted to play music?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I started playing piano at 6, joined the jazz band in middle school, and it all just kind of grew from there. My high school band director is the one who set me up with my first ever paid gig, when I was 17. After that, I knew this was what I needed to do.” You can tell that he’s trying to hide his smile, but it’s not working. He was impressed by you, and for some reason, you liked that. 

“I did jazz band too, amongst other things. It was honestly a great start on music theory, learning about chord progressions and improvisation and stuff like that,” he says with a shrug, passing your blunt back to you. 

“Yeah, I agree. You learn a lot of important stuff there,” you reply, taking a hit. It was nice to have someone to talk music with, even if it was Sam. He knew what he was talking about, and it felt like he understood you. That’s not an easy feat. 

“Have you ever been in love?’ he asks, looking down at you. You expected to find a smirk on his face, but there wasn’t one there. 

“That’s a loaded question,” you joke, taking another hit as you try to think of what the hell to even say to that. “I don’t think I have, to be honest. There were times when I thought I was, but looking back…” you trail off. “Have you?”

“No,” he shakes his head, taking the blunt from your fingers and taking a hit. “Nothing ever stuck. Not sure why.” Surely you had a couple of good guesses, but you wouldn’t dare to say any now. The topic was somewhat vulnerable, which you didn’t expect from him. Why did he want to know this about you? You’re gonna take a mental note to ask about it another day when you’re both much more sober.  

Some time passes, as the two of you share the blunt in silence. Near the end of it, you pass him the blunt and let him finish it off, watching him flick the butt onto the sidewalk and stomp it out. He doesn’t make a move to go inside, however, but instead moves closer to you. As you look up at him, your mind starts to spin as his head reaches for your face, cupping your cheek. His thumb smoothes over your cheekbone, the rough callus on it sending shockwaves throughout your body. You’re not sure why you don’t pull away, even when his face starts getting closer and closer to yours.

“Don’t run away this time,” he whispers, his nose brushing against yours as your eyes travel to his lips. They looked soft and full, and you started to wonder if they would feel warm against yours. You knew you probably wouldn’t have to wonder much longer. For some reason, you didn’t want to run away. No, you wanted to stay. Something inside you wanted to know if you’d feel something– anything. 

Your eyes lock with his as his other hand finds its place on your waist, tugging you toward him slightly. You search his eyes, seeing if you could read his mind. What was going through it? You knew he’d been persistent with you before, but why did this feel different somehow? You let your nose brush against his again, as you feel his breath hot against your lips.

“Sam!” you hear someone exclaim from behind you, causing you to jump from the brash noise. 

“We’ll finish this later,” he whispers against the shell of your ear. You suck in a deep breath then quickly pull away, leaving at least a foot between you two as a girl approaches you– seemingly a fan. Sam puts on a brave face, smiling softly as he talks to her. He was gracious and kind, despite being visibly frustrated. 

“Do you… want me to take your picture?” you ask softly, to which she nods feverishly. After snapping a few photos on her phone, you hand it back to her with a shy smile. 

“So, who’s this?” she asks, turning to Sam. God, she was nosy. All the fans were, clearly. What did she care? Why would she need to know who Sam was spending his time with? Your angry internal rant comes to a full stop as Sam wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you into him.

“Actually, this is my girlfriend, Y/N,” he says proudly, his grip soft but strong on my side. You offer her a soft smile as her face lights up, and you know this will be plastered all over the internet by tomorrow. You suppose that was the whole point, though. This was bound to happen eventually, you just didn’t expect it to be on your first night out. You thought you’d have more time to prepare. 

Luckily for you both, this girl was way too drunk to bother asking too many other questions. Soon enough, she says her goodbyes and swiftly leaves. You breathe out a sigh of relief, laying your back against the wall once more. 

“Fuck, that was exhausting. How do you do that all the time?’ I ask jokingly, rubbing my temples. He lets out a soft laugh, which makes your lips turn upward into a smile almost immediately. 

“It’s not always that bad. Usually, they refrain from personal questions like that… sorry. I know I kinda put you on the spot there,” he offers genuinely, which you accept. 

“It’s not your fault, you didn’t know it would happen. I just wish I was more prepared– I mean, we don’t even have our backstory together or anything! We haven’t discussed any of the details at all,” you say, slightly exasperated. Another laugh leaves his lips. You think to yourself that you quite liked being the person who makes him laugh.

“Right, well I guess we’ll just have to figure that out then. We’ll need to be prepared, now that everyone is going to know,” he says. “How about we meet up for coffee on Monday and set all the details straight? That sound good?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you nod with a small smile. “I can do that.”

“Great, I’ll text you the details tomorrow then,” he says, reaching into his pocket for his phone. He sees the time and his eyes shoot open, not realizing how late it's gotten. “Shit, it got late on us. Can I call you a cab?” he asks, looking up from his phone to look at you.

“Oh, no that’s not necessary. I only live around the corner, I’ll walk,” you insist, though you’re surprised he cares that much. It was a side of him that you had yet to see.

“Then I’ll walk you home,” he says, not even letting you answer before starting to walk off. How he knew what direction it was in, you weren’t sure. You suppose he’s seen you leave that way before and leave it at that. 

Soon enough, you’re both stopped in front of your apartment building. It seems like you’re both unsure of how to say goodbye, considering the nature of your “relationship” was such a gray area. You knew he was about to kiss you earlier, and you knew that you were going to let him, but you’ve sobered up slightly now. It wasn’t a good idea.

“Goodnight, Sam,” you say softly, just choosing to back away without a proper goodbye in favor of avoiding any more awkwardness between the two of you.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” he says, offering you a soft smile as he shoots you a wink. You watch as he turns to leave and walks back toward the bar to catch his Uber home. As he turns the corner, you quickly turn around and retreat inside, hurrying to your apartment before finally entering your bedroom. You lean your back against the door and sink to the floor, your mind slightly boggled by the entire evening. 

You have to admit that you ended up enjoying his company. The teasing was still excessive and he was arrogant, but there were times when this different guy shone through the cracks. You wanted to know that guy.

•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈••✦ ♡ ✦••┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈•

As you’re sitting on your balcony on Sunday afternoon, enjoying the sunny weather with an iced coffee and a book in hand, you feel your phone buzz in your pocket. You slide a bookmark onto the page and shut the book, setting it down on your table next to your coffee before reaching into your back pocket to pull out your phone. 

Sam: We still on for tomorrow?

You hum to yourself, checking your calendar quickly to make sure you don’t have anything else going on. You thought that he might have forgotten about your plans to meet up tomorrow, since it was already well into the afternoon and you hadn’t heard from him. But you suppose he isn’t one to rise early, as Danny told you last week. You typically weren’t either, but today was an exception. 

You: Yeah, whenever works best for you. We could meet at the coffee shop across the street from Seb’s?

That place was your usual haunt, the baristas all knew your name by now. It was helpful for hangovers, so you always came in the morning after a night out and it soon became a habit. You knew Sam didn’t live in Midtown, but maybe he wouldn’t mind coming down. 

Sam: Sounds good, meet at 2 pm? I’ve got a short meeting with the guys in the morning.

You: Yeah, that’s good. See ya then.

He doesn’t respond from there, so you just leave it at that. You never took him for much of a texter, so you didn’t read too much into it. You slide your phone back into your pocket and open your book back up, picking up where you left off. 

Just as you were getting back in the groove of the story, you heard your apartment door close behind you. You turn around to see Lucy coming in from her weekend with her parents. She spots you outside and walks over, sliding the glass door open. 

“Hi, love,” she says, coming outside and sitting on the chair opposite you. 

“Hey, Luce. How was your weekend?” you ask, still keeping your eyes on your book. 

“It was good! Tommy had his graduation ceremony this weekend, so there was a big party,” she answers with a smile. Tommy is her younger brother, who’s just graduated high school. You never knew him well, since their age gap was so big, but he was a sweet kid. 

“That sounds nice!” you say, offering her a soft smile. 

“How was yours? Anything interesting happen?” she asks, raising an eyebrow at you. She knows something.

“What did you see?” you ask bluntly, getting right to the point. A chuckle leaves her lips as she smiles at you.

“Oh, nothing. Just saw a few pictures of you and a certain rockstar cuddled up at Seb’s last night, plastered all over their update accounts on Instagram,” she says with a smug smile.

“Why on Earth do you follow their update accounts, you weirdo!” you say, barely getting the sentence out before you both erupt into laughter. 

“When you told me you’d be pretending to date him, I went and followed some of them! I knew you were bound to make it on there eventually and I wanted to see my best friend become famous!” she exclaims, pulling her phone out to show you the posts. There were photos of you both in your booth and standing outside the club. You did look rather close. 

“I am not becoming famous. It’s just a couple of photos,” you say curtly. “And he might have told a fan I was his girlfriend,” you mumble at the end, hoping she didn’t hear.

“He what?” she yells, and your hand shoots to cover her mouth with a giggle.

“Shhh, shut up, the neighbors already think we’re crazy,” you laugh, taking your hand away after a moment. “It’s not a big deal. We knew he’d have to make it official eventually. We’re meeting up tomorrow to get our story together and stuff, so that we know what to tell the fans in case we get asked anything on the spot.”

“Wow, you guys are moving fast,” she teases. She had no idea. You were tempted to tell her about the kiss you almost shared the night before, but inevitably you decide not to. Talking about it will just complicate things even more.

“Whatever. He’s actually not that bad at times– but don’t tell him I said that,” you say with a small smile across your lips. “We just have more in common than I expected.”

“I’ve been telling you that for months, Y/N,” she says sarcastically, getting up from her chair. “I’m gonna go rot in bed for a while, talk to you later.”

“Okay, have fun,” you say, your smile widening as you wave her off and then open your book back up again. 

You really couldn’t stay concentrated on reading today, it seems. You try your best to refocus, and you eventually do, reading until the sun starts to go down. Soon enough, you retreat to bed, getting an early rest before your coffee “date” with Sam tomorrow. That should be… interesting, to say the least. 

•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈••✦ ♡ ✦••┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈•

As you try and get ready to go the next afternoon, you’re completely stuck on what to wear. What does someone wear to a coffee date with their fake boyfriend to discuss the terms of their fake relationship? God, even phrasing that question made your head spin. You tried asking Lucy for advice but she was no help, just resorting to light teasing and not giving any actual suggestions.

“Why do you care what you wear? It’s not like he’s your actual boyfriend,” she said with a smug smile. You didn’t grace her with a reply, opting just to shut the door in her face and turn back to your closet. 

You sigh to yourself before sifting through your clothes, pulling out a white linen button-up shirt. You decide to just go with a black tank top, with the white shirt on top, left unbuttoned. The weather was quite warm with the summer heat really starting to settle in. You throw on a pair of jean shorts, slip on your low-top white vans, and then throw your things into your tote bag before heading out the door. It was only a few minutes before 2 at this point, but you didn’t want to arrive too early. You assumed he’d be late himself, anyway. 

As you turn the corner and cross the street, you see him sitting at a small table out front. Damn, guess you were wrong. Again.

“Sam,” you greet quietly as he stands up from the table. 

“Nice of you to finally show up, Y/N. Was starting to think you stood me up,” he says with a smirk, opening the door for you. 

“Shut up, I’m two minutes late,” you answer with a scoff, getting in line to order a drink. He stands next to you, leaning against the counter. You decide to stand in silence until after you place your order since your bickering wasn’t really the best idea in public. You order a chai tea latte and Sam just gets an americano, and the two of you find a table in the corner while you wait. 

“So, let’s get started then, shall we?” Sam says, leaning back in his chair. “Where’d we meet?” Your lips quirked upward into a smile.

“Okay, getting right to the point, I see,” I joke, folding my hands and placing them on the table. “Well, that one’s easy. We met at the club. We’ll just say that you came to some of my gigs and just liked me sooo much that you had to say hi,” I say, fighting the urge to roll my eyes at the absurdity of it all. You watch as a chuckle leaves his mouth, and there goes that feeling again. 

“Alright, sure,” he laughs as a barista comes to put our drinks on the table. “Thanks,” he says to them, taking a sip of his drink before turning back to you. “And we can say we started seeing each other… when? Maybe March?”

“Yeah, that sounds fine,” you shrug, taking a sip of your chai. “That won’t explain the girls you’ve had… relations with between then and now, though,” you add, looking up at him. He rolls his eyes, crossing his arms as he leans back in his chair. 

“If you’re jealous, just say that,” he smirks. “We can just say that we only became exclusive recently.” You quirk an eyebrow at him, but quickly decide it’s not worth the argument, opting to just scoff and change the subject. 

“What do we say when they ask why I’m not going on the tour with you guys?” you ask, adjusting nervously in your seat as a look washes over his face that you can’t quite interpret. 

“Are you not?” Sam asks, the tone in his voice sounding slightly accusatory. You’re not even quite sure how to reply, this wasn’t something you ever discussed.

“Wait, do you want me to?” you ask, straightening your posture. “I still have to work, you know. This is how I make a living, I can’t just ditch Seb for weeks on end.” He ponders your words for a moment, then leans forward a bit. 

“You don’t need all that. Jodie said she’d help set you up in your career, and she meant that,” he says sincerely. “She can pay you for the entire time we’re gone, if that’s the problem. I’m sure we can find something for you to do on the tour. And then when we come back, we can get you in the studio to record your album.”

It all almost felt too good to be true. Too easy. What was in it for them, truly? Sure, having a likable and successful girlfriend would be good for Sam’s image, but is that really all it is? Why does it feel like you’re getting way more out of this than they are? 

“I don’t know, Sam. I really don’t feel like I’ll belong there. What could I possibly do on tour besides act as your arm candy?” you say bitterly. 

“Y/N, you’re not just my arm candy. It isn’t like that,” he says dejectedly. His eyes scan your face but you don’t seem convinced. 

“You may be strikingly beautiful, but you’re much more than that to me, trust me,” he teases, coaxing a smile out of you. When he sees that his plan is working, he continues. “Maybe you could help me compose some piano fills for the shows or something.”

“You’d really let me do that?” you ask, your eyes lighting up slightly. A soft smile grows across his lips. 

“Sure. You won’t catch me admitting this ever again, so don’t get your hopes up, sweetheart… but you’re a talented musician. I’m sure we could cook something up together,” he says. 

You look over at him for a moment, trying to figure out if this is the same Sam that you used to argue with all those weeks ago. Obviously, it is, and he’s still keeping you on your toes, but something’s changed. You’re starting to think that this partnership may work out after all. 

“Okay. Alright, I’ll come,” you answer. “How long is it, anyway?”

“We’ll only be gone a month, and then we’ll have off until the end of the summer,” he assures you. It can’t be that bad, you suppose. 

“Okay, so we have that covered, I guess,” you say, taking another sip of your drink. “I guess that just leaves one more thing. We should set up some rules.”

“Rules? Seriously?” Sam scoffs, leaning back in his seat again. 

“Yes, seriously. We have to be on the same page or else this is gonna end up becoming a big mess,” you say, returning his annoyed look. 

“Fine. What rules are we talking about here?” he concedes.

“Well, first of all, do the rest of the guys know? Do they know it’s fake?” you ask.

“They think it’s real,” he shrugs. “Jodie thought it’d be better that way.”

“Okay, we’ll keep it that way then. But Lucy knows it’s fake,” you admit, and he gives you a disapproving look. “I tell her everything, it’s not my fault! But she’s the only one, even Seb thinks it’s real somehow.”

“Right, well. To the rest of the world, it’s real then. Anything else?” he asks, raising his eyebrow at you. 

“We should agree that this,” you start, pointing your finger between Sam and yourself, “is only in public. When we’re alone, it’s just me and you, none of this happy couple stuff.”

“Well, you don’t have to tell me twice,” he says with a smirk, “...unless that’s something you’ll have trouble with, sweetheart?” he teases. 

“Yeah, right. I just can’t seem to keep my hands off you, my bad,” you answer sarcastically. “Whatever, so that’s handled. Have anything you wanna add?” you ask, sipping from your mug.

“Yeah, what happens if one of us forms any sort of…” he trails off, pondering his words carefully. “...feelings.” Your eyebrows shoot up as you look over at him, almost spitting out your drink. You swallow it quickly and clear your throat. 

“Feelings?’ you laugh. “Not that that’s ever gonna be a problem, but… if it is, then I guess we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get there.”

“What, you’re not scared that you’ll fall in love with me?” he asks, leaning over the table slightly. You mirror his actions, your faces mere inches away. 

“Not in the slightest, Samuel,” you answer proudly, your eyes piercing into his. You weren’t going to back down, and neither was he. As you watch his eyes drift to your lips, you clear your throat, leaning back again. 

“Anything else?’ you ask, looking down at your mug in your hands as you avoid his gaze. 

“Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’ loudly. You can just hear the smirk in his voice. You’re not giving in that easily, you know that the second you look up at him, your heart will jump into your throat. 

“Great, so that settles it,” you say, taking the last sip and then putting your empty mug down on the table. You watch as his hand extends out to yours, to shake it.

“Girlfriend?” he asks, smirking at you as you finally look up at him. You have to hold in a sigh as you offer your hand to him, shaking it.

“Girlfriend.” 

His eyes dart between your eyes and your lips again before he brings your hand up to his mouth, kissing the back of it lightly. It takes everything in you not to fold right then and there, frankly, but you’re stronger than that.

His lips were just as soft as you thought they’d be. Not that you’ve thought about them before, of course not. Nonetheless, they were soft, and so warm. They lingered far longer than you wanted them to, and your instincts caused you to pull your hand away, placing it back in your lap. At that, you abruptly stand up from your seat, grab your tote bag, and put it on your shoulder. 

“I have to– I’ve gotta go,” you say softly, and he quickly stands up.

“Okay, I’ll walk you home,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck nervously as he follows you out the door. Again? That’s the second time just this week… You have to admit that it was thoughtful, but you don’t want to think too much of it. It’s just a nice gesture, nothing serious. He might be an arrogant asshole, but you guess he’s still a gentleman.

You walk beside each other on the sidewalk as you make your way down the street to your apartment. Every once in a while, his hand brushes yours as you walk, sending jolts throughout your body that you’re determined to ignore. You wondered why he asked you about the possibility of feelings being involved. Was that something he was worried about? Should you be worried about it? Surely not. Lucy seems to think you should be, if you told her about this she’d freak. But it’s not a big deal, right?

You stop in front of your building, the awkward opportunity of a goodbye leering over you both once more. You go back up toward your building in the same fashion as the other night, but a strong hand stops you before you get the chance to get too far. 

“Josh is having a party on Friday,” he says quickly, as if he was spitting it out. “I told him I'd bring you.” You stop and look up at him, his grip on your upper arm still remaining.

“Oh. Yeah, I’ll be there,” you answer with a soft smile. His eyes light up, like he was expecting you to put up a fight.

“Cool. I’ll pick you up at 8?” he asks. You nod, as his eyes continue to burn into yours. God, what now? Before you have the chance to do something awkward, his other arm lands on your waist and he bends down, placing a kiss on your temple and then backing away toward the sidewalk, leaving you in silent shock. “See you then, sweetheart.”

“Uh– yeah, see you,” you mutter, your eyes trained on him as he turns the corner. What the fuck was that?

As you slam the door of your apartment, you rush off to your room with hopes of avoiding any interrogation from Lucy. It doesn’t work, however. 

“Y/N,” she opens your door with a smug look on her face, leaning against the door frame. “How was your date?” You scoff at her as you throw yourself onto your bed. 

“I don’t even know where to start,” you groan as she enters the room and climbs into bed next to you. 

She stays sitting up as you lay your head on the pillow, and her fingers comb through your curls as you debrief the events of your afternoon. Despite her occasional jokes and teasing, she seems to be really supportive of you going on tour with the band. After all, it will be a good start for the future of your music career. But at what cost? What will it be like to spend a month straight with Sam Kiszka and his band of brothers? You still had two weeks to prepare, but even that didn’t feel like enough. Your world was moving a mile a minute, and it was only just getting started. 

•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈••✦ ♡ ✦••┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈•

chapter three

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[jung-koook]

정국 (Jung Kook) 'Standing Next to You - Slow Jam Remix' Visualizer

정국 (Jung Kook) 'Standing Next to You - Holiday Remix' Visualizer

정국 (Jung Kook) 'Standing Next to You - Future Funk Remix' Visualizer

Standing Next to You - Band Ver.

Standing Next to You - Latin Trap Remix

Standing Next to You - PBR & B Remix

[janeluartakaragou2niko]

Documenting regarding colosseum leaders in PBR:

Pokemon battle revolution, like Orre duology follows a secret formula GS has for major opponents: A muscular dude, a pretty lady that stalls, and least 1 or three slim guys. And short guy as boss with powerful mons. Let's start off with oddities and similarities: PBR track list regarding major bosses (in orange text) and next unrelated stuff (in blue) As for soundtack order for bosses/colosseum masters:

As for final order of battling them and their 3d model section:

It feels like Kruger meant to be first battle (or not), hence he has weird theme in game. Just Speculating it's mostly coincidential

and now the similarities: Joe's counterpart to Ein and Snattle, with Dakim strats in Masters battle, and Venus's supporter schtick; Sashay's counterpart to Venus and Lovrina, with Miror B's flexibiblity and dancing skills

Kruger's counterpart to Dakim and Gorigan, with some Ardos and other admin elements in it

and lastly, Mysterial carries the "short guy as boss with powerful pokemon" template, but few oddities: unlike his predecessors, Evice and Greevil, has open eyes and doesn't carry any malice or slim guy as bodyguard/second in-command. And Poketopia Master utilizes weather in set 8 If you have any DS cartridge.

since Orre duology and PBR are made by Genius Sonority, and both have somewhat of a template for important opponent pattern Again, it's my speculations and coincidences, and that lead to #GSshortmantrio to exist and those pieces of mine to exist, recent to older:

Signing off this one ramble, gotta sleep soon

[kennak]

要約するとTOPIXを100万、残りをPER,PBRが低い個別グロース株を吟味して10万ずつ10銘柄程度買えということ。儲けたいなら至極真っ当なアドバイス

[B! 投資] 個人資産800億円超「伝説の日本人投資家」が明かした「200万円持っていたら、何に投資すべきか」（伊藤 博敏） @gendai_biz

[oil-diffuser]

Part of Nostalgia, Ultra’s success is indebted to how Frank distanced himself from his contemporaries. Music criticism during the early 2010s was still focused on indie rock to the detriment of most other genres. Frank singing over songs from MGMT, the Eagles, Coldplay, and Mr. Hudson was seen as novel. “PBR&B” was first coined as a joke, but it quickly became a blanket term to describe a group of blog-friendly singers ranging from the Weeknd to Jeremih. Together they were deemed as something deserving more praise than Ne-Yo or Trey Songz. Years later, it’s hard not to see this gambit on Frank’s part as intentional. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, R&B was still seen as a Black genre, which most likely seemed inaccessible to a generation of music critics that were either too white or elitist to enjoy something outside of their cultural purview. Bloggers couldn’t claim that they created a Ciara or Lloyd, but they could plant a flag in the career of new artists like Frank or the Weeknd, whose debut mixtape came out roughly a month after Nostalgia, Ultra. During this time, nearly any R&B boat could rise if you merely chose the right sample and were mysterious enough to warrant obsessive reblogs on Tumblr. 

[cureforbedbugs]

Trap Daniels and global country

Will keep cross-posting my newsletter stuff here when it seems worthwhile. This is about Morgan Wallen and country meeting global sounds halfway.

From Mix 22

Morgan Wallen briefly alit on the top of the Billboard Hot 100 last week, only to be dethroned by Alex Warren on the following week’s chart. This added to the crescendo of fretting from music critics in my orbit, who have been putting out increasingly urgent hand-wringing treatises about Wallen and What It All Means. Personally, I think the Warren success is much weirder than the Wallen success. I’m no country scholar, but Wallen seems to me like the obvious beneficiary of leading the first wave of country music to sound globally contemporary in many years.

Wallen’s success makes sense to me because he’s the country star who “won” the sound I’ve jokingly dubbed Trap Daniels (after Eric Harvey’s PBR&B). As I’ve written about before, once you take off in your own lane in the monsterverse, it’s very hard to shift the inertia. As soon as I listened to “Last Night” I understood that country music had finally arrived as the last genre on earth to join pop music’s broad adoption of ’10s trap beats. Once it did this, more of it traveled, no right-wing global heel turn necessary. (That may also have happened, but I’m dubious.)

This posed a few questions for me. What accounts for the long delay between the introduction of what we’d recognize as today’s trap beats and their total global takeover? When did the rest of (non-country) pop music absorb trap beats and why? And then, why did it take country so long—and, given how long it took, why did this actually work rather than sounding hopelessly passé?

Trap beats have a long history, but a relevant endpoint (to be reductive about it) is the standardization of rap production conventions that eventually took the scrappy drum machine sample beats of Dirty South rap in the ‘90s and, over time, ironed out all of the bounce—either literally, in the sense of the New Orleans genre, or figuratively, in the sense of a more rigid and less syncopated feel. By the ‘10s, trap beats, especially those influenced by Chicago drill, moved at a menacing plod and featured some specific sonic elements, like the persistent hiss of random hi-hat rolls.

I think of this development as the emergence of hard trap. If you’re annoyed with my many neologisms, you could refer to it simply as “drill,” but I think it’s important to separate the conventions and palettes that transferred over to pop music from the specific development of Chicago drill as a genre. “Hard trap” gets across how rap music abandoned the rubbery and inviting feel of previous trap beats and started lurching in lockstep.

I suspect that stiffening and slowing the beats down in this way made them more suitable for other pop forms entering the streaming “vibes era.” The almost militaristic regularity, with off-kilter ratatat hi-hats throwing in random textures, could more easily adorn ponderous, sadder, or dreamier music without accidentally turning it into dance music. You could write a real downer and still thread a relatively hip beat through it, which happened with emo-adjacent Soundcloud rap but also with pop and singer-songwriter material using some of the same beats.

Hard trap was in full swing in rap music by 2012, but in 2013, you still hear pop stars struggling to incorporate these elements. I immediately think of Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse,” which switches awkwardly to a trap beat for its Juicy J feature, or Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop,” a colossal mess of a song whose Mike WiLL Made-It beat forces sloppy, almost indie-ish drumming into something like a trap pattern.

It isn’t until about 2015 that you really get the full complement of hard trap tropes showing up all over the place. There are the obvious candidates who seem like a natural fit, like Rihanna with “Bitch Better Have My Money,” and also non-obvious ones like Lana Del Rey on “High by the Beach.”

What this gradual adoption of hard trap in the pop mainstream reminds me of is the explosion of keyboard technology following low-budget prosumer innovations in the early ‘80s. By 1983, analog keyboards that required programming were rapidly being supplanted in pop music by digital synthesizer models with presets made possible through FM synthesis (Holly Boson has a good rundown of this technology in a Pop Could Never Save Us episode about the 1985 charts). This led to popular, and often overbearingly cheesy, sounds from synths like the Yamaha DX7 flooding the pop charts, giving much mid-80s pop its uniquely plasticky character.

The “Yamaha DX7 moment” isn’t as obvious to me in the wider adoption of trap beats (there might be one, but I don’t know what it is). My semi-educated guess is that there is probably a confluence of technologies: (1) cheap DAWs being used in increasingly formulaic ways by producers without other studio experience, (2) cheap bluetooth headphones connecting to new smartphone technology (the signature hi-hat hiss sounds awful, but its oppressive flatness fits the playback), and (3) popular sample packs and production templates becoming more widely available. Trap was only one product of this technology confluence, which also led to the explosion of dubstep and pop-EDM.

It’s not surprising that hard trap didn’t transfer to country music for a long time—most of the styles from this era didn’t, including dubstep and EDM.4 There was the rise of so-called “bro country” in the mid-’10s, which mimics the braggadocio and cadence of rap, but without many actual trap beats. The overriding bro country production norm at the time was hideously chipper sunshine snap, a lightly hip-hop-indebted beat built on very loud, reverbed snaps that “hook you” like a wedgie might. It’s overbearing to the point of being didactic, like instructions for clapping properly on the 2 and the 4 for people suffering from rhythmic congenital amusia.5

What you find in 2013 country are the same growing pains crossover attempts that were happening in pop music: the “Cruise” remix with Nelly by Florida Georgia Line has a few trap sound elements, but it’s still very much of the sort of uneasy hip-hop/country Frankenstein that has been a feature of country for decades.

My inner Occam’s Razor says that the success of “Old Town Road” in 2019 was, despite the song’s fraught relationship with country radio, still a proof of concept for how completely you could let trap beats take over the production of a country song—the guitar twang even gets you some bounce back in the picture. (Some of the music that followed was likely being recorded around the same time, though, so it’s hard to know for sure.) Whatever the reason, by 2020, you see dozens of country songs importing hard trap seamlessly after lots of prototype fits and starts, like Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Backroad” in 2017. That song is still built on sunshine snap, whereas almost everything else on the eventual album it appeared on, Southside in 2020, is more directly trap-influenced.

Country was late to the party by five years compared to other American pop, but globally, hard trap beats were also finding their way into K-pop and other non-US pop scenes at the same time. So the template finally clicked—Wallen joins the monsterverse as the representative of the newest sound of modern country music, which, even though it is technically pretty “old” at that point, still signifies around the world.

It may be that country is also signifying something other than basic pop interoperability, but I’m skeptical. If I were to make a more political judgment of why it traveled when it did, I would tie it to A-pop theory: a more comfortably hip-hop-oriented country music may have been the sonic Trojan horse for newfound American regionalism abroad, with the cowboy being something close to the default costume of the US in global imagination. This has long been true, but the sounds of 21st century country have sometimes seemed stubbornly difficult to absorb in other countries. Trap Daniels meets the rest of the world halfway, maybe for the first time since…Shania Twain? (This is where I’m out over my skis. Spurs?)

And hey, speaking of cowboy costumes, I did get that new A-pop installment up, about Eurovision and the impending(?) vacuum(?) of American pop centrality. It’s a weird one, still working a bunch of ideas out, but if you haven’t read enough words from me yet, there’s a few more for you.

[portfoliodocumentationandpitch]

Portfolio, Documentation and Pitch (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Stylized Works #2

The First Berserker: Khazan is a stylized action RPG developed by Neople released very recently in 2025 and follows the tragic downfall of Khazan, a once-heroic figure framed for treason, now battling through a grim, war-torn world seeking revenge. It's a darker, bloodier cousin to titles like Marvel Rivals with bold character design and a serious, battle-worn flavor.

Figure 1 (The First Berserker: Khazan, (Orselli, 2024))

Khazan is not painterly bright like Marvel RIvals as it is more grittier and darker but holds heavy stylization in its character designs and environmental storytelling. The characters themselves retain heroic exaggeration with broad shoulders, flowing capes and weapons larger than common sense dictates. It can be classified as realism filtered through a hyper-stylized lens- not quite realism and not quite cartoon as well.

The surfaces of armor, swords, and architecture are very sharply modeled with clean, defined edges and the materials while rugged, are still stylized- not full photoreal, but textured enough to give weight.

Figure 2 (Stylized shader in Khazan, (Jacob, 2023))

Khazan uses PBR shading, but textures are selectively exaggerated to main a larger-than-life aesthetic. For example, metals glint with sharp specular highlights, skin shaders are tweaked for a slighty "unreal" vibrancy and the blood and cloth have stylized splatter/tearing effect which is not photoreal horror.

Heavy work of ZBrush sculpting is evident, especially in ornate designs on armor and weapons. They also avaoid procedural over-noise as every scratch feels deliberately places, not just "grunge for grunge's sake".

Figure 3 (Dynamics in Khazan, (xMufL, 2024))

The movement in Khazan is slow but heavy and the users can feel the mass behind each sword swing. This also affects how the 3D models are rigged with extra care on secondary motion, weight transfer and weapon interactions. There's subtle dynamic simulation on cloaks and hair though it is stylized to snap into poses, not floppy and ultra-realistic like AAA open-world RPGs.

Figure 4 (Environment in Khazan, (Duckworth, 2024))

The environment art is really similar to the Souls genre but slightly dipped into anime dramatic flair. The 3D assets are modular and designed to blend "playable spaces" with "hero shots" in mind. It has a stylized high-contrast lighting which enables characters to pop against darker backgrounds that help with visual clarity during intense fights.

Khazan is an excellent study for those who wish to master stylized sculpting, material polish and emotional character design and will refine your sense of weight, detail and form.

REFERENCES

Orselli, B., 2024. Niche Gamer. [Online] Available at: https://nichegamer.com/the-first-berserker-khazan-release-2025/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].

Jacob, 2023. Game News 24. [Online] Available at: https://game-news24.com/2023/12/07/brutal-combat-cel-shaded-visuals-and-more-are-some-of-the-features-in-the-first-berrker-khazan-debut-trailer/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].

xMufL, 2024. XDynasty. [Online] Available at: https://www.xboxdynasty.de/news/the-first-berserker-khazan/exclusive-spielszenen-aus-dem-hardcore-action-rpg/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].

Duckworth, J., 2024. Gamerant. [Online] Available at: https://gamerant.com/first-berserker-khazan-gameplay-preview/ [Accessed 27 April 2025].

[heylittleriotact]

𝐢 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟓

𝐄𝐦𝐦𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐱 𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐀𝐔

𝐀 𝐝𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐮𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬. 𝐒𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭.

A very special thank you to my wife @emmg - this chapter (in all of its absurdity) could not have come to fruition without her. I don't want to spoil it, but the notes at the end will make everything clear.

Read below or on ao3

Like any mid-sized music venue of repute in a city like Nevarra, the Night-Owl was located in a basement at the bottom of a narrow stairwell that served as the only means of egress from the place, effectively making the dark windowless room a fire-trap.

Was Emmrich disquieted by that knowledge? Yes: the idea of being trapped underground, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other likewise trapped people - slowly suffocating, overheating, crushing - in the event of an emergency was a literal nightmare for him.

Was he going to do what he’d done since his late teens when he started attending such places and simply drink away any apprehension that might ruin his night? Certainly: it was nearly Wintersend after all: no better time to cut loose and indulge, right?

Rook seemed to be of a similar mind, because as soon as the door-girl plucked the cash from Emmrich’s fingers for cover and branded them with a stamp on the inside of their wrists, she beelined for the bar, half-dragging him through the packed space that smelled of flat beer, pot, body odour, and the nebulous but unmistakable aroma that was unique to fog machines.

The bar wasn’t well-lit, but from what he could see from the glow of the three televisions behind the bar and the dim pot-lights set into the black ceiling tiles, he and Rook were exceptionally overdressed in their cocktail attire: punks, skids, skins, creeps, and weirdos milled about. Some leaned against the bar, slugging back tall-cans of PBR and talking loudly over the music being played over the sound system. Some lurked in front of the stage waiting for the band to start.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am - I’m afraid you don’t meet the dress code for the evening and you’ll have to leave: this is a classy place.”

Emmrich‘s hand had settled on Rook’s waist, and he reflexively held on a little tighter at the sound of the stern but apologetic voice.

Rook turned in his arm and grinned broadly at the sight of the handsome and broadly built man in front of her who tossed his long wavy black hair, grinning cheekily. He held a pint glass filled with something hazy, and wore a purple and green plaid button down over a t-shirt that had ‘MOGWAI’ printed across the chest.

“Yeah, I’ll leave - if you can manage to get me back up the stairs, asshole” Rook snarked back.

“Done it before,” her friend shrugged. “And you were dead weight too - that was the Fireball and tequila night.” He wagged a finger at her, his voice familiar to Emmrich - a familiar late-night accompaniment to many a midnight embalming.

“On the topic of the dead—” his head shifted and he looked at Emmrich. “You’re ‘The Guy’ aren’t you? Emmrich, right?” His eyebrows raised and lowered twice, and he held out his hand. “Leon Delgado - best known around town as Leon the Loon on B-96.9’s late night show: Mom always said I had a face for radio, so I like to think I’m making her proud.” His grin widened.

Ah of course - this was the infamous Leon: Rook had shared many a tale of misadventure featuring her old roommate. He hosted a late night radio show during the week spotlighting local alternative artists - of course he’d be here.

Rook had pulled out of his grasp and was standing on the brass bar rail, making her a few inches taller so she could lean in for the pretty bartender with a pixie cut to hear her.

“What do you want?” She hollered over her shoulder at him.

“I’ll have what you’re having, darling!”

“Three jägers and two PBRs, please!”

Oh it was going to be that sort of night, then - Emmrich could already feel his head throbbing in advance of the hangover that was in his near future.

He returned his attention to Leon. “A pleasure to meet you, Leon - I’ve heard so much about you!”

“And you still want to date her?!” Leon threw his head back and laughed loudly. “Just fucking with you, man - but if you’re ever looking for an embarrassing story about Rook, I lived with her for two years: I could write a book!”

“So could I, but about you! Do you want this shot or not? Keep talking and I’ll do ‘em both!” Rook reached into her jacket for her wallet and Emmrich put his hand over hers.

“I’ll buy, darling,” he said, quietly enough so that only she could hear him.

“Don’t be silly,” she retorted, eyes reflecting the dim bar lighting prettily. “You can get the next round.”

If he had it his way, Rook wouldn’t pay for a single thing out of her pocket ever again, but he understood that letting her do things - small kindnesses like a round of drinks - meant something to her.

“Of course, dear.”

Smiling, she counted out the cash for the drinks and handed it to the bartender, pocketing some of the change and dumping the rest in the tip jar before sliding down from the rail, her heels clicking against the hard concrete.

“We just found out our funeral home has been bought out by a pair of raging sociopaths and will be run by a dumbass whose spine has the structural integrity of overcooked spaghetti!” She told Leon, picking up a shot and handing it to him, then handing one to Emmrich before she picked up her own. “Sooo... fucking cheers!”

She cozied back against Emmrich and lifted her shot glass.

“Fucking yikes, bud!” Leon concurred, and all three touched their glasses together before tipping them back.

Oh it was bad. It was foul. It was concentrated evil.

It tasted like cough syrup and regret - how it left his throat feeling sticky was a marvel: the enigmatic trait of a concoction that could have only be dreamt up and made reality by a sadistic madman.

The cloying, herbal taste of the jäger dragged Emmrich instantly back to the hazy, sloppy nights of younger years, and a wave of nausea belted him square in the gut: a fist with a message tattooed on brutal knuckles that said ‘you are too old for this, old man.’

The cheap beer that he chased it with did little to take the edge off: foaming and bubbling all the way down to his stomach where it mingled with the jäger and made the acute nausea even worse.

Perhaps he’d vomit right here at the bar, ruining Rook’s costly new shoes - and any chances he had of making their relationship last beyond the night.

He swallowed the mouthful of saliva that had ominously flooded his mouth and forced his constitution to heel: he could do this - ‘rally’ as the youth called it these days.

Rook stood on her toes to see the front of the room where a very done-up woman in her mid-thirties with bouffant, fire-engine red hair was currently setting up on stage along with a fellow with an impressively vertical flattop, and another fellow wearing a black shirt with red roses embroidered on the chest. All three of them were smartly dressed, and positively covered with tattoos.

“We missed The Buttfuckers, hey?” She asked, leaning towards Leon.

“By about ten minutes, yeah.”

“The band setting up is The Swamp Neck Romantics - Cherry, the lead singer, is the friend I mentioned,” she explained to Emmrich, her index finger poking at the tab on the can of beer in her hand. “I don’t come out to shows as much as I used to, but I always try to see her play when I can.”

Emmrich watched the fairly diminutive woman vanish from sight behind a stack of speakers only to reappear moments later, lugging something bigger than she was across the stage.

“Is that—?”

“A real baby coffin? Fuck yeah it is," Rook smirked. "Cool, right?"

"Indeed," Emmrich admitted. He'd seen double basses before, but none quite so morbidly intriguing as this.

The shiny black coffin sized for an infant served as the body of the bass, and the scroll at the top of the neck was shaped like a skull. It was an intimidating instrument: beastly and daunting by its sheer existence alone as it lay on its side at the front of the stage where Cherry Cherise had set it down in front of the mic.

“They’ve been playing the scene for about ten years: her husband, Flitz - the guy with the flattop - is a carpenter. He built the bass for her as a wedding present - with the help of a professional luthier, of course.”

The very romance of the gesture prodded at the part of him that Johanna frequently derided for being soft and dewy-eyed: to be so in tune with your lover’s passions - to share that joy with them on a stage and know that you were part of it too.

It was rather like his dynamic with Rook, he supposed. Except instead of pin-up hair and rock ‘n’ roll, it was aspirating corpses and consoling the bereaved.

He was seized with the sudden need to hold her hand, so he did, twining his slender fingers through hers, feeling entirely content as Rook and Leon caught up over the twenty minutes or so before the band hit the stage in earnest.

The punk-rockabilly fusion of sound that payed homage to all of the greatest horrors to grace the silver screen was a wonderful novelty, and as they took down another round of drinks, and Rook shimmied and grooved in place in front of him in time to the music, laughing, singing along and exuding nothing short of unbridled joy, Emmrich felt overwhelmed with gratitude.

The fact that he got to be here with her - granted this invitation into her life and the people and things that she cared about and loved - could this admission mean that he was counted among them? Dare he entertain the idea that his darling Rook had fallen just as hard and just as fast as he had?

Clapping and hollering drowned out the end of the song, and the buxom frontwoman flicked her burgundy-tipped finger towards the crowd - the stage lights followed her gesture, illuminating the churning mass of bodies. "We don't care if you skank - or if you headbang - or if you shake your titties–" racous hooting filled the room. "– it's all good: we just want you to party with us – you gonna party with us?"

"FUCK YEAH!"

"Wooo!!"

"I fuckin' love TITTIES!!"

"That's more like it," she purred into the vintage microphone, her deep, throaty voice slithering past her lips like pure sin. "I wanna see you fuckin' move."

She slapped the strings of the bass like it owed her money, and snarled out a song about murdering an unfaithful lover.

"Aw - yes! I was hoping they would play this one!" Rook said, turning over her shoulder so he could hear her. "It's one of my favourites!"

He watched Rook (the band was good, but it wasn't her), bemused and enchantingly mystified at his own good fortune, until he felt that uncanny evolutionary awareness kick in, which alerted him to the fact that he was being watched.

Glancing around the dark pulsing room, his eyes landed on a lone figure leaning against the side of the sound booth: a handsome young man with pale eyes and dark hair styled into a tidy pompadour. His black denim vest - frayed at the edges where the sleeves used to be - was covered in pins and patches that Emmrich couldn't make out at this distance, and his white t-shirt was tucked into the waistband of a pair of rolled up Levi's so tight they might have been painted on.

The young man did not deign to look away Emmrich looked his way. In fact, his smooth features contorted into an even deeper scowl as the corner of his mouth curled back in a hateful snarl that had Emmrich wondering what he had done to offend this stranger so, but it all came together when Rook accidentally stepped on his foot and turned around briefly to apologize profusely, her hand on his chest.

The stranger wasn't staring at him: he was staring at Rook. And he wasn't a stranger at all: this could be none other than Tommy - and he was furious.

Emmrich looked away from Tommy and back towards the stage, his face stoic as he kissed the top of Rook's head and held her a little closer while she continued to enjoy the band - she didn't seem to mind.

He wasn't in the business of picking fights, nor had he any interest in humiliating the younger man by parading Rook around like she was some prize he had stolen. However, he was not above making it abundantly clear to Rook's troublesome former lover that she was not alone: that she was being looked out for and would be unavailable to Tommy, should he feel compelled to approach her tonight.

A short time later, Emmrich looked back to the sound booth and around the room: Tommy was gone.

Tommy had vanished at some point, and Rook was glad that he had.

Standing around glaring at her and Emmrich like a fucking ghoul like she wouldn’t notice - what a pathetic creep. It was no surprise that he was at the show, honestly: she’d taken the possibility into account when she floated the idea to Emmrich, taking a calculated risk by assuming that if Tommy was there, he’d be too big of a coward to actually approach her, let alone start anything - and she had been right. Not with Leon or any of her other friends and acquaintances around - Cherry alone would have happily jumped on an excuse to kick his sorry ass: she knew all about the circumstances of their breakup. Rook had already heard through the grapevine that Flitz had told him they wouldn't share bills with Tommy's band anymore - the Romantics wanted nothing to do with him. It wasn't an insignificant move: Flitz was well-known for being one of the chillest, most easy-going dudes in the scene - being a fair bit older than most up-and-coming musicians, he and Cherry garnered a lot of respect amongst their peers.

Despite that momentary unpleasantness, the rest of the night was a blur: four hours, two ATM visits, far too many shots, and one very giggly Rook later, Emmrich got out of the cab and walked around to the other side to open the door for her.

She practically spilled out onto the sidewalk with all the grace of a baby fawn, and he caught her by the elbow to make sure she wouldn’t fall while he thanked the cabbie again.

“My apologies if anything she asked about your experiences with death was insensitive - she’s just very passionate, you see? Drive safely, sir!”

The door closed and the cab pulled away as Emmrich started following Rook up the walkway to his townhouse: she was tugging against his grip like an excited hound.

“Darling, please,” he beseeched, slurring the words slightly. “It’s icy: be careful.”

“I’m being careful!” She huffed, negotiating the snow covered flagstones with as much care as she could. “You worry too much, Emmrich. I’m f-ine!”

As she’d said it, her heel slipped over a patch of melting snow and sent her flailing backwards into his arms. He caught her, but only just - his own feet slipping to the sides as he tried to find purchase on the snowy walkway.

“Holy shit!” The surprise on her face gave way to unfettered laughter as he guided her back up onto her feet and she collapsed against him, tears at the corners of her eyes, she was in such hysterics. It was enough to get him going too: only a relieved chuckle at first - but within seconds he was breathless, and they both leaned against one another outside his house, arms over shoulders and around waists as they cackled and quaked at the sheer hilarity of it all.

“C-could you imagine?” She wheezed. “How fu-fucking dumb I would have loo- hah- looked if I ate shit two seconds af-after you told me to be careful?”

“It’s not— it’s not funny, Rook!” He rasped, laughing harder still. “You could have been s-seriously hurt!”

Maker she loved when he laughed - loved being the one responsible for it - even if it meant she'd nearly cracked her skull on the pavement like a rotten melon.

“I know!” She groaned, massaging her sore cheeks and taking a deep breath. “It was j-just… the…” words failed her and she tried again to regain some composure. “The look on your face!” She gasped out before curling in on herself, clutching her belly as she howled. “You were like—” she clutched her face in her hands and pulled a ridiculous expression of panic. “— ‘arghhh!’ Hahaha - oh… haha - Maker’s balls it was funny...”

“Your own expression wasn’t too different, dear,” he retorted. “Now let’s get you inside before you properly hurt yourself, shall we?” He held out his hand to her and carefully led her up the stairs of the porch before reaching into his pocket to withdraw his keys.

He disarmed the alarm and took her jacket, hanging it up in the front closet while she slumped to her knees and greeted Manfred, who graciously saw fit to arch his back when she scratched her fingers down the length of his spine - he’d warmed up to her over the past month, having only bitten through two of her charging cables, stolen away with her nice lingerie and made a nest out of it in a linen closet, and commandeered her backpack for an entire afternoon roughly three weeks earlier, swiping and hissing at either of them if they dared too close in an attempt to extract him.

“I’m glad we’re both off tomorrow,” she said, stroking under Manfred’s chin and looking up at Emmrich. “I think a day of sweet fuck all is gonna be great.”

“If it’s with you, I know it will be, darling,” he beamed and extended a hand to help her up, but she didn’t take it.

Instead, she shuffled closer to him, still on her knees, one of her shiny gold pumps dragging behind her.

The palms of her hands meandered up his thighs, and she gazed up at him with glassy eyes. She drew her scarlet lower lip through her teeth and then said, “Did you have a fun night?”

“Of course, darling - even despite the curious events of the party. I got to spend time with you: I met your dear friend, Leon, and got to watch a band whose lead singer has managed to fashion an upright bass out of a baby coffin. I can’t remember the last time I was out this late.”

Rook hummed happily and hugged his legs, burying her face into his lap and making him jump.

“I’m glad you had fun,” she mumbled. “I did too - but you wanna know what made it even better?”

“What?” He inquired gently, smiling as he drifted his fingers over her hair.

“Feeling you slowly dripping out of me all evening,” she whispered silkenly, rubbing her cheek over his pants and against his cock. “Every time I stood up… every time I shifted in my seat… sometimes just out of the blue I’d feel a little bit more of your cum oozing out of me… mmmm…”

He must have been expecting her to wax poetic with sweet words and declarations of affection rather than filth, because he made a small sound, high in the back of his throat: something caught between a whine and a sigh.

“Wanna do it again?” She inquired, the tips of her fingers curling over his waistband.

He hooked his index fingers under her wrists and urged her up onto her feet so he could kiss her properly in answer: it was a sloppy collision of lips and tongues and teeth, but it was sweeter and more intoxicating than any drink she’d had that night.

Parting from her, he ran his thumb over her shiny lower lip, seemingly entranced by the delicate smudge of crimson that trailed in its wake against her fair skin. It was silent in the front entryway, but for the sound of Manfred inquiring about their evening as he twined between their feet.

And then they were kissing again: graceless and desperate - utterly devoid of flair or panache. She felt his hands all over her, roaming, clutching, and squeezing - a handful of ass here, a palmful of tit there - Manfred skittered off.

She bit Emmrich’s lip and he groaned. She did it again - his fingernails dug into her hip and he bit her back.

“Fuck you’re hot…” she breathed between feverish kisses - between the flares of arousal that licked through her core as she started clumsily working him out of his jacket. “You’re so fucking hot, Emmrich— ah!” she shuddered and gasped when his lips closed over her neck, his teeth dragging over her sensitive skin, as he backed her against the wall in the hallway, effectively pinning her so he could continue to ravish her. “All night… this was all I wanted - all night…”

“Me too,” he panted against her neck, catching skin between teeth - making her squirm against the wall as his hand slipped up her thigh and she fumbled with his belt buckle, fingers lacking the dexterity they normally had. “You are radiant, darling… irresistible…”

She arched against his hand as his long fingers swept aside her ruined thong and he slipped one deep inside of her with ease. She bucked even harder, head tilting back with a clipped cry when he twitched that finger just enough to drag it over her g-spot.

“… how fortunate I am to find myself in your company—” his words caught in his throat when she freed him from his pants and her fingers wrapped around his hardening shaft, working him in her hand. “That you would choose me…”

“I was thinking the same thing but about you…” she managed, words threatening to fail her when a second finger joined the first and the sensations he was heaping upon her intensified. His cock was hot and heavy in her hand. “Emmrich… will you pin my hands against the wall?” She ventured, feeling daring due to the ridiculous quantity of alcohol in her system.

He didn’t hesitate: he simply did as he was told and pulled her hand from his cock, collecting her thin wrists in one large hand and guiding them up over her head, pressing them firmly to the wall while his ministrations continued.

“Like this?” He whispered, parting from her neck long enough to look into her eyes, his own gaze lust-blown and somewhat unfocused, a flush of colour on his cheeks, signaling his own intoxication.

“Yes!” She whined, and he clearly understood the assignment, because following confirmation that this was indeed what she wanted, he scissored his fingers, stretching her deeply before adding a third. Her hips jerked at the fullness, and his thumb found her clit, circling it in time with the movements of his hand, all while holding her firmly in place.

“Does that feel good, darling?” He queried sinfully, notching the outside of his leg against the inside of her knee, making it even more difficult for her to move.

“Yes!” Was her reply: a pitched whisper. “Ohhh fuck yes!” His fingers stroked over her g-spot again and her vision went spotty, a moan warbling past her lips. “Please - please don’t stop—”

Maker - every time: he knew exactly how to undo her with an efficiency that was nothing short of staggering.

The thick squelch of her cunt and the smell of sex filled the entryway as he worked his fingers inside of her, and Emmrich laved his tongue over her earlobe, breath searing the shell of her ear when he said, “Are you going to come for me, dearest?”

His thumb pressed down on her clit and she writhed in his grasp - desperate - wanting. He braced his arm, making it impossible for her to chase release on her own.

“Yes!” She panted again, apparently incapable of anything more complex than single syllables as his erotic proposal ricocheted around her skull.

He stooped down and rewarded her with a wet, sloppy kiss, not quite crushing her against the wall, but leaning enough of his weight against her that she was truly at his mercy - and it was amazing.

The quavering groan that accompanied her orgasm was muffled by his mouth: he kissed her all the way through it, feasting on the sounds of her elation - pleased moans of his own accompanying the sweep of his tongue against hers.

Her knees went weak and she sagged against the wall, thighs quivering as he withdrew his hand from between her legs and lifted it to his mouth, tasting her before drawing the tips of his fingers over her flushed lips, watching with half-lidded eyes as she drew them into her mouth and sucked gently - her own tart sweetness mingled with the slightly salty semen that was reminiscent of vanilla… one of the reasons she was so taken with the perfume she was wearing: it reminded her of Emmrich.

“Shall we retire, my darling?” He asked gently, as if he hadn’t just completely rocked her world.

“Yes please…” she mumbled, kissing his fingertips and massaging the palm of his hand with her thumb now that he’d relinquished his hold on her. She could feel his still erect cock resting heavily against her belly, throbbing occasionally, and leaving a dark spot on her black dress where precum had leaked from the tip. “I’m not done with that,” her eyes drifted pointedly downwards.

He pulled away enough to give her space to push away from the wall and support her own weight. She kicked off her heels, instantly becoming a few inches shorter, and watched - transfixed and feeling rather like a pervert - as Emmrich stooped and picked up his jacket from the floor and straightened before gripping his cock and stroking it slowly a few times.

She felt a bit faint at that, completely taken off guard by how unexpectedly intrigued she was at the sight of Emmrich touching himself.

“Darling?”

“Hmmm?”

“I asked if you could manage the stairs on your own: I’m going to feed Manfred and ensure everything is locked up, then I’ll join you.”

“Oh! Oh - yeah. Yeah I’m good!” Her feet found ground again, and she forced herself to look at Emmrich’s face instead of his cock.

He leaned in and kissed her again, hand curling into her hair: her bun was already in a state of disarray - no need to be careful with it anymore.

“Aren’t you just?”

Oh, she felt dizzy again…

“Don’t take too long…” Adjusting her skirt and shifting her panties back into place, she parted from him and started down the hallway, punch drunk, actually drunk, and hoping that her stroll through the kitchen and towards the stairs read as a sexy and alluring saunter instead of a spontaneous and poorly-timed attempt at imitating Quasimodo - she was never sure...

She flicked on the bedside lamps via the switch on the wall when she got to Emmrich’s room, unzipping her dress as she wandered towards the bathroom.

By the time Emmrich joined her, she was naked except for her pine green stockings, makeup washed away, a number of bobby pins wedged in the corner of her mouth as she reached behind her head with both hands and worked the last few free.

She tucked one in into her lips, following Emmrich’s reflection in the mirror when he appeared, still fully dressed, closing the distance between them and standing behind her, his hands grazing her hips.

“Allow me.”

He gently parted her hands away from her hair and kissed her temple before resuming the task of removing the bobby pins on her behalf.

She let the mouthful of metallic tasting pins tumble from her lips and into her palm. “Thanks.”

“Of course, darling,” he said, utterly focused on his work, managing not to pull or snag a single hair.

It was silent for a time but for the hushed ‘clink’ of metal meeting the marble vanity as Emmrich methodically freed Rook’s hair leisurely, a placid and blatantly smitten look on his narrow face.

���Such a soft touch,” Rook remarked, meeting his eyes in the mirror when he glanced up at her words. She leaned her hips against the countertop, still very much drunk. “I usually end up getting impatient halfway through and yanking the rest out.”

He tilted his head almost sheepishly to the side and looked back down at his hands, one side of his moustache lifting with the corner of his mouth.

“As the skin of a cadaver begins to dehydrate postmortem, the dermis and epidermis shrink, and weakened cellular adhesion makes the hair exceptionally delicate…” He spoke almost distractedly, tilting his head to the left this time, lost in the tending of her hair. “The gentlest touch must be used when washing or combing the hair of the dead, or it just… falls loose.”

His hands stilled and the lazy smile was replaced by a look of wide-eyed panic.

“That’s— it’s not that— I’m not comparing you to a corpse, I only—”

“I get it - dead people hair pulls out easily - so you’re gentle,” Rook interjected. “Please don’t stop?”

He relaxed, looking tired and relieved, strands of his silver hair falling over his forehead as he went back to work.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“For what? You’re the one fixing my hair.”

“You understand me, Rook.” He set down the last pin on the black quartz countertop and combed his fingers gently through her hair, guiding it down over her shoulders. “Sometimes what I intend to express gets lost in translation and… it doesn’t seem to happen quite so often with you...”

He reached for the hairbrush on the counter, presumably to brush out her wayward and hair-sprayed curls, but she stopped him with her hand over his. “I want to go to bed.” She announced, turning so she was facing him properly. “But let’s get that lipstick off your face first, shall we?”

She hopped up onto the countertop and parted her legs, beckoning him close. He obediently slotted himself between them, placing his hands on the countertop and nuzzling playfully up her neck, chasing the fading notes of her perfume while she reached for her package of makeup remover wipes.

His moustache ghosted over her skin, tickling her and causing her shoulder to jerk upwards.

“Hey!” She giggled. “You’re being a goof!”

“There is a very beautiful and naked lady perched on my vanity - I daresay some goofiness is warranted…” he grinned at her with drooping eyelids, and she realized then that she’d never seen Emmrich so deeply in his cups as he was now.

Certainly he’d split a bottle of wine or two with her at dinner most nights, and occasionally indulged in a nightcap when wasn’t on call, but Emmrich was very much a wits-about-him-at-all-times kind of man - except for right now.

Right now he was staring at her like she’d hung the stars in the sky, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger and looking pleased as anything while she quickly wiped the smeared and smudged lipstick stains from his mouth, cheeks, and chin for the second time that night.

“And there is a very handsome and tipsy man in front of me,” she said in retort. “I can’t help but wonder: is this gentleman gonna take me to bed and fuck me, or is he going to stand around all night staring?”

She thought about wrapping her arms and legs around him and making him carry her to the bed, but thought better of it: Emmrich wasn’t a brawny man to begin with, and surprising him with her entire body weight unannounced in his condition might end up with both of them on the floor.

Emmrich had other plans anyway: he helped her down from the counter and began loosening his tie and unbuttoning his waistcoat. He stooped slightly to kiss her. “You have somewhat of a head start on me, I’m afraid,” he remarked, slipping loose a button and then gently rolling one of her pierced nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

“I suppose we’d better do something about that…” She helped herself to his belt - still undone from earlier - sliding it free from his thin waist and setting it down on the counter behind her.

She undid his gold cufflinks and removed them next, then shifted his shirt off his shoulders and down his arms, leading him from the bathroom, the light switch clicking as Emmrich darkened the room behind him.

The shirt was tossed on the small settee at the foot of the bed, and Rook scraped her fingernails gently over his chest, kissing here, licking there… sucking his own nipple into her mouth, feeling him shiver against her.

His bare skin felt comforting and familiar against hers - as though within the span of a month, he had imprinted on her at a biological level, setting off the quadrants of her brain that told her she was safe and loved. She sighed and wrapped her arms around him, inhaling the spicy, luxurious waft of his cologne mingled with the distinct but not unpleasant musk of his sweat - maybe it was because it was his and smelled unique to him, but she didn’t mind: it got hot at the Night-Owl when it was packed with bodies, and he was wearing a three piece suit, after all.

She dropped to her knees and undid his shoes, loosening the laces of the eccentric brown and mauve oxfords enough so he could step out of them.

Pushing them aside, she straightened, lifting herself so she could undo his trousers and slide them down over his skinny hips, along with his underwear so that he was exactly as naked as she was: he in his black dress socks, and she in her stockings.

“There - now you’re all caught up,” she followed the slight curve of the small of his back and squeezed his ass: she loved his ass. It was adorable. It was small but shapely, and she had a particular soft spot for the little horizontal folds of skin - the gluteal sulcus, according to her anatomy textbook - that were nestled right under the curve of his cheeks: they were downright lickable.

“I’ve always been impressed by your efficiency,” he walked her back towards the bed until she fell back onto it, enveloped in softness and the finest synthetic goose down money could buy. He followed, slinking over her, enshrouding her with his form. “Sweet, beautiful Rook…”

He wasted no time burying his face between her thighs, and while his technique was perhaps not as refined and elegant as it usually was, there was something undeniably exciting about seeing him a bit less poised and deliberate than usual: a rawness to his broad, flat tongue-strokes - as if he finally felt emboldened enough by the alcohol in his veins to allow himself to truly, properly indulge - not just for her, but for himself as well.

Her toes curled into the duvet and she fisted one hand in his hair, grinding languidly against his face.

Fucking Tommy - he could never love her like this - never bothered to put nearly as much effort into making her feel amazing the way Emmrich did. Yet he was the one that felt like he had the right to be butthurt when she threw him out?

I’m so fucking glad I did…

I might never have met this one…

She looked down and realized she’d forgotten to take his glasses off… oops - surely they were a smudgy, sex-fluid smeared mess by now...

I fucking love him.

He readjusted his grip on her thighs, his eyes closed, expression one of intense focus as he teased her clit with the tip of his tongue.

“Oh… Emmrich… Emmrich - I lo— woah.”

The drunken admission was cut off abruptly when the sight of Emmrich eating her out started sliding left… while she simultaneously felt like she was being pulled right...

Her stomach lurched and her eyes slammed shut and she willed herself to pay attention to the pleasant sensation of a man’s tongue between her legs rather than the brutal spin of the room around her.

It wasn’t working: she could still feel him absolutely going to town on her - but it was like they were inside a centrifuge.

She let go of his hair and gripped the bed instead, hoping the static, non-moving surface would be enough to convince her inner ear that she was not in fact twirling madly in circles.

Nope.

Her stomach roiled unpleasantly again, and saliva poured into her mouth, thick and indicative of the impending inevitability.

Shit! I shouldn’t have laid down–

“Emmrich— Emmrich!” He paused and looked up, clearly concerned by the urgency of her voice. She squirmed out of his grip. “I’m gonna… oh fuck— think I’m gonna be sick–” she mumbled, feet colliding with the floor. Not waiting for any confirmation that Emmrich had heard her before sprinting towards the dark bathroom, desperate to at least save herself the humiliation of puking on his fucking carpet.

She felt tile her feet, then veered in the direction she knew the toilet was in, feeling cool porcelain greet her just in time: a few shots and what was left of her dinner spewed forth, her abdominal muscles contracting painfully.

Aware of the deeply unpleasant sounds Emmrich must be hearing from the bedroom, she tried her best to stifle the sounds of her heaving and retching, but knew it was futile. She thought she might have heard Emmrich call out to her, but the horrific groans she made drowned anything discernible out.

Not entirely sure if she was done, she lifted her clammy left hand to flush, but frowned when it passed through air.

But… huh?

She reached again for where the handle on the side of the tank should be, and once again found nothing - not even the tank.

But if there was no tank, then that meant that this…

Oh no.

Oh my fucking god.

Please no.

Please tell me I didn’t…

She leaned to the left, reaching blindly into the darkness, a very quiet, “fuck,” slipping past her lips when her fingers found the solid confirmation she had been dreading.

If that’s the toilet, then this is…

No, no, no - please fucking tell me I didn’t just puke in his bidet.

I. Puked. In. His. Fucking. Bidet.

I’m trash. That’s so fucking trashy. What is he going to think?!

Rook kept the light off, unwilling to embrace the visual reality of what she’d done.

I can’t stay in here forever - he’s going to come check on me… it’s actually strange that he hasn’t already, come to think of it…

She wandered to the doorway out into the master bedroom still faintly illuminated by the bedside lamps, her heart bottoming out when the bed came into view: Emmrich was prone on the mattress - groaning and stirring feebly.

Rook made a sound - she wasn't sure what kind of sound it was, but it wasn't a good one. “Holy shit! Emmrich?!”

Heart attack? Stroke? Aneurysm? She needed to call an ambulance—

She piled onto the bed, snatching her phone from the nightstand, setting it next to her knee as she shook him and leaned down so she could see his face - it was paler than usual, but she could feel his breath on her skin.

“Emmrich— hey!”

Thankfully he moved: his eyelids fluttered open and she helped roll him onto his back.

“Emmrich what the fuck?! Can you hear me? I need you to tell me you can hear me!” She shook him again and was slightly encouraged when he managed to wrap his fingers around her wrist. She grabbed her phone again, adrenaline ruling her thought-processes. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Don’t…” he rasped, reaching for the phone which she jerked away.

“Don’t my ass - you fucking fainted!” She snapped, all concerns about the bidet replaced with the horrific familiarity of this scenario.

“I did,” he agreed sluggishly, swallowing and taking a deep breath. “… got up to help you… but — suddenly light-headed… I stood up too fast, I'm afraid.”

“You seem troublingly unconcerned,” Rook ground out.

He managed to gently pry the phone out of her hand and set it on the bed out of her reach.

“Nothing to fear, darling,” he assured her, pulling himself into a sitting position and stroking her thigh as if he hadn’t just been face down, unconscious in the bed a minute earlier. “Just an uncommon side effect, I think...” He was wearing the same expression he wore when dealing with a devastated family: patient, humble, comforting.

“Side effect of what?!” She demanded, panic rapidly being replaced with impatience: what wasn’t he telling her? What was he hiding? Had he shot up in the kitchen or something while she was upstairs getting undressed?

His expression softened further despite the harshness of her words, and she almost felt bad when he collected her hand in his, drawing his lips over the backs of her fingers in a clear attempt to placate her.

“When we started seeing each other, it quickly became clear to me that I’m not as… vigorous as I once was… no fault of yours - of course.” He chose his words carefully, “So I…” he trailed off, looking somewhat bashful. “I began indulging in an occasional regimen which would help to keep me up to snuff…”

Rook blinked: what the fuck did that mean?

“You’re… you’re gonna have to be more clear.”

“A medicinal aid,” he clarified, though he looked like he’d prefer to change the subject. “For our intimate encounters…”

Then Rook got it.

“Oh. You mean the Viagra.”

“Yes!” He confirmed, eyes widening hopefully, grateful that she understood. “You mustn’t think that I’ve been taking it because you aren’t attractive to me - which isn’t the case at all: you’re the most attractive woman I’ve ever— hang on…” he frowned. “You knew?!”

The accusation was a scandalized squawk: if he’d been wearing pearls, she was certain he would have clutched them.

Feeling relieved at the knowledge that his brief fainting spell had been wrought by too much blood in his dick, and not enough in his brain, Rook cracked a smile, though her heart continued to gallop.

“Yeah. Found it in your medicine cabinet the first time I spent the night. You know, if you really wanted to hide it from me, you should have stashed it somewhere that wasn’t the first place most people would look."

He was trying to glare at her, but the smile on his lips fought through. “Oh, Rook… you… you…”

“Brat?”

“You are a brat!” He chided, though there was no real heat in his tone. He sighed and finally discarded his glasses, clearly coming to terms with the fact that his girlfriend was a nosy snoop who apparently took zero issue with plundering people’s medicine cabinets when presented with the opportunity to do so. “And you’re… you’re not upset with me?”

Rook jerked a shoulder nonchalantly and played with the rings on his right hand.

“No. Now that I know you’re not having a serious medical episode in the middle of the night.”

“I mean about the…”

“Oh.” He was talking about the boner pills. “Should I be? Like you said: you’re not twenty anymore. It only stands to reason that an old dude like you would need some extra pep in his step from time to time.”

“Rook!”

He was taking this seriously.

... and she had just vomited in his bidet.

She unclasped the heavy gold watch from his left wrist and slid it onto her own, tilting her arm up and down and admiring the weight of the expensive timepiece.

“No - I’m not upset with you. Honestly, I thought it was kind of sweet that you would even consider doing that for me.” She tapped the face of the watch and held it up to her ear. “Most guys would be too attached to their shitty male entitlement and not give a fuck about wanting to make sure I was satisfied in bed.” Her hand fell to her lap and she looked at Emmrich. “But you’re not ‘most guys’ — are you? This thing isn’t ticking.” She held out her arm with the watch on it.

“It needs to be wound.”

“They have these new things called ‘batteries’ — not sure if you’ve heard of them?”

He ignored her jab and reached up to push her hair - away from her face: tucked a strand behind her ear, palming her cheek with his big warm hand. Rook leaned into the touch, and he drew his thumb tenderly over her skin: she really was happy that he was okay.

She hated to think of anything bad happening to him. Not when she was around. But what if it was a real emergency - what would she have done? What would she feasibly been able to do to help him?

"Are you all right, darling?" He clearly noticed her ruminating.

She looked at him, nibbling her lower lip before taking a deep breath and coming clean with the simple, casual admission:

“I puked in your bidet.”

He blinked once… twice, puzzlement gracing his features as his eyes left hers and he comprehended her words, his hand stilling on her cheek.

Another little sigh slipped past his lips and he shook his head slightly - bemused, but not exasperated.

He pulled her down beside him, eyes wandering her face as if committing every aspect of it to memory - his expression not at all the one she anticipated when she decided to tell him of the incident with the bidet. His hand slipped down to her naked waist.

"I love you, Rook."

And then he kissed her.

[et-fmp]

Adding Details

I referred to these resources during the process, on top of the initial reference I gathered.

3D MP9 Tactical - PBR Game Ready Model - TurboSquid 1973678

TM-MP9-EN.pdf

Starting to create the back of the stock. Initially, I was planning on adding the details on the back with geometry. Later on I decided to do it during texturing instead, as it would be easier and decrease the poly count.

Moved onto creating the correct shape and highlights for the handle and magazine.

Figuring out the best way to add this detail:

This is how it turned out.

Trying to add the correct highlight, this took many iterations and tries.

Adding the latch holes. Although I had set the values to the same, they were different sizes, this is because one side had an extra edge. to fix this I just added the extra edge on the other side too.

Creating the correct shape that I want.

Modelled the latch and tested different joins for the lateral accessory rail.

This one was more accurate to the reference and looked better.

Adding the top accessory rail.

Referring to an exploded view of my reference.

Adding the holes.

I managed to create the correct highlight and I am very happy with how this turned out. It required a lot of trial and error.